Free Thought Project – by John Vibes
Bristol County, MA – Family Court Judge Katherine Field denied a motion to stop the use of electric shock on disabled students, a form of punishment that has been controversial for years after news of the practice first reached the public in 2013 when video surfaced of an 18-year-old student receiving dozens of shocks for refusing to take off his jacket.
“(The state) failed to demonstrate that there is now a professional consensus that the Level III aversive treatment used at JRC does not conform to the accepted standard of care for treating individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” Judge Field wrote in her decision.
The facility in question is the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC), a special needs day and residential school in Canton, and it is the only school in the country that still uses electric shocks on its students. Records show that at least 58 students at the school have received shocks as of August 2017.
Despite the obvious ethical concerns with this practice, there is a cult-like support among the staff and even some parents for what they call “aversive treatment.”
A statement from the JRC Parents Group reads:
“As parents whose children attend and received treatment at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC) we welcome the court’s ruling and repudiation of Massachusetts government officials at the Department of Developmental Service (DDS), who acted in bad faith and impermissibly made treatment decisions for JRC Clients—our children, just as officials within the agency had done in the 1980s and 1990s.”
However, the students being subjected to this abuse obviously disagree, and there are several former staff members who are now speaking out against the use of electric shock.
Whistleblower Greg Miller, who taught at the facility from 2003-2006, told MassLive.com that he truly believed that this barbaric therapy was saving lives.
“I believed in that place at first because I was told that it was the only place in the world that could really save these kids lives and most of them would be dead if they weren’t hooked up to the electric shock,” Miller said.
Miller said that electric shock was used on students for the smallest infractions, even something as small as standing up or speaking without permission. Eventually, he began to observe that the students were horrified of the shocks and they were rarely aggressive enough to require such a painful punishment.
“I was seeing more and more ways I could do something other than shock the students,” Miller said.
Miller ultimately quit, unable to cope with the ethical dilemma that came along with the job.
The use of shock therapy has been proven to be ineffective, and it is not used very often because other treatments work much better.
“People don’t use it anymore because they don’t need to. It is not the standard of care. There are alternative procedures that do not involve aversives like electronic shock. And I am not talking about drugs as an alternative. I am talking about other behavioral treatments,” Dr. William Pelham, a behavioral specialist, and director of the Center for Children and Families at the State University of New York at Buffalo, told the New York Times.
The things that have taken place at JRC have prompted calls for the FDA to ban the use of electric shock as a punishment for students, but the FDA has ignored the issue and even had protesters arrested for attempting to raise awareness about the issue outside of their headquarters.
I can’t believe they’re actually doing this. What the hell have schools become? Everyone involved with electro-shocking kids needs to hang.
If you tried that when I was in school my Dad would have beaten the crap out of you, if I didn’t beat him to it.
This is horrendous escalation of a torture regime that is moving from its usual area of operation, the military, right smack into the civilian population, and to its most vulnerable: children. The vid shows the “experts” agreeing that this particular type of torture is needed in very extreme cases with exceptionally unruly and disruptive children. Oh yeah, then how come 60, I repeat, 60!! are currently approved to receive the shock? The vid is horrendous to watch. Not just because of the suffering the children must endure, but how the discussion takes place, as if they’re deciding whether to use black chalkboards or green chalkboards. It is so devoid of humanity and so many are going along. STOP THE FRIKKIN’ TORTURE!!
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Related: Paperclip Torture:
Kindergarten teachers caught on camera stabbing children with paperclips because they refused to nap:
https://www.rt.com/news/431534-china-stab-teacher-paperclip/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=aplication_chrome&utm_campaign=chrome
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How about they receive a dozen of their own shocks to see if they should be doing it to the students? Perhaps there should be a random school bureaucrat or teacher chosen each week to get their own shock for as long as this practice continues? I GUARANTEE the practice would cease immediately if either of the above suggestions were enacted.
Other than that, I agree with Jolly – hang the bastards!
My own grandmother–who had a very high IQ, was 7th grade valedictorian (and her father forced her to leave school and go to work because she was female…life in the early 1900s), and mentored me in novel writing so to speak, was placed in Pilgrim State (a psychiatric facility on Long Island) and was electro-shocked for depression (wouldn’t you be depressed by being forced to leave school when you are as smart as she was, and do menial labor at age 13?) in the late 1930s. Various psychologists proved this method DOES NOT WORK back in the 60s!