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<h1 class="reader-title">US district court ruling allows electric
shock “therapy” of intellectually disabled students</h1>
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<p> The Washington D.C. District Court of Appeals has <a
href="https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/jznvnynkwpl/Rotenberg%20opinion.pdf"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">struck down</a> a ban on
the deliberate and painful shocking of autistic and
mentally-impaired children with electrical stimulation
devices.</p>
<p> At issue is the signature policy of the Judge Rotenberg
Educational Center (JRC) in Canton, Massachusetts. The JRC
has, since 1985, used a “graduated electronic decelerator”
(GED) on students ages three to adult, supposedly as a
form of “aversion therapy.” For decades, the center has
been the target of lawsuits, petitions and exposés by
traumatized youth and families. In 2013, the United
Nations <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2300749-report-of-the-special-rapporteur-on-torture.html"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">condemned</a> its
practices as a violation of the UN Convention against
Torture.</p>
<p> After the case remained in limbo for several years, the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally <a
href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-rare-step-ban-electrical-stimulation-devices-self-injurious-or-aggressive-behavior"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">banned</a> the use of
GEDs in March 2020. The ruling cited “an unreasonable and
substantial risk of illness or injury that cannot be
corrected or eliminated through new or updated device
labeling.”</p>
<p>The agency reviewed the clinical and scientific
literature on self-injurious and aggressive behavior, the
purported rationale for delivering the shocks, while
interviewing experts in the field. It concluded that the
shocks could only temporarily halt such problems and, on
balance, were harmful. They found that GEDs create a
significant risk of “worsening of underlying symptoms,
depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, pain,
burns and tissue damage.”</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the July 6 appeals court decision found that
the FDA could not ban the device, claiming such a
prohibition constituted “interference with the practice of
medicine.” In fact, the Judge Rotenberg Center is
technically a school, licensed by the Massachusetts
Department of Elementary & Secondary Education,
serving those with intellectual disabilities or
behavioral, emotional or psychiatric problems. Many
clients are referred from the juvenile justice system and
have a history of abuse or abandonment.</p>
The shocking devices were developed by the center’s founder
Matthew Israel in 1985 after his policy of physical abuse
(spanking, squeezing and pinching) came under legal attack.
Reportedly, shocks are delivered to between 20 and 50
percent of enrolled students.
<p>The purpose of the device is to inflict pain. Students
are required to wear a backpack containing the shocking
device with electrodes affixed to their skin at all times.
Staff can shock them with remote-control activators at any
time.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Andre McCollins was shocked 31 times for failing to
remove his jacket, “tensing up” his body, and screaming
with pain, according to <em>New York Magazine</em>. The
episode left McCollins catatonic, barely able to eat or
walk for days. His mother sued JRC, forcing the release of
a horrific <a
href="https://www.wcvb.com/article/school-in-mass-only-one-still-using-electric-shock-therapy/8099170"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">video</a> of her son
strapped in four-point restraints with a helmet on his
head while being repeatedly shocked. The session went on
for hours while staff rotated electrodes around his body
to lessen burn marks. The video showed the child screaming
for help and begging employees to stop. His mother says he
has never fully recovered.</p>
<figure>
<p><img
src="https://www.wsws.org/asset/9cce7073-62cf-48f4-bc86-d27f2a860390?rendition=image1280"
width="475" height="206"></p>
<figcaption>Screenshot from the hours-long shocking of
Andre McCollins, 18 years old.</figcaption></figure>
<p>Jen Msumba, a former student, called her time at JRC
“mind and body torture.” She said electrodes were applied
under students’ fingers or the bottom of their feet to
increase the pain. She recounted being shocked for “waving
her hands, body movements, talking too loud, not answering
a staff member in less than 5 seconds, or pretty much
anything they deem annoying.”</p>
<p> In 2018, Disability Rights International <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5081017-JRC-PM-Petition-OCT2018#document/p2"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">petitioned</a> the
Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, pointing to
multiple practices at the JRC facility, including
“contingent shocks, the use of restraints and the use of
isolation rooms.” It stated, “These practices—particularly
when used in people with disabilities and
children—constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment
and torture.” It objected to the state law which permitted
the policies and implored the body, “Under international
law, the prohibition of torture is absolute and cannot be
justified for any reason.”</p>
<p>Food deprivation is another tool used at JRC, according
to Msumba. “Your meal is divided up into little cups: If
you rock in your chair, wave your hands, or talk without
permission you have to get up and throw one cup away. If
they stop work for 5 seconds, such as staring at the
wall—throw your food away. Until you have no food left,
she says. At the end of the day, they’ll give you a nasty
concoction with liver powder all over it. And that’s going
to be your food, but you wouldn’t eat it until 11 p.m.
