(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on
August 12, 2012)
It has been quite a while since I last
wrote about the Judge Rotenberg Center, a special education school based in
Canton, MA for children and young people with behavioral, emotional, and
developmental problems and disorders. It is also the only school
in the whole country that legally uses aversive therapy to improve their
behavior and make them better and more productive independent members of
our society, or so they claim. As
I have stated in my first posting on the Center, this “behavior
modification program,” consists of electric shocks, physical and mechanical
restraints, punishment-and-reward programs, forced cohesion to behavioral
expectations, and 24/7 monitoring at all times. Numerous investigations
have been conducted and actions have been taken against the JRC in
regards to the questionable effectiveness of this aversive
treatment in disabled children and how it is actually damaging them
physically and psychologically. The latest news I have obtained are cases
in point.
During a legal hearing in April, a
surveillance video from the JRC shot in 2002 was shown in which an
18-year-old autistic boy was enduring seven hours being strapped
face down on the floor and shocked 31 times for refusing to take off his
jacket. In May, 223,000
people signed a petition urging Massachusetts lawmakers to ban the shock
treatments in light of the surveillance video. Unfortunately, the
ban was kept out of the state budget that was passed in June even
after a U.N.
official made it clear that the use of electricity as a means of
compliance with authorities is torture. Meanwhile, a
teen incited a riot at a JRC-run home in Stoughton, MA a few weeks ago. A
movement modelled after the Occupy Wall Street movement, called
Occupy the Judge Rotenberg Center, was formed in efforts to persuade people to
call for a permanent ban on the behavior modification therapy and to
permanently shut down the Judge Rotenberg Center.
Now legally (as I understand it), we cannot use electric shocks to
subdue criminals, be they child molesters, serial killers, or even
terrorists. So why is it being administered to disabled children, some
with a form of autism that makes speech difficult for them, who
cannot speak for themselves to describe the ordeal they have been going through
at the Judge Rotenberg Center? Another thing that baffles me is that how
the petition to ban the shock treatment, signed by over 200,000 people, was
struck down due in part to the strong legal influence the JRC has as well as
the strong support from supporters. The JRC itself had repeatedly
stated that they are a “school/hospital of last resort with zero-rejection
policy” (meaning that they will take in any kid for any problem they have when
all other programs fail and have nowhere else to go) and that their behavior
modification program is reserved for children and young people who struggle
with violent, abusive or mutilating behaviors toward themselves and others,
only after their families have exhausted all other options. One supporter even stated that without those therapies, those children and young people would
end up going back to taking drugs, continue to engage in self-destructive behavior,
cause injure other people, and would not be able to support themselves in the
future; in short, they would regress, making them a lot better off with the
treatment that the supporters call “effective.” That argument is rather
disturbing since it appears to me that torture is the “best, last, and only
option” for disabled children and young adults when there are a number of other
ways in which they could be treated, educated, and supported which the
supporters may not have known about.
I think it is best that I end this entry with a short story describing
how I have dealt with my autism up to this point as opposed to a scenario in
which I was sent to the Judge Rotenberg Center instead. During my
childhood, I went to school in another town that offered a special education
program that was designed to help autistic children control their
behavior. I also used to bite my knuckles and suck my thumb until I
stopped in my very late preteens. As I went through elementary,
junior high, and my first years of high school, I attended small speech
classes, either one-on-one or with a small group, that focused mainly on speech
development, social, and communication skills. I also had an
individualized education plan (IEP) that’s made to accommodate my autism-affected
learning skills. In time, I graduated from high school with highest
honors, got a decent-paying part time job which I have worked for over five
years, and spent two years at a community college, graduating with highest
honors. I intend to acquire a job that requires writing skills and am
currently planning to take courses I could transfer to another college that has
a video game program which I intend to take, with hopes that I could make a
career in video game development. Throughout my entire life, my family helped
me learn to clean myself, dress myself, groom myself, shave my face, mind
my manners, tie my own shoes, cook my own food, be open to trying new food, do
my chores (including but not limited to making my bed and cleaning my room), manage
my finances, make judgements on what sort of clothes to wear for the
season, iron my clothes, recycle cans and bottles, shop for
my own goods; I have learned, and am still learning, to live my own
independent life thanks largely to the support my family has given me over the
years. I have no doubt that my life would have been different had I been
sent to the Judge Rotenberg Center. I would have to wear electrodes
for the Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED) all over my body and a backpack
containing a battery for the device 24 hours a day. I would have no way of
knowing when or while I would be shocked by someone following me everywhere I
go, watching my every move. I would have been shocked for biting my
knuckles, sucking my thumb, any number of things that most people consider
normal behavior: not having a neat appearance, speaking loudly, talking to
myself, swearing, complaining, not getting work done for more than 10 seconds,
not getting up from bed in the morning, and so on. I would have a much harder
time learning social skills and I would only be learning math, reading, and
typing, skills that would be useful in basic things but not much in the long
run. Since the academic program consists of staring at a computer screen
for hours, my learning experience would have been tedious and
unproductive. If I had been confined to the Judge Rotenberg Center past
the age of 20 under these conditions, it is unlikely that I would be the man
with a job, a high education, and a career goal who is writing this blog
right now; I would be an inept recluse who would be so incapable of living
independently that I would have had to continuously need my parents for
everything I currently take for granted in life.
By sharing my short story about my life and presenting a scenario that
would render me a very different person, I am taking a stand against the
Judge Rotenberg Center and its “behavior modification program.” People
cannot turn a blind eye on this forever as disabled, troubled, and emotionally
challenged children and young people, some who cannot speak for
themselves, get sent there to be chocked into changing their behavior in the ”school
of last resort.” As further show of my advocacy, I share with you a
Youtube video, a compilation of news stories covering the JRC and its
unorthodox, and unethical, practices made by Gregory Miller, a former teacher’s
aide at the JRC who authored the petition to ban the treatment in the first
place. Right now, I can only hope that the advocacy to close the Judge
Rotenberg Center permanently gains enough strength to do so soon.
Original Comment
Dakota
February 27th, 2014 at 11:38 pm
Have you looked into the self abuse treatments? I really think this center may/or may not be good. However, SIBIS has extremely useful applications. I know it’s not easy to look at, but I defiantly think it’s better to be able to administer a shock to someone, rather then letting them severally or pertinently damage themselves/others. Several times, patents have lost vision due to detaching their own retinas due to self inflected abuse, and the only type of treatment that has been shown to always be effective is aversive treatment. It is also, the only proven way to help children to young who develop Rumination Syndrome. It’s great that you found ways to cope and work with your autism. However, it’s naive to believe that just because you were helped by one type of treatment that no one ever has it bad enough to need another proven effective treatment just because that treatment bothers you. I do no think this should be a first, second, or even third option, but I have literally seen patients that have been hostilities and doped up on meds and antipsychotics for 20+ years. It takes less then a day of treatment to permanently stop the behavior that had them abusing for their whole lives.
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