The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) is fighting off accusations that its practice of skin-shocking children with serious psychological issues is barbaric. Yet those accusations seem justified after several JRC staff members at a home in Stoughton listened to a prank caller and shocked one of its residents 77 times, sending that student to the hospital for first-degree burns.
Why would a parent submit a child—no matter how disturbed the child may be—to that kind of torture? (Bostonist doesn't buy that the shocks are equal to mere "bee stings.") The New York Times found one parent who defended the school because of how much it helped her daughter. Susan Handon said that it stopped her daughter from harming other people and herself.
The author of the Times piece, Leslie Kaufman, makes a solid attempt to address the other side of the argument. She also writes that the JRC never expels a student and takes the cases that no other school would.
It's worth noting that she speaks to only Handon and to no other parents. And sure, Handon has allowed the JRC to treat her daughter, but how would she feel if her daughter received skin-shocks for no reason, such as for a prank call? Since the school costs $228,000 a year, one would think the parents, even those who believe in skin-shock, should demand better service.
The opinions stated in this post belong solely to this Bostonist. Image of the JRC from its website.
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
Every indication is that JRC is using its students as guinea pigs. JRC manufactures its own GED's and no one has ever studied what the various configurations of voltages and electode placements do to a child.
If a particular parent reports her child helped by the punishments inflicted at JRC, it seem more likely luck, rather than the perverted science.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am left scratching my head. Here's my opinion: Even after the prank shocking episode, the state is STILL going to allow JRC to go on with shocking for another year! This is an outrage. The restrictions that go along with this permission are hopelessly inadequate. After decades of JRC torturing defenseless children, there is no good reason for the public to think any arm of the government is ever going to stop JRC from using "skin shocking", isolation, restraint, and severe food restrictions.
As I see it, any one of these entities could stop the practice.
The civil court - A case is well underway.
The criminal court - Those 154 and 58 shocks were no prank, they were Federal and State crimes.
The MA legislature - there are some who have tried to shut this place down for years.
The probate court - it approves all of the shocks.
The MA regulators.
The MA psychologist's association - they license the psychologists.
I have ultimate faith that once the staff is asked questions under oath, the practice will be stopped.
Those who have been following the JRC know that this prank was not a freak incident. The very fact that staff members would shock a student 77 times in three hours reveals deep flaws in the philosophy and culture of the Judge Rotenberg Center. Aversive shock treatment induces students to temporarily comply with directions out of fear of physical pain, but they revert to their former behaviors once the aversive is removed. Even B.F. Skinner, originator the technique, eventually denounced it. Painful aversive shock treatment, along with alleged methods like food deprivation and isolation, leaves only emotional trauma and distrust for authority. Americans are concerned about waterboarding of enemy combatants, yet our school boards fund an institution which straps our most psychologically fragile children to boards and shocks them repeatedly. This abusive practice, better described as torture, must end as soon as possible.
We've started a group at Brandeis University, and hope to garner more widespread support. Please join our facebook group "Massachusetts Students United Against the Judge Rotenberg Center", or email me at lizaveta@brandeis.edu if you have any questions or would like to be put on our mailing list.
If you'd like to take more immediate action, please call Governor Deval Patrick at 617-725-4005 (out of state) or 888-870-7770 (in state) and urge him to follow the lead of Washington D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty, who has promised to remove all D.C. students from the Judge Rotenberg Center.