This is an open letter to Mark L. Sundberg, Ph.D., Vincent J. Carbone, Ed.D., and Patrick McGreevy, Ph.D. These gentlemen are experts in the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA), and they are scheduled to speak at an upcoming conference in Austin, Texas called the Verbal Behavior Conference. The problem is that the hosts of the Verbal Behavior Conference, Kelle Wood Rich and the Central Texas Autism Center, have a history of malpractice, abuse, and fraud. Indeed, Kelle Wood Rich has recently been sanctioned by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board for having engaged in deeply unethical conduct since 2004. And the Central Texas Autism Center is the subject of multiple fraud and abuse claims.
This video lays out the considerable amount of evidence that establishes the existence of this malpractice, abuse, and fraud by Rich and CTAC, and encourages Dr. Sundberg, Dr. Carbone, and Dr. McGreevy to engage in a panel discussion at the Verbal Behavior Conference that addresses this misconduct.
Parents of special-needs children must remain ever-vigilant against those who have a history of engaging in malpractice, abuse, and fraud.
TRANSCRIPT OF OPEN LETTER (AS PREPARED)
Dear Drs. Sundberg, Carbone, and McGreevy:
Continuing-education programs routinely begin with a relevant history of the subject matter that is being taught. The history that needs to be recited at the Verbal Behavior Conference must focus on the history of the hosts of the conference. Here is that history.
From 2004 until late 2016, Kelle Wood Rich told consumers that she held a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.
Kelle Wood Rich actively solicited business during this period. Exploiting the competitive advantage of holding a Ph.D., she competed against other practitioners who had not earned a Ph.D. But, according to the University of Texas Registrar’s Office, Kelle Wood Rich never earned this Ph.D.
The Behavior Analyst Certification Board was forced to step in.
In an official ruling in 2017, the disciplinary appeals committee of the BACB determined that Kelle Wood Rich had the Professional and Ethical Compliance Code for Behavior Analysts, which requires that behavior analysts like Kelle Wood Rich to act truthfully and honestly and to refrain from making public statements that are "false, deceptive, misleading, exaggerated, or fraudulent."
Anyone who is capable of faking a Ph.D. for over a decade is capable of anything.
And Federal Court records for a lawsuit in El Campo, Texas bear this out. Kelle Wood Rich was the supervising behavior analyst in that abuse and fraud case.
According to Page 8 of the Federal Magistrate’s Report in the El Campo case, CTAC wrote and sought to implement a behavior plan that called for the use of contrived exercises that were designed to repeatedly and intentionally provoke a 10-year-old with a pre-existing traumatic brain injury to emotional decomposition.
According to Page 32 of the Federal Magistrate’s Report, CTAC’s behavior plan for the child required that he be intentionally frustrated and provoked at least forty-five times per day. CTAC directed teachers to tell the child “no” regardless of the requests he was making; to make him wait unnecessarily; and to deny him objects he customarily used to calm himself.
According to Page 33 of the Federal Magistrate’s Report, "[CTAC’s behavior plan] also required school officials to contrive tests, to be imposed even in times of appropriate conduct, that intentionally … caused [the child] to lose control of his behavior." CTAC then directed that the child be physically restrained when he was unable to control himself.
And these physical containments were "routinely" imposed, even before this 10-year-old’s "behavior was at all dangerous," according to Page 34 of the Federal Magistrate’s Report. This was a violation of Texas law.
What did this look like on any given day? Page 5 of the Federal Magistrate’s Report tells us:
“[D]uring a math game of tic-tac-toe, [the 10-year-old child] put his head down and refused to write the number ‘49’ on the game paper. Rather than permit [the 10-year-old child] time to compose himself, CTAC repeated the demand that [he] write the number ‘49’ on his paper until his decomposition escalated to physical aggression. Then, CTAC, with the assistance of multiple other adults, physically restrained [the 10-year-old child] on the floor for forty-five minutes—all the while the demand that he write the number ‘49’ on his game paper was repeated.
[. . . .]
“[CTAC] later advised the 10-year-old’s guardian that [CTAC] intentionally provoked [the 10-year-old child’s] decomposition and physical aggression to determine what [CTAC] was ‘dealing with.’”
According to Page 35 of the Federal Magistrate’s Report, the 10-year-old child’s behavior plan should have been constructed by someone "with sufficient education, training, or experience to be considered professionally competent." Instead, CTAC advocated interventions for the 10-year-old child that were uniformly at odds with methods recommended by treating psychologists and other medical professionals.
