More Controversy at Rotenberg Education Center

Two people received skin-shock treatments at the Judge Rotenberg Education Center (JRC) in Canton after a former student made a prank phone call requesting the treatments. The incidents happened in August but are being reported now.

The prank phone call led a frightening number of skin-shock treatments. According to the Globe, the school had delivered "77 shocks to one student and 29 shocks to another."

The skin-shock treatments aren't the same as the shock therapy witnessed in movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Here's the school's description of skin-shock: "A mild current from a battery operated device is passed for a two-second period through a small area of the surface of the skin of an arm or leg. The sensation has been compared to a bee sting with no after-sensation. It has no significant negative side effects." Then again, having 77 of the shocks, even if each one is only 2 seconds, has got to hurt.

One writer for Mother Jones, who investigated the school in August, said that "bee-sting" wasn't the appropriate description for the treatment: "It felt like a horde of wasps attacking me all at once. Two seconds never felt so long."

The Rotenberg center says on its home page that it serves "both high-functioning students with conduct, behavior, emotional, and/or psychiatric problems and low-functioning students with autistic-like behaviors." Since the treatments are so controversial, the school says that it uses them after only "appropriate parental, medical, psychiatric, human rights, peer review and court approvals are obtained." And perhaps the occasional prank phone call.

Image from the school's website.