Court Rules School Can Use Electric Shock as Punishment For Special Needs Students

[Shechemite]

Court Rules School Can Use Electric Shock as Punishment For Special Needs Students


Barbaric

 

[krtek a houby]

Horrific but also, America

 

[chilango]

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Autistic activists have been trying to raise awareness and complain about what goes on at the Judge Rotenberg Center for years.

I'm aware that electroshock 'therapy' is sometimes used on adults, but they generally consent to their treatment (and I understand it's usually a last resort after other options have been tried).

If they were doing this in an adult facility to adults who hadn't consented, or perhaps weren't able to give informed consent, there would be an outcry. But because it happens to vulnerable children, that's somehow okay. No. No, it's not.

 

[Shechemite]

Autistic activists have been trying to raise awareness and complain about what goes on at the Judge Rotenberg Center for years.

I'm aware that electroshock 'therapy' is sometimes used on adults, but they generally consent to their treatment (and I understand it's usually a last resort after other options have been tried).

If they were doing this in an adult facility to adults who hadn't consented, or perhaps weren't able to give informed consent, there would be an outcry. But because it happens to vulnerable children, that's somehow okay. No. No, it's not.

I remember the JRC coming up in discussions 10-15 years ago in activist groups.

It’s not a fashionable cause, it’ll take a lot of work to win on.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

How on earth did a judge decide that this is acceptable?

It is appalling

 

[Jeff Robinson]

How on earth did a judge decide that this is acceptable?

It is appalling

Even more disturbingly, how can the parents support it?

 

[dessiato]

There's been a time or two I've thought it might be a good idea...but never ever seriously.

 

[NoXion]

How is this any different from just hitting them?

 

[Jeff Robinson]

How is this any different from just hitting them?

Hitting kids and administering shocks are both seriously wrong but I think there are some features about the latter that are particularly disturbing:

The Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts, is believed to be the only institution in the world in which disabled and disturbed children are subjected to electric shocks to in a system known called "aversive therapy".

The shocks are generated by a device known as a GED which children are made to carry 24 hours a day in backpacks or around their waist.

About half of the school's students carry the generators that are triggered by care assistants using remote-controlled zappers, which then send a electric charge to skin pads on the children's arms and legs.

1. Pain severity: According to the UN special rapporteur on torture the application of electricity to the body causes extreme pain and often has long term psychological effects. Whereas hitting children can amount to inhuman treatment, electric shocks can cross the threshold into torture.

2. Constant threat: as described above the children are made to carry the devises around with them all day. They have the constant threat of electrocution. It must be very scary.

3. Discrimination: this method of punishment is only used against autistic children. Using methods of punishment that are associated with controlling farm animals (I think it’s wrong in that context too) against an already socially marginalised group are likely to reinforce their subordinate social position.

 

[NoXion]

Hitting kids and administering shocks are both seriously wrong but I think there are some features about the latter that are particularly disturbing:



1. Pain severity: According to the UN special rapporteur on torture the application of electricity to the body causes extreme pain and often has long term psychological effects. Whereas hitting children can amount to inhuman treatment, electric shocks can cross the threshold into torture.

2. Constant threat: as described above the children are made to carry the devises around with them all day. They have the constant threat of electrocution. It must be very scary.

3. Discrimination: this method of punishment is only used against autistic children. Using methods of punishment that are associated with controlling farm animals (I think it’s wrong in that context too) against an already socially marginalised group are likely to reinforce their subordinate social position.

OK, so it's different in that it's actually worse. Fucking hell.

 

[Chilli.s]

Im sure you can train most things with pain, the big difference is that teaching a human isnt the same as training an animal. What other things are these poor people learning apart from the trained response?

 

[NoXion]

Im sure you can train most things with pain, the big difference is that teaching a human isnt the same as training an animal. What other things are these poor people learning apart from the trained response?

Even with animals, some species can only be trained usefully with positive reinforcement, and not negative. Like cats.

