Warning About Our Social Media Accounts!
Hello.
I am writing this blog post to reach out to and warn the 2500+ followers of the @usautismassociation Facebook Page and the @usautism Instagram Page that our organization is no longer responsible for or affiliated with these pages. These are now under the sole control of Ms. Jennifer Grace, a disgruntled former member of the Board of Directors, who has claimed these as her own personal accounts.
For a short recap on the history, in May of 2025, with unresolved differences about the direction of the organization between myself and Ms. Grace, she accepted a payout from the organization and resigned in a written letter that was sent to all members of the Board of Directors, Advisory Board, and to all active US Autism Association Speakers. But when she resigned, she failed to turn over many of the US Autism Association’s accounts and assets, with over a dozen accounts still registered under her personal name and linked to her private cell phone months later.
To recover these, last November, with the help of a cybersecurity specialist, the organization was finally able to recover the @usautism email account portfolio with Google, which, in turn, gave us access to most of our withheld content. However, this did not include some of our social media accounts because several of these were still linked to Ms. Grace’s personal social accounts.
Beginning in January, with no success in recovery of the Meta Business Portfolio containing our Facebook and Instagram accounts, we formally filed for an Administrative Dispute with Meta against Ms. Grace for full ownership and control of the @usautismassociation Facebook Page, along with its 1200 followers, the @usautism Instagram Page, with over a thousand followers, and for control over the US Autism Association Facebook Group, with approximately 400 members.
In response, and because Ms. Grace continued to claim that these accounts belonged to her personally, Meta, not wanting to be in the middle, required us to seek a court order for recovery of these accounts. This dispute also prevented us from using our own business names on either Facebook or Instagram (US Autism Association or US Autism) to open new pages or accounts. We then initiated a legal process and with additional pressure, Ms. Grace finally turned over the Meta Business Portfolio to us the last week in May of 2026, a full year past her resignation. She also turned back to the organization the administration of the US Autism Association Facebook Group. But, before she returned the account, Ms. Grace removed from the Meta Business Portfolio all content, pages, and followers, returning to the organization an empty portfolio shell.
This step has finally allowed us to open a new Facebook Home Page, and a new Instagram Home, and in time this should also allow us to finally begin to appear in online searches with Meta. But because all content and followers from both of the old accounts had been removed by Ms. Grace before we recovered the account, we now face another legal dispute to recover those followers and content pages. While we are still deciding whether to pursue this additional step legally, we decided that in the meantime, it was necessary to issue this WARNING:
To anyone who is following @usautismassociaton on Facebook or @usautism on Instagram, these accounts are no longer under our control, and are instead, in the sole possession of Ms. Jennifer Grace. If you see something that concerns you, please do not hesitate to contact us.
If you receive any contact from Ms. Grace or from any email account that is outside of our @usautism.org email portfolio, please know that these contacts did not come from our organization, and we advise you to please be careful opening or responding. We ask that you be especially careful with any emails from ***.usautism@gmail.com. This isn’t us!
As we work to resolve this situation, we ask you to find us again, like our content, and share our content widely with others so that we can attempt to recover our understandably lost and confused followers.
All Official Social Media Accounts Can Be Found HERE.
With Our Sincere Appreciation,
Marlo Payne Thurman, Ph.D.
President,
Board Chairman
Divergent World, Inc.
Registered to Do Business As:
US Autism
US Autism Association
US Autism World Alliance
World Autism Conference
World Autism Learning