Last month, the state of Massachusetts issued a report on an August 2007 incident at one of the group homes of the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) where, on the basis of a phonecall, two boys were awakened in the night and repeatedly given electric shocks by the adults responsible for their care. If you’re not already familiar with the JRC in Massachusetts or the aversive therapy used there on institutionalized disabled children, Mother Jones provides details in an article published this past September.
Eight states pay up to $200,000 per student, per year, to send otherwise “unplaceable” children with autism, psychological and behavioral disorders to the residential institution that uses aversive therapy to control many of its young inmates. Very generally, aversive therapy involves the use of a wide range of unpleasant stimuli to discourage specific behaviors. At JRC, aversives include electric shocks, food deprivation and isolation. On children.
The phonecall that led to the nighttime torture of the two boys turned out to be a prank. From the Boston Globe:
The report says none of the six staff members in a Stoughton residence run by the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center on the night of Aug. 26 acted to stop the harrowing events for three hours, despite ample reasons to doubt the validity of the caller’s instructions to wake the boys in the middle of the night and administer painful shock treatments, at times while their arms and legs were bound.
The caller said he was ordering the punishments because the teenagers had misbehaved earlier in the evening, but none of the home’s staff had witnessed the behavior that the caller cited. As the two boys’ screams could be heard throughout the house, near-mutiny erupted among the other boys, who insisted that the accused teenagers had violated no rules. One boy even suggested the call was a hoax, according to the report by the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, which licenses group homes
The staffers, inexperienced and overworked, were described as concerned and reluctant, yet nobody verified the orders with central office, nor did anybody check treatment plans for the two teenagers to be sure they were permitted to receive that degree of shock therapy.
The damage was done before the staff at the JRC realized their “error”:
By the time a call was finally placed to the central office and staff members realized their mistake, one teenager had received 77 shocks, well in excess of what his treatment plan allowed, and the other received 29. One boy was taken to the hospital for treatment of two first-degree burns.
The full account described by the Boston Globe is harrowing and beyond awful. The result of the state report is the suspension of seven JRC employees. But what I find telling is that because of the state investigation the following changes are supposedly being implemented at the JRC:
- Expanded training for staff — Many of the suspended employees had been working at the JRC for less than three months at the time of the August incident. High employee turnover is also suggested by Google search of the center, which pops up numerous ads for employment.
- Institution of new telephone verification procedures — Electric shock orders via telephone will continue to be part of the official procedure of aversive therapy, as is the incredibly extensive video surveillance of every moment of inmates’ lives.
- Elimination of delayed punishment — On its own, prior to this incident, awakening inmates through administration of electric shock was not a violation of procedure? Children were routinely hooked up to shock equipment even while they tried to sleep, apparently.
Supporters of JRC and its aversive therapy say it effectively changes behavior. Of course it does. Extended torture with no end in sight tends to do that. One of the axioms of torture is that anyone can be broken, given time and cruel enough methods. There are some inmates of JRC receiving electric shock that have been there for decades.
This post is part of a Blogging Against Aversives event. (The banner at the top of this post simply announces “Blogging Against Aversives, 1-14-2008”.) You can find links to writing from other bloggers on the topic here. Or check out Amanda Baggs’ extensive and well-indexed writing on aversives, behavior modification, JRC, and other related topics at Ballastexistenz. This post of Amanda’s is especially informative. Feel free to add links of other writings on this in comments.
Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade
Non-voluntary “aversion therapy” is torture, pure and simple. I can understand taking the brute-force approach of aversion therapy for someone who opted into it, but the idea of applying it to unwilling subjects just turns my stomach.
That, and calling this “shock therapy” is idiotic, because it totally confuses the issue. When people here “shock therapy”, they think of electroconvulsive therapy, which may or may have therapeutic benefits that are unrelated to how horrible an experience it is. In electricity-based aversion therapy, the shocks simply exist to cause pain (and apparently, nausea-chemicals do a better job than pain anyways, since the mind is better-wired to construct aversion from nausea than pain).
They’re torturing kids. The only reason people are talking about them torturing kids is because they were tricked into torturing them once.
edit: Your mother jones link is busted – you’ve an extra “http” there.
Thanks, Silence is Foo. The link should be fixed, though I seem to have other formatting issues I’m working on yet. I also fixed my one slip where I referred to “electric shock” as “shock treatment”. One slipped in after reading all the news reports calling it that.
