Center For Retarded Kids Uses Electroshock Therapy

Center For Retarded Kids Uses Electroshock Therapy

NaturalNews,com
Originally published June 23 2008

Gitmo For U.S. Children: Center for Retarded Kids Uses Electroshock
Therapy
by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) It appears that the use of electroshock punishment
tactics isn't limited to the U.S. military these days: The state of
Massachusetts has renewed a special education school's authority to
use electric shocks as a form of punishment, even after the school
admitted to administering excessive and unfair shocks to two children
after being told to do so by a prank caller.

Last year, a prank caller believed to be a former student called the
Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, MA, in the middle of the
night. Posing as an administrator, the caller told school officials to
administer electric shock treatments to two students, one 16 and one
19, for infractions that had allegedly happened more than five hours
before. In response to the call, the two students were awakened; one
was shocked 22 times, and the other was shocked 77 times.

"I think it's fair to say that [giving someone] 77 shocks is unusual,"
school spokesperson Ernest Corrigan later admitted. "It is excessive
to what is normal protocol. Giving 22 shocks is also excessive." So
why did they give the shocks to children? And why did they do so after
merely receiving a prank phone call?

According to Nancy Alterio, the executive director of Massachusetts'
Disabled Persons Protection Committee, which received a phone tip
about the incident, a third person was also shocked based on the same
prank call.

In response to the incident, the school fired seven people, claiming,
"This [incident] happened, we reported it and we've taken steps
necessary so that this doesn't happen again," Corrigan said.


How America treats mentally disabled children...
Rotenberg has approximately 250 students, most of whom live in one of
38 nearby group homes. All the students have mental disabilities that
make it difficult for them to function in normal society, and many are
low-functioning autistic children. About two-thirds of Rotenberg's
students are minors.

It is my belief, by the way, that nearly all of these children were
put into this mental state through either vaccinations, exposure to
toxic chemicals or severe nutritional deficiencies during their
mother's pregnancy. In other words, virtually all the children in the
facility could have avoided mental retardation if our nation had a
healthy food supply and realistic nutritional support for expectant
mothers.

While much of the behavior modification treatment at the school is
based on rewards, Rotenberg remains the only school in the United
States to still use electric shock as a form of therapy. The state of
Massachusetts has twice tried to have the school closed due to the
practice, but has failed both times.

According to Rotenberg's Web site, shock therapy is only used "after
obtaining prior parental, medical, psychiatric, human rights, peer
review and individual approval from a Massachusetts Probate
Court." (They forgot to mention it also includes a "prank phone
call.") Corrigan dismissed the shock as similar in pain to a bee
sting, and the school maintains that the shocks have "no significant
negative side effects." You will note, however, that they did not
subject their own employees to such electroshock treatment before
firing them. That would be cruel, of course.


There's something rotten in Rotenberg
Sixty percent of the school's students have court-authorized treatment
plans that include electric shocks as punishment. And autism experts
and patient's rights advocates dispute the claim that the shocks are
harmless, pointing to the inevitable psychological harm done by such a
practice.

According to Barry Pizant of the Brown University Center for the Study
of Human Development, shock punishment "interferes with [autistic
students'] ability [to] trust people who are with them, and these are
people who already have trouble understanding people."

Yet the Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services recently
extended Rotenberg's authorization to use electric shock by one year.
To continue using electric shock therapy, the school must prove that
it only uses shocks to punish the most dangerous and self-destructive
behaviors, and must also prove that the shocks reduce the occurrence
of those behaviors. Shocks must not be used for "seemingly minor
infractions" such as swearing or getting out of seats without
permission, and the school must show that it is committed to phasing
out the treatments, particularly for students who are about to leave
the school. Further, the state criticized the school for failing to
customize treatments to individual students, and for failing to
address the root causes of disruptive behavior.

Rotenberg has reportedly also agreed to eliminate the practice of
delayed punishment or shocking sleeping students, as occurred in the
August incident.


Opposition to electroshock therapy for autistic children
Mental health advocates expressed disgust that the practice of
shocking children will continue. "I see [shock therapy] as the last
vestige of [an] old practice that was proven ineffective and we should
have stopped doing it all together 20 or 30 years ago," Pizant said.
"If you look in the mainstream of people working with kids with
disabilities these aversives are totally out of the mainstream."

"I think it's barbaric and there are really no words," said Rita
Shreffler, executive director of the National Autism Association,
"It's inexplicable. There's no reason to [shock] another human being."
Shreffler urged parents with special needs children to carefully
investigate the people or institutions that they entrust their
children to.

Many schools, of course, continues to assault children with both
chemicals (pharmaceuticals) and electric shocks, all under the guise
of helping these children in some way. But the truth is that that
mentally disabled children need love, nutrition and good parenting,
not chemicals and electric shocks.

But I suppose it's not so surprising to learn that a nation now
engaged in the routine torture of war prisoners -- in direct violation
of the very U.N. treaties our veterans fought so hard to defend --
would also invoke electric shocks on mentally retarded children, too.
There is no longer any respect for the value of a human being by our
nation's leaders, and it appears some institutions disappointingly
agree with that assessment.

If I had my way about all this, I would march into the Rotenberg
school with a law enforcement team, arrest these school employees, and
charge them with first degree assault of a minor. Let them spend a few
years behind bars to think about what they've done.





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