[Trigger Warning: This article describes physical, emotional and sexual abuse, including use of restraints and electric shocks.]
“Instead of showers, I was bathed tied to a restraint board, naked, while staff washed me, putting their hands over me. All in front of cameras, where Monitoring watched, including men. Being tied on a restraint board, naked with my private areas exposed to the staff in the bathroom and the cameras was the most horrible, vulnerable, frightening experience for me. I would scream out ‘rape, rape!’ And these were recorded as major behaviors for me” (Autistic Hoya, “Judge Rotenberg Center Survivor’s Letter,” 01.15.2013).
“It was very difficult to sleep at the Judge Rotenberg Center. There are several alarms in the room and over the bed. Every time someone moved in bed it would set a loud alarm off that could be heard throughout the house. Most of us on Graduated Electronic Decelerators had to sleep with the devices on. That means locks and straps that get all tangled around you and make it very hard to lay down in a comfortable way. I was very anxious to close my eyes, always fearing a shock for something I might not have even known I did. My fears came true one day, and I was given a GED-4 shock while I was asleep. It was not explained to me why I got this shock. I was terrified and angry. I was crying. I kept asking why? And they kept telling me ‘No talking out’…After this incident I really stopped sleeping. Every time I closed my eyes they would jump open, anticipating that jolt somewhere in my body” (ReunifyGally, “Letter from Former Resident at Judge Rotenberg Center,” 01.11.2013).
“A staff would rush in at various times during the school-day, yelling and screaming while entering the room and racing to the student, and place either a plastic knife or a metal spoon to the student’s mouth, and yell, ‘Do you want to swallow a knife? Do you want to swallow a knife?’ The staff would hold the plastic knife to the student’s mouth in a life-threatening manner, the student would scream loudly as though it was his last breath, and another staff somewhere in the room would push a hidden remote control button to shock this student who was already physically helpless to move his body an inch in any direction while being attacked” (Autistic Hoya, “Letter from Former Teacher at Torture Center,” 01.16.2013).
These accounts don’t come from Guantanamo Bay. They’re not from Abu Ghraib. They’re not from a prison camp in North Korea or a re-education camp in China. They’re not from a gulag or a death camp. They’re not from pre-1960s American psychiatric wards. In fact, all three of these stories are from survivors of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, a school for disabled students in Canton, Massachusetts that is still open today—running on taxpayer dollars.
I have been writing about disability rights for The Miscellany News for my entire four years at Vassar College, and today I write my final article. I don’t want to leave you with more kvetching, though certainly that is something I am quite adept at doing. So instead, for my very last op-ed, I am going to tell you, my loyal readership, a story about one of the worst places in America, and at the end I will tell you what you can do to help.
The story begins in 1971, when psychologist Matthew Israel founded the Behavior Research Institute in Rhode Island. The school housed autistic people and people with intellectual disabilities. The school would use physical aversives to dissuade them from undesirable behavior. At the time, aversives meant, “[S]praying children in the face with water, forcing them to smell ammonia, pinching them, slapping them, subjecting them to painful muscle squeezes, spanking them, forcing them to put hot peppers on their tongues, and forcing them to wear a white-noise helmet that emitted static” (Mother Jones, “The School of Shock,” 08.20.2007).
The center later moved to Massachusetts and was renamed after Judge Ernest Rotenberg, who ruled in favor of the institution during a legal struggle with the Massachusetts Office for Children, after the government agency had grown concerned about the staff abuse that led to the death of 22-year-old Vincent Milletich (Autistic Self Advocacy Network, “Prisoners of the Apparatus: The Judge Rotenberg Center,” 08.09.2014). Today, it is known as the Judge Rotenberg Education Center, or JRC for short.
The school still uses physical aversives on its students: most famously electric shocks. In 1988 Matthew Israel developed the GED, a device used to administer electric shocks on unruly students. The current model, the GED-4, can deliver a shock of 45.5 milliamps (Autistic Self Advocacy Network, “Prisoners of the Apparatus: The Judge Rotenberg Center,” 08.09.2014). According to the Electronic Library of Construction, Occupational Safety, & Health, 30 milliamps is enough to cause respiratory paralysis (Electronic Library of Construction, Occupational Safety, & Health, “Electrical Safety: Safety & Health for Electrical Trades (Student Manual),” 01.2002).
As one survivor stated, “The GED is harmful. Even the GED-1. I was burned many times, and I still have scars on my stomach from being repeatedly shocked there, by the FDA approved GED-1. The electrodes had actually burned into my skin. I experienced long term loss of sensation and numbness in my lower left leg, after getting a shock there. I felt searing pain all the way down to the bottom of my foot, and was left with no feeling in my skin from the knee down for about a year” (PsychCentral, “Judge Rotenberg Center: One Patient’s Story,” 07.08.2018).
