Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) has filed a disturbing report with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture alleging that the Judge Rotenberg Center for the disabled in Massachusetts is engaging in the torture of disabled children through electric shocks and restraints.
The report, entitled “Torture not Treatment: Electric Shock and Long-Term Restraint in the United States on Children and Adults with Disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center,” gives pictures and accounts of how restraints and shocks are used to control the behavior of the children.
What is most disturbing are the allegations that electronic shocks are administered by remote-controlled packs attached to a child’s back called a Graduated Electronic Decelerators (GED).
This is not the first controversy for the Judge Rotenberg Center. Judge Rotenberg CEO and founder Dr. Matthew L. Israel established the program in California back in 1977. The center was the subject of an investigation into the death in 1981 of a 14-year-old boy who was tied to his bed. After the investigation cleared Israel, he moved first to Rhode Island and then to Massachusetts. Recently there was an allegation that the Center destroyed tapes after giving shocks to children in a prank call, here.
For a copy of the report, click USReportandUrgentAppeal
For the full story, click here.
Lee, I totally agree with your statements. The parents should be required to get these skin shocks with the same level of pain (highest the units can go) and frequency ( 77 to 100 times) while strapped to a board face down with you pleas for help being ignored and laughed at. See how those bastards like it. My son is doing very well with the proper form of treatment- love and compassion and the D.A.N. Protocol.
It’s only torture if it’s done on animals, terrorists, criminals. Children with disabilities? Oh no! That’s not torture. Suddenly torture has taken on no definition when it comes to the children.
Some of these kids have adhd, autism, self injure, mild problems.
These people are acting like psychopaths and the parents who believe in this system should be shocked themselves.
Zneni tohoto textu vychazi z dila Narodni bachorky a povesti (svazek 2) tak, jak bylo vydano ve Statnim nakladatelstvi krasne literatury, hudby a umeni v roce 1956 (NEMCOVA, Bozena.
ceske maminy zrale
Dr.Matthew Israel to retire !
I have a few questions for you Dr. Israel before you retire. I herd that educational and child advocate George Deabold has been poking around and looking into your center. I was also informed that Deabold just might have asked the right question or questions that prompted you to retire. Is that true sir ? I know both George Deabold and his org. SchoolWatch both advocate for child Safety, health and education issues. Dr. Israel is it true that Mr. Deabold has contacted both you and The Judge Rotenberg Center ? Dr. Israel is it not true that via a phone call between Mr. Deabold and your staff, that Mr. Deabold informed a member of you staff that he is an education advocate. Dr. Israel, didnt Mr. Deabold also inform you staff that he helps both parents and children obtain appropriate educational classification, placement and services. Dr. Israel, isnt it true your staff offered to send one of The Judge Rotenberg Centers rep’s or Sales people to meet with Mr. Deabold. ? Dr. Israel, is it also true that the Center had an interest or was interested in Mr. Deabold possibly sending some of the students he advocates for to The Judge Rotenberg Center? Dr. Israel , did Mr. George Deabold request to feel the full power, pain and discomfort levels of the two skin shock devices that your center uses on children. Dr. Israel, Did Mr. George Deabold ask you about the level of pain associated with the skin shock that JRC uses ? Dr. Israel, did educational and child advocate Mr. George Deabold request to rent, lease or buy both a GED and GED – 4 skin shock device.
Dr. Israel why arent you granting Mr. Deabolds Request ?????show more show less
Come’on grownups! Let’s save those kids!
A name and an email address can make you a hero to a disabled abused child…
The infamous Judge Rotenberg Center for disabled kids, even the United Nations has declared this school in MA an institution of torture. Now despite its high financial clout you can join human rights groups the world over in ending the abuse, and preventing more deaths! All you need is a name and email address to sign the online petition and show the UN what Americans think of state sponsored torture!
Sign the petition here…
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/petition-sign.cgi?ASDADVO
Read more about it here…
http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/school-shock
The Moar you Know,
Thank-you so much for your educated assessment of people diagnosed with Autism. I regularly sit on my comfortable chair and watch in amazement as my 6’1, 200 pound, 14 year old son, once diagnosed with severe autism and now diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, continues to flourish each and every day. There is not a violent bone in his body, and he has never made any attempt to hurt anyone. I can make the same claim of every person on the Autistic spectrum with whom I have ever had the opportunity to work with.
Autism is a neuro-biological sensory disorder which can severely affect communication skills. Research has shown that people with autism can act out violently when over or under stimulated in any of the senses, or become frustrated with their lack of ability to effectively communicate. When given the opportunity to learn an effective means of communication in an environment where sensory deficits are recognized and treated, these are people who can excell in spite of their difficulties. The use of shock treatments and restraints actually can cause worse behavioural outbursts due to the fact that both are an invasion of the senses. This is a technque that has been discredited by real behaviourists for years now.
Attitudes such as the one you posted were once the norm in society, and there was a time in relatiely recent history, when a child diagnosed with Austism was automatically taken from it’s parents’ and left to rot in an institution.
For the record, I am trained & papered as a Behavioural Therapist and have worked in the profession for 20 years. I am also currently taking specialized training in ASD’s and can guarantee that these barbaric ” treatments ” are in no way a part of that or any training currently available.
“Paging Dr. Milgram, Dr. Milgram to the treatment room”….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram
Shock collars are inhumane when used on dogs IMO; using them on people is to me no less inhumane. In another context: is this not akin to using a taser on someone repeatedly as a compliance device? Is it more acceptable to ‘taze’ someone because a doctor said it has therapeutic benefit? How is this different than just giving all of the nurses and floor staff tasers or cattle prods beyond the cost savings of having one person do it remotely vs. having a big enough staff to provide on-site observation for all patients? I suspect that I’ll get a response of ‘false equivalency’ with this line of thought but pain compliance is pain compliance IMO.
