Last month, the state of Massachusetts issued a report on an August 2007 incident at one of the group homes of the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) where, on the basis of a phonecall, two boys were awakened in the night and repeatedly given electric shocks by the adults responsible for their care. If you're not already familiar with the JRC in Massachusetts or the aversive therapy used there on institutionalized disabled children, Mother Jones provides details in an article published this past September.
Eight states pay up to $200,000 per student, per year, to send otherwise "unplaceable" children with autism, psychological and behavioral disorders to the residential institution that uses aversive therapy to control many of its young inmates. Very generally, aversive therapy involves the use of a wide range of unpleasant stimuli to discourage specific behaviors. At JRC, aversives include electric shocks, food deprivation and isolation. On children.
The phonecall that led to the nighttime torture of the two boys turned out to be a prank. From the Boston Globe:
The report says none of the six staff members in a Stoughton residence run by the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center on the night of Aug. 26 acted to stop the harrowing events for three hours, despite ample reasons to doubt the validity of the caller's instructions to wake the boys in the middle of the night and administer painful shock treatments, at times while their arms and legs were bound.
The caller said he was ordering the punishments because the teenagers had misbehaved earlier in the evening, but none of the home's staff had witnessed the behavior that the caller cited. As the two boys' screams could be heard throughout the house, near-mutiny erupted among the other boys, who insisted that the accused teenagers had violated no rules. One boy even suggested the call was a hoax, according to the report by the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, which licenses group homes.
The staffers, inexperienced and overworked, were described as concerned and reluctant, yet nobody verified the orders with central office, nor did anybody check treatment plans for the two teenagers to be sure they were permitted to receive that degree of shock therapy.
The damage was done before the staff at the JRC realized their "error":
By the time a call was finally placed to the central office and staff members realized their mistake, one teenager had received 77 shocks, well in excess of what his treatment plan allowed, and the other received 29. One boy was taken to the hospital for treatment of two first-degree burns.
The full account described by the
Boston Globe is harrowing and beyond awful. The result of the state report is the suspension of seven JRC employees. But what I find telling is that because of the state investigation the following changes are supposedly being implemented at the JRC:
- Expanded training for staff -- Many of the suspended employees had been working at the JRC for less than three months at the time of the August incident. High employee turnover is also suggested by Google search of the center, which pops up numerous ads for employment.
- Institution of new telephone verification procedures -- Electric shock orders via telephone will continue to be part of the official procedure of aversive therapy, as is the incredibly extensive video surveillance of every moment of inmates' lives.
- Elimination of delayed punishment -- On its own, prior to this incident, awakening inmates through administration of electric shock was not a violation of procedure? Children were routinely hooked up to shock equipment even while they tried to sleep, apparently.
Supporters of JRC and its aversive therapy say it effectively changes behavior. Of course it does. Extended torture with no end in sight tends to do that. One of the axioms of torture is that
anyone can be broken, given time and cruel enough methods. There are some inmates of JRC receiving electric shock that have been there for
decades.
This post is part of a Blogging Against Aversives event. You can find links to writing from other bloggers on the topic
here. Or check out Amanda Baggs' extensive and well-indexed writing on aversives, behavior modification, JRC, and other related topics at
Ballastexistenz.
This post of Amanda's is especially informative. Feel free to add links of other writings on this in comments.
