This isn't over though. The prosecutors and school district intend to have the case dismissed because of governmental immunity. Also the police claim they would do exactly the same thing if this situation happened again.


Family to get $1.8 million in dad's jailing, teen's false sex-assault interrogation

A West Bloomfield Township family will get $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit against the police department, after the father was prosecuted and jailed after being accused of sexually assaulting his severely autistic daughter — a prosecution that eventually imploded..

The charges against Julian Wendrow were dropped for lack of evidence in March 2008, after he had spent 80 days in the Oakland County jail. His wife, Thal Wendrow, was also jailed, and the girl, 14, and her brother, 13, were placed in foster care for months.

The settlement was made public in district court filings today.

The Oakland County prosecutor’s case was based almost solely on statements the daughter reportedly made using facilitated communication, a widely discredited method in which the child typed on a keyboard with the assistance of a school aid. The girl, who does not speak and functions on the level of a two-year-old, reportedly typed that her father had been raping her since age seven. Prosecutors pursued the case, even though a physical exam showed no sign of assault.

The family sued in federal court in 2008, alleging 38 counts of false imprisonment, wrongful prosecution and other misdeeds.

The Wendrows named the police department as a defendant in part because of a two-hour interrogation a detective conducted with the 13-year-old boy, shortly after his parents arrests, wrongly telling him they had videotapes of both the boy and his father sexually assaulting the girl. The boy had no adult representative present for the interview....

Lawsuit