I’m flabbergasted. :-(((
Awful stuff to think about.
On the other hand, these are kids for whom nothing else has seemed to work. Parents seem to support the JRC pretty vociferously.
There’s probably no good option, and that sucks.
Holy fuck this is evil.
Update to add: The testimony of those parents who don’t or didn’t like want JRC is doing, however, should be taken seriously. And complaints of bad treatment by children should (very nearly) always be taken very seriously.
Even if that’s true, not all bad options will be equally bad. This is an atrocity.
On the other hand, these are kids for whom nothing else has seemed to work.
This doesn’t either. Did you notice that their three “star testimonials” were all failures? Two were still in the facility in their 30s, one apparently near comatose (learned helplessness will do that for you), the other still strapped to the torture device. The one who was eventually released admits to having reverted to her “bad behavior” (cursing.) Still less is there any actual scientific evidence that this works any more than “placebo”–no reputable journal will print the director’s stuff. It’s just state sponsored woo.
Judge Rotenberg Centre says:
Translation:
>
A redacted version of the report can be found here (1.9MB PDF)
“Even if that’s true, not all bad options will be equally bad. This is an atrocity.”
Yes, Daran! Exactly.
Just reading about this was horrifying; I can’t imagine what it would be like to be subjected to that kind of systematic abuse by people who supposedly cared about your wellbeing.
Maybe it is small-minded of me, but I am particularly appalled to learn that this is going on in *my own state*; wasn’t (Massachusetts Governor) Deval Patrick supposed to be doing good things against institutionalization? Kay Olson, do you happen to know of an activist group that is working on getting the JRC closed (or creating better safeguards against abuse like this in general) to which I could look for information regarding letter-writing campaigns, etc? I feel like I just found out they’d opened a second Guantanamo in my basement, or something. I mean, argh, this is Massachusetts, we’re supposed to be good on civil rights here!
Massachusetts is not good on civil rights for people with psychiatric disabilities. You have Roger’s Orders which are forced drugging in people’s own home as well as the JRC. I can’t imagine what “working” means in the context of torturing kids with disabilities but the fact is that positive behavioral supports work for almost everybody and the use of aversives, seclusion and restraint are indications of treatment failure on the part of the clinicians/treatment team, not the person being treated. And just because someone is a parent, it doesn’t mean they are educated on what is best for their own child or even unfortunately always have their child’s best interest at heart.
“Even if that’s true, not all bad options will be equally bad. This is an atrocity.”
Yes, Daran! Exactly.
What superior alternative do you propose?
Er . . . . not torturing children with electricity?
I mean, for certain values of bad, the ‘alternative plan’ can be ‘don’t do it’.
—Myca
Yeah, I’m with Myca. Not doing this would be better than doing it.
I’m not sure I understand. Do you mean to say, that you take a child, and you don’t torture him with electricity? Interesting…so you limit the torture to hot irons and bamboo under the fing…what? Not torture him at all??!!? Are you mad?
But that’s…that’s…that’s so ludicrous, it just might work! My God, man! You might be on to something here!
Robert,
In my graduate work at the University of Kansas, one of the top Special Ed schools in the country, I was involved extensively in a project called ‘Positive Behavioral Supports.’ This was based on decades of extensive research on behavioral therapy for people/children with severe emotional disorders and behavioral issues.
In all of the literature out there (and give me a few days and I’ll dump a LOAD of sources on you) shock therapy has not been shown to be an effective treatment for problem behavior. NEVER. Yes, it can temporarily deter problem behavior, but it has never been shown to effect any long term improvements. It is used simply for one thing, to control inmates so that they can be controlled in large number by a small number of (usually untrained) staff. And using it in this situation with no plan to move the children to a ‘least restrictive environment’ as a goal of treatment is entirely unethical. They are warehoused there, many with no hope of ever escaping, and the shock treatments are used as a means to control the population and nothing else. And this is allowed for one reason, because they are disabled and thus are considered subhuman.
There are a vast plethora of therapies and behavior strategies to be tried. Without knowing the boys and their particular situation, I could not say specifically what behavior plan would be appropriate for them. But this “therapy” has no basis in professional treatment. It is a crock. And the fact that they used it apparently HOURS after the supposed behavior is also sounding off the alarm bells. There is nothing therapeutic about delayed reinforcement like that, waking up kids in the night, especially if they have significant cognitive or other psychiatric disabilities.
