Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

http://www.strugglingteens.com/artman/p ... 711_.shtml

This clearly proves that AdvancED (SACS) has no credibility. Why would they reaccredit RCS for 5 years with the record they have? Do they check with ORCC for violations? Did anyone at AdvancED watch the report? They need to receive a barrage of calls asking why they continue to accredit RC. What did AdvancED recommend for the violence and suicide attempts? How many violations/acts of violence before they refuse to accredit them?

RCS is admitting that they currently do not have “interdepartmental meetings”? A college prep school doesn’t have a “curriculum map to assist with guiding instruction”?  RC doesn’t “monitor the effectiveness of the ed program”? “Staff/student retention”? LOL I thought they had a plan, bonuses for doing whatever is necessary to retain students, even lying to parents? There's more, but that’s enough. They should already be doing all this stuff. They’re admitting they aren’t, but then go on to praise their effectiveness.

“This sense of ownership results in the students holding one another accountable.”  
Indeed they apparently do, with Fisticuffs.

Not one mention of DJJ kids? Does RCS speak to their parents or deal with DJJ? Certainly they do know these kids issues, and records. Or is RCS claiming that DJJ (parent) withholds information from RCS?

The report was biased??? How the hell do they figure that? They interviewed RCSs attorney, and no one wanted to go on the record, that was their prerogative, but they were given the opportunity. Why didn’t they come on and tell how wonderful the program is?  Easier to lie in print.

Hell of a lot of money for peer control with fisticuffs and community service.
They continue to mislead the public. Scumbags, all of them.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massac ... e_charges/
Rotenberg founder set to face charges
Expected to quit over ’07 shock case

The founder of the controversial Judge Rotenberg Educational Center is scheduled to face criminal charges in Dedham today arising from a night in 2007 when two special needs teenagers at the center were wrongfully administered dozens of electrical shocks, according to the father of one of the victims and another person with knowledge about the case.

In a deal reached with the state attorney general’s office, Matthew Israel, 77, is expected to be spared prison time in return for stepping down from the Canton-based center that he founded 40 years ago and accepting a five-year probationary term, said Charles Dumas, the father of one of the two victims in the 2007 case who said he spoke yesterday with prosecutors. As part of the agreement, the school’s day-to-day activities will also be overseen by a court-approved monitor.

A court official who works at the Norfolk County Superior Court said that today’s schedule of cases lists a defendant named Matthew Israel facing two charges, misleading a grand jury and accessory after the fact to a crime.

The charges against Israel are believed to be related to the destruction of some of the center’s digital surveillance tapes that would have showed what occurred the night of Aug. 26, 2007, in one of the center’s residential group homes in Stoughton. That night, staffers received a prank phone call from someone posing as a supervisor, saying two teenagers, including Dumas’s son, should be administered electrical shocks as punishment for bad behavior earlier that day.

The attorney general’s office declined comment on the case yesterday, as did Ernest Corrigan, a longtime spokesman for Israel and the center. On May 2, Corrigan had issued a press release announcing Israel’s retirement, effective June 1. In the release, which made no mention of a pending criminal case, Israel is quoted as saying, “I am now almost 78 years old, and it is time for me to move over and let others take the reins.’’

The case marks a dramatic turn in the career of the Harvard-trained psychologist, though it does not appear to end the center’s unorthodox practices that have generated national controversy: the use of skin-shock treatments to discipline behaviorally troubled children.

His tactics have been condemned as barbaric and savage by many top medical and mental health professionals. But despite some injuries and even deaths at the facility, the center has continued to get state approval to operate as a special-needs school serving some 200 students with serious emotional and behavioral problems, including autism and intellectual disabilities.

Its most effective backers have been the parents of some of these troubled students who say Israel’s center accepted their child when no other school would. Israel has said his methods work and have virtually eliminated the use of psychotropic drugs at his center.

In the press release announcing Israel’s departure earlier this month, one of the center’s board members, Margaret Vaughan, a retired professor of psychology at Salem State University, described Israel as a “heroic figure’’ to thousands of families. She said he helped the families who saw the center as “their last thread of hope’’ for their children.

The center has launched a national search for a successor to Israel. The center is being run on an interim basis by assistant executive director Glenda Crookes.

The case against Israel allegedly centers on the tapes that captured the wrongful shocks delivered in 2007, said people familiar with the case.

The center has a policy of monitoring students’ behavior with help from remote surveillance cameras. Those monitoring the tapes had the option of ordering skin-shock treatments via telephone if they witnessed inappropriate actions, even hours after they occurred.

Based on the phone call, staffers woke up Dumas’s son and he was given 77 skin-shock treatments over three hours while being restrained on a flat surface. Another teenager was given about two dozen shocks.
The center acknowledged mistakes made by staff that night, and vowed to change many of its policies, particularly the issuance of shock treatment orders via telephone. Charles Dumas said his son remained at the Rotenberg center for another year, but was moved to a different group home and taken off the skin-shock treatments. He said his son, now 22, is now living on his own and working two jobs.

