PVBP

I first learned about the Travelers at the time of the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, when Dateline did a documentary on the American line of the Irish migrants. The producers seemed more interested in "looping," a Traveler mating ritual, than anything else. Shiny, sequenced-dressed preteens with bouffant hairdos and makeup were eerily similar to the child beauty queen.
George Gmelch, an American anthropologist, spent a number of years living with the Travelers at Holylands, a Traveler haven in Dublin. This book is a compilation of that research. In it we learn that the Travelers were originally Tinkers or tinsmiths who wandered throughout Ireland looking for work, relying on farm families. They also did a bit of begging and outright stealing on the side, hence their nefarious reputation. During the potato famine of the 1840's up to a million Irish starved and another million emigrated, some Travelers among them. Those that stayed experienced difficulties after WWII when farming became mechanized and the need for tinkers decreased.
Gmelch's book concentrates on the Irish government's attempts to settle the Travelers in permanent housing. They ran into difficulties with settled Irish because of their penchant for scavenging scrap metal and begging. Like other minorities the Travelers did not adjust well to public housing, but did much better when given an opportunity to purchase their own homes.
According to Gmelch the Travelers are family oriented, unwilling to trust anyone outside the immediate family. They also have an adversarial relationship with the settled Irish, who look down on them because of their lack of education and their enthusiasm for drink. This results in a bit of one-upmanship during horse trading and such.
Probably because of Gmelch's academic background, much of the writing is pedantic, kind of surprising when we're talking about some of the most interesting and humorous people I've ever heard of. He does, however, reveal some of the reasons why the American Travelers behave the way they do. For instance, many Travelers in Ireland marry close relations and we see the reason for this in their distrust of everyone, including unrelated Travelers.
This book involves Gmelch's sojourn at Holylands between July 1971 and September 1972 and a return trip in 1975 which lasted four months. Gmelch includes an Update outlining the status of the Travelers as of 1984. As of 1984, more Travelers were dependent on welfare than on scavenging. Horses were almost gone and more families relied on cars and vans. Begging was also in decline. As of 1981 only fifty percent of Travelers were living in trailer caravans. Forty-six percent were living in houses or chalets.
Many Travelers resist the government's efforts to settle them in public housing, preferring their independent, wandering lifestyle. As of 2003, during a visit to Ireland, I witnessed them parked in their caravans alongside country roads.

In addition to being incredibly poorly written, this book is misleading and racist. The Travelling people have been living in the traditional way for centuries in Ireland and yes, some have made their way to the States. Obviously, there are good and bad in every culture, but it seems that the writer of this book is trying to blame Travellers for every major scam in America. This is ridiculous. It is also insulting to the majority of the Travellers, who are law-abiding, respectable citizens who mind their own business. The book was obviously written with the explicit purpose of slanderizing the Irish Travellers, which is a shame. If the writer had done more research, as opposed to just cranking out a sensationalist tabloid essay, he would have found that a small minority of scams are carried out by Travellers, however, Travellers often get blamed for scams that they have no responsibility for .

I found the actual information in the book to be interesting. Having no other information or experience with Travelers, I can neither support nor dispute the facts as the author presents them. That being stated, I found the actual writing of the book to be frustrating and overall awful!

I had several problems with the way the book was written -
1. It did not appear to follow any logical pattern. The book felt like it was written in a stream of conscience style. It hop scotched around from topic to topic, year to year, and had no flow. It started and ended with the "Disney Scam" and kept referring back to it periodically throughout the first few chapters. The author would start a section with a phrase like, "Another favorite scam of the Travelers that year. . . " without ever identifying "that year". After reading it, I have an idea of the types of scams that the Travelers try, but absolutely no concept of the timeline that was involved.

2. The author referred to himself as "the writer" throughout the entire book. It was a "cute" ploy when he described how he first got entangled with the Travelers, but once I figured out he was "the writer" it got pretty old and annoying.

3. He carefully kept referring to his wife as, "the writer's wife" throughout the story, but at one point slipped when he was quoting a letter from Jimmy that said, "'I deeply appreciate both your and Pam's support . ..'"

4. The writer couldn't keep his made up names straight. One paragraph he called the owner of an RV dealership Norman Roberts, the next paragraph the man's name was Norman Robbins and back to Roberts later in the chapter.

5. He was listing the cities that were scam "hubs" so to speak, and he listed the same city twice within the same sentence (Minneapolis).

6. There were two maps of the eastern United States labeled "trip 3" and "trip 4" in one chapter. Why? The entire book is about how these people would go from Kentucky to Florida to New York to Indiana to Oklahoma to South Carolina to . . .. The maps were completely out of place. It was kind of like seeing a china vase in the middle of a hardware store, "what's that doing here?"

