This paper summarizes the background, staffing, philosophy, participants, methods, and conclusions of the Case Studies on Facilitated Communication Project, which examined the use of facilitated communication (FC) with seven adult females, all with mental retardation and other disabilities. Information is provided on the development of the FC checklist, development of the Wisconsin Sensorimotor Pointing Assessment, and implementation of the FC intervention. The paper discusses the consequences to the project, staff, and participants when, under facilitated communication, allegations of sexual abuse were made against community service providers. Efforts to validate the authorship of facilitated communication and negative impacts experienced by project staff, family members, and participants are recounted. Some positive behavioral changes in participants are also reported. The project's major conclusion was that the risks involved in using FC when there is not objective evidence for the sole client authorship of messages overshadows any potential collateral benefits of FC (such as improvements in eye contact, initiations, or speech). The project identified a number of practices and philosophies that could be extracted from FC and used in non-FC therapy and training. Appendices provide additional detail on behavior tracking, a description of the FC checklist, and excerpts from facilitated messages. (Contains 10 references.) (DB)