Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => The Troubled Teen Industry => Topic started by: ZenAgent on December 21, 2007, 11:31:57 AM
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Jesus!
http://wbztv.com/local/shock.treatments ... 14971.html (http://wbztv.com/local/shock.treatments.prank.2.614971.html)
Staff Fired After Prank Call Shock Treatments
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
Staff members at a group home made multiple mistakes when they followed a prank caller's direction to give dozens of electrical shocks to two emotionally disturbed teenagers, according to a report by a state agency that investigated the incident.
The report by the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care said six staffers at a Stoughton residence run by the Canton-based Judge Rotenberg Education Center had ample reason to doubt the orders to administer the shocks, but did nothing to stop it.
The six staff members and video surveillance worker on duty that night have been fired, Ernest Corrigan, the school's spokesman, said Thursday.
Initial investigations showed that a former student at the Judge Rotenberg Education Center allegedly called in orders for electric shock treatments on Aug. 26 and officials at the school self-reported the prank call and unnecessary treatments the day after they occurred, Cindy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Early Education and Care, said Monday.
After the call, the teens, ages 16 and 19, were awakened in the middle of the night and given the shock treatments, at times while their legs and arms were bound. One teen received 77 shocks and the other received 29. One boy was treated for two first-degree burns.
The caller posed as a supervisor and said he was ordering the punishments because the teens had misbehaved earlier in the evening. But none of the staffers had witnessed any problems, and other boys said the two teens had done nothing wrong. One boy suggested the call was a hoax.
The report says the caller was a former resident of the center with intimate knowledge of the staff, residents and layout of the Stoughton home. No motive was given and the caller's identity wasn't disclosed. Police are looking into filing criminal charges.
Five of the six staffers had worked a double or triple shift and most had been on the job less than three months. The staffers were described as concerned and reluctant about the orders, but failed to verify them with the central office or check treatment plans to make sure the teens could receive that level of shock therapy, the report said. Staffers also didn't know who the shift supervisor was that night.
Staff members realized their mistake after someone finally called the central office.
One reason staffers might not have been suspicious of the phone call is that the Rotenberg Center uses surveillance cameras in its group homes to monitor residents and staff, and a central office employee is allowed to initiate discipline by phone.
"We found that there were breaches of internal control procedures that happened in this particular case," Campbell said. "We take this very seriously."
Corrigan said an incident like the faulty shock treatments after a phone call has never happened before.
"We have modified procedures to assure that an incident of this type cannot occur ever again," Corrigan said.
As a result of the investigation, the center has expanded staff training, implemented new telephone verification procedures, added oversight at group homes and eliminated delayed punishment.
Nancy Alterio, executive director of the state's Disabled Persons Protection Committee, confirmed that her agency is investigating a complaint that a third victim -- an adult -- at the a residential facility in Stoughton run by the Rotenberg center also received unnecessary shock treatments after the phone call.
"It was a perfect storm of things that went wrong that night," he said.
The complaints have also been referred to the state police and the Norfolk District Attorney's Office, Alterio said.
The school treats people with a wide variety of behavior problems, including autistic-like students who have aggressive, self-injurious or destructive behaviors and high-functioning students with psychiatric or emotional problems, according to a description posted on its web site.
"The so-called prank call ... was an isolated, unprecedented incident that occurred more than three months ago," Corrigan said in a statement released Monday. "We immediately reported it to the appropriate state agencies and the local police."
The state Department of Early Education and Care said it investigated a complaint about two youths -- ages 16 and 19 -- who were given unnecessary shock treatments on Aug. 26 after someone claiming to be on the staff of Dr. Matthew Israel -- the psychologist who founded the school -- called facility and ordered the treatments.
Two state legislators called on Gov. Deval Patrick to take quick action to put strict regulations in place for the use of shock therapy.
"In a word, this incident is horrifying and it would be immoral for the Legislature and the executive branch not to react strongly and swiftly," said Sen. Brian A. Joyce, who has previously sponsored legislation to ban electric shock therapy.
Kenneth Mollins, a New York attorney who has filed several lawsuits against the Rotenberg center alleging the mistreatment of children at the Canton-based school, sent a letter Monday to Patrick and various state agencies, calling on the state to investigate the complaints, which were first reported by The Examiner newspaper, of Washington.
"The governor needs to take a look and see what's happening here. There is nobody overseeing the store. If somebody can just call and ask that somebody be shocked, there is a significant problem," Mollins said.
