Category: Health and Wellness
again, i can't fit the title in... ugggg!. but here is the artickle.
Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) has filed a report and urgent appeal with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture alleging that the Judge Rotenberg Center for the disabled, located in Massachusetts, violates the UN Convention against Torture.
The rights group submitted their report this week, titled "Torture not Treatment: Electric Shock and Long-Term Restraint in the United States on Children and Adults with Disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center," after an in-depth investigation revealed use of restraint boards, isolation, food deprivation and electric shocks in efforts to control the behaviors of its disabled and emotionally troubled students.
Findings in the MDRI report include the center's practice of subjecting children to electric shocks on the legs, arms, soles of feet and torso -- in many cases for years -- as well as some for more than a decade. Electronic shocks are administered by remote-controlled packs attached to a child's back called a Graduated Electronic Decelerators (GEI).
The disabilities group notes that stun guns typically deliver three to four milliamps per shock. GEI packs, meanwhile, shock students with 45 milliamps -- more than ten times the amperage of a typical stun gun.
A former employee of the center told an investigator, "When you start working there, they show you this video which says the shock is 'like a bee sting' and that it does not really hurt the kids. One kid, you could smell the flesh burning, he had so many shocks. These kids are under constant fear, 24/7. They sleep with them on, eat with them on. It made me sick and I could not sleep. I prayed to God someone would help these kids."
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Noting that it believes United States law fails to provide needed protections to children and adults with disabilities, MDRI calls for the immediate end to the use of electric shock and long-term restraints as a form of behavior modification or treatment and a ban on the infliction of severe pain for so-called therapeutic purposes.
"Torture as treatment should be banned and prosecuted under criminal law," the report states.
The U.S. Department of Justice opened a "routine investigation" of the center in February of this year in response to a September 2009 letter signed by 31 disability organizations claiming that the center violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Judge Rotenberg CEO and founder Dr. Matthew L. Israel began his first program in California back in 1977. In 1981, a 14-year old boy died face down, tied to his bed, while living in the California center. Dr. Israel was not held responsible for the death. After an investigation by the State of California, Israel relocated to Rhode Island, and then to Massachusetts, where his facility still operates today.
Mother Jones magazine published an extensive investigative report on the Rotenberg Center in 2007 titled "School of Shock." Reporter Jennifer Gonnerman asked, "How many times do you have to zap a child before it's torture?"
Children at the Judge Rotenberg Center are often shackled, restrained and secluded for months at a time, the report says. Social isolation, and food deprivation as forms of punishment are common. Mock and threatened stabbings -- to forcibly elicit unacceptable behaviors resulting in electric shock punishments (Labeled as Behavioral Research Lessons or BRLs, by the center) were reported to MDRI as well as state regulatory bodies.
A former student of the center reportedly tells MDRI, "The worst thing ever was the BRLs. They try and make you do a bad behavior and then they punish you. The first time I had a BRL, two guys came in the room and grabbed me – I had no idea what was going on. They held a knife to my throat and I started to scream and I got shocked. I had BRLs three times a week for stuff I didn't even do. It went on for about six months or more. I was in a constant state of paranoia and fear. I never knew if a door opened if I would get one. It was more stress than I could ever imagine. Horror."
Behaviors that the center deemed "aggressive," as well as those considered "minor," or "non-compliant" -- such as raising one's hand without permission -- are all considered punishable by electric shocks, restraints, and other punishments to students.
"One girl who was blind, deaf and non-verbal was moaning and rocking," a former teacher says in the report. "Her moaning was like a cry. The staff shocked her for moaning. Turned out she had broken a tooth. Another child had an accident in the bathroom and was shocked."
The rights group investigation found that the Rotenberg center is the only known facility in the United States, "Or perhaps the world," that employs the use of electricity, long-term restraints and other punishments to deliberately inflict pain upon its children and then refer to it as "treatment." The electric shocks alone are cited as having possible long-term effects such as muscle stiffness, impotence, damage to teeth, scarring of the skin, hair loss, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), severe depression, chronic anxiety, memory loss and sleep disturbances.
The MDRI report states that more than any other source for its information, they relied upon information readily obtained from the Judge Rotenberg Center's own website.
In response to MDRI's report, the Judge Rotenberg Center said, "There is no credible evidence that for these most severe forms of behavior disorders, there is any pharmacological or psychological treatment that can effectively treat these students or even keep them safe. JRC is the only program willing to address the reality of these children’s disorders and endure the political firestorm in order to save these children and give them an education and a future."
