"Shock Doctrine" Applied to Autistic and Retarded Kids

[babylonsister]

http://alternet.org/blogs/peek/71391/#more

"Shock Doctrine" Applied to Autistic and Retarded Kids

Posted by Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake at 3:01 PM on December 21, 2007.



I guess it's the "trickle down" theory of torture.

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts looks like nothing so much as Gitmo for trouble kids -- they subject severely autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar and emotionally disturbed kids to a "reward and punishment" system that includes painful electrical shock. They are paid $220,000 a year per resident by various states and have annual revenues exceeding $56 million.

Watch the video AT LINK, and see how the kids are under constant video surveillance. Half of the residents carry around battery packs and are wired so that if they are observed doing anything against the rules, they are immediately shocked.

The school and its founder Dr. Israel, of course, claim that this was "an isolated, unprecedented" incident. Just as it claimed back in 1981 when it was reported that "Israel had pinched the feet of Christopher Hirsch, an autistic 12-year-old, at least 24 times in 30 minutes, while the boy screamed and cried. This was a punishment for soiling his pants." Or when another student, 14-year-old Danny Aswad, died while strapped facedown to his bed. " Or when "Vincent Milletich, an autistic 22-year-old, suffered a seizure and died after he was put in restraints and forced to wear a white-noise helmet." Or when 19-year-old Linda Cornelison, who had the mental capacity of a toddler, refused to eat and was punished by staffers: "Between 3:52 p.m. and 8 p.m., staffers punished her with 13 spatula spankings, 29 finger pinches, 14 muscle squeezes, and 5 forced inhalings of ammonia. It turned out that Linda had a perforated stomach. She died on the operating table at 1:45 a.m.".

I can't imagine anything more degrading and paranoia-inducing to kids who are already troubled, and indeed the treatment methods of the center's founder, Dr. Matthew Israel, have been widely debunked.

In a recent incident, a resident was awakened and shocked 77 times:

While the staff claim that the shocks feel no worse than "a bee sting," Mother Jones' reporter Jennifer Gonnerman subjected herself to the shock and said "it felt like a horde of wasps attacking me all at once. Two seconds never felt so long."

Six kids have died at the Rotenberg school.

Eliot Spitzer is trying to get New York kids out of there, but a judge's order has temporarily kept the State of New York from doing so. This "normalization" of torture, whether against prisoners at Abu Ghraib or disturbed children, is a moral outrage -- and I really don't want to think that this is who we've become.

(thanks to scarce for the video)

[madeline_con]

1. The use of aversives should be loutlawed!

This is outrageous! I cannot believe a parent would ever send their child to a place that uses such horrific methods of behavior management.

This makes me sick! I work with exceptional students, and this is not an acceptable system to use on animals, let alone human children!

[LiberalEsto]

2. Goddamned Nazi monsters

I hope the bastards in charge of this place are sent to prison.

[Caretha]

3. Clock Work Orange anyone?

[TheMadMonk]

4. The problem with aversion therapies is not they they don't work.

It's that the application of them is left to the hands of those willing (and quite possibly eager) to use them. Those of us (and I don't include myself, as I am far too easily frustrated) who have what it takes to inflict pain compassionately, have turned our backs on it.

"Pain is evil." has become the mantra. Sorry, but if anything pain is good. In the real world it tells us we are (still) alive. I believe the vast majority of us here are at least somewhat "Darwinist" in our outlook, but like the most credulous of Creationists, we deliberately turn our backs on a very simple fact, because we find it uncomfortable/think it barbaric. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution have honed pain into a surgically sharp tool of individual survival. And yet we are hell bent on eliminating it wherever we find it possible.

Misapplication of pain is indeed most evil. However, properly applied it teaches in an instant a lesson that lasts a lifetime.

BUT, it works best if it comes immediately on the heels of the "misdeed" which brings it (the pain) about. Particularly if the subject lacks the ability to reason abstractly, indeed if this is the case, it MUST follow immediately or it is less than worthless.

That said, and hopefully some are still reading this, the use of actual pain for aversive reasons should be reserved for actions that are dangerously/mortally destructive, or have the potential to be so. If I am preventing a heedless child from dashing pell mell into traffic, I WILL be more forceful than is absolutely necessary, because I know that a sore shoulder beats having Chevrolet imprinted in reverse on their forehead by a country mile.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. Fuckin' unbelievable

Even though you know shit like this goes down it's still unbelievable.

K&R

[derby378]

6. And this is tolerated in a state known for being liberal and progressive?

:wtf:

[tomreedtoon]

7. It's a teacher's dream come true!

Didn't you recall that movie where a science teacher (supposedly gone insane, but actually fully in posession of his facilities but fed up) pulls a .45 out of his desk and holds it to a kid's head to make him recite the chemical formula he was supposed to know? It has been a teacher's dream to have something like that come true, and the intellectual elite of Massachusetts has made it happen! Dare to dream, teachers!

[jillan]

8. When I saw the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be about Romania or something.

Not the USA.

:cry:
:cry:
:cry:
:cry:

[babylonsister]

11. Disgusting and gross, isn't it. I share your pain, and where else

is this going on? So many problems, no one to fix them. :-(

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

9. "The school and its founder Dr. Israel..." --

Somebody's gotta be yankin' our chain here, that's just a little too perfect -- A school that tortures the weakest, most defenseless members of our society under the guise of education, founded by Dr. Israel?

I understand there's a school of cosmetology right next door to the Rotenberg Educational Center that was founded by Dr. Frankenstein.

[badgerpup]

10. "..isolated and unprecedented incident"...where have we seen THAT before?

literal translation: "Oh damn, we got caught."

[intaglio]

12. Recently a report said kids were shocked after a phone call

from a hoaxer - outside the school! I'll see if I can find the link

[intaglio]

16. Heres a link

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/12/22/state_lets_center_use_shocks_for_one_year/

/snip
Jean McGuire, assistant secretary of the state's Office of Health and Human Services, said the state has issued this conditional reauthorization well aware of the events last August in which two teenagers wrongfully received dozens of electrical shocks at the direc tion of a caller posing as a supervisor. The caller told staff to wake up the teenagers and give them dozens of shocks each based on alleged behavior that had occurred at least five hours earlier.

[Prophet 451]

13. FUCKING BASTARDS

My kid brother is autistic. This is bullshit.

[Mend]

14. "Dr" Israel is a psychologist, not a physician....he can't prescribe medication

so he does this...the psychotropic drugs are not dangerous and this is not a humane alternative to psychiatric medical treatment. This is torture.

[mmonk]

15. As a parent of an autistic son, the parents that send their kids to

somewhere like this should be jailed for child abuse and this place shut down. My son is attending NC State University, but early on we were told he would never make it. I can tell you his success was not predicated on brutality, but on methodologies that enhanced everyday skills both learning and socially with a heavy dose of understanding and love. Does this so called "Educational Center" also engage in exorcisms and witch burning?