“Paging Dr. Milgram, Dr. Milgram to the treatment room”….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram
Shock collars are inhumane when used on dogs IMO; using them on people is to me no less inhumane. In another context: is this not akin to using a taser on someone repeatedly as a compliance device? Is it more acceptable to ‘taze’ someone because a doctor said it has therapeutic benefit? How is this different than just giving all of the nursed and floor staff tasers or cattle prods beyond the cost savings of having one person do it remotely vs. having a big enough staff to provide on-site observation for all patients? I suspect that I’ll get a response of ‘false equivalency’ with this line of thought but pain compliance is pain compliance IMO.
Dog collar test vid:
Crazy Guy Tests Dog Collarchristopher | MySpace Video
My first reaction was to be skeptical of the organization producing the report. As far as I can tell from brief poking around, these folks aren’t associated with or similar to the anti-Psychiatry, Scientology groups. That said, I have no idea who they are or what their slant is on any given issue. Regardless of “slant,” two things cause me to have raised eyebrows: above the link on their site to the actual report is a link to a “media kit,” and the fact that this is so heavily directed at the UN, rather than State or Federal authorities. (They claim that the State and Federal authorities have failed in their responsibility to protect the kids and adults at this program, and thus, they need to appeal to the UN.)
I read the Executive Summary and up to about page 20 of the 67 pages of the full PDF. The report doesn’t sound crazy or that it’s representing some wing-nut take on things. There were a few things that sounded off to me (on page 8 they write, “battered the brain with inescapable white noise,” which is pretty hyperbolic), but overall, it seems level-headed.
To me, the most crushing critique they make of the folks running this place is that they are said to be operating from a purely “behavioralist” perspective and are using these aversive techniques on kids diagnosed with schizophrenia. If that’s true, then, to put things plainly, the people running this program are freakin’ nuts. There’s a huge amount we don’t understand about schizophrenia, but it’s pretty clear that in severe cases, the brain is fundamentally malfunctioning. All the aversive stimulus in the world isn’t going to be very effective at changing outward behavior, any more than asking the person with severe schizophrenia to talk about his early childhood relationship with his mother will.
Politically, I’m skeptical that the folks putting out this report have really done much to expose what appears to be going on in this program within the US. Given that they use the aversive techniques on kids diagnosed with autism, when word of this place hits the smoking oil of the “autism community” there’s going to be fireworks. I suspect that we will soon be seeing Jenny McCarthy protesting at the gates with an Access Hollywood TV crew in tow.
Moar:
good point. What is the level of shock? If it is like a dog collar it wouldn’t do much harm but it would sure get your attention. Although I don’t think I would want it around my neck.
Your 3 choices are correct and I know which one I would choose-the corrective shock. It would be living death to be put in a padded room or be drugged.
Hopefully a new medication can be developed that will make shock correction unnecessary.
It is easy to make hard choices from a comfy chair, it goes on all the time. People should take a lesson from that old saying about walking a mile in some one’s shoes before casting judgement or aspersions. It is very easy to do by people who have the complete authority of the uninformed.
Investigate the place then either bring charges closing it down or tell the world that its treatments are humane.
Welcome back, AY.
So Moar, the Hippocratic Oath now reads “do no harm unless it’s convenient”?
Now don’t get defensive. I know that’s not what you said. It’s just the reasonable extrapolation of the logic behind your statement. Restraining someone from harming themselves or others can be done a right way (humane) and a wrong way (inhumane). The instant and past actions of the Rotenberg Center merit and invite some severe scrutiny of their methods.
Electric shock?? Torturing kids in order to entertain themselves? Are these people left-overs from the Bush Administration?? Sick.
It’s easy to get up in arms and outraged about this, from your comfortable chair and your households filled with normal kids.
Let’s see how well you can deal with a autistic, violent teenager that’s six feet tall and over two hundred pounds.
The Rotenberg Center doesn’t do this for fun. They do it because with some kids (and adults) this is the only option outside of them being tossed into a padded cell and locked away for the rest of their lives.
If you prefer that option to the human equivalent of a dog’s training collar, well, that’s the choice you make. Seems like the collar is a better option. But let’s not pretend that these are patients who can ever be let out into society without someone either getting killed, severely injured, or raped. They will have to be institutionalized. Either they can be mobile with a collar, thrown in a cell, or drugged into insensibility. You pick.
No good choices.
This is something that cannot be allowed to stand. I cannot understand how people think this stuff is okay. Where is the human evolution? I hope the crackdown comes quickly and these kids get the protection they need.
Who the H is Judge Rotenberg?
“In 1994, we changed our name to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, to honor the memory of the judge (right) whose courageous decisions and actions (see below) helped to preserve our program from extinction at the hands of state licensing officials in the 1980’s.”
“…Judge Rotenberg was temporarily given the powers of a Superior Court judge, and all of the various legal battles that were ongoing between OFC and JRC (then known as the Behavior Research Institute, or BRI), and between the JRC parents and OFC, were consolidated in one legal action in front of Judge Rotenberg. At a critical point Judge Rotenberg enjoined OFC from taking any adverse licensing action against JRC and ruled that the further legal expenses of the parents and of JRC, which were now exceeding what either could bear, should be born by OFC.”
Source:
http://www.judgerc.org/history.html
I am aware that some still consider that this is appropriate therapy. I am not so sure.