There are other options. Even prisoners are not subjected to this (as far as I know). I’m not a big fan of psychopharmaceuticals, but one could argue that even drugs as a last resort might be more ethical than what they are doing.
Leora,
I for one would really like to see those sources. The more we can back up our opposition with research and get the research seen and read WIDELY, the better.
Leora –
I believe you. I have no reason to think that this type of treatment would produce good outcomes in these children.
The question is, is there something that would produce *better* outcomes.
Myca et al –
“Don’t zap him with electricity” is a fine start. Then what do you do about the behavioral problems that led the kid to this facility in the first place? These aren’t kids who wet the bed or don’t share with others, they’re kids who stab themselves or bash siblings into cement walls and send them to the hospital. The previous “best” solution was to restrain them for hours at a time when they weren’t able to control their behavior; the parents say that the electrical treatment is better because it means that most of the time the kid is unrestrained, able to go to school, etc.
What solution are you offering that is better than what has been tried already?
Robert,
Check out the reading at Ballastexistenz’s. She’s lived in instituations where she was treated like that, and she has a great deal of insightful commentary on how it doesn’t work, why it’s inhumane, and what works better.
Was Ballastexistenz extremely aggressive and violent as a child/teenager?
If she wasn’t, I don’t see the relevance. That this type of treatment was not the best possible for her, I would not dream of disputing. But if she wasn’t displaying this kind of behavior, then she isn’t the person who the treatment is designed for.
This is appalling and inhumane. That anyone could even briefly entertain the thought of regarding such a course of action as a form of therapy, or debating its merits and flaws, makes me sick to my stomach.
“But if she wasn’t displaying this kind of behavior, then she isn’t the person who the treatment is designed for.”
I believe the argument is that she is the kind of person this treatment is implemented on.
@Robert:
Solitary confinement as punishment, for example. I have no idea if that’s the best solution – it may still be too cruel, it may be less effective than something else I haven’t thought of, but obviously you need a way to punish the children without physically torturing them. But I have the creeping feeling that, if they were using solitary confinement as punishment, I doubt that this controversy would exist.
Precisely.
The argument is that punishment of adults (many of these residents are adults) is inhumane, inappropriate, demeaning and doesn’t work to change behavior. Solitary confinement is seclusion and yes, there are arguments about the use of it all over the country and regulations as well. Because it is traumatizing and doesn’t help anyone. I’m really wondering how anyone can defend punishing people for having problems.
@Alison
I realize that there are actual, proper approaches that behavioural experts could suggest. I was just trying to argue Robert’s suggestion that the shock-aversion was the best (or close-enough) available alternative. Even simply using a less violent deterrent would be an improvement.
Then what do you do about the behavioral problems that led the kid to this facility in the first place?
This is not my field, but I have some general suggestions.
1. Be honest with the parents. Some of these kids will turn out to be untreatable. We can’t solve every behavioral problem in the world and it may turn out that some of these children will never be able to live outside of institutions. Don’t offer them the false hope that your untested “therapy” will solve all their problems when you’ve never gotten it to work even anecdotally.
2. Examine each case. Have all known therapies really been exhausted? Drugs will work in some subset. Psychotherapy, particularly cognative and behavioral therapy, will work in another subset. Some combination will work in yet another. I doubt that all avenues have really been exhausted for all the children in this Massachusetts Gitmo.
3. Consider experimental therapies. Note that “experimental therapy” does not mean “try this head game on the kid and see what it does” but rather implies a carefully controlled trial of a specific therapy performed only after approval by a human research committee and with proper safeguards.
4. In the worst case scenario: Just try for keeping the child from hurting him/herself or others. Sometimes that may be all that can be done. I don’t like it, but there it is. Torturing the kids who can’t control themselves doesn’t help anyone.
Dianne –
The alternative for most of these kids is restraint. As in, straps and boards and six orderlies holding them down while they scream.
I really don’t see that as a huge improvement; I am not sure which I would pick for myself, if the alternative is behavior-modification and relative freedom, versus no shocks and getting strapped down and locked in for hours every day.
My understanding is that the people doing this treatment don’t claim it will solve the kids’ problems. They claim it will allow the kids to go about a semblance of a life without being restrained all the time, and without hurting other people or themselves very often. They seem to be delivering on those promises.
I agree. We need to torture people, because if we didn’t, we’d have to use straps and boards and six orderlies holding them down to stop them from swearing and getting out of their chairs.