The complete response from the center can be read in full at JRC's website.
this is fucked up. someone needs to go and rot in jail for the rest of their life!
Yeah send these turds running that place for a year's vacation ... at Abu Ghraib!
Shocking children for treatment? Anyone read Brave New World? Because that's totaly what comes to mind here.
This is absolutely sickening. Hopefully, these people who are doing this get what they deserve, and the children get better treatment and caretakers.
god, thats fucked up!
Wonder if these people know what it's like to be shocked.
This is the most fucked up thing I ever heard. I can't even describe how horrible this is, but I hope they get tied up, starved and shocked too so they can know what it feels like!
There you go. No punishment suits anyone better than whatever they inflicted on their victems.
I can not believe this disgrace.
wonder why I have only heard of this on this post/
and they shut down gwantonamo bay. what a shame I'd say find these disgraceful people a new home there.
I've never heard of such a thing ever before. I think every staff member in that facility should have to walk around for a week with this thing on them, not knowing when they can and would be shocked, and see how they like it. Most often, I would say just ban the thing, but this is just horrible.
As far as I know, in order to become a police officer, you have to be tazored once so you know what it's like. I guess the point of this is to keep you from abusing your tazor gun. I totally agree with this, and would apply it to any kind of career that requires giving discipline, no matter what the method of punishment is. As of now, the rules are usually made by people who don't have to follow them, with the exception of law enforcers.
i've read their website, and its rather disturbing. i don't think we'd allow this in the UK.
Heres another one. This will not change your mind on the matter I'm sure, as I am with all of you on this, but it might have you think a bit. This is from 2007. Its pretty lengthy, but worth reading all the way through. sSchool of Shock
As I said before, I don't agree with it, but read some of the situations that the parents were in. What would you have done?
But what is stopping the kids from behaving this way? Is it because they know it is wrong, or because they know they're going to be shocked if they do this sort of thing? I mean, eventually good behavior will probably be ingrained in their habitual responses, but is this really the most effective way to do this? Personally, I think not. I find myself feeling genuinely ashamed that such a thing still exists today. I thought this stopped in the 1950's or even earlier? The article even says that prisoners are not subjected to this, so why should kids? Yes, they have some serious problems, but they're still just kids. I learned good behavior by having privileges taken from me when I misbehaved, not by living in constant fear of being shocked, thank you very much.
Having said that, I do appreciate that article. It really clears up some questions I had about this so-called "facility".
I agree with the fact that the good behavior is probably enforced more by fear than anything else. In fact, with some of the kids being severely mentally retarded, it probably triggers something primal within them that does make their behavior improve, but, having said this, they are still in the school 20 years later, because they could never function normally on their own. There are many other group homes and facilities that take in people like this, and while I've heard of things like sexual abuse and things of that nature going on at some of them, there has to be other positive ways of dealing with these types of problems. And using shocks on people who are depressed, schizophrenic etc. is totally wrong. They can tell you what it's like, and have to live with it, which probably worsens their condition in the long run. With the autistic and mentally retarded people though, we'll never know how they feel if they are nonverbal, and while some would argue that's probably a good thing because their capacity to think is probably not able to store long-term memories, we don't know that, and that's what really makes me sad. They are probably just as traumatized as the others who can express themselves and are able to get out of the situation. I stand by what I originally said on this topic, that place needs to be shut down and the staff need to be given a taste of their own medicine.
O wow. I read the rest of the article, and many of these kids can barely talk. That's even worse. I was already against this before I heard about that, and the fact that the leader of this school will get rid of people who are against the methods of the school, and you never get any privacy. That really seems like some of the dictatorships we know about, don't you think?
oh my; this is awful!! personally, I think the kids that're well behaved, are so cause they know they'll get shocked if they do something wrong. someone needs to shut this facility down!!
Even the way lessons are taught to the kids, expecting them to learn on their own with no instruction is just as horrible. Kids learn at different paces, and if many of them have learning disabilities already, how can you expect them to self-teach. Anyway, I digress. If they would just remove the shocking system, the facility would be controversial, but not illegal.
This is horrible! There are other ways to teach kids how to behave rather than shocking, food deprivation, and the things they are doing in this center! These kids need love not this horrible treatment! They need guided discipline and someone that cares for them and tries to help in a nonviolent manner and to teach and instruct them in a firm but caring manner!
This article sounds like the MK Ultra program all over again!
How aweful. It does sound like Brave New World.