"School of Shock" wins Journalism Prize

Jennifer Gonnerman won Honorable Mention at The MOLLY's, the 2008 National Journalism Prize, for "School of Shock" first published in Mother Jones.

In her troubling expose, Gonnerman sheds light on the Judge Rotenberg Center, a Massachusetts-based behavior modification program that for 30 years has used an elaborate system of rewards and punishments--including painful electric shocks administered through electrodes attached to the bodies of children as young as 9 years old--in an attempt to socialize troubled teens.

Like so many six-guns, workers at the Judge Rotenberg Center carry remote controls on their belts. Kid misbehaves... Zap !

Each remote bears the face of the child to be zapped - so that they won't accidently shock the wrong kid.

But in August, one student was shocked 77 times, and another 29 times, after a prank caller posing as a supervisor ordered the "treatments." One of the boys was treated for first-degree burns.

The Rotenberg Center is the only facility in the country that disciplines students by shocking them, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers or child molesters or any of the 2.2 million inmates now incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons.

It is also the facility that destroyed the videotape showing showing those shocks, despite being ordered to preserve the tape.

School of Shock is reprinted here at the Texas Observer:

Alleged Rape at the Shock School

This from the Sun Chronicle (Massachusetts):

Center worker accused of raping fellow employee

NORTON - A mental health supervisor at the Judge Rotenberg Center on Shelly Road is in jail after he was charged with raping a fellow employee. Ellison Livingstone, 24, of Providence, was ordered held in jail on $100,000 cash bail after pleading innocent Wednesday to sexually assaulting the woman.

The incident is alleged to have occurred early Sunday in a bathroom at the Rotenberg Center...

This from Maia Azalavitz at the Huffington Post:

Will Rape Shut the Shock School?

When I wrote recently about the Judge Rotenberg Center -- the facility for autistic kids and other children with "behavior problems" that uses electric shock to gain compliance -- I asked rhetorically what it might take to shut it down. If the latest incident doesn't do it, I simply cannot imagine what would.

Of course, you would think exposure of its methods would be enough. Especially given our increasing knowledge about oversensitivity in autism and the fact that many "inappropriate behaviors" are actually attempts by people with autism to soothe themselves when overwhelmed. Brilliant treatment, this is:
Take a kid who is distressed and trying to soothe herself-- and punish her with
more distress to try to make her stop.

Ok, so that's not enough for the state regulators. How about the fact that a former inmate of the program can call in and order employees to shock other kids -- for no reason -- and the employees comply, replicating Milgrim's chilling "obedience" experiment? That's the one where ordinary people become "good Nazi's" simply by being told what to do.

Oh yeah, that didn't do it. Comes now word that a staff member allegedly raped
another staff member at a Rotenberg facility. Police were called to the site just after the incident -- and the rape apparently occurred in a bathroom.

Can we please, please spend the $200,000 a year states give to this program each year per child instead on evidence-based, nurturing treatment at home? I mean, for that money, you could hire a psychiatrist full-time to see only your child.

It's time to turn the page on this shameful chapter in the history of treating troubled children.

Shock treatment

This from the Boston Globe:

How to 'decelerate' a teenager

In 1971, Dr. Matthew Israel founded the Behavior Research Institute in Canton. Its name was later changed to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center to honor the jurist who upheld Israel's controversial methods in court.

At Harvard in the 1950s, Israel was a student of B. F. Skinner, founder of behavioral psychology and author of "Walden Two," a utopian novel whose heroes try to build a perfect society through behavioral conditioning. In "Walden Two," people are encouraged by a system of rewards and punishments to live simple, frugal lives, to express themselves through art and classical music, and to trust the wisdom of their leaders.

After college, Israel formed the Association of Social Design, a Skinner-esque utopian community in Boston. The community failed, and Israel went on to start what became the Rotenberg school.

In 1994, Matthew Israel and David Marsh obtained a patent for an "apparatus for administering electrical aversive stimulus." (An image from the patent is shown here.) They dubbed the device a Graduated Electronic Decelerator, or GED, its purpose being to "decelerate" a patient engaged in inappropriate behavior by administering an electric shock.