Robert: on what information do you base your opining about these kids’ alternatives?
By the way, Robert, are there any circumstance in which you wouldn’t defend torture?
We need to torture people, because if we didn’t, we’d have to use straps and boards and six orderlies holding them down to stop them from swearing and getting out of their chairs.
The children being committed to this therapy aren’t children who swear and get out of their chairs; they are children who hit one another or hurt themselves or have extremely severe emotional or mental problems. I entirely agree that children whose behavioral problems consist of occasionally swearing or getting out of a chair, should not be subjected to this kind of treatment. OK?
My understanding, Mandolin and Daran, is that the parents at this facility tried escalating levels of treatment for their severely disturbed children. I don’t think anybody is doing this as their first option, or their fifth. I have a severely troubled child, who does tend to pose a danger to himself and to others. He can be parented and guardrailed effectively by us – thank God – after years of searching for techniques and parenting methods that would work. I don’t think I would ever commit him to this kind of a facility, because I don’t think it would do him the slightest bit of good – but other parents, guardians, and states disagree. Other kids are different, and I don’t know them. I hesitate to automatically condemn the choice of someone parenting a severely troubled child.
I’ve asked, and thus far have gotten one serious positive response, for alternative treatments. Some people have mentioned things that the parents in the cited article(s) described as having attempted without success. The one new suggestion, solitary confinement, could well work for some kids – but I doubt it will “work” for the ones whose main threat is to themselves. The risk of solitary confinement for even children of ordinary stability seems very high to me, significantly higher than the risk of a shock now and again.
So what’s the alternative? Johnny won’t stop hitting his sister, not love slaps, but punches to the face. He’s not doing it because he’s a malicious assailant, he’s doing it because he has a severe mental problem. Drugs don’t work, or leave him a near-zombie. Talk therapy goes nowhere. Traditionalist firm discipline just breeds more explosions. Love and support help, but by softening blows, not preventing them. You could throw him in jail; it’s assault, after all. Is jail better than a zap in the ass? You tell me. You tell me what to do with Johnny. In the meantime, his sister is bleeding and CPS wants to know what the fuck is going on.
There aren’t any easy answers. This kind of behavioral modification is pretty awful. I hate thinking about it. But I’m not so serene in my superior knowledge of how to salvage children with severe problems, as to automatically foreclose a choice because it offends my sensibilities.
Robert, I don’t agree with “your understanding” of when and why the treatment is used. What is your basis for it?
What I read of the cited articles in the original post, for the most part. Plus my own experience as a parent.
You tell me what to do with Johnny.
Commit him to an institution where he will spend the rest of his life getting electrical shocks and burns whenever the people who are in charge of him feel like it?
I don’t see positive behavior modification or negative reinforcement (which is not the same as ‘punishment’) on your list anywhere. I note you’ve carefully circumscribed therapy as “talk therapy”, aka Freudian analysis, and assumed no medical ever, anywhere could possibly help.
It isn’t just “a zap” every now and then, for some kids it’s a lot more than that. That kind of language minimizes what’s being done. Moreover, the state is perfectly within its jurisdiction in closing off certain parenting “options.” After all, child abuse is (mostly) illegal, even if some parents think it’s a perfectly acceptable choice for their circumstance. That’s what this is about. I have never understood why the choices disabled children’s parents’ make are somehow afforded more latitude and less scrutiny. It’s pretty disgusting.
I don’t see positive behavior modification or negative reinforcement (which is not the same as ‘punishment’) on your list anywhere.
That would come under traditionalist firm discipline.
Your other assumption is unwarranted. I’m assuming it’s been tried and failed.
Physically remove him from the presence of his sister. Is that so damn hard to figure out?
That would come under traditionalist firm discipline.
Words mean whatever we want them to mean!
And c’mon: this is not merely aversive therapy. Did you actually read the Boston Globe article? Do you believe that it is “effective” to use aversive therapy with such sloppy protocols that a hoax caller could get a staffer to wake up a child in the middle of the night and administer dozens of electrical shocks?
And gee, I wonder if this treatment might set the kids’ behavior back just a teeny bit.
Daran: I imagine that if the torture were administered by secular humanist school teachers to children quietly attempting to pray, he’d be agin it. Otherwise, no.
Physically remove him from the presence of his sister.
And then he starts hitting the caretaker. Or the neighbor kid.
