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Bad Judgement
Author: TriSec    Date: 06/02/2012 12:01:30

Good Morning!

Time to pay the piper; our long string of fantastic weekend weather is replaced today by a typical cold, rainy spring weekend. You know, the kind we usually get in April (when marathon weekend was 90.) But I digress.

I have a story today that was first brought to my attention by my friends over at the East Coast Conservative Podcast.

Most of you are well aware that the Boston area boasts some of the United States' and indeed, the world's finest hospitals. Many of the technologies we all take for granted today, from humble anesthesia all the way up to the latest scanning miracle, were all invented, tested, or perfected right here in my backyard.

I want to take a look today at one of the lesser-known facilities in these parts, the Judge Rotenburg Center.

Most of you have probably never heard of this place. From their masthead, it seems benign enough:


JRC is a special needs residential school in Canton, Massachusetts that treats children and young adults with a wide variety of behavior problems. Some of JRC’s students are autistic-like students who have aggressive, self-injurious or destructive behaviors. Others are emotionally disturbed with psychiatric/emotional problems.

JRC operates residential, day, respite and long-term care programs in which a consistent behavior modification treatment and education program is offered. The individuals whom JRC serves have a wide variety of behavior problems. Some students have normal cognitive functioning but have severe behavior problems such as conduct disorders, bipolar disorders, depressive disorders and other psychiatric issues. Other students have autistic behaviors.


I'd have to assume that they've had some successes at what they do. But you may find their methods a bit unorthodox, since they resort to torturing most of their patients, without consent or approval of their guardians in most cases.

Yes, you read that right.


The Center makes use of aversives as part of their intensive, 24/7 behavior modification program. Until the late 1980s, aversion therapy was administered in the form of spanking with a spatula, pinching the feet, and forced inhaling of ammonia.

The Center administers 2-second electric skin shocks to residents using a Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED), which was invented to administer the skin-shocks by remote control through electrodes worn against the skin. Most often, the shocks are initiated manually by the staff. Automatic punishment is also used by forcing the patient to sit down on a cushion; if they stand up, they are automatically shocked. To address high-risk, low-frequency behaviors, a "Behavior Rehearsal Lesson" has been planned: The person is restrained and forcibly told to misbehave: if the student pulls away, he is shocked; if he follows the order to engage in the risky behavior, he is shocked even more. Reduction of food is also used as punishment: up to three-quarters of the daily required calories can be withheld from the patients if staff members judge that they are misbehaving.

The center stated on its website that electrical shock aversives are only employed after positive behavioral interventions have not been proven to help with violent, self-injurious behaviors and the GED is used with only 42% of residents of school age. In 2011 facilities licensed by the DDS (Department of Developmental Services) in Massachusetts, including but not limited to the Judge Rotenberg Center, were banned from subjecting new admissions to severe behavioral interventions including electric shock, long-term restraint, or aversives that pose risk for psychological harm.


Of course, the center isn't quite forthcoming about their "alternate" treatments at their own website. If you were the parent of an autistic child, would you find the following to be an attractive option to drugs or other kinds of treatment? There's 11 pages of information if you take the time to read through it all, but here's the highlights:


1. ***Near-zero rejection/expulsion policy.
2. Serves students with varied diagnoses and cognitive levels.
3. No waiting list.
4. Advocacy assistance to gain admission.
6. ***JRC avoids or minimizes psychotropic medication.
7. *** Required Daily school attendance
13. Effective treatment of aggressive and violent behaviors.
14. Highly consistent behavior modification program.
15. Student programs are directed by clinicians with doctoral and masters level training in behavioral psychology.
17. Unique reward systems.
18. *** Optional intensive treatment procedures.
19. *** No use of time out or isolation rooms.
24. Instruction in Skills Required for High School Diplomas.
33. 1-1 Instruction in Basic Skills.
41. JRC students live in normal homes or apartments
43. *** Staff-secure residential treatment facility for higher functioning students who have conduct, behavior, psychiatric, or autism issues.


For desperate parents, some of these things sound like manna from heaven. Indeed, many beleagured parents often have noplace else to turn, with children marginalized by the public schools, ostracized by their peers, and branded "difficult" by volunteers in youth organizations.

But once their children are enrolled....all bets are off. Reading through the public pronouncements from their corporate website, and contrasting it to the many news stories out there about the center, many parents feel betrayed, misled, and outright lied to about what would happen to their children. Indeed...there are lawsuits afoot.


A jury in Dedham, Mass., saw video this week of an 18-year-old being tied down and shocked 31 times as he screamed in pain.

The footage was presented by lawyers of Andre McCollins, who is suing the Judge Rotenberg Center for developmentally disabled students, which treated him in part by attaching electrodes to his body and shocking him.

The incident recorded on video took place in 2002 after McCollins refused to take off his coat, according to MyFox Boston.