In the GEDs used at the Rotenberg Center, battery and receiver are bundled into a backpack, with electrodes routed through the straps to make contact with the patient's skin. Guards carry remote control devices with patients' photos emblazoned on them.

In filing his patent, Israel followed the example of Skinner. Among Skinner's best-known inventions was the operant conditioning box, or Skinner Box, a cage designed to allow researchers to administer rewards (food) and punishments (electric shocks) to lab animals without having to interact directly with the animal. Skinner also invented the "air crib," a box for taking care of infants without having to swaddle or diaper them. Among his most controversial inventions, it was also jokingly called an "heir conditioner."

"The method of treatment of this invention," according to the patent, consists in "securing a remotely activated apparatus for administering electrical aversive stimulus to a patient to be treated. The patient is then observed for signs of undesired behavior."

The patent specifies self-injury as the sort of behavior to be deterred. But, according to a January article in the Globe, therapists at the Rotenberg Center have been accused of being more liberal in their definition of "undesired behavior," delivering shocks for offenses such as swearing or shouting.

In August of last year, therapists at the school received a call from a disgruntled patient posing as a staff member, who ordered them to administer multiple shocks (in one case, as many as 77) to two students with whom he was having a dispute. The shocks were administered before the hoax was discovered.

In Skinner's "Walden Two" the founder explains that children in the community are taught to control their impulses "[b]y having the children 'take' a more and more painful shock" because, he explains, "[s]ome of us learn [self-]control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way." The problem with utopian solutions in real-life communities like the Rotenberg Center, of course, is that not only the children need to learn self-control; self-control is also required of those with their fingers on the shock button.

Matthew Battles is a freelance writer in Jamaica Plain and the author of "Library: An Unquiet History."

D.C. Wants to Stop Shock Therapy for Children

WASHINGTON (AP) - The D.C. Council wants to stop placing children in special education facilities that use shock and other possibly painful therapies.

The council has taken up the issue after dozens of youth from the city were sent to the Judge Rotenberg Center, a shock-therapy clinic in Canton, Mass.

Lawmakers are considering a bill that would bar the Office of the State Superintendent from transferring students to a school that uses aversive education techniques, including withholding meals, electric shock, deep muscle squeezes and chemical restraints.

Four D.C. students remain in the facility today. Attorney General Peter Nickles says the city is trying hard to get them out.

This from WTOP.com.

Dr Phil's sweet talk fails Britney. This is a job for Matthew Israel.

The entertainment press reports ad nauseum on poor little rock star, Britney Spears. This week it was reported that she spent some time in a padded room. In theraputic settings, this is typically indicative of combative behaviors.

I'm certainly not up-to-speed on the particulars - but it sounds like she has defiantly engaged in some destructive behaviors while failing to respond to traditional therapies, including some drive-by counseling from Dr Phil.

It's time to crank up the reinforcers, and I know just the guy to do it.

When it comes to finding the most effective treatment for misbehavior (ethical considerations notwithstanding), one should ask, What would Matthew L. Israel do?

Since he once cured a spoiled 3-year old - and presently runs the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center where he practices aversive techniques including electric shocks regularly - he is not without skills. It's just a question of firepower. I wonder what he would think up for Britney.

Are 3 skin shocks enough?

Is 77 too many?

Shock and Awful: School destroys video evidence of shocks

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:

Lawmakers consider limits on skin-shock therapy

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.

Investigator: School Destroyed Video

It Was Ordered to Preserve of Students Being Shocked

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.

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." ...

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.

This from the Boston Globe:

Parent details toll taken by shocks at group home

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.

Autism Diva reports:

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?! ...

More background from:

Mother Jones, August 2007, "Why Can't Massachusetts Shut Matthew Israel Down?"

The Village Voice, October 2006

Anderson Cooper, March 2006

Left Brain/Right Brain

Autism Diva, March 2007 - with a highly-edited (distracting musical soundtrack, no less) 10-minute YouTube video from Christschool.

Matthew Israel Interviewed at Mother Jones

Stirring the Pot, January 2008, responded to particular claims made by Israel, like this:

"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)."