Is that so damn hard to figure out?
Apparently.
Robert, I used to work with developmentally disabled adults in a group home setting. I had one client who was basically rescued from an institution not anywhere near as bad as the one in MA and things like changing his diet, proper medication, positive reinforcement and a shitload of time and patience and COMPASSION on the part of many staff members changed his behavior dramatically in 3 years. He was a child with a SIGNIFICANT history of abuse. he had significant cognitive disabilities, was blind from the headbanging he had done to himself, couldn’t speak because he spent the better part of his youth locked in a basement with no one talking to him… he had used to have to wear a helmet and was restrained more often than not or drugged up on high doses of ativan or other psychotropic drugs.
By reducing the amount of allergens in his foods, exposure to red dye 40 and refined sugars, appropriately medicating his mood disorders, teaching him sign language for basic needs so he could communicate what he wanted and watching his triggers and avoiding them, he was like a new person. By the time I left that job he spent a lot of his day sitting in the living room listening to music, would enjoy walks around the neighborhood, loved to be in the water, was able to clear his own place from the table etc. Periodically he would headbang or bite himself or others (I’ve been on the receiving end of those things and it stinks), but overall he was a pretty happy and contented guy.
I am guessing that before compassionate, knowledgable and trained professionals got a hold of him he would have been a prime candidate for the MA gitmo (thanks Dianne).
He’s just one example, and maybe what worked for him wouldn’t work for everyone, but I am telling you that I do not believe for one second that electric shocks are absolutely the only possible solution for a safe and secure, mostly enjoyable quality of life. Even if these are people with severe behavioral problems, they are still people and require more compassion not less.
Robert,
What KateL said is exactly right and I could also tell of several stories of children with multiple disabilities and extreme behavior issues that have been turned around or at least vastly improved by a combination of different therapies.
There is no one answer to your inquiry. No one here can tell you the “ANSWER” for these boys. There is no “every solution has been tried so we have nothing left but shock therapy.” The combinations of therapy is so vast that not all the possible interventions could be gone through in any one lifetime. The environment, drugs, diet, medical issues, communication methods, cognitive issues, sleep issues, functional assessment, behavior strategies, the list goes on and on…all of these things can be tinkered with or vastly changed in a number of ways and combinations that will affect behavior. I think we all get that these kids pose an extreme challenge. But what we are all saying is that there are lines you JUST. DON’T. CROSS.
Torture being one of them. And even if you could prove that this electric shock is the ONLY intervention that could work and it is postively affecting their behavior, which you can’t prove under any circumstances–the way this was administered in this setting was wrong. Wrong. WRONG. Not verifying a phone call? Waking the kids up in the night? Shocking so many times as to cause first degree burns? Not taking into consideration the opinions and observations of the other inmates? All are unethical.
Why on earth are you fighting so hard for this? Obviously with a kid of your own with challenging behaviors you know there are endless possibilities of interventions. It is just a matter of having the compassion, patience and ethics to not give up and go to the (torturous) path of least resistance.
“I’m assuming it’s been tried and failed.”
Please stop making these assumptions. They are unsupported.
If you continue posting in this thread, please use evidence to support your assertions. Otherwise, please leave the thread.
We are not even talking about “electric shock” period. At this facility, the protocol included consequences delayed for hours after the ‘bad behavior’, waking patients up in the middle of the night for punishment, and repeated shocks administered over many hours. On what fucking planet is this considered effective use of adverse consequences? Do you ever drag your kid out of bed in the middle of the night to say “You were bad at dinner, so you’re going to be given consequences for three hours?” I’m guessing not.
And resources.
I agree that children who hit one another or hurt themselves, or have extremely severe emotional or mental problems should be tortured when they occasionally swear or get out of chairs.
This center uses restraints and boards to shock residents if you actually read about it. There are tons of ways to turn kids around and there is no excuse for torturing kids. Being seriously emotionally disturbed does not give caretakers an excuse for bad treatment, and by the way Robert, negative reinforcement is NOT the same thing as old fashioned discipline, it’s ignoring unwanted behavior and reinforcing good behavior. Kids are being shocked for being messy or talking back to staff, staff who don’t have proper training and aren’t clinicians. It’s like the experiement with college students divided into guards and students that had to be stopped, give anyone that kind of power and they will abuse it.
Parents don’t always know best, even parents of kids with disabilites, as witness the parents who kill their kids with disabilities.
