ABC News Nightline
By Katie Hinman and Kimberly Brown
June 30, 2010
It may look like any leafy New England campus, but inside one Massachusetts school for special needs children, the method of teaching at work is anything but ordinary.
The Boston-area’s Judge Rotenberg Center educates and treats enrollees ages 3 to adult, all of whom are struggling with severe emotional, behavior, and psychiatric problems, including autism-like disorders. And for about half of the 250 students here, undesirable behavior means getting hooked up to a special machine and administered an electric shock.
The skin shock treatment, used only after both a court and the student’s parents have approved, has drawn criticism for years. But after the release of a recent study by Mental Disability Rights International, Rotenberg has come under the scrutiny of no less than the United Nations, which is calling the school’s practices “torture.”
“To be frank, I was shocked when I was reading the report,” said Manfred Nowak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture. “What I did, on the 11th of May, was to send an urgent appeal to the U.S. government asking them to investigate.”
Read entire article: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/shock-therapy-massachussetts-school/story?id=11047334
RELATED ARTICLE: Sue Clark-Wittenberg, director of the Wittenberg Center to End Electroshock in Ottawa, Canada is an electroshock survivor who is appealing to Amnesty International to deem electroshock (ECT) as torture.
http://babies.secretbest.com/19814/electroshock-is-torture/
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Tags: electric shock, Judge Rotenberg Center, Massachusetts, Mental Disability Rights International, New England, psychiatric problems, restraint, School, shock treatment, torture, UN, UN Convention against Torture, undesirable behavior, United Nations, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture
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I am a 32yr. old woman with Bi Polar 1 Dissorder. I find this incredibly offensive and I am truely discusted. I work with children who are autistic,asbergers, ADD, ADHD, and I suspect Bipolar and Schzhzophrenia. I am truely saddened and extremely upset that this kind of electroshock therapy is still going on today. This kind of mistreatment is archaic. I am a graduate with a BA Art Degree And also a Psychology Degree. I received my Psych. Degree because I wanted to be educated in mental illnesses. I am appalled that this is occuring in Massachusetts, because I live in Massachusetts!!!
What is alao shocking and horrific is that after a brief period of banning the electroshock “therapy,” the courts have allowed this school to re-instate electroshock therapy on children!
What kind of parent, especially parents of children suffering from behavior, autism, and psychistric disorders over which the children have no control, would allow their child to be shocked like that?! It is torture and nothing less! If parents were subjected to the same procedure, I wonder if they would still permit their children to endure such involuntary torture. When those children become of age, they will suffer even more as a result of the torture they were forced to endure, and will probably suffer from deep feelings of mistrust, depression, and anger.
Parents who allow it should be held accountable and the school closed permanently, with criminal charges pursued against anyone and everyone responsible.
First sentence should read “What is also…”