Did you know it’s legal for certain schools to apply electric shocks to autistic children as a form of “therapy?”
It is. It’s horrific. After years of work, the FDA is considering banning it. You can submit your comment here.
Shain M. Neumeier, who has been working on this for years, had an op-ed on the torture – and the Judge Rotenberg Center that applies it – in USA Today.
How is this legal?” This is one of the first questions people ask when they hear about what happens at the Judge Rotenberg Center, a residential school for disabled children and adults just south of Boston. For decades, JRC has worked off a treatment model of reward and punishment — punishing its clients severely when they misbehave. In particular, JRC is the only program of any kind in the United States to use electric shock as a form of behavior modification.
This form of punishment is very different from electroconvulsive therapy, which is used to treat depression; it’s much more like the use of a shock collar in training a dog. JRC aides use two different types of remote control devices to shock students on their arms, legs and torso in response to dangerous or potentially dangerous behavior. The weaker of the two is 15 times more powerful than an actual dog training collar, and has been described as feeling like being attacked by a swarm of wasps. The devices have been known to cause first-degree burns and to occasionally malfunction, shocking someone other than the intended target or activating completely unintentionally.
Please read, share, comment, and get this practice banned.