Moving right along, back to the topic at hand... I do believe this is a more local version (with more details) about the same family noted in the recent Boston Globe article
Parent details toll taken by shocks at group home. That latter piece was written mostly from the perspective of the father. Apparently, the mother is not so gung-ho, hesitantly describing it here as "medieval to me."
Jan 22, 2008
Former Silver Lake student shocked 77 times in prank at Judge Rotenberg CenterBy Tom Benner, Gatehouse news serviceBOSTON• The divorced parents of a special education student victimized in an electric skin shock prank at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center say the punishing therapy shouldn't be banned outright.
"A lot of people think it is some kind of crazy electrocution," said Charles Dumas of Halifax, whose son formerly attended Silver Lake regional schools.
The son, now 19, was given 77 painful skin shocks over a three-hour period in the early morning hours on Aug. 26.
Dumas' son was one of two students at the center who were wrongfully shocked in a harrowing night that is detailed in a new state report released today.
The report concludes the Halifax teen was severely physically and emotionally abused by the wrongful treatments.
The other student, age 16, received 29 shocks.
"My son has been in and out of a lot of places and so highly medicated that he would drool," Dumas said. "He was behaving better than he ever had at JRC. He's made huge leaps and bounds since he's been there."
The teenager's mother, Dawn Dumas of Taunton, also said in a separate interview that her emotionally troubled son seemed to improve at the JRC.
"It's medieval to me," Dawn Dumas said of skin-shock therapy, "but I guess it helps."
Today's report by the state Disabled Persons Protection Commission says the couple's son was placed at the school in March 2006, with the Silver Lake Regional School District and the state Department of Social Services paying for his tuition at the Rotenberg center, which costs about $210,000 per student annually.
The report says the teen, who name is not being released because he was a victim, had problem behaviors, including "aggressive, health dangerous, destructive, impulsive, noncompliant, and sexually inappropriate behaviors."
The report says the teen had been "totally happy" at the Rotenberg center until the Aug. 26 incident, saying he had seldom been subject to electric shocks and that he had "changed dramatically."
The report says the teen suspected the phone calls ordering that he be punished were a prank and told group home staffers as they administered skin shocks, "when have you ever known someone to call and give GEDs (graduated electronic decelerator, or skin shocks) over the phone?"
Charles Dumas declined further comment because his son still lives at the Rotenberg center. The second victim in the case, who was from Virginia, has since left the school.
DPPC investigators identify the prank caller as Stephen Ferrer-Torres, a former student who had "eloped," or run away, before making the prank calls as an apparent retaliation. His whereabouts are unknown by investigators conducting a criminal investigation.
A former Rotenberg center employee who worked with Ferrer-Torres doesn't believe skin-shock therapy helped him.
"He's done something bad, but he's not a bad kid," said Greg Miller of Newtonville, who now works at a school for autistic children.
Miller, who worked at the Rotenberg center for three years before leaving in 2006, said he sometimes couldn't administer skin shocks.
A spokesman for the school did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Skin shocks and other so-called "aversive" therapies are needed to treat many of the school's more than 200 autistic, retarded or emotionally disturbed students, school officials maintain.
Critics maintain the two-second skin shocks are physically abusive and are pushing state lawmakers to restrict or ban the treatments.
The Aug. 26 incident at one of the school's group homes in Stoughton was caught on tape by camera monitors.
The Rotenberg center officials destroyed copies of the tape despite an order by state investigators to preserve copies.
