N.Y. report denounces
shock use at school
Says students are living
in fear
By Scott Allen, Globe Staff | June
15, 2006
New York
education officials issued a scathing report yesterday on a
Massachusetts school that punishes troubled and disabled
students with electric shocks, finding that they can be shocked for
simply nagging the teacher and that some are forced to wear shock
devices in the bathtub or shower, posing an electrocution hazard.
The report, based in part on an
inspection last month of the Judge
Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton,
portrayed a school in which most staff lack training to handle the
students and seem more focused on punishing bad behavior than
encouraging good acts.
The investigators said some forms of
discipline, such as a device that delivers shocks at timed
intervals, appear to violate federal safety regulations, and
students live in an atmosphere of ``pervasive fears and anxieties."
The report, denounced by Rotenberg
officials as biased, is expected to play a key role next Monday when
education regulators in New York are scheduled to vote on
whether to severely restrict the use of painful punishment on
students from New York.
Two-thirds of Rotenberg's students are
sent from New York. The inspectors said they had notified
officials in Massachusetts and at the US Food and Drug
Administration about possible violations of state and federal safety
rules.
There have been increasing allegations
of abuse at the Rotenberg Center in recent months.
They include several assertions that
students have been badly burned by the shock devices, known as
graduated electronic decelerators. The Massachusetts Disabled
Persons Protection Commission has received 22 allegations of abuse
at the school since January, including 12 that involve injuries.
Rotenberg officials have steadfastly denied the charges, but
commission officials say that at least two have been substantiated.
Yesterday, a lawyer for the school,
Michael Flammia,
said the New York report
grossly distorts what goes on at the school, which is often used as
a place of last resort for students with
autism, mental retardation, or behavioral
problems. School districts in several states, including
Massachusetts, refer students to Rotenberg after other methods
to control their behavior, such as hospitalization or drugs, have
failed.
The school has about 250 students,
about half of whom wear electric shock devices that teachers can
activate around the clock.
``These findings are completely false.
They are the product of a biased review team sent by the New York
State Education Department for the specific purpose of making
derogatory findings" about the center, said Flammia, who denied that
students are forced to wear shock devices in the shower.
He also said that New York
officials are mistaken in asserting that the school is violating FDA
or Massachusetts rules.
Flammia noted that New York
inspectors had given the Judge
Rotenberg Center high marks for safety last September, but
he believes they turned against the school after the publicity
surrounding a lawsuit filed this spring by the mother of a New
York student.
Some parents of Rotenberg students
rallied behind the school, as they have in the past, saying that
most people don't understand how serious their children's problems
are. The school, which costs states and school districts more than
$200,000 a year per student, helps students who have failed
everywhere else, they say, and turns to shocks and other punishments
only if less painful methods fail.
``This school has saved my daughter's
life," said Marcia Shear of Long Island, whose 13-year-old daughter,
Samantha, used to punch herself in the head so often that she
detached both retinas.
After she received a few high-level
shocks, Shear said, the self-abuse stopped. ``I am livid at these
people and pieces of garbage who think they know what they're doing.
Let them come and sit with my child and go through what I've gone
through for 11 years."
The 26-page
New York report intensified a debate over the Judge Rotenberg
Center's methods that has gone on for much of its 35 years.
The latest controversy began in March, when Evelyn Nicholson of
Freeport, N.Y., went public with a charge that her son, Antwone, had
been mistreated at the school, where he was shocked 79 times over 1
1/2 years. She initially consented to the procedure to curb her
son's aggressive behavior, but said she changed her mind after
Antwone became increasingly desperate to get away.
``There's no education in what's
happening here," said Ken Mollins , a lawyer representing the
Nicholson family, which is suing New York for $10
million. ``The head of this institution calls this therapy. I think
this is more like a domestic torture chamber."
The New York inspectors found that
more than two-thirds of the direct-care providers at the Rotenberg
Center have completed only a high school education, which they said
``in many cases . . . is not sufficient to oversee the intensive
treatment of children with challenging emotional and behavioral
problems."
They also noted that only six of the
17 clinicians who oversee mental-health care at the school have a
license in psychology.
The inspectors said the school
appeared to violate FDA regulations in several ways, including a
policy that allows the parents of students to administer shocks to
students after only minimal training. The New York report
also said that the school appears to violate Massachusetts
regulations that allow painful punishments only for
``extraordinarily difficult or dangerous behavioral problems,"
noting that they witnessed one student who was threatened with a
shock after sneezing in class. School officials said no shock had
been given in this case.
Finally, the report raised concerns
about students' nutrition because the
Judge Rotenberg Center withholds food as a punishment. The report
found that one New York student was in a program where he
could be denied up to 25 percent of his normal food intake.
New York Deputy Education Commissioner
Rebecca Cort said the report painted a much darker picture of the
Rotenberg Center than last year's review, because the state
took a more in-depth look, including a surprise inspection that
showed the school's practices are a lot different from written
treatment plans for students.
Rotenberg's Flammia said the school
was never given a chance to review the report before it was made
public and he said the school would demand a fair chance to respond.
He warned that if New York students are denied access to
the
Rotenberg Center, the state could be sued by parents of children who
hurt themselves as a result.
Supporters of a bill in the
Massachusetts Legislature to ban the use of electric shocks on
students said they hoped the New York report would give
new momentum to their efforts to force the school to change its
methods or close. A proposed ban was written into the state budget
passed by the Senate, but the House of Representatives has not taken
a position.
``It's troubling that it's necessary
for New York officials to point out the violations of Massachusetts
law taking place at this facility," said state Senator Brian Joyce,
the Milton Democrat who has led the effort to ban electric shock.
Scott Allen can be reached at
allen@globe.com.
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