that night if you lost all portions of food. And that way
of living makes you obsessed about food.”</p>
<figure><figcaption>Jen Msumba showing how JRC attached 5
electrodes to her body, via TikTok</figcaption></figure>
<p> Israel’s center has been a steadily growing and
lucrative business. The annual cost per student is
$220,000, and states pay the bills. According to the <em>New
York Magazine</em>, “Between 2000 and 2005, the
facility’s annual revenues grew from $18 million to more
than $50 million.” The “nonprofit” school brought in $79
million in 2020, handsomely paying its president Glenda
Crookes $354,000 and its director of human resources
$224,000, with 11 other executives making between $100,000
to $200,000.</p>
<p>Since 2010, the center has spent nearly $500,000 lobbying
federal lawmakers and agencies. At the same time, hundreds
of thousands more were funneled to legislators from New
York and Massachusetts, according to ProPublica. The JRC
was previously named the Behavioral Research Institute and
was based in California and Rhode Island, but simply
relocated from state to state to elude constant legal
battles.</p>
<p> Those confined to the JRC are largely working class and
poor youths. Jennifer Gunnerman reports in <em>New York
Magazine</em>, “In the fall of 2006, I visited while
working on a story for another publication, and I found
the place packed with teenagers from New York City, many
from poor neighborhoods. One 15-year-old girl said she
recognized other kids from her days in Bronx-Lebanon
Hospital’s adolescent psych ward. Two young men said
they’d come straight from Rikers.” At present, the center
has over 300 students living in group homes operated by
the school.</p>
<p> The center came to the attention of the United Nations
in 2010, after the Mental Disability Rights International
(MDRI) issued a report on the JRC titled, <a
href="https://abcnews.go.com/images/Nightline/HT_US_Report_4_30_10_100630.pdf"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">“Torture Not Treatment.”</a>
UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak commented
at the time, “To be frank, I was shocked when I was
reading the report.” He added, “What I did, on the 11th of
May, was to send an urgent appeal to the US government
asking them to investigate.”</p>
<p>The UN noted that increasing voltage was applied as
individuals “became adapted” to the shocks. It quoted
Israel describing the process as “very painful.” The MDRI
argued, “Whether or not such treatment is narrowly defined
as effective, international human rights law places limits
on the amount of pain that can be inflicted on a person.”</p>
<p>The group pitched their appeal to then-president Barack
Obama, urging a federal investigation. “President Obama
has staked his international reputation on ending torture,
and the world is now looking,” said Eric Rosenthal, the
MDRI executive director. He added, “Are we gonna live up
to our obligations and is President Obama gonna live up to
his promise to end torture by the United States
government?”</p>
<p>Appeals to Obama, the UN, and the court system
notwithstanding, the JRC continues business as usual. It
rakes in millions of dollars in tax money and continues to
be well-protected. The enterprise was initially named for
Judge Rotenberg because he was the first judge—in the
1970s!—to deny families’ claims and rule for Israel. The
FDA itself stalled for years before issuing the ban, which
was overturned in just over a year. Dozens of legal
attempts have similarly failed to force a shutdown.</p>
<p> The problem is not just a few wealthy and well-connected
individuals but a more profound need by the capitalist
system for social repression. The barbaric torture and war
crimes committed at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have their
counterpart at home against the working class. One recalls
the <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/10/29/homan-m10.html">“black
sites”</a> run by the Chicago Police Department, the
mounting use of the <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/18/soca-j18.html">death
penalty</a> against the poor and mentally ill and the
increasing <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/07/12/utah-j12.html">assault</a>
of basic democratic rights. Over 70 percent of high school
students attend schools patrolled by armed police. As
schools cut psychologists, social workers and counselors,
they add “school resource officers” resulting in growing
abuse.</p>
<p>While the precise “averse therapy” of JRC is unusual,
such institutions are not. Various forms of highly
profitable entities which prey on troubled and mentally
impaired youth have proliferated across the US.</p>
<p> On April 29, 2020, Cornelius Frederick, 16, died after
being tackled and restrained at a Michigan “strict
discipline academy” in Kalamazoo. The academy is a charter
school run by Sequel Youth and Family Services which
houses children in the foster care and juvenile justice
systems. Such outfits are very often a thin veneer for
profitable business chains. This particular type of
charter school was incorporated into Michigan law
following the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School. (See
also the business model of former Detroit-based <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/06/evan-j21.html">Evans
Solutions</a> .)</p>
<p>Sequel Youth and Family Services has 44 “behavioral
health care programs” across the US. They have been the
subject of numerous allegations of illegal excessive
restraint, negligence, and trauma inflicted upon children.
While such reports are not regularly quantified and
publicized, a federal investigation in 2007 found
thousands of allegations of abuse at facilities for
at-risk youth between 1990 and 2007. These reports from
“boot camps,” “residential treatment facilities,” “strict
discipline academies,” etc., include abuse and deaths
recorded by state and federal agencies and in “pending
civil and criminal trials with hundreds of plaintiffs.”</p>
<p> Under conditions of deepening social deprivation and the
near nonexistence of mental health care for the vast bulk
of the population, social tragedies and abuse are
mounting. The pandemic has dramatically exacerbated the
growth of poverty and mental health crises. <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/07/16/drug-j16.html">Deaths
from overdoses</a> have reached record highs.
Psychologists predict that a <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/01/ment-a01.html">mental
health “shadow” pandemic</a> will last for years after
the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided.</p>
<p>The tragic saga of those abused and tortured at the Judge
Rotenberg Center is a warning. Every agency of capitalism
and both political parties turned a deaf ear to these
youth and workers. It is necessary to put an end to a
system that requires torture and social deprivation to
maintain the dictatorship of a financial oligarchy over
humanity’s productive forces. Relief from this social
crisis must be achieved through the independent struggle
of the working class for socialism.</p>
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