If you read the Mother Jones article series carefully, start to finish (which I did, and it took me hours because of how awful the content is) you’ll see that every single expert says that 1) the techniques the institute uses don’t work, 2) other techniques that aren’t torture do work, and 3) the institute uses the same techniques on vastly different conditions in different patients, and for vastly different behaviors.
Most of the support for the institutes comes, not from reputable scientists who researched the techniques used and found them to be effective, or humane, or necessary. They come from parents who are grateful for the change the techniques have effected in their children. Ordinarily we might be inclined to assume that the parents are reliable, because of course they want what’s best for their child, but I think we all already know that when it comes to disabled children, that just isn’t true.
Why do you do this, Robert? You clearly have the intelligence necessary to operate a computer keyboard. I’ve got to assume that you’re also able to generalize from the specific solution I gave you regarding his sister, to a more general one that can be applied no matter which kid is getting hit.
And yet, you don’t generalize. You respond and ask yet another dumb question.
“But what if he hits the neighbor kid? But what if he hits the OTHER neighbor kid? But what if he hits his brother? But what if he hits the newspaper boy? But what if he hits the newspaper GIRL?”
If I thought that you were truly unable to figure it out, I’d be more sympathetic. But I don’t — I think you’re just playing dumb in order to get your kicks.
Enough. I’m finished letting you waste my time.
Pingback: Blogging Against Aversives 1-14-08 « Odd One Out
Bjartmarr, the logical conclusion of your suggestion is “remove him from all human contact whatsoever”. Is that so much better than the other alternatives?
Okay, Robert, you’ve had your say on this subject. Stop posting in this thread now.
No, it’s “find humans he can have contact with.” There are humans trained in providing services to such people. Look at KateL’s comment #43, where she describes significant improvements in someone once:
*his diet was changed
*he was treated with respect by others (rather than punished?)
*he was taught a way to more effectively communicate with others
In the case of autistic children in particular, one potentially useful intervention might be to try to figure out what is bothering the child. People with autism often have sensory dysintegration such that stimuli that are minimal to neurotypicals may be highly painful to them. Maybe the kid is attacking everyone because his/her clothing is painful to him/her because s/he can’t wear wool or cotton or polyester because of its texture. Maybe the color is violently painful to him. Maybe someone sneezed in her/his vicinity and the noise was painful, causing her/him to act out. It’s hard to tell what’s going on in the heads of people with autism that is severe enough to make them non-verbal, but it isn’t impossible to notice trends: What causes them to get agitated? Can the offensive stimulus be removed rather than trying to force the child to live with something that may be as painful to him/her as the shocks delivered as punishment for acting out in response to the pain?
Oh, but that takes time. And money. And paid, trained staff.
Yeah, that. There are a lot of behaviors that seem incomprehensible or maliciously violent to NTs that really make absolute and clear sense once said NTs figure out how an autistic person perceives a situation or experiences a sensory stimulus.
Which is a huge part of where a lot of this weird “just punish” thinking comes from. The people with power didn’t know what could be causing behaviors, experienced those behaviors as disruptive or threatening, went “what do you do with an NT kid when positive reinforcement doesn’t work AHA PUNISH!”
which really… well clearly it’s not right even for NTs when it’s torture. But in the case of many of these autistic kids, it may not even make sense to punish at all, even humanely. Because these kids may just be expressing “I can’t stand those lights!”
which is hardly a call for punishment. Perhaps a call for stopping a behavior, if it threatens others or is very self-injurious. But punishment? If you’re punished for what is either
an involuntary reaction to an overwhelming stimulus
or
a behavior you intend as communication
what does that really do or fix or solve?
D’ya think $220K a year would cover it?
So where was that $220K (times how many prisoners?) going? It wasn’t going to the staff — anybody who gets cowed by a threat of “…or you’ll be evaluated” probably isn’t making much more than minimum wage.
Oh. Right. High electricity bills.
Seriously, though, was somebody making a mint off Camp Child Abuse here?
I was told by someone who worked high up in Massachusetts’ government that the JRC is owned by a for profit company. So I suspect, yes, someone is making a lot of money out of this place and it certainly isn’t the employees.
This place was spending $200,000/kid/year? I only see “…up to $200,000″ which we all know could mean anything. It’s the average that counts.
