Isabelle Zehnder: An aversion to aversive therapy

Article about Canton school rekindles shock treatment controversy

By TOM BENNER
The Patriot Ledger

BOSTON - ‘‘School of shock: Food deprivation. Isolation. Electric shocks.’’

It sounds like a coming attraction for a sci-fi torture movie.

But it’s fact, not fiction.

The cover story of the current Mother Jones magazine offers a new look at what it calls the Abu Ghraib of high schools - the only facility in the nation where students are disciplined with electric shock treatment and other forms of physical punishment that critics consider outdated, outrageous and cruel.

The national magazine barely hit the stands last week before state lawmakers renewed efforts to put a stop to the so-called ‘‘aversive therapy’’ used at the Judge Rotenberg Education Center in Canton.

Electric skin shocks and other painful or unpleasant treatments, accepted more than a generation ago, are largely rejected today by mainstream psychiatry in favor of drugs and other methods that have proved effective.

But Dr. Matthew Israel, who founded the special-needs school in 1971, favors physical punishment and a mix of positive and negative reinforcements over psychiatry or drugs to treat children and young adults with the most severe mental illnesses, or who pose a danger to themselves or others.

Nearly 75 percent of the center’s 230 residents are subject to jolts of electricity to the skin or food deprivation if they act inappropriately.

To administer skin shocks, Israel developed a device he calls a graduated electronic decelerator. It is carried in backpacks that students at the school wear, and elicits shocks through electrodes strapped on their arms and legs.

School officials acknowledge that a skin shock, when given at the highest level, hurts. They liken it to a bee sting, or getting a tattoo, or touching a hot stove.

While the school maintains skin shocks are used to correct extreme or harmful behaviors, Mother Jones accuses the center of using skin shocks to correct nagging, swearing, complaining, or other behavior that might be typical for a teenager.

‘‘In the Rotenberg Center’s 36 years of operation, the program has repeatedly been found to torture kids - there is no other word for it - not accidentally, but systematically,’’ the magazine’s editors write in a foreword to the piece.

Eight states (including Massachusetts) send children to the center, which is often seen as the last resort for children with severe emotional or behavior problems.

The center receives $220,000 per child in tuition from states and school districts, and collects $56 million in yearly revenues; Israel collects an annual salary of $400,000.

The story was written by Sudbury native Jennifer Gonnerman, now a New York-based investigative reporter, who began researching the center last year when New York state officials debated whether to continue sending students to the Massachusetts school.

Gonnerman said she had no opinions about the school as she began her research.

‘‘I didn’t really know enough to have an opinion,’’ she said. ‘‘I wanted to go in with an open mind and talk to as many people as possible.’’

But Israel believes the writer had an ax to grind.

‘‘It is a classic hatchet job,’’ Israel said. ‘‘It is clear the reporter came with an agenda, and it is in no way a fair and balanced piece of work.’’

Israel said the piece fails to convey the seriousness of the problems of students at the school, that the school uses positive and negative reinforcements instead of psychotropic drugs, and that many parents speak to the center’s success stories.

State officials, meanwhile, are renewing efforts to curb the use of aversive therapy.

State Sen. Brian A. Joyce, a Milton Democrat whose district includes the center’s 15-acre campus, has complained for years that students are subject to punishments that aren’t used on the worst criminal.

‘‘People are incredulous that in 2007, we’re allowing this electric shocking of our most vulnerable and innocent citizens, children with autism or mental retardation,’’ Joyce said. ‘‘If we were to apply electric shock to serial killers or terrorists, there would be worldwide outrage over cruel and unusual punishment.’’

Joyce says he’s frustrated that he has not succeeded after years of trying to halt electric skin shocks, and adds that 10 states have banned aversive therapy. He expects a legislative hearing to be held in December or January on his push to curb aversive therapy.

Another opponent of aversive therapy, Rep. Tom Sannicandro, D-Ashland, asked to receive an electric shock at a legislative hearing last year to see what it feels like.

‘‘When it happened it was just unbearable,’’ he said. ‘‘I was only shocked at the lowest level, and it felt like I was being electrocuted.’’

Sannicandro, who has a 23-year-old son with Down syndrome, said physical punishment doesn’t fit in with modern psychiatry.

‘‘A lot of these kids can’t speak for themselves,’’ he said. ‘‘We have to stand up for them.’’

In addition to its Canton campus, the Rotenberg Center has group homes in Attleboro, Mansfield, Rehoboth, Norton, Randolph, Stoughton and Holbrook.

The Mother Jones article can be viewed at motherjones.com/schoolofshock.

The response from Dr. Matthew Israel, founder of the school, can be viewed at ledger.southofboston.com/articles/2007/08/27/news/news02a.txt.

Tom Benner may be reached at tbenner@ledger.com.