Dumas said he was told by the attorney general’s office to keep secret the news of Israel’s criminal charges, but he wanted to speak out when approached yesterday by the Globe about the case. “I don’t want to do anything to protect Matthew Israel,’’ he said.

Patricia Wen can be reached at [email protected].  
© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

Quote from: "Ursus"

What really strikes me most of all is the apparent systemic nature of this flippant trivialization of the ongoing chaos at Ridge Creek School. It would appear to be ingrained in the employee culture at this point, as part of RCS's "therapeutic milieu."

Well stated.  Nary as soul will 'fix' it either.

Fix? There's no Fixin a flawed system/design. You just blow it up and start over. Or in the case of programs, realize that it never was a good idea.

@ Ed Kahn... Brilliant!!!

With utter disdain for the rule of law, defendants Mark A. Ciavarella, Jr.
and Michael T. Conahan, in combination and conspiracy with other
defendants named herein, have collectively perpetrated, through their acts
and omissions, what ranks as one of the largest and most serious violations
of children’s rights in the history of the American legal system. Both in its
duration, spanning approximately five years between 2003 and 2008 – and
its magnitude, inflicting damage on the lives of thousands of children and
their families – the scope of defendants’ unlawful scheme is profoundly
shocking. In choosing to treat children as commodities that could be traded
for cash, the defendants have placed an indelible stain on the Luzerne
County juvenile justice system.
Class Action
http://www.jlc.org/files/luzernecounty/ ... awsuit.pdf

Posted: February 21
Updated: Today at 12:22 PM
Anguished mom talks to CNN - VIDEO
Sandy Fonzo speaks about confronting ex-judge after his corruption trial verdict.
By Jerry Lynott http://www.timesleader.com/news/Anguish ... -2011.html

ANOTHER THOUGHT - THE ORS, BJ BAKER and CO. will be happy as pigs in a sty if RCS turns Traditional Boarding School.  This lets the ORS off the hook for accountability in allowing this debacle to continue throughout the years.  Not that the ORS was ever accountable.

We all remember when the Investigators with the DHS worked tirelessly to put an end to this all ... but the upper echelon, in the words of the GAO, "dropped the ball."  Perhaps, it was too hot, so they threw it.

Yes, ORS would love to be off the hook on this one. If they convince ORS that they are no longer providing therapy and are released from oversight, then it's back to square one. Documenting evidence that they are providing therapy, forcing ORS to investigate and require licensure. Game of 4 square. Or would it be Dodge Ball?

If he has "students" boarding there then HPS WILL be subject to oversight by the ORS because children under the age of 18 will reside there. God he is a sneaky bastard!!!

No, they will not have oversight by ORS if they are classified as a traditional boarding school and do not board kids year round or provide therapy.
They may be planning to drop the "therapeutic" label and go underground with their behavior modification techniques.
This will be revealed as time passes. Surely NO parent of a child attending a traditional boarding school will allow contact with their child to be severed. Calls/mail should not be monitored. They will be more able to report what's happening.

RCS would not be monitored either if they become part of the new school and claim not to provide therapy. Again, "therapy" and length of boarding time are the determining factors. For instance, summer wilderness/camping programs that don't provide therapy are not regulated. In the early days of RCWP, that was ORSs assumption based on what HLA had told them. When pressured to investigate, they found out otherwise.

Freeofcc
I wonder if you can buy a corner piece as well. You seem to be so narrow minded, your only focus is on child abuse. “What indicates there was no Therapeutic Abuse? For all I know, a staff coulda lost his noodle and went gansta on one of the patients.”
That’s right, and that’s the point, you don’t know, that much is clear. It does not have to be a case of “child” abuse for the police to be called in. There are many other reason and situations that the police can be called in for. I told you in my last post this is not a case of child abuse. If your one goal is to shut down the school I would think that it would not matter to you the reason why, only that it is shut down.
But you are so narrow minded and singular in purpose that you cannot see the forest for the trees as the saying goes.
You keep saying that it must be child abuse, let me ask you, how do you know it is?

Guilty of Assumption/Speculation. When the Sun rises every morning in the East, one comes to assume it will continue to.  
It could very well be another case of negligent supervision. Lack of "watchful oversight".

Well, if you want to split hairs, what really transpired here was that you accused me of not reading your post and then, when asked, wouldn't point to where in that post you indicated that there was no Therapeutic abuse- couldn't, cause you didn't. Assumptions/ speculations would be fair game.

If you believe that there has never been any abuse perpetrated by staff, you would be the "narrow-minded, singular-in-purpose" one.
Another Day, Another Shill.