We never heard back from B F Skinner disciple Matthew L Israel since our last posting about the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center's use of controversial shock treatments. He intended to allay our concerns by providing access to “an accurate summary of what JRC is really about.”KSN&C didn't buy it and offered a retort.
Whether aversive techniques can work for the most difficult students is not the only question here. Water boarding would work too. Whether or not JRC is competent to administer any techniques in a professional, ethical and humane fashion is also at issue.
The Village Voice reported in 2006:
"The commonwealth of Massachusetts assessed $43,000 in fines to 14 current and former employees of the Judge Rotenberg Center (featured in "School of Shock," October 11–17) for describing themselves as "psychologists" without holding Massachusetts licenses, in violation of a 1996 state law."But Israel's been too busy to write back. He's been spending time in front of the Massachusetts legislature.
The Boston Globe reported this week:
In many ways, the high-pitched scene that unfolded in a packed State House public hearing today was nothing new: Over the past two decades, critics of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center have condemned the center's skin-shock therapy as cruel and barbaric, while supporters of this special education school, largely parents, have praised the facility as life-saving for mentally retarded and emotionally disturbed students.He is apparently also spending time in the AV room.
This from AP and therawstory: Photo from Mother Jones.
A special education school destroyed videotape showing two of its students being wrongly given electric shock treatments despite being ordered to preserve the tape, according to an investigator's report.Below is a parent's description of how Israel's controversial techniques were applied to his son. Let's not forget, his son did not get to JRC by being an angel. JRC works with tough kids - kids who understand their own treatment protocols, maybe even better than the staff. Read it and decide for yourself.
One student was shocked 77 times and the other 29 times after a prank caller posing as a supervisor ordered the treatments at a Judge Rotenberg Educational Center group home in August. The boys are 16 and 19 years old and one was treated for first-degree burns.
The Disabled Persons Protection Commission planned to release the report Tuesday concluding that one of the teenagers was severely physically and emotionally abused by the treatments. The commission has referred the case to the Norfolk district attorney's office.
The videotapes compiled footage from cameras inside the home in Stoughton. An investigator with the commission, which examines abuse allegations and can refer cases for criminal prosecution, viewed the tapes and asked for a copy, according to the commission's report obtained by The Boston Globe.
But school officials declined, saying they "did not want any possibility of the images getting into the media." The investigator told the school to preserve a copy so state police could use it in their criminal investigation. A trooper later told the investigator the tapes had been destroyed...
...Earlier this week, the school's founder and director Matthew Israel said the tapes were reviewed by several investigators and were not preserved because the investigation "seemed to be finished." ...
... State Sen. Brian Joyce, who has long sought to ban shock therapy from the school, said Israel and his staff should be investigated for obstruction of justice.
"I believe the tape was intentionally destroyed because it was incriminating," said Joyce, a Democrat. "I intend to ask the attorney general to investigate." ...
This from the Boston Globe:
A Taunton [MA] man said his 19-year-old emotionally disturbed son seemed to be thriving at a group home, run by the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, before staff members were duped into giving him 77 punishing electric shocks one night last summer...
...But, according to graphic details from a state investigative report made available to the Globe this week, his son encountered a night of horror on a weekend last August, after experiencing 10 months without any shocks.
The incident, triggered by a caller who pretended to be a central office supervisor giving punishment orders, is now the subject of a criminal investigation. The case was also the focus of a State House hearing this week as lawmakers considered a bill that would severely restrict the school's shock-treatment programs.
The report, issued by the Disabled Persons Protection Commission, outlined a motive for the hoax: The alleged caller, Stephen Ferrer-Torres, a runaway from the group home who has not since been located by police, asserted to other students that he had been bullied by Dumas's son and another resident, who received 29 wrongful shocks based on the caller's instructions, according to the report...
...In the report, the commission gave a harsh assessment of the group home's staff. It found that three of six staff members assigned to the Stoughton group home had been employed for less than three months. Two had repeatedly failed basic training tests, and two had been on probation for various infractions...
After the hoax call came in at about 2 a.m. Aug. 26, according to the report, Dumas's son told staff numerous times that they were violating his shock treatment protocol and suggested that the caller may be a prankster. At one point, he said, "Get on the phone and find out what is going on. . . ."The 77 shocks he received were, in part, based on his unwillingness to passively receive the shocks.