Granted, some of my criticisms may seem petty. Get an editor! Proofread the book before sending it to the printer! I don't purport to be an English expert on grammar, but the errors and style of the book were extremely frustrating and distracting to the overall message that the author may have been trying to convey.

One nice thing about the ending of the book however is that he listed all of the main characters (and even most of the minor ones) and gave a short summary statement of "where they are now". It was nice to tie up some of the loose ends that were dangling from the actual narrative.

The author summed it up best when he wrote, "This book also could not be written until now because it lacked both a focal point and a conclusion." Perhaps he should have narrowed down his focal point and conclusion a little bit more.

Nothing about the child abuse case that occurred in the Mishawaka Kohl's parking lot has been simple. While the video is shocking and Madelyne Toogood has admitted she was wrong, new twists continue in the case.

Identity is complex issue for investigators
Part of the struggle for investigators is the society in which this family lives. The culture of the Irish Travelers has made the basic question of identity hard to answer. From the very beginning identity was an issue. When police first released the video they didn't release a name because they questioned the name they were given.

"It is typical for family members and for all the travelers to give false names. It is also typical for a traveler to take on another name or another identity of another family member," says Don Wright, an expert on Irish Travelers. "There could be ten different Johnny Toogoods out there," says Wright. He says that it is all part of the culture. That has made this investigation even tougher. John Toogood sat at the Mishawaka Police Department for hours while investigators checked his background, a check that involved several other names.

Husband has many aliases
"I had a warrant," explains Detective Matt Austin of the Bristol, Tennessee Police Department. "Basically, the name was John Gannon, or A.K.A, James Gorman. I thought he looked or fit the description of Mr. Toogood,"says Detective Austin. While fingerprints cleared him of charges associated with that warrant, police believe John Toogood is the Johny Lark who plead guilty to felony theft in Philadelphia in 1998.

Spanish newspaper throws in a twist
Adrian Villalobos is a reporter for Voz Latinas
A new article on the identity of Madelyne and her daughter was recently published in the Voz Latina, a Spanish language newspaper published in Michiana. The reporter interviewed a man who says that the Madelyne and Martha Toogood we know are not the same mother and daughter in the video. "He says he's pretty much involved in a high level with the real mother of the girl," explains Adrian Villalobos, a reporter for Voz. "He says he knows where they are but he refuses to give me that information for now," explains Villalobos.

The premise behind a deception of this type would be that the daughter brought in to police earlier this week is different than the one shown in the video. That child would not have shown the signs of abuse that the child in the surveillance tape apparently sustained. It is a bizarre question of identity and at this point the prosecutor will only say that the investigation is ongoing. Obviously verifying the identity of individuals in question is part of the investigation.
While video-monster mom Madelyne Gorman Toogood visited her 4-year-old daughter yesterday, Indiana authorities were checking out a flurry of criminal complaints about her husband that they said will likely prevent the couple from regaining custody of the youngster.

"At least three states have been heard from," reported Randy DeCleene, spokesman for the St. Joseph County prosecutor's office in South Bend.

He said that following Toogood's arrest for the videotaped beating of her daughter, her husband Johnny's picture was flashed on TV screens and published in papers around the country.

And several people recognized him - some convinced he's a swindler who called himself John Lark, others insisting he's a con man who goes by the name John Gannon.

"It's all being investigated. It looks like he could have an extensive criminal background," said DeCleene.

Asked how that would affect the Toogoods' bid to regain custody of their daughter, he replied, "I would say it doesn't bode well . . . A criminal record is not considered to be positive for a child."

Little Martha was put in foster care on Saturday after her mother was charged with pummeling her in a Kohl's department-store parking lot in Mishawaka.

The Sept. 13 beating was caught on a store security camera and shown around the country. Images of her husband followed as the story gained worldwide attention.

The exposure led to complaints about Johnny Toogood from Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia, according to DeCleene.

Since Douglas Biklen is one of the foremost and most vocal proponents of FC, and since none of the essays in the book are written by the many scientists, researchers, parents and people with autism who have criticised FC, I wonder whether this book is really the best place to start for anyone genuinely interested in "unravelling the facilitated communication controversy".

Biklen's compilation brings together a collection of double-blind experimental evidence on the reality of facilitated communication that can only be ignored by those people (mainly psychologists) who feel that any positive findings they find unwelcome are automatically suspect. useful for people who want to explore the possibility of taking a new view of the significance of communication handicap in intellectual disability and autism. (I've read the book, by the way: the last (anonymous) reviewer seems to have condemned it unread on the basis of its authorship on the give-a-dog-a-bad-name-and-hang him principle).