The center, believed to be the only school in the nation that uses a two-second skin-shock punishment to change destructive behavior, is no stranger to controversy. It has survived two attempts by the state to close it amid allegations that its unorthodox methods amount to abuse.
Massachusetts was required to pay the center $580,000 after it unsuccessfully sought to close the school following the 1985 death of a 22-year-old student who suffered a seizure while restrained and forced to listen to static noise.
More recently an investigation was ordered to determine if a shock device malfunctioned, causing burns to one student. The center also agreed to stop referring to staff members as psychologists if they have not been licensed with the state.
On Monday, the center defended its use of the intensive treatment methods, saying they are used in a minority of cases as part of overall therapy for "very deeply emotionally disturbed young adults."
The procedures are applied "only after obtaining prior parental, medical, psychiatric, human rights, peer review and individual approval from a Massachusetts Probate Court," Corrigan said.
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(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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There are a host of criminal charges that can and should be brought against the staff here. Battery, assault and criminal negligence being the most obvious.
But I don't be shocked if they only charge the prankster.
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The center also agreed to stop referring to staff members as psychologists if they have not been licensed with the state.
That was nice of them. so you can call yourself a psychiatrist even if you're not and just have to promise not to do it again? Isn't that....a crime? How about impersonating a gynocologist? Or a police officer?
Zeus
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See also these threads, which deal with the same situation:
http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=24499 (http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=24499)
http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=24520 (http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=24520)
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The Globe (http://http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/12/20/staff_faulted_in_use_of_shock/) had a lengthy story about this yesterday.
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The center also agreed to stop referring to staff members as psychologists if they have not been licensed with the state.
That was nice of them. so you can call yourself a psychiatrist even if you're not and just have to promise not to do it again? Isn't that....a crime? How about impersonating a gynocologist? Or a police officer?
Zeus
If I'm not mistaken, I think Massachusetts just had a rather notorious case of a woman practicing psychology without a degree. It became notorious by virtue of her previous profession as a stripper long ago (Princess Cheyenne?).
It's somewhere in the threads here within the past year, maybe over the summer. I think in her case, it was a mail-order degree, and she got into a lot of trouble about it, perhaps even jail time. Ironically, if she had just advertised her services as "therapy," no one would have been able to nail her for a thing.
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The Globe (http://http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/12/20/staff_faulted_in_use_of_shock/) had a lengthy story about this yesterday.
Lemmee expand that link for posterity's sake:
Patricia Wen can be reached at wen@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
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The center also agreed to stop referring to staff members as psychologists if they have not been licensed with the state.
That was nice of them. so you can call yourself a psychiatrist even if you're not and just have to promise not to do it again? Isn't that....a crime? How about impersonating a gynocologist? Or a police officer?
Zeus
If I'm not mistaken, I think Massachusetts just had a rather notorious case of a woman practicing psychology without a degree. It became notorious by virtue of her previous profession as a stripper long ago (Princess Cheyenne?).
It's somewhere in the threads here within the past year, maybe over the summer. I think in her case, it was a mail-order degree, and she got into a lot of trouble about it, perhaps even jail time. Ironically, if she had just advertised her services as "therapy," no one would have been able to nail her for a thing.
Why don't these people ever go to prison for doing the same thing?
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http://arcmass.org/Portals/0/DEEC%20JRC ... 1-1-07.pdf (http://arcmass.org/Portals/0/DEEC%20JRC%20report%2011-1-07.pdf)
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psycho... just fricking psycho
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Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating
Civil Rights Unit
45 Shawmut Road
Canton, MA 02021
781-830-4800
Mass. Governer Deval Patrick 888-870-7770
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It may also be helpful to contact the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and demand a re-evaluation of their registration of the Graduated Electronic Decelerator (Shock Device), which is manufactured by the Judge Rotenberg Education Center, Inc. It’s registration number is: 1222743, and it is classified as an “Aversive Conditioning Device, FDA regulation number: 882.5235. Please inform them that this device is being used on individuals with severe forms of Autism who may be completely unable to associate the reason for the pain (shock) with their behavior. They may also suffer from sensory related issues that increase their pain level far beyond what a typical person may experience. Even the aversive shock testing that Dr. Ivar Lovaas performed on people with Autism did not reveal any lasting learned benefit. This fact alone should clearly reveal that the GED is not a suitable “conditioning device,â€
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It should also be noted that this device is NOT FDA approved. It IS FDA registered. If anyone finds references to claims of FDA approval, or has heard Dr. Israel make claims of it being approved, they should immediately report this to the FDA.