 

[crossthebreeze]

Just barbaric and horrific.

Im sure you can train most things with pain, the big difference is that teaching a human isnt the same as training an animal. What other things are these poor people learning apart from the trained response?

I don't think you pain works for training anything to do anything complex - touch the fire and get burnt, try to climb that fence and get a shock works, but anything more difficult to grasp and you just cause fear, confusion, and further behavioural problems. Positive reinforcement works more effectively with almost all animals.
This obviously isn't being used only in situations of real risk of harm through the students behaviour, or even in the formalised way that corporal punishment used to be administered in schools.
Those kids must be in constant terror and confusion, especially if they already have problems understanding social conventions.

 

[Edie]

Just wtf is wrong with America

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Even more disturbingly, how can the parents support it?

Because instead of promoting tolerance and acceptance of children and adults on the spectrum, there are charities and institutions and individuals who profit and make money off of promoting fear and shame and intolerance of neurodiversity.

It's in the interests of some to catastrophise a diagnosis and push the idea of a 'cure' to desperate parents who want to release and rescue the 'locked-in' child they hoped for before birth from the autistic shell they've have to try to come to terms with since they were given their child's diagnosis.

Some of the propaganda around autism is that it's like a disease that has kidnapped the child, and the parents feel that their 'real' child is inside the autistic child, waiting/wanting to be 'cured'/rescued.

 

[Raheem]

Whereas hitting children can amount to inhuman treatment, electric shocks can cross the threshold into torture.

So you can hit kids as much as you like without it crossing that threshold???

 

[Mrs Miggins]

I am beyond horrified that this is happening. Literally lost for words.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

So you can hit kids as much as you like without it crossing that threshold???

No. But in the vast majority of cases smacking wouldn’t meet the severity required to be legally regarded as torture.

 

[Bryan_l]

Barbaric

 

[Johnny Doe]

 

[bemused]

I can't imagine how morally vacuous you'd have to become to take a job delivering electrical shocks to disabled children.

 

[StoneRoad]

'eckin 'ell - Could only be in 'murica.

I'ld like it if that judge was hooked up to one of those units for a few days ...

 

[BristolEcho]

Because instead of promoting tolerance and acceptance of children and adults on the spectrum, there are charities and institutions and individuals who profit and make money off of promoting fear and shame and intolerance of neurodiversity.

It's in the interests of some to catastrophise a diagnosis and push the idea of a 'cure' to desperate parents who want to release and rescue the 'locked-in' child they hoped for before birth from the autistic shell they've have to try to come to terms with since they were given their child's diagnosis.

Some of the propaganda around autism is that it's like a disease that has kidnapped the child, and the parents feel that their 'real' child is inside the autistic child, waiting/wanting to be 'cured'/rescued.

Yep. It's also why the autism is caused by Vaccines argument really annoys me. So many people that I have got into debates with around this have an inherently negative view of Autism.

Thankfully outside of that particular group of people the view generally here is much more positive.

On the subject itself this is pretty sick. We have a long way to go here in the way we support people with disabilities and mental health needs, but we are miles ahead of some places.

 

[Shechemite]

Well in this country we lock up and restrain autistic and learning doasabled people as make them take anti-psychotics (not because they have psychosis, but to ‘manage their behaviour’)

 

[Shechemite]

Teenager’s condition leading to death caused by antipsychotic drugs – inquest - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

 

[Shechemite]

https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2017/07/05/locked-learning-disability-units-want-son-home/

 

[BristolEcho]

Well in this country we lock up and restrain autistic and learning doasabled people as make them take anti-psychotics (not because they have psychosis, but to ‘manage their behaviour’)

Yeah true this is still happening. There's definitely over medicating going on too and STOMP have been trying to challenge this. As I said we still have a long way to go.

 

[Shechemite]

 

[Shechemite]

3 labour MPs bothered to turn up to the transforming care debate.

3.