The station reports that lawyers for the center fought to keep the public from seeing the video, but a judge denied their request.

"These are dramatic tapes, there’s no question about that,” Edward Hinchey, an attorney who represents two of the Rotenberg Center’s clinicians said. “But the treatment plan at the Rotenberg Center, the treatment plan that Andre had in place on October 25, was followed.”

The lawsuit is just one of several ongoing investigations and lawsuits involving the center, which remains open, according to Mother Jones magazine.

On its site, the center insists that "JRC relies primarily on the use of positive programming and educational procedures to modify the behaviors of its students. If however, after giving these procedures a trial for an average of eleven months, they prove to be insufficiently effective, JRC then considers supplementing them with more intensive treatment procedures known as aversives."

The center contends that these procedures are only administered after "prior parental, medical, psychiatric, human rights, peer review and individual approval from a Massachusetts Probate Court."

In a 2007 expose on the center, Mother Jones reported that, "Of the 234 current residents, about half are wired to receive shocks, including some as young as nine or ten."


It's remarkable that what is essentially a medieval torture center is allowed to operate in this Commonwealth without a second look from the authorities. If such abuses were perpetrated on the mentally ill in other places around the world, we'd call it what it is: crimes against humanity.

The only reference I could find online to any legislative effort to reign in the center led right back to them; Judge Rotenburg spent over $100,000 on a lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill to oppose a bill that would have banned "aversives" therapy. Yes, they lobbied for the right to torture their patients.


WASHINGTON — The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, a special-needs school in Canton that disciplines students with electric shocks, used a sophisticated lobbying campaign in Congress last year to help defeat a ban of its controversial techniques, according to recently released public documents.

Although the center declined to discuss its strategy for 2011, the legislative battle is expected to be rekindled this year.

The center, the only school in the country that uses electric shocks to modify behavior, launched its Capitol Hill campaign after the House approved a measure last year outlawing the use of restraints and some other devices to control students. The bill did not explicitly reference shock devices, but lawmakers said the ban would have applied to the Judge Rotenberg Center’s practices.

Critics say the electric shocks — which are the subject of ongoing state and federal investigations — are inhumane. But school officials and parents say they are necessary, a last resort to prevent severely disabled children and teens from harming themselves or others.

The center paid $100,000 last year to a law firm headed by former GOP presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani in a successful effort to help stifle the measure in the Senate, according to 2010 lobbying disclosure records released in January. The bill died in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

As part of the campaign, it transported parents and students to the Capitol to argue the point in private meetings with senators and staff.

The parents told lawmakers that their children would be dead or institutionalized without the center and its unorthodox methods, said Edward D. Krenik, a top Washington lobbyist who led the campaign.

“They have a pretty powerful story,’’ he said. “There were folks that were visibly moved.’’

The center declined to make available for interviews any parents who participated in the lobbying effort.


I know there aren't many bloggers that are also voters in this Commonwealth. But if you're so inclined, I'm sure the Judge Rotenburg Center would love to hear your opinion.

Their contact information can be found here: http://www.judgerc.org/

Governor Deval Patrick can be reached here: http://www.mass.gov/governor/utility/contact-us.html

It is an interesting juxtaposition....we've actually gone to war for less. But when our own citizens, and indeed the least among us, are openly tortured, we turn the other cheek.
 

6 comments (Latest Comment: 06/03/2012 02:24:11 by Hatton)
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Comment by BobR on 06/02/2012 13:09:17
From the lawsuit link:
"These are dramatic tapes, there's no question about that," Edward Hinchey, an attorney who represents two of the Rotenberg Center's clinicians said. "But the treatment plan at the Rotenberg Center, the treatment plan that Andre had in place on October 25, was followed."

That doesn't mean it's okay, idiot. That's the whole problem - the "treatment plan" is torture.

Comment by BobR on 06/02/2012 13:11:03
I hope all our New England bloggers are surviving the storm intact. It was pretty rough here around the nation's capital last night.

Comment by livingonli on 06/02/2012 19:22:43
Quote by BobR:
I hope all our New England bloggers are surviving the storm intact. It was pretty rough here around the nation's capital last night.

I love that they waited until 15 minutes into the pre-game to call off the Nats game when they could have called it much sooner.

Comment by TriSec on 06/03/2012 00:52:02
Comment by Hatton on 06/03/2012 02:22:18
Hey folks, first time commenting here - I'm Hatton, one of the hosts of the East Coast Conservative Podcast.

When we talked about this issue on episode #229 of the podcast it was pretty much universally agreed that the practices at this place were, in a word, barbaric.

A couple of the facts that we didn't know about before that we do know now, such as the fact that Rudy was a lobbyist for them, simply add to my level of disgust with it.

Comment by Hatton on 06/03/2012 02:24:11
Quote by TriSec:
Go figure...This was in the Globe today.

Hrm, might have to revisit this item again.