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In center of a storm
State education department report blasts Massachusetts facility for special needs students

BY KARLA SCHUSTER AND LAUREN TERRAZZANO.STAFF WRITERS; Staff writer Jennifer Maloney contributed to this story.

June 15, 2006

Troubled New York students sent to a controversial Massachusetts treatment facility are given electric shocks for minor offenses, strapped to wooden boards and sometimes denied most of their daily meals - behavioral therapies that threaten their "health, safety, privacy and dignity," according to a state report.

The scathing review released yesterday of the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Mass., based on surprise visits by the New York Department of Education, describes an institution where students get virtually no social interaction, academic instruction or mental stimulation, save for a battery of aversive therapies that are administered by staff with little training in how to deal with emotionally disturbed children.

"The privacy and dignity of students is compromised in the course of JRC's program implementation," the report stated. State education officials have ordered the Rotenberg Center to "immediately take corrective actions" and provide documentation of that by Monday, or risk being dropped from the state's list of approved facilities for New York students. Right now, approximately 148 New York students are enrolled at the Rotenberg Center, which houses 255 students.

Also Monday, the state Board of Regents is to consider asking lawmakers to approve legislation that would bar placing New York students in schools that use such aversive therapies.

"This is everything we said it was and the one question I have is why is this place still on the state's approved list?" said attorney Ken Mollins, who is representing a Freeport mother in a $10-million lawsuit accusing the state of negligence for placing her son there.

Said the boy's mother, Evelyn Nicholson: "I wish they would just shut it down. I don't think anything good happens for kids in there."

Michael Flammia, an attorney for the Rotenberg Center, called the state's review unfair. "It's the product of a biased review team that was sent to JRC for the purpose of making adverse findings," because of the increased media attention on aversive therapy since Mollins filed the lawsuit, Flammia said. He noted that the state had given the center a more positive review last November. "The observations are false and the conclusions are false."

Among the findings:

The review team observed that most students were restrained in handcuffs or leg shackles as they arrived or left the school, and in some instances, in wheeled chairs that keep them in four-point restraints.

Academic instruction often consists of rote tasks at a computer, punishments are given in tandem - one student was given five shocks in 10 minutes while strapped to a four-point board for pulling a fire alarm - and electric shocks are given during baths, a violation of federal safety rules.

Sometimes, the reviewers found, students are goaded into negative behavior so that aversive therapies can be used.

While most of the children placed at the center are special-education students sent there by local school districts, some are foster children in need of institutional care sent by county social service departments.

Peter Clement, director of administration for Nassau's Department of Social Services, had not seen the report as of yesterday afternoon, but said "the county would not consider placing any more children there" if the findings are true.

The center is also under investigation in Massachusetts, as that state's Department of Early Education and Care probes allegations that students were burned by the electric shock device and that one Roslyn Heights autistic girl suffered significant weight loss.

The autistic girl, identified in an earlier interview by her mother, Marcia, as Samantha Shear, 13, is being treated there. Yesterday, Marcia Shear staunchly defended the center.

"It's a totally one-sided report," Shear said. "I go to the school all the time. I know exactly what goes on there."

Staff writer Jennifer Maloney contributed to this story.

More ....

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