According to Pages 32 and 33 of the Federal Magistrate's Report, the 10-year-old endured more than forty physical containments after implementation of CTAC's behavior plan.
The 10-year-old’s mental health suffered significantly during CTAC’s month’s long campaign.
After reporting all of these facts, did the Federal Magistrate conclude that CTAC’s actions conformed to standard behavior-analytic practice conducted by prudent practitioners? No. The Federal Magistrate concluded that CTAC’s methods “shock the conscience.”
The Federal District Court Judge who presided over this case accepted the Federal Magistrate’s authoritative report and recommendations in their entirety.
CTAC nonetheless told the judge in certified court pleadings that it had acted in self-defense against this fourth grader; this claim of self-defense proves the point that anyone who is capable of faking a Ph.D.—as CTAC’s owner was doing during the El Campo abuse scandal—is capable of anything.
Not surprisingly, CTAC settled this abuse and fraud case. The 10-year-old victim in El Campo received a large settlement payment.
Just a few years later—in 2015—Kelle Wood Rich did it again; this time to a six-year-old kindergartner here in Austin, Texas, whom she knew suffered from seizures.
In Austin, as in El Campo, Kelle Wood Rich engaged in the same kinds of artificial trials without consulting with the kindergartener’s neurologists regarding his medical condition or his prescribed medications; she didn’t consult with the child’s parents either.
Here is a quick summary. To protect the child’s identity, we will call him “Jack.”
Kelle Wood Rich is present in the kindergarten classroom to observe Jack’s behavior. After having just met this child with a complex medical history—Kelle Wood Rich immediately diagnoses the cause of behavioral problems that have vexed medical professionals for months. Kelle Wood Rich decides to intervene, even though she has no parental consent to do so.
She first singles out Jack by segregating him from the rest of his classmates. She rings several adults around him to form a human fence that hems Jack in. The adults repeatedly demand that Jack write something on a piece of paper that is of no educational value. It’s writing the number ‘49’ on the tic-tac-toe board all over again.
Understandably, Jack doesn’t like being humiliated by Kelle Wood Rich in front of his classmates. But the demands continue. He retreats under his school-desk, just as the child in El Campo did. He tells Kelle Wood Rich no, wanting her to leave him alone. But the demands continue.
Eventually, Jack is coaxed out from underneath the school-desk, but the barrage continues.
After enduring this for quite a while, Jack runs for daylight, escaping the adults whom Kelle Wood Rich has ringed around him; out of the classroom and down the hall toward the stairs he runs, trying desperately to escape. Several adults chase after the six-year-old down the hallway of the elementary school. It’s utter chaos. The adults eventually corral Jack, confine him again to a limited area, and this time, they block his means of escape so that Kelle Wood Rich can continue to go to work on him without any interruption.
The demands continue that Jack write something on a piece of paper.
Jack tells the adults, "Stop touching me."
But the demands continue unabated.
Some adults in the room begin to exhibit revulsion at Kelle Wood Rich’s behavior.
Seeing Jack in total distress and with no way of helping him, Jack’s teacher’s aide leaves the room. She tells the school principal, “I can’t do this anymore!”
Kelle Wood Rich turns away a conscientious adult who tries to rescue Jack from this contrived trial telling her ‘No.”
Jack goes into full meltdown.
Kelle Wood Rich rounds up the other adults to pinion this child to the classroom floor—this kindergartener is just a little fella. If Kelle Wood Rich’s methods are so scientifically pure, ask yourself: why does she intentionally introduce chaos and havoc into a classroom—a learning environment—in order to implement her methods? And why does it take five adults to carry out these methods by force against someone whom the school district calls a “loving child” who measures only three feet, six inches tall; who weighs only 46 pounds.
Jack eventually emerges from the physical containment. But Kelle Wood Rich starts to rev him up again.
After several more minutes of this, Jack melts down again.
The same conscientious adult tries to rescue Jack again. Kelle Wood Rich says “no” again.
Kelle Wood Rich physically restrains Jack again. "Let me up," pleads this kindergartener. She is, once again, intentionally violating the physical autonomy and bodily integrity of a small child with a neurological condition.
Jack also tells the adults in the room that he wants to eat and wants to be with his friends. Why?
Because Kelle Wood Rich has extended this already-lengthy artificial trial into the child’s lunch period and then into the child’s recess period.
Kelle Wood Rich refuses to allow this child with epilepsy to eat until she has gotten her way with him. This goes on for nearly two hours.