...half-hour standoff occurred in the hallway...But after that, the staff tied Dumas's son to a board, restraining all four limbs. The teenager, resigned to his fate, said, "Let them know I'm being compliant." During the next hour, he received dozens of rapid-fire shocks to his abdomen and limbs, which in fact violated his treatment plan. At one point, he complained, "Mister, I can't breathe."
...Of the two power levels of shock treatments used by the school, Dumas's son received the most powerful each time, school officials have said. Shift supervisor Michael Thompson, on the job for two months, left the room at one point, saying he wanted to "either cry or throw up," the report said...
Today's editorial from the Globe shoots right down the middle: Fix JRC or close it down.
The battle over skin shocks
ON WEDNESDAY, desperate parents begged lawmakers at a State House hearing not to interfere with the work of the controversial Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton. They had reason to be concerned.
Some state lawmakers take a dim view of skin shock treatments at the center, a view that may not be in the best interest of the school's autistic, retarded, and emotionally disturbed students. Even a new bill trumpeted as a compromise by sponsors could undermine treatment programs that many parents view as the best hope against self-destructive and violent behavior by their children. The state Department of Mental Retardation is better qualified than lawmakers to set limits on treatment
methods at the center - or decide whether it should operate at all.The situation is tense. Senator Brian Joyce of Milton, a cosponsor of the bill, is passionate in his belief that the center is not only hurting patients but also manipulating their parents' emotions.Joyce, who can barely disguise his contempt for the center's founder, Matthew Israel, says it is the Legislature's "moral obligation to stop the wholesale application of this so-called aversive therapy." Israel says the bill is just another in a long line of overboard attempts to close his center, which administers brief skin shocks to deter violent behavior by some patients who don't respond to traditional therapies.The public has reason to be confused about a center that has been embroiled in complex legal battles dating back decades. But the proposed legislation only makes matters worse. It might seem reasonable to pass a law that limits skin shock treatment to cases involving "a clear risk of injury to self or others." But the bill would also bar shocks to treat "minor behavior problems, even if said behaviors are identified as antecedents to targeted challenging behaviors." So, if a disturbed patient is known to rub his head vigorously for several seconds before biting or gouging himself, the shock could not be administered during the "antecedent" behavior, but only at the onset of the actual attack. The whole point of aversive therapy is to discourage the attack before it begins.Both the patients and public will be best served if the Department of Mental Retardation, which certifies the Rotenberg Center, concentrates fully on the competence of the center to administer the treatment, instead of the treatment itself. There are plenty of reasons to scrutinize the center closely, not the least of which is the questionable quality and training of the workers who administer the shocks.Rotenberg staffers made a mind-blowing error of judgment in August when they shocked two emotionally disturbed students on the phoned-in order of a former patient posing as a medical supervisor. And Rotenberg top officials followed that up with a gross error in judgment, or worse, when they destroyed videotapes of the incident despite a warning not to do so by a state investigator who had viewed the tapes.If the Rotenberg Center can't do its job consistently and ethically, then DMR should shut it down. But the Legislature shouldn't foreclose the option of skin shock treatment as a last resort for desperate patients.
The Judge Rotenberg Center Charges $216,000 a year in tuition room and board.
According to the 2005 JRC tax return, Dr. Matthew Israel has a salary of $306,831.
In addition, he uses a tax vehicle known as a deferred compensation plan (where he doesn't pay taxes on deferred income) of $58,360 for a grand total of $365,000 in yearly compensation.
The Judge Rotenberg Center received $41.7 million in public support from state governments. Only $4,585 was contributed by indirect public support. JRC earned approximately $76,000 in interest and investment income in 2005.
The JRC had $708,000 in legal fees for that year?!
Another $100,000 in postage?! ...
"Prove it. Prove that the improvement in students over years of therapy is due to that therapy, not in spite of it. Show us the hordes of thankful graduates who should be swarming the blogosphere with congratulations to you, Mr. Israel, if your 100% success rate is truly due to skin shock therapy's intrinsic benefits, not to the fact that aversives subdue aggression by force, not through learning."
"The percentage of overall people who have graduated away from the shock therapy
is only 4% of those at the center. 4%. Another point that I think we all should be aware of is the portion of the aversive's program that deals with the withholding of food (http://www.judgerc.org/faqs.html#foodrewards)."
No comments:
Post a Comment