He makes ambiguous reference to such on his website, saying it is APPROVED and then qualifying the meaning of that "approval" by putting in parentheses "registered." The information on this page appears to be part of a scientific paper he presented in 2002 and is described on its header as:USE OF SKIN-SHOCK AS A SUPPLEMENTARY AVERSIVE
AT THE JUDGE ROTENBERG CENTER (JRC)
Matthew L. Israel, Ph.D.
[Portion of paper presented at the 2002 meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis][/list]
The pics were probably slides or a PowerPoint presentation. I've included some of the build up in order to portray the context, but the slide you really want to look at is the last one.
From the website, http://www.judgerc.org/ (http://www.judgerc.org/)
================================================
Safeguards
JRC's use of aversives is carried out carefully, openly and with a maximum number of safeguards. The safeguards are listed in Exhibits 177 through 179.
(http://http://www.effectivetreatment.org/exhibits/exhibit176.jpg)
Exhibit 177
(http://http://www.effectivetreatment.org/exhibits/exhibit177.jpg)
Exhibit 178
(http://http://www.effectivetreatment.org/exhibits/exhibit178.jpg)
Exhibit 179
1. Professionally Approved Procedure (Exhibit 180). Skin Shock was recognized as a professionally accepted treatment for destructive behaviors by the 1987 Consensus Conference on Destructive Behaviors sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. In addition, it is the most widely researched decelerative procedure in the field of applied behavior analysis. Both the Consensus Conference Report, as well as an extensive bibliography on the use of skin-shock may be found at www.effectivetreatment.org (http://www.effectivetreatment.org) (Exhibit 181).
(http://http://www.effectivetreatment.org/exhibits/exhibit179.jpg)
Exhibit 180
(http://http://www.effectivetreatment.org/exhibits/exhibit180.jpg)
Exhibit 181
2. Acceptance by the FDA. JRC submitted its skin shock device to the FDA for review and the device was accepted in 1991. (Exhibit 182)
(http://http://www.effectivetreatment.org/exhibits/exhibit181.jpg)
Exhibit 182
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In the event that last pic is removed from JRC's website, the text reads as follows:
2. Acceptance by the FDA
• GED skin shock device was submitted to FDA for approval (registration) in 1990.
• GED device was approved (registered) in 1991.
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Ok those slides are going on the YLF site ASAP.
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The GED device is, if I remember correctly, 10x more powerful than the SIBIS (what JRC originally used back in the 1980s) in terms of shock delivery. The reason JRC manufactures the GED themselves is because the company that manufactures the SIBIS refused to "upgrade" their device to JRC's "specifications."
Is the FDA aware that JRC puts as many as five (5) electrodes in place per student, making the potential total shock as much as 50x more powerful than the SIBIS? And that JRC also manufactures another device called the GED4, which is 4x more powerful than the original GED, making the potential resultant shock as much as 200x more powerful than the SIBIS?
JRC exhorts their staff NOT to start out with the least effective dose and aim to ramp up, but to start out with the highest allowable dose since it is considered most effective in deterring future misbehaviors...
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Hey Ursus can you set this all up in some sort of presentation format so I can have the techno maven for the YLF post it ASAP?
You seem to have a better understanding of this situation than myself. Frankly the less I know the better I sleep at night in this regard.
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Hey Ursus can you set this all up in some sort of presentation format so I can have the techno maven for the YLF post it ASAP?
Lols, you know I suck at seeing the forest sometimes; I'm usually better at focusing on the trees. But, then again, this place has been intermittently on my radar for a while... Give me a better idea as to what you mean by "presentation." Are you talking about a couple of explanatory paragraphs to clue in the novice reader who is unaware of JRC?
Aside: the site www.effectivetreatment.org (http://www.effectivetreatment.org) and the Geocities site mentioned in at least one article as being additional sources of more information, all direct you back to the JRC site when you click on them. It would appear that interest in and support for the use of skin shock aversive "therapy" is a great deal less espoused by the general public than a casual observer might presume.
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Arrange the material in a manner so that the casual internet user can understand it quickly and easily.
Remember what I said about bite size chunks?
Very applicable here..
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yesterday's New York Times article
Nearly a year ago, New York made plans to ban the use of electric shocks as a punishment for bad behavior, a therapy used at a Massachusetts school where New York State had long sent some of its most challenging special education students.
But state officials trying to limit New York’s association with the school, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, southwest of Boston, and its “aversive therapyâ€