MA - Feds probe special needs school in MA

[believe09]

"BOSTON — The U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether a Massachusetts special needs school violates federal disability laws by disciplining students with electric shock therapy.
The Boston Globe reports that the first federal probe of the Canton-based Judge Rotenberg Educational Center follows demands from more than 30 disability rights groups."

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1235423&format=comments#CommentsArea

The school specializes in treating children with autism. Children are hooked up to electrodes by doctors and nurses and they are apparently given shocks for negative behavior...eye rolling, shrugging shoulders, refusing food or drink given to them.

Some of the people who have commented on the article make the EXCELLENT point that this would clearly not be tolerated in someone's home. I for one am trying to have an open mind about this because there are several families who have come out in support of this technique.

I think it is barbaric.

 

[believe09]

http://www.judgerc.org/

You will find information about the "adversives" under "Optional Intensive Treatment."

Words fail me sometimes.

 

[Rayemonde]

August 2014:

Jennifer Msumba is on the autism spectrum. For seven years, she was treated at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts, where she received painful electric shocks aimed at modifying her behavior. She describes being strapped, spread-eagle to a restraint board and shocked multiple times before she left the center in 2009.

"It's so scary. I would ask God to make my heart stop because I didn't want to live when that was happening to me. I just wanted to die and make it stop," she told CBS News correspondent Anna Werner in an interview at her mother's home outside Boston. "I thought, they won't be able to hurt me anymore."

Msumba provided testimony to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel in April. The panel met to discuss a ban on using electrical stimulation devices to modify aggressive or self-injurious behavior in people with severe emotional problems and developmental disorders such as autism at the Judge Rotenberg Center, or JRC, the only known facility in the country that uses them.

In its current patient population, JRC says 29% of its 234 students are court-approved to receive shocks from a device called a "Graduated Electronic Decelerator," or GED..

Much more:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/controversy-over-shocking-people-with-autism-behavioral-disorders/


Burns on one of the autistic children from the "GED" devices.