The Boston Herald, Feb. 15 and 23, 1995 - Reported here. ABUSE UNCOVERED IN DEATH AT BRI Victimization of 19-year old Linda Cornelison called "inhumane beyond all reason"

You Tube video from AutTV

B F Skinner: The Next Generation

On December 20th I picked up a story from ABC News about the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center being snookered by a prankster who convinced school officials to deliver “77 shocks to one student and 29 to another.”

I found the story shocking on two fronts. First, I was shocked to learn that the punishment involved was an actual shock. I didn’t know that was still going on anywhere.

Second, I was shocked that any responsible treatment facility would punish a student on orders received over the telephone. Any behaviorist worth his salt would admit that a therapy’s effectiveness is wholly dependent upon proper application, including the timing of the consequence - and that misapplication of consequences is counterproductive to the therapy. Throw off the schedules of reinforcement and what have you got?

As JRC admits, “The best-laid behavioral programs in the world are to no avail if they are not carried out as designed by the direct care staff.” I'm not sure how a telephone call from the outside squares with that.

I linked to a related ABC story that called the Judge Rotenberg Center (J.R.C.) “One of the most controversial schools in the country… [that] tries to eliminate the use of psychotropic drugs, and instead uses aversive stimulation -- specifically behavioral skin shock -- to treat children and adults with the most severe cases of autism and emotional and behavioral challenges.”

On Christmas Day I linked to a New York Times story that reported New York Governor Spitzer’s call to remove any New York students from the program. The Times also misreported that amount of shock being used at JRC which “ranges from 15 to 45 milliamperes, or thousandths of an ampere — not 15 to 45 amperes” as the Times reported.

Finally, I linked to a Boston Globe report that Massachusetts officials required JRC to “stop electric shocks for "seemingly minor infractions," such as getting out of a seat without approval or swearing. And it must show greater commitment to phasing out shock treatments, especially for those about to leave the school to enter mainstream society...”

Recently Kentucky School News & Commentary heard from Matthew L. Israel, JRC’s founder, offering KSN&C readers “an accurate summary of what JRC is really about.”

So I followed up a bit.

Dr Matthew L Israel tells us he studied psychology under the late B.F. Skinner (wiki & Skinner Foundation) as an undergraduate, as a graduate student (like Richard Herrnstein who co-authored the controversial book, The Bell Curve which prompted wide-spread backlash in the social science community for its views on race and intelligence), and as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University.

Skinner was best known for his “baby tender,” an enclosed crib better known as the “Skinner Box.” This “operant conditioning chamber” was an instrument of his Radical Behaviorist philosophy which has been very influential in the treatment of students with special needs including behavioral pharmacology.

In the 1960’s Matthew L. Israel was looking for an opportunity to apply these principles and techniques in the treatment of a wide variety of behavior disorders. He found it writing “self-instructional materials” and “in two behavioral communes that [he] started in 1966 and 1967” – once curing a 3-year old “some considered to be extremely spoiled.”

After some consulting and establishing a “unit for the treatment for autistic children,” in 1971, he “started the Behavior Research Institute by offering behavioral treatment consultation in the homes of parents of autistic-like (sic) children.” By 1985 the program accommodated 65 students. He sees the school as a last resort for students and uses “the application of rewards and punishments” to change undesired behaviors.

It is Israel’s tolerance for more severe forms of aversive punishments that seems to draw the most criticism.

Israel writes that, in 1985, “a young man died at [the Behavioral Research Institute] while being restrained at one of our residences.” He says, “The cause of death was ultimately determined to be natural causes related to his condition of tardive dyskinesia and not due to the restraint procedure that had been employed.” But that precipitated the ire of numerous state agencies and groups who have attempted to close down JRC over time and there is a long history of litigation, settlement agreements and Receivership.

The Behavioral Research Institute changed its name in 1994 to JRC to honor the memory of the judge “whose courageous decisions and actions helped to preserve our program from extinction at the hands of state licensing officials…”

“Today, JRC serves over 200 students and adults from many states. These individuals live in 37 apartments, town houses and homes which JRC operates in Canton and neighboring communities. All attend JRC's day school at its Canton facility each day. The program is staffed with approximately 900 employees.

Israel’s effort to present an accurate summary of events ignored the circumstances that lead to school officials to delivering 77 shocks to one student and 29 to another on the word of a prankster over the telephone.

Photo from judgerc.org.