I think it is a staffing problem. A lot of the reason people do this sort of horrible shit is that the caretakers themselves are limited in their capabilities. Tolerance is pretty hard to achieve; working past boundaries with little payback is difficult. And because these positions are generally not very well paid, and are generally at least somewhat unpleasant, you don’t tend to attract the top candidates.
Of course we and they are supposed to understand that the kids can’t help it, just as I am supposed to understand that my 1 year old can’t help but dump out every container he sees, and it’s just “my fault” for giving him the opportunity. But you know what? It’s still fucking annoying when I turn around for a minute and he shatters something on the rug.
I know he’s only a baby, so I can’t–and don’t–get angry at him, but I doubt i could keep up that level of forgiveness for his entire life. It’s actually fairly rare that you find people who have the ability to never blow up at others, and/or to take what comes their way without complaint.
I’ve worked with mentally disabled children and it can be insanely frustrating. I didn’t have the ability to keep it up; I’ve done it. And nonetheless from my lifetime observations I am probably in the upper rank of people who can shake shit off. So you generally need people who are more tolerant than I (not so hard, really) but for the worst case kids you need people who are WAY more tolerant than I am. Who are willing to shake it all off, every day.
People refer to them as “saints” for a reason–saints are rare, and different from most of us. How are you going to find enough people like that to staff an institution like this?
And who is going to pay for it? I know from various friends’ experiences how difficult it is to find caretakers for the mentally disabled. And that’s part-time, just-competent, care, usually to fill in for the odd day here or there. One of my best friend’s kids is now 14. he’s big, strong, and extremely disabled. He uses a diaper, is sexually confused since he hit puberty, bites and punches when he is angry, threatened, or upset, and generally is a handful. With all that he’s a good kid, and he gives a great hug. But unsurprisingly finding care for him isn’t easy.
I think there are two different conversations. One is “don’t zap the kids” which seems pretty blatantly obvious.
But the other one is what level of care we owe these kids. Do we just keep them from hurting self or others? Or are we obliged to, as KateL put it, do this:
Because I don’t think there are enough trained people (or money) to give that to everyone who would benefit from it. I wish there were.
Sailor,
The motherjones article quotes $220K per victim. It also quotes 234 residents, and $56M total annual revenue, so the math pretty much works out.
The way you find people to care for those with severe problems is you take the cream of the crop, you pay them well, and you accept that you’re going to sometimes get burnouts.
Questions of “Who’s going to pay for it?” or “Where does the money come from?” are red herrings. The money is already available, and it’s already being spent.
Ah, thanks for the explanation.
Do you think I’m disagreeing with you about function? I’m not. That WOULD work, once put into practice. I’d also add “…and train them well,” with which I’m sure you agree.
What you and I (may) be disagreeing about is feasibility. That suggestion is, um…. not quite as easy as it first may seem, I think, even given considerable resources.
Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t try. And it should be pretty obvious that $200k/year/child should be able to produce, if not perfection, something a hell of a lot closer to perfection than the shit we saw there.
It wasn’t going to the staff — anybody who gets cowed by a threat of “…or you’ll be evaluated” probably isn’t making much more than minimum wage.
The staff is an interesting side issue. Because it’s clear that the corporation’s treatment of the staff is unethical. Basically, they’re undergoing an uncontrolled, coersive version of the Milgram experiments every working day. Except that they’re being forced to shock children and the shocks are real–no one’s going to reveal to them at the end of the day that they didn’t do any real harm, that it was all faked. I would expect that a fairly large number of ex-employees of this place have PTSD or other psychiatric sequelae of their experience.
I think the staff is more than a side issue.
Incompetent, untrained, morally corrupt, or simply stupid staff can doom almost anything to failure. And it is *incredibly* hard to find, recruit, and retain top quality workers, even if you pay them a lot of money. It is probably even more difficult when you’re looking for tolerance (which is probably somewhat fixed by the time folks are in the job hunt) combined with interest in the position, trained skills and knowledge.
Good thinking re milgram though. I suspect you are right.
The fact that places like this exist further convinces me that we are so far from providing the free and appropriate education that IDEA promises disabled children. And I do think we need to look at this place not just in terms of its behaviour therapies, but that it is a school and, from what I understand, being a school is how it makes its money. What schools does our community offer otherwise?
