Just Claim They Were Autistic

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creative commons license

In a story on the wire yesterday, a man in Salem, Oregon was arrested and jailed after shocking his four children with a shock collar meant to train dogs. According to the story

"Todd Marcum, 41, said he did it "because he thought it was funny," Salem Police Lt. Dave Okada said. ...

Marcum was taken into custody on four charges of first-degree criminal mistreatment. He is in the Marion County jail."

Now if Marcum had had a lick of sense, he would have just told the police that he thought his children were autistic, and needed some training. Because he had been on the internet, and he knew that the Judge Rotenberg Center uses shocks to control autistic kids. And it's perfectly legal. Other states even send their autistic kids to Massachusetts to the JRC so they can be shocked, too.

Marcum could have stated that his children were swearing, nagging, or flapping their hands, and thus qualified to receive shocks.

Now the only problem is that the dog collar that Marcum used was probably a lot less powerful than the one that is routinely used at the JRC. The dog collar is a small, self contained unit, while the JRC devices need a backpack to haul around. The dog collar will stimulate for up to a half second, while the "GED" devices used by the JRC will shock you for up to 2 seconds.

I found out while poking around that dog collars are subject to legal regulations, which state (amongst other things) that they can be applied for no more than 12 hours in any 24 hour period, and they can't put out more than 15 milliamps root mean square. The JRC uses devices that put out an average (not maximum) of 15 milliamps RMS, and a maximum of 45 milliamps RMS (fully three times as powerful as the maximum allowed for a dog collar).

So Marcum, if you or your lawyer are reading this, just claim you were using a tried and tested method of disciplining your kids, who you suspect are autistic (don't forget the autistic part-people might not approve of your behavior otherwise).

Perhaps the Massachusetts and New York legislatures would be interested in the torture by electric shocks that is occurring if there were dogs that were being shocked. Because they haven't been interested when it was only autistic individuals involved.

Justice Delayed

photo credit-densaer
creative commons license

Well, it might be a case of too little, too late for many who have been tortured at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) in the past, but I'll take anything at this point.

Yesterday's Boston Globe reported that the JRC is being investigated, and that state investigators went in to the center last week and seized boxes of documents.

I started writing about the JRC about 15 months ago, but they've been up to no good for a lot longer than that. The JRC is famous for using electric shocks in autistic individuals as a form of "aversive therapy". Inmates "Students" at the center wear backpacks with batteries and shocking devices which torturers "patient care technicians" can activate at any time by pushing a button. They shock children for such things as being "defiant", or for matters as trivial as "nagging a teacher".

The state of Massachusetts has considered laws in the past to ban spanking of children, but still allows the JRC to continue its daily torture of children.

According to the Globe article:

State Police seized documents late last week from the offices of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton that are related to a prank phone call last summer that led two students to wrongfully receive dozens of punishing electrical shocks, according to two people with direct knowledge of the investigation.

I guess all of the shocking things that go on at the JRC on a daily basis, like starvation and shocking "students" is just fine, but give some of those same "students" some extra shocks and NOW they're sitting up and taking notice.

The article goes on to say:

The collection of evidence has to do with a yearlong grand jury investigation led by the office of Attorney General Martha Coakley, said Kenneth Mollins, a New York lawyer who has filed several lawsuits against the school and who said he spoke to a representative of Coakley's office about the Rotenberg investigation. Mollins said he was told the grand jury is also examining possible financial improprieties by the school.

I just hope that this investigation sheds enough light on this stinkhole of a place that the public finally sees it for what it is.

Spanking Bad, but Shocking Still OK

In Massachusetts, it's a good day to be a kid. That is, unless you're an autistic kid.

A story in today's Boston Herald online edition details how the state legislature is set to debate outlawing spanking of any kind in the state, including in one's own home. As stated in the article:

...If signed into law, parents would be prohibited from forcefully laying a hand on any child under age 18 unless it was to wrest them from danger, lest they be charged with abuse or neglect. ...

This would make Massachusetts the first state in the US to ban spanking. Massachusetts has long been known to be a very liberal state. And this proposed ban on spanking is evidence of that bent. Inexplicably, however, that liberal concern of the state for the welfare of children doesn't exist if you happen to be on the autism spectrum.

As this article in the online Village Voice pointed out, at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts, administering electric shocks to autistic students in this residential "school" is an everyday occurrence.

...The only thing that sets these students apart from kids at any other school in America (aside from their special-ed designation) is the electric wires running from their backpacks to their wrists. Each wire connects to a silver-dollar-sized metal disk strapped with a cloth band to the student's wrist, forearm, abdomen, thigh, or foot. Inside each student's backpack is a battery and a generator, both about the size of a VHS cassette. Each generator is uniquely coded to a single keychain transmitter kept in a clear plastic box labeled with the student's name. Staff members dressed neatly in ties and green aprons keep the boxes hooked to their belts, and their eyes trained on the students' behavior. They stand ready, if they witness a behavior they've been told to target, to flip open the box, press the button, and deliver a painful two-second electrical shock into the student at the end of the wire. ...

So, as the Boston Herald notes, laying a hand on a child forcefully in any manner would earn you being charged with abuse or neglect, while in the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) withholding food and shocking kids is considered therapy. And if a small shock doesn't get the desired result, then just increase the level of shock.

...They still withhold food from some students as an aversive, but shocks are their main treatment. The school began using electric shock in 1989, but the device they first used, called SIBIS, was so weak that many students grew accustomed to it, eroding its effectiveness. So Israel developed the GED, which he registered with the Food and Drug Administration in 1995. (The GED was classified in such a way that it only required FDA registration, not approval.) When students grew innured to that, Israel brought forth the GED-4, three times as powerful as the original GED. That version is not registered with the FDA, which now says the Rotenberg Center is exempt because it's only using the machines in-house. ...

And although Dr. Israel, the founder and head of the JRC, justifies the use of involuntary shocks because of self injurious violent behavior on the part of students, its use is not limited to that.

...But the GED isn't only used when a life is at stake, or when a student hurts himself or another, but also for "noncompliance" or "simple refusal." "We don't allow individuals just to stay in bed all day," says Dr. Robert von Heyn, a Rotenberg clinician, in a video for parents. "We want to teach people. So we may use the GED to treat noncompliance." Other behavior that doesn't appear dangerous also could earn a zap. While it might seem excessive to shock a student for nagging his teacher, Israel asks, what if the kid nags all the time, every minute, every day? The nagging interferes with his learning, so he can't learn self-control and develop normally. JRC's choice is to shock him, stop the nagging, and let him learn. ...

As a parent, I am not the biggest proponent to spanking. Generally speaking, I try my hardest to avoid it, and consider each episode at least partly a failure of parenting on my part. But I also think that parents need to be given latitude in raising their own children, and that a swat to the butt is not the worst thing in the world.

I believe that I know the difference between a swat on the butt and child abuse. Unfortunately, it would appear that the state of Massachusetts has gotten it entirely backwards. A swat on the butt will get a parent arrested if this law passes, but starving kids or jolting them with electric shocks for non-compliance in school gets you paid hefty sums of money from the state.