This survivor went on to say, “[L]ife with GEDs is a life of constant anxiety. I experienced heart palpitations daily, had a very hard time sleeping and eating, and become rather paranoid, always wondering if I was about to get shocked and constantly alert in all directions” (Autistic Hoya, “Judge Rotenberg Center Survivor’s Letter,” 01.15.2013). According to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, “Some students receive hundreds of shocks per day. One student received 5,000 shocks in one day. Students are shocked over an extremely long period of time—of the 109 students receiving electric shocks at JRC…48 have been receiving these shocks for at least 5 years” (Autistic Self Advocacy Network, “Prisoners of the Apparatus: The Judge Rotenberg Center,” 08.09.2014).
The JRC also uses restraint and seclusion to humiliate students. As one survivor attests, “I was put in a GED seat board, strapped onto a chair. They turned a key to turn it on and it would automatically trigger a shock if I stood up without asking. I was in the chair for several months. I was also put in a room by myself and put in a 4-point chair—feet and chest tied to chair. I was strapped to the chair, except when I was sleeping, for four months.” The mother of a survivor told Mental Disability Rights International that the during her son’s first few months in JRC, he son was put in restraints. She said, “When he was in restraints, they put him in diapers—he was a teenager—he was never in diapers before and he always used a toilet. But they didn’t want to untie him and let him use the bathroom” (Mental Disability Rights International, “Torture Not Treatment,” 2010).
Even the United Nations itself views these practices as a form of torture. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture formally called for the U.S. government to intervene. Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak, in response to claims that the actions of the JRC are justified in the name of medical treatment, said, “[E]ven for a good purpose—because the same is to get from a terrorist information about a future attack, is a good purpose. To get from a criminal a confession is a good purpose…You cannot balance this. The prohibition [on torture] is absolute” (Autistic Self Advocacy Network, “Prisoners of the Apparatus,” 11.23.2015).
On April 24, 2014, the Food and Drug Administration held an advisory hearing that concluded that GEDs cannot be used without harming the patient. Still, the FDA has failed to ban the use of physical aversives on disabled people (Autistic Self Advocacy Network, “#StoptheShock,” 04.29.2018). If you have five minutes, call the FDA, call your Congressperson, and please tell them that it’s finally time ban these devices. I believe in you. We can do this.
they have to stop this treatment for these poor children shock treatment should be banned
My daughter is in that HELL HOLE. Tonight she called me and said a male came in the bathroom and busted her head against the wall they didn’t call the ambulance or anything so I called them. My daughter said her body is going numb. She can’t feel her legs and her arms was going numb I freaked out. If anything happens to my daughter I don’t know how I’m going to live.
Total insanity!!! These people who participate in such things should take
their own treatment. since it is so “beneficial”.
Shock treatment is barbaric!
Those who perform it or help with it belong behind bars. Wake up America!
The practice of psychiatry is a sham. Awaken America! Ban shock therapy backed by your
“friendly” psychiatrist..
My husband and I heard about The Judge Rotenberg Center after we were having problems with our daughter at another residential placement in Connecticut. We just won a Special Education case in one of the small towns of Connecticut. We were the first parents to do this. At this first placement, on the first few nights our daughter was there the Caregiver was drunk. Our daughter called us and also the person in charge. There were other multiple things going on. Including having sex with a caregiver. Also going to the residential placement and seeing there was no food. Our daughter had an anger issue. Behavioral issues. We went for the first placement because we did not know of any other placements. We had lawyers that did the case pro bono. Because of our daughter’s behavior, one member of the school said if our daughter went to school and she had an issue with another student they would call the police. We were shocked. Our daughter was in a residential place in another state. I had called the school in Connecticut to see what they had to offer before we moved. The member of the school said they did have placement for her. Because of the first placement after we won the case, we did not feel that this was the placement for our daughter. So I started doing research for another placement. Where I worked I found help through one their programs. I went with the Judge Rotenberg Center because they had cameras. If our daughter said they did this, and the staff said she did this, we could look at the camera to see who did what. We were informed about the shock treatment. We agreed to switch placements with the understanding that there was no shock treatment given to her. In the end, we are thankful for Judge Rotenberg Center. Our daughter went on in school and received her GED. You have to know all sides.
Your daughter not having a personal traumatic experience does not discount the trauma of others or their horrific practices. We cannot excuse child abuse because some children were not abused.
ery night i pray for the children at the judge rothenburg center .
I am a victim of simpler marital abuse. I can tell you from experience that living in fear of any kind of abuse damages you as a person and leaves you with that damage for all your life as you try to heal. It damages your brain. The children are not guinea pigs in some kind of scientific experiment that has no outcome already known. These children are being damaged. Address the abuse but allow the good positive treatment. The track record of this school means that how it is run is totally wrong. There is too much potential for abuse even if there is no electric shock used. This school is simply too large to make it a safe school for these most vulnerable children and teens who already are traumatized, damaged, and compromised in their ability to deal with life. Their mental processes are damaged. They need healing experiences and not more damage done to them. This school adheres to principals that set them up to manage behavior externally instead of looking at the cause of the behaviors. They should not automatically rule out the role of medication in managing the root causes of the behavior. The children can CHOOSE to engage in good behaviors offered them, and not be bullied, abused, violated, wounded, and even murdered in the name of extinguishing behaviors that they engage in. We are not dealing with dangerous wild animals here. Aggression in people has many causes and there are many more ways to deal with it that are not damaging and dangerous to people.
