Coalition of disability rights groups protest the Judge Rotenberg Center’s literal torturing of students

The school’s founder, psychologist Matthew Israel, patented a remote-controlled device called the Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED). The FDA banned the use of the device, but JRC successfully overturned the ban in court. After Congress empowered the FDA to ban such shocks as behavioral therapy, the agency is working towards a new ban.

FDA ban proposal

The FDA wrote in its ban proposal, “These devices present a number of psychological risks including, depression, anxiety, worsening of underlying symptoms, development of post-traumatic stress disorder and physical risks such as pain, burns and tissue damage.”

JRC students with intellectual disabilities are particularly vulnerable, the FDA notes, because it may be difficult for them to communicate about pain or other harms they experience from the shocks.

School staff members administer electric shocks through electrodes attached to a student’s arm, leg or torso to cause a change in their behavior. According to their website (judgerc.org), “A highly trained and experienced staff member skillfully opens a plastic box and presses a button causing two seconds of safe electrical current.” Students wear up to five of the electrodes, even while sleeping,

JRC is the only program in the U.S. that uses electric shocks to control behavior. The center compares the shock to a bee sting, but survivors of JRC have testified that it causes severe, lingering muscle cramps. According to its website, JRC is “licensed to serve ages five through adult.” It has used the device on minors, but states that it now delays shocks until age 18. Each student’s shock program is approved by psychologists and by the Bristol County Probate Court.

In 2010, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, referred to the use of electrical shock devices for this kind of therapy as torture and sent an urgent appeal to the U.S. government to investigate.

Israel claimed that there are no negative side effects from skin shock. Professor Nancy Weiss, co-author of a book on the Rotenberg Center, responded that people who have experienced the shock at JRC describe it as the worst pain they have ever felt, and years later still have debilitating PTSD. “Electric shocks are not a professionally accepted approach to behavior management. […] You’re not allowed to use electric shock on prisoners, or prisoners of war or convicted terrorists.”

The JRC responds that using electric shock is “a treatment of last resort” for residents who harm themselves, but their court-approved programs allowed harmless behaviors to be shocked, including hand-flapping, standing up without permission, taking their eyes off of their work, nagging, disobeying orders or making noises.

(Emphasis original.)