The chaos she has created gets the best of Kelle Wood Rich. She loses track of things. She cannot remember whether she has physically restrained Jack two or three times that day.
The school principal, who witnessed the event, told the child's father that she would have called the police if she had seen that father doing to his son what Kelle Wood Rich did to the child in his kindergarten classroom. The school district admits that Kelle Wood Rich’s methods have violated Jack’s behavior plan (or BIP); in retrospect, that’s not surprising; email records later reveal that Kelle Wood Rich had not even bothered to obtain a copy of the BIP until she was 38 minutes into her “observation” of Jack.
During the weeks and months that follow, this six-year-old boy’s seizures increase radically in frequency, intensity, and duration.
In the aftermath, the child’s neurologists point out that stressful situations like the one Jack endured at the hands of Kelle Wood Rich have to be avoided because of the significant risk of morbidity—death—that undue stress poses for children like Jack who suffer from epilepsy. Kelle Wood Rich could have learned this, but she didn’t make any efforts to meet with Jack’s doctors before she imposed such stress on him in his kindergarten classroom.
Kelle Wood Rich is able to rationalize this all away. She insists, in writing, that rounding up five other adults to intentionally evoke defiance, rage, and despair in small children is research-based and scientific; so too, evidently, is pinioning small children to the classroom floor. She is not a scientist. She has no medical training.
Kelle Wood Rich even claims that Dr. Carbone’s teachings justify her disgraceful actions. Anyone who is capable of faking a Ph.D. for over a decade is capable of anything, after all.
These days, unfortunately, rationalizing abuse is not unheard of. There was—very recently—a highly publicized criminal trial involving a doctor who was abusing female gymnasts who were training for the Olympics. At the sentencing hearing, even this doctor did not possess the nerve—the audacity—to claim that he was acting in self-defense when he assaulted his patients. But he did tell the judge that he had been utilizing research-based and scientific methods.
The judge repudiated the doctor’s claim that he had helped the victims and the judge imposed the maximum punishment. Fortunately, the victims in that abuse case had been allowed to counter the doctor’s claims to scientific purity.
Undoubtedly, some of the children who have been subjected to Kelle Wood Rich’s methods have not had the same opportunity to speak out. For some of these children, this is because they are physiologically incapable of speech, or are speech-delayed.
When all of Kelle Wood Rich’s flimsy justifications are dismissed, it can be tempting to speculate as to the real reason she insists on going behind the backs of parents and doctors to endanger small, defenseless children with special needs.
Is Kelle Wood Rich herself a former abuse victim who has allowed herself to be caught in a vicious cycle? We don’t know. Whatever the cause of Kelle Wood Rich’s shameful behavior, it is historically relevant to understand that Kelle Wood Rich has absolutely no credibility.
Dr. Sundberg, Dr. Carbone, and Dr. McGreevy, you must be prepared when the conferees at the Verbal Behavior Conference ask you about this relevant history.
Do not choose ignorance as a basis for inaction. To accept Kelle Wood Rich’s excuses, rationalizations, and justifications at face value would be to consciously choose ignorance over the overwhelming evidence of malpractice, abuse, and fraud contained in the Federal Magistrate’s authoritative report and in other credible primary sources.
Do not turn away from the mountain of evidence. Just remember, this mountain of evidence pointing to malpractice, abuse, and fraud has not been compiled by persons who have faked an advanced degree for over a decade.
These credible primary sources can be found easily, and I offer you my help. You need only ask.
What your disgraced colleague Kelle Wood Rich has to teach us at the Verbal Behavior Conference is not the content of her presentations. Rather, her publicly-reported actions are what inform us—they are object lessons—in precisely what NOT to do.
For that reason, I recommend that you make a panel discussion about her malpractice, abuse, and fraud a precondition to your participation in the Verbal Behavior Conference. Doing so will send a clear message to conferees that three of the leading lights in the field of behavior analysis do not tolerate malpractice, abuse, or fraud.
Remember the recent, prominent case involving the doctor who was abusing the female gymnasts? The victims warned scores of adults about the doctor’s abuse. The adults ignored these warnings for a long time. And the resulting human suffering that could have been avoided continued for far too long.
Do not repeat this mistake.
Let it be said, instead, that your repudiation of Kelle Wood Rich’s dangerous behavior put a stop to abuse being suffered by the least amongst us—let it be a forceful reminder that all persons analyzing special-needs children must do so at the highest level of ethical standards.
Respectfully,
Kip Oren
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