If you look at the parental letter propaganda on JRC’s website, it paints a picture of last resort. As in, parents applied to other schools, but JRC is the only one that took their extremely disabled kid. This demonstrates to me that we need to not only condemn JRC and what it is doing, but simultaneously demand school settings that are capable of confidently taking on such extreme cases. I don’t think the argument against JRC and the like is useful until there is a plan in motion to avoid leaving people in limbo. Does anyone know of such in the works? (–>sincere question, I would want to support it.) I think a successful fight against JRC requires a lot more than pointing out its serious deficiencies.
I think the staff is more than a side issue.
You’re right. What I meant was that the damage done to the staff was a side issue. The damage done to the children is the main issue, IMHO. Poor phrasing on my part.
Oh, yes, i agree entirely. Sorry re the mixup.
“I would expect that a fairly large number of ex-employees of this place have PTSD or other psychiatric sequelae of their experience.”
One of ballastexistenz’s posts on the JRC attracted several comments from ex-employees who said, basically, it was the worst work environment they’ve ever experienced. They did sound very upset and traumatized.
“Incompetent, untrained, morally corrupt, or simply stupid staff can doom almost anything to failure. ”
Granted. But the staff comments — though brief — seemed to point to “poor” and “coerced.”
It’s a side issue in that, however bad the working conditions at JRC are, the children at the JRC are the primary victims. However, the functionary staff at the JRC *are* also being screwed over, and the way in which that’s happening can help to illuminate how utterly bankrupt this place is on all levels.
Yes, in so far as the victimisation of the staff is contingent upon the victimisation of the children. They are also perpetrators.
If children weren’t being tortured, but the working conditions were otherwise the same, we’d have no problem in recognising them as coercive to the staff. In this respect, the staff are primary victims.
The situation is analogous to a family unit consisting of a coercive abuser, a coerced abuser, and an abused child. To the extent that the coerced abuser is victimised through the victimisation of the child, they are a secondary victim. But they are a primary victim of the coercion.
First thing, I don’t recall ever hearing of an Autistic person or disabled person, behaving like some psychotic psycho-killer. This is a popular myth perpeutated by people who wish to see the disabled as other.
If you beat a dog, and it bites you, you don’t go “Gee I guess that dog is retarded” you say, “Well I shouldn’t have beaten the dog”. We’re talking about people who already suffer from things most people wouldn’t consider. Like bright lights. Or, take me for instance, someone who has Asperger’s Syndrome. I have Hyperacusis, I’m disturbed by sudden loud noises.
I hate to admit this, but sometimes I will react to sudden loud noises by behaving in ways people might see as “retarded” Like screaming, or making hissing noises. This is to keep the sound from entering my ear. It’s a defense mechanism, it’s not something that should be cured. If you are to cure someone of their defense mechanisms, then you’re dooming them to a life of torture. Most of the people at JRC are being shocked, so they learn not to defend themselves against things that they are overstimulated by. They’re conditioned to belive in learned helplessness, because the only response they get to “I’m in pain” is BZZZZTTTT.
When I read about the person who became comatose at JRC, it reminded me of the ending to the film Brazil. Where after being tortured, the main character couldn’t take it anymore, and started singing Brazil. The torturers said, “He’s gone”. Meaning that he was tortured to such an extent, that he had to retreat into his mind. That he was no longer able to respond or accept the outside world, the only way he could escape was to retreat forever into his mind. People talk about Autistic people as, “Being off in their own world, unable to respond to the world everyone else is in.” What does it say when you CREATE that in someone though?
Imagine being put in a place, where everyday there is no hope, you know that if you do X you will be shocked, there is no discussion it just is. Imagine that happening for years. Imagine if one overzelous sadist happens to be hired, and decides that it’s fun to shock the patients for no reason at all. You can’t do anything, it just is. If you are suffering nobody listens, if you are sick nobody cares, if you are dying it’s just as well. Sounds like a plot to a reasonably good horror film right?
It is the reality people in JRC face EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Pingback: Pithy Bitch » Blog Archive » Aversive Therapy Can Be Torture
Incompetent, untrained, morally corrupt, or simply stupid staff can doom almost anything to failure.
It didn’t really matter in this situation, except perhaps for the “untrained” part. The staff’s actions were, apparently, right in line with the facility’s protocols. From the Globe story it appears that only the *number* of shocks administered to one boy was “outside of his treatment plan”. Remote video surveillance and ordering shocks by telephone was and still is A-OK there, and apparently waking a child up for shocks in the middle of the night, many hours after “bad” behavior, was also perfectly acceptable.