Your daughter just happens to be lucky that she wasn’t tortured. But that doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t still exist. It needs to be stopped. That entire place needs to be shut down so no one else suffers, and the people who administered these treatments need to be put on trial. It sickens me greatly. Imagine if they did the same thing to your daughter. I doubt you’d feel so optimistic about the school then. Parents and others in your generation are fully capable of making these changes. It’s all a matter of choice. And if you choose to do nothing, then others like your daughter suffer. And that is NOT okay.
Well stated john. I cannot believe the State allows this disgusting place to still be operating. This totally disgusts me. I have a child on the Autism spectrum and the horrible practices that they do at rottenberg center is appalling. How can the state allow this and let themmget away with this type of treatment?
You are a liar and probably one of the employees there.
A GED at a normal school is not the same thing as a GED at Rottenberg.
I just saw that once again , the ban of this torture was overturned They even showed a video of Staff asking for a student to remove his jacket in because the student did not remove his jacket he was shocked and forcibly restrained on the ground in a full body restraint they then said it was only to be used as a last resort so in consideration of the term last resort because the student didn’t respond to the command “ takeoff your jacket” you shocked him,absolutely hideous!!I would be willing to bet that all the staff are uneducated and unskilled people
Please get in touch with me
My son resided there. Justice needs to be served
if you want and feel confortable I can write about him on my website which I am currently working on against the JRC.
Arcanius,
My wife and I are currently seeking a higher level of care for our autistic 13-year-old daughter. We are literally getting doors slammed in our faces by dozens of possible treatment centers and residential schools, mostly due to staffing issues, or because her “behavioral needs are too great”. One of our state agencies is actually considering sending our daughter to JRC, and we are horrified and disgusted. We watched an interview and expose on the Stew Peters show, and we were literally sick to our stomachs. How can a place like this continue to stay open and thrive? How can people even support such abhorrent abuses? Why aren’t states banning this place, instead of keeping them on their “approved” provider lists? The problem lies not only in the blatant torture that is happening at JRC, but with the blatant blindness of state agencies willing to look the other way so as to check another “problem child” off their list. I, for one, will stand against JRC and their terror tactics. It has no place in civilized society. …Crimes against humanity comes to mind.
Hello. I am from Europe, I am interested since you said a state agency is considering sending your daughter there, can they do it against the will of the parents? If so then you cannot allow that to happen, fight it if necessary by hiding your daughter or moving, anything, because your daughter doesn’t deserve to be tortured.
I look forward to the day that school a) Loses all it’s funding b) Changes it’s barbaric model || And yep, I have autism. Of course, I have *other* thoughts about what I want to do to that place, but they aren’t nice at ALL, so I won’t type them here)
I already typed them, and evidently it violates the TOS of this webpage.
ery night i pray for the children at the judge rothenburg center .
Eff Matthew Israel for this hellhole. Eff all the people that work there as well because the bottom line is that THEY ARE ALL BIGOTS. The same is true for any kind of institutional place, the ones who are supposed to care for disabled people are the ones who hate them the most. What they do love is their power, sadism, and the money they earn from it. It kills me that the “students” at the Judge Rotenberg Center (and yeah, ROTTEN is right, what an accurate name) are deemed the problem when it is obvious it’s the psychopathic employees that have the problem. They are the ones who should be locked up, IN JAIL AND MATTHEW ISRAEL WITH THEM. You gotta wonder too, where the hell is CPS? I mean shocking these kids and all the other horrors they inflict on them IS CHILD ABUSE. Oh wait, that’s right, social workers work there also, the damn hypocrites. Yup, child abuse is illegal in this country EXCEPT for the autistic, the unborn who get murdered and adopted kids who are also killed and psychological abused with “attachment therapy”, closed adoption records and being sold to adopters (which all adoption is to begin with).
I don’t know why people say America is the greatest country in the world, it isn’t, it can’t be when it treats so many of it’s children like shit. I hope this place is shut down someday, but in the meantime all parents need to get their kids out of there. I’d never, ever let my child be tortured in a realm of hell like the Rotenberg Center. I hope all the monsters that work there get their karma too, I’ll be waiting in the wings ready to LMAO..
My daughter is there. She called me last night and she sounded a little off. She then told me that Male came into the bathroom and smashed her head against the wall. She started to lose feeling in her arms and legs. I told them to take her to the hospital so she can be seen they kept saying the nurse is coming I said she needs to go the hospital. I hung up and called the police department they called me back and said they was with her and she was going to the hospital. I HATE that place her father put her there. I never signed a piece of paper for her to be there. Now they mad cause I called the police. I don’t care my daughter will not be Victim #7.