The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Lover or predator? The case dividing America
A new film attempts to tell the sensitive story of a professorstudent relationship that sparked a legal case.
In 2015, two years before the MeToo movement swept America, Anna Stubblefield went on trial accused of rape and sexual assault. She was 41, white, and a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The victim, Derrick Johnson, 30, was black, the son of a working-class single parent, and suffered from cerebral palsy that had left him unable to walk or talk since birth. The case gripped the nation, since the defendant, who is also a published expert on race and disability, claimed that she acted out of love.
She and Johnson were in a loving relationship and planned to set up house together, she said. Johnson had been happy with everything that was going on. She was found guilty of sexual assault and sentenced to 12 years in prison; following an appeal she was released in 2018 and placed on the sex offenders register for life. She is not able to contact Derrick ever again. Yet many of those who had followed the case were unsure what to think. Newspaper headlines asked the question: “who is the victim in the Anna Stubblefield case?”
It was a question the documentary maker Nick August-Perna (below right) found himself asking, too. He had followed the trial with interest, and immediately wrote to Stubblefield and Derrick’s family requesting interviews.
“Anna was still in the county jail awaiting sentencing at that point. I instinctively felt the story needed more than a court case. I don’t think I’ve ever jumped on something that fast in my life.” Stubblefield agreed straight away, though filming didn’t begin until her sentence was overturned. Daisy Johnson, Derrick’s mother, and his elder brother John, were more guarded and took longer to persuade.
“Daisy works on intuition and looks you in the eye,” he says. “She makes all her decisions in her heart and her gut. There is no contract that is going to take the place of that – you can have her sign 43 different papers but if she doesn’t want to film, she’s not going to do it. But I was transparent I would also be talking to Anna. Eventually, after talking on email for about 18 months, I was invited into their home for the first time.”
The resulting Sky documentary, Tell Them You Love Me, with Louis Theroux as its executive producer, features extensive interviews with Stubblefield, and with Daisy and John, filmed over a six-year period. There are sweeping shots of the modest house where Stubblefield was forced to move after her release and where she now lives under a new name. There is video footage of John and Derrick goofing about at home with Daisy, a single parent with whom Derrick has always lived, the walls crammed with photographs of both boys as children.
Derrick is a constant presence throughout: a slight man-child with unsteady gait and eyes that struggle to focus, but also ready with a smile and a chuckle. And there are contributions from disability experts and from Stubblefield’s mother, Sandra McClennen, herself a pioneering disability educationalist. What it doesn’t do is provide easy answers.
“It took me years going back and forth to get to a place where I could feel I knew what happened [between them],” says August-Perna, although he is reluctant to express his own opinion, preferring to let viewers make up their own mind. “I would talk to Anna and think: ‘oh, her experience is so true.’ But then I would talk to Johnson’s family [who have cared for Derrick since birth] and think exactly the same. The story defies any attempt to box it up.”
Stubblefield first met Derrick in 2009 after his brother John attended as a PhD student one of her courses at Rutgers in disability studies in which she talked about facilitated communication. FC, as it is known, was developed in the 1960s initially to help those with autism. The process involves a “facilitator” helping the user with a Neo keyboard, which has a built in LCD display, by supporting their arm as they type.
After John approached Stubblefield about his brother, she agreed to begin teaching Derrick basic literacy at his home. Slowly, with Stubblefield’s assistance, Derrick was able type simple sentences on the Neo, including to Anna: “I’m so happy to see you”. After a while he was able to express something of his condition. “I am confined without the ability to speak,” he wrote. Eventually it was agreed he would benefit from some education, so he started attending a Saturday course at Rutgers in African American literature.
A student who wasn’t on the course and had no knowledge of the books being studied helped him write his essays using the Neo. “Derrick had clearly read the books and understood them,” Stubblefield tells August-Perna in the documentary. Before long, Derrick was participating in conferences and producing papers on the right to communication.
Yet FC is highly controversial. These days it is largely rejected by the scientific community who point to many studies that prove the facilitator unconsciously influences the outcome.
Around early 2011, Derrick’s family started to feel troubled. Derrick had always loved gospel music at church, but during a car journey he tried to change the radio station from gospel to classical. The brothers used to enjoy a beer together; now, with Stubblefield, Derrick was typing he preferred red wine. For her part, Stubblefield found herself developing romantic feelings for Derrick. Eventually she told him she loved him. In the documentary she says he replied to say he loved her too and asked her to kiss him.
One afternoon at Derrick’s house, while Daisy was out, Derrick allegedly asked if he could see her naked. She complied. Not long after that, sex took place at her office. On May 30 Stubblefield and Derrick informed Daisy and John of their relationship, and that they were intending to start a life together. John and Daisy were horrified. They contacted a lawyer. A couple of months later, Stubblefield was arrested and was sacked from her job.
To this day Stubblefield maintains she is not guilty of any crime. While she was in prison, she kept a journal full of her love and longing for Derrick and her assurances that they could still have a future together. Much of her initial interview with August-Perna, filmed soon after her release in 2018, appears in the documentary. At this point she believed a relationship with Derrick was still possible. Her eyes sparkle when she talks about Derrick, the way a teenager might talking about a first crush. Even today, August-Perna says, she holds on to her version of what happened.
From the start, August-Perna wasn’t interested in what he calls “gotcha” journalism. He’s not interested in ideas of guilt or blame. But he did find himself having to be careful he was always representing both sides equally fairly. “In that respect it’s the most
‘I felt the story needed more than a court case. I’ve never jumped on something that fast’
difficult film I’ll probably ever make. I had to be so careful in the editing that I gave each side equal balance. Because even I found myself swaying at certain points.” Both Stubblefield and the Johnsons have seen the finished film and while both feel “represented”, they also admitted that they felt the film at times could have been more critical of the other side.
He remains in contact with Stubblefield and the Johnsons. “It’s not like we became friends exactly, we don’t hang out and have beers, but I admire their courage and their honesty.” His determination to make the documentary never wavered. “Love, relationships and family are the most fascinating subjects to me because they offer the deepest form of human connection,” he says. “But they also have the power to destroy us.”
‘Tell Them You Love Me’ is available on Sky Documentaries and streaming service NOW from February 3