Sen. Joyce and the History of the Judge Rotenberg 'Educational' Center

Today the Unitarian congregation in Canton was enthralled by four speakers: John Randal, CEO of Omega, that supplies humane environments for emotionally disabled children/young adults, Mary Ann Kinnealey, who gave us the hideous history featuring six deaths by Matthew Israel, the Ph.D. who owns the JRC, Poly Cobb, a long term activist against the cruelty of this shocking place and Joan Lundgren, co-chair of the AAUW in Canton, Omsbudman, and teacher.
We moved to the chapel to view a presentation by Sen. Bryan Joyce, who has succeeded in getting many of the shocking instruments removed (for how long, who is to know).

Sen. Joyce's Presentation

State Senator Joyce speaks out

State Senator Brian Joyce explains a lot of the details of what's been going on, "profiting from the abuse of children," and "held in restraints while some 70 or so of these extraordinarily painful electric shocks were applied to him." and "one of those individuals ended up hospitalized as a result."

We heard a lot of testimony today at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Canton.  It's even worse than what I had seen so far.  I hope to get a lot of this information into this blog.

Eventually, when we reach a critical mass, I'd like to start publicizing the blog to get a significant number of readers.

This is a jaw dropping speech made to the Massachusetts State Senate:
State Senator Brian Joyce speaks out on the Senate Floor


Here's a CNN news segment interviewing Brian Joyce about the issue.  A very important issue that he brings up is that he says a huge amount of taxpayer money is flowing into this center and a large amount of that money is fed into lawyers and lobbyists (which should be public information... can we get a link to the documentation?).  This would be the fuel that keeps this whole thing going.

There were also allegations at the testimonies today, and people I talked to, that parents of the students are afraid to speak out against the center due to some sort of real or implied threats against the children.  Also, a lot of the parents supposedly fall victim to wanting it to be a good thing in order to not feel like a monster for putting their children through that.  Another claims is that many of the parents have reached wits end and are tired of dealing with the problems of their children.

I believe the best approach is sunlight: show everything that's going on and let people be horrified by it.

Here's a similar speach by State Senator Brian Joyce

Protest at the State House on the JRC's methods

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/06/02/advocates-push-for-law-ban-shock-treatment-canton-special-needs-school/erT3A59sSlLzBozLoSVzsN/story.html

Sen. Joyce and others addressed us in the pouring rain at the State House in Boston a few weeks ago.  Unfortunately several churches in Canton refused to allow the human rights workers from all over the country to park in their driveways for our march of protest at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center.

Boston Globe has long history of investigation into the JRC

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2012/06/05/aversive-therapy-outlier-not-those-serves/gcDkCmNxwKRQHL8tGPXtMI/story.html

This is just one letter of many in outrage about the torturous practices and lying practiced by the owners, lawyers and PR people they hire.

Mother Jones News sent in an investigative reporter

I have been following the horrible happenings at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton since 2007, when Mother Jones News did a cover story on this place.
I invite you to call them up and ask for a tour.  You'll get a 'dog and pony' show, but at least it will give you some context. 
Several follow-ups to the cover story were made during this year.

Here is a set of links for the shocking stories of the inhumane practices in this place, licensed by the state of Ma.  I thought we were through with torture when we quit dunking the old ladies for being witches, and pressing the old guys with stones for being warlords.

http://www.motherjones.com/search/apachesolr_search/Judge%20Rotenberg%20Educational%20Cente

Findings from a 2006 Review

The New York State Education Department Board of Regents and others conducted a review of JRC's program on April 25 and 26, and on May 16,17, and 18, 2006. The review was conducted by NYSED staff and three behavioral psychologists in the role of independent consultants. The April 25-26 review was an announced visit. The May 16-18 review was an unannounced visit.

F I N D I N G S

The integrity of the behavioral programming at JRC is not sufficiently monitored by appropriate professionals at the school and in many cases the level of background and preparation of staff is not sufficient to oversee the intensive treatment of children with challenging emotional and behavioral problems.

This makes sense to me.  In order to avoid abuses in the case of extremely difficult children and overseers who are given extraordinary power over those children, JRC would need to hire highly trained people with very high credentials.  The risk of losing those credentials due to abuse should be extremely serious.

JRC employs a general use of Level III aversive behavioral interventions to students with a broad range of disabilities, many without a clear history of self-injurious behaviors.

 and also

JRC employs a general use of Level III aversive behavioral interventions to students for behaviors that are not aggressive, health dangerous or destructive, such as nagging, swearing and failing to maintain a neat appearance.

This damages the argument that these measures are needed to stop the children from harming themselves.  It also reinforces my conjecture in the previous post about the center essentially being a dictator's attempt at having absolute control over a group of disabled children in order to create some world of his own imagination.

The use of electric skin shock conditioning devices as used at JRC raises health and safety concerns.

I wonder if it's possible to get any evidence to support this: emergency medical treatment of skin burns or other evidence of abuse. Would it be possible to get testimony from police or EMT workers who may have dealt with cases at JRC?

