(Originally for The Voice of Heard posted
on May 13, 2011 as 'The Judge Rotenberg Center: The Moral and Legal Reprehension of Disability Treatment at an Unethical School')
Ever since I was first
diagnosed with autism as a child, my parents had sent me to special
education programs, speech and language therapies, and hired aides that have
helped me develop socially and intellectually over the years of my life. I
have been and still am grateful to my family, teachers, and peers who have
helped me get to where I am today. However, I have learned a
few months ago that there is a center with a program for disabled people
similar to myself and others with more severe conditions, including
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, severe autism,
mental retardation, and emotional disturbance. Unfortunately, the students
who attend the center are not developing as well as I have and how they
are treated is, in my father’s words when I first told him about its existence,
“morally and legally reprehensible.” The center is called
the Judge Rotenberg Center, located in Canton, Massachusetts, 20 miles
outside of Boston. The treatment is a “behavior modification program”
that consists of electric shocks, physical and mechanical restraints,
punishment-and-reward programs, forced cohesion to behavioral expectations, and
24/7 monitoring at all times. Any form of social interaction between
students, staff, and among themselves is discouraged as part of
the JRC’s treatment program.
For the past few months, I
have desired to write about this but could not due to college work,
distractions at home, and my routine autistic behavior. I feel that I
should have done this earlier since first learning about the JRC and the
inhuman treatment of its “patients.” As an autistic person, I am appalled
as I read reports about students getting shocked for behaviors that are not
considered aggressive, including swearing, not dressing appropriately, nagging,
stopping work for ten seconds, getting out of a seat, and even slouching in a
chair. I have a desire to write everything that I have read that has been
going on at the center but I actually cannot since there is so much information
that I find hard to summarize in my own words in the most convenient way for
you, the readers. So, I find it best to post internet links so that you can
read the articles I have read and view the videos that I have watched, all of
which are below.
This link contains a report
on the JRC made by the New York State Education Department five years ago.
This article was written a
year after the NYSED report by an independent journalist who visited the
center.
This is a report made last
year by the Mental Disability Rights International in an appeal to the United
Nations to take action against the JRC.
This video is a report on
the JRC made by ABC Nightline last year.
After you have gone over
these links, I urge you to post comments so I can reply to them as part of an
online conversation as to find ways to stand up against the JRC and its
practices. So as long as the JRC remains open, misinformed parents of
disabled people with limited resources and options for helping deal with them
will continue to turn to the center which uses treatments that are described as
torture by the UN. The best conclusion I can come up with is this: the JRC
is one of the most blatant human rights violations to have ever existed here in
the United States.
No comments:
Post a Comment