Video surveillance system monitoring includes most bathrooms and all bedrooms but no formal staff monitoring system is in place to ensure the privacy and dignity of students/consumers during intimate grooming/hygiene or personal sexual behavior (e.g., masturbation). For example, no procedures were in place to ensure staff was not observing opposite sex residents during showering.

[emphasis added]

It would be a gross understatement to say that I'm starting to form an opinion about JRC.

It may be that they have taken steps to address these issues.  But I believe in the "where there's smoke, there's fire" principle.  True evil is like feces in your food.  Once its existence is established, claims of its removal require an extraordinary burden of proof.

Ed Pilkington visited JRC

The Guardian's New York Correspondent, Ed Pilkington, visited JRC back in March of 2011 and wrote this report.  It's definitely worth reading.  The one part that really struck me was the description of the founder, Matthew Israel.  The school was essentially founded back in 1971.  Dr Israel was very much influenced by B. F. Skinner and his book Walden Two

...in which he envisaged a fictitious community of 1,000 people engineered to produce the happiest and most efficient society. Every activity in the community is shared, from child rearing to cooking and manual labour. Positive emotions are rewarded and negative ones discouraged; meanwhile, children are given rigorous ethical training to turn them into model citizens.

This would explain the bizarre nature of the school, such as the Wizard of Oz themed reward center.  If you haven't seen those photos, you should scroll through them to get a sense of the creepiness that I mentioned in an earlier post.

History is riddled with utopian idealists acting as dictators for the "good" of society

Note that Matthew Israel was forced to step down from his position at JRC.

...there was enough evidence that the grand jury indicted Israel Friday on two counts related to misleading a witness and destroying evidence. Cunha said his office ultimately decided to offer Israel a pretrial probation agreement, in which Israel had to permanently end his tenure at the center, which he founded 40 years ago, and serve a five-year probationary term. If he complied, prosecutors would drop the case in five years.

What bothers me is that just like the Andre McCollins case, nothing was actually resolved.

Unitied Nations Takes Aim at JRC

The Guardian reports that the UN's special rapporteur on torture has made a formal approach to the US government regarding the Judge Rotenberg Center.

The Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts, is believed to be the only institution in the world in which disabled and disturbed children are subjected to electric shocks to in a system known called "aversive therapy".

It certainly says something when the United Nations focuses on a single school in the town of Canton, Massachusetts.

...Mendez was himself subjected to torture by electric shock at the hands of the Buenos Aires police in 1975.

My own view is that it doesn't matter whether the method works or not.  You could easily get school children to obey the teacher if you had them all routinely waterboarded.  That doesn't make it a good idea.

This is the second time the UN has intervened over the school. Mendez's predecessor as torture rapporteur, Manfred Nowak, also called for a federal US investigation.

Former Student

Someone on Reddit, responding to the now-famous video, claimed to be a former student of JRC and offered this as proof (which seems to check out against the history of the place, but I have no idea about the authenticity of it).  Keep in mind that this would be very old, from the 1990s.

A user named "ganic" asked"

Did you see or experience punishment like what has been brought to light in the video? If so why did you not try to bring it forward to authorities? 

to which the alleged former student replied:

I saw this literally every single day for three years. The authorities in Massachusetts approve of this treatment.

I recommend reading the whole thing if you are skeptical (and being skeptical is always a good starting point).

It's worth pointing out that the alleged former student also wrote:

As a last resort for people who will perhaps kill themselves if not constantly sedated (people wo [sic] do not have the capacityh [sic] for reason), it is debatable as to whether or not this place is desirable. For anyone else: No fucking way.

Bruce

Former Employee Weighs In

A testimonial from a former JRC employee:

Hi, my name is Gregory Miller. I used to work at a school in Massachusetts named The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) where we used powerfully painful electric shock devices (45 – 91 milliamps, at 66 volts) on students to control their behaviors. These devices are much stronger than police stun guns (1-4 milliamps).... The United Nations is aware of JRC, has called these shocks at JRC “torture”....

To me, this next statement is particularly damning because it undermines the main thesis of JRC's argument:

Rather than shocking students for only severe behaviors, JRC also shocks students for minor behaviors, such as closing eyes for 15 seconds while sitting at the desk, pulling apart a loose piece of thread, tearing an empty used paper cup....

The site has a petition.

Thoughts

About a year ago, an acquaintance told me about abuses routinely occuring within the Judge Rotenberg Center.  My initial reaction was a healthy skepticism.  I went to the JRC website and found that they were, in fact, administering electric shocks to their patients/students.  I looked through the photos and was "creeped out" by the strange world they've created.  I couldn't shake the sense that this was pure evil.

I read through their justification papers and I found myself back to being skeptical.  The argument is that shocks are better than powerful drugs that simply deaden the mind.  That may be so, but the video does not strike me as an exceptional one-time case of abuse within the system.  If you haven't seen the video (including the news report supporting it), you should definitely watch it.  The trial ended in a settlement, which resolves nothing.

My current sense is that JRC is based on pragmatic ideas that make sense on paper.  The application is probably effective in some cases, maybe lots of cases.  But if there is widespread torture going on at the center, then even good results mean nothing.

There are rallies being held against the center, but I believe the best approach is to quietly gather all relevant information and determine what is really going on.

Here's a relevant article.

Bruce