BELOW is a forwarded email from Disability Rights International, that
Rotenberg Center has been ordered to stop shocking 'new admissions,'
which is a ....... step in right direction to closing this torture facility.
http://http://www.disabilityrightsintl.org/JRC Banned from Shocking New Admissions
Dear Supporters,
This week we can celebrate a major victory against torture of people
with disabilities in the United States.
The Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services (DDS) adopted
new regulations last week that greatly restrict the intentional use of
pain as a form of treatment - including the use of electric shock,
seclusion, and restraints on young children and adults with
disabilities. As documented by a recent report by Disability Rights
International (DRI), Torture Not Treatment, The Judge Rotenberg Center
(JRC), based in Canton, Massachusetts, has used these practices,
called "aversive treatment" for decades.
Facilities licensed by the DDS in Massachusetts can no longer subject
new admissions to severe behavioral interventions including electric
shock, long-term restraint, or aversives that pose risk for
psychological harm -- in other words, mainstays of JRC's "treatment"
program.
No other institution in the country - or the world, as far as we can
tell - uses such barbaric practices. DRI's investigation found that
the pain caused by this is so severe and outside accepted professional
norms, that these practices constitute nothing less than torture. By
permitting such treatment, the United States violates its obligations
under international law, as defined by the UN Convention Against
Torture. DRI filed our report, Torture Not Treatment, in 2010 as an
urgent appeal to the United Nations. The top official on torture at
the United Nations agreed with DRI, and when asked by ABC Nightline if
the practices were torture, he declared, "Yes...I have no doubts about
it. It is inflicted in a situation where a victim is powerless...a
child in the restraint chair, being then subjected to electric shocks,
how more powerless can you be?"
We applaud Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick on taking a courageous
stand by issuing an executive order for the Massachusetts DDS to
review their policies regarding electric shock and other severe
aversives.
The resulting new policy puts an end to the use of JRC's electric
shocks on new admissions. But we can't declare success yet. While
hundreds of children will be spared from JRC's behavioral experiments
in the future, the new policies do not stop JRC from shocking and
causing psychological damage to children already placed in the center.
These children and young adults remain prisoners in a very dangerous
environment. The center has been repeatedly investigated for
suspicious deaths and physical abuse. JRC has been fined for
identifying some clinicians hired by the school as psychologists, when
in fact, they were not licensed psychologists. And as a result of an
investigation into a case of abuse at the facility, JRC's director was
forced to resign earlier this year after being charged with misleading
a grand jury about the investigation.
DRI is encouraged by the bold statement by the US National Council on
Disabilities, a federal advisory body, which cited DRI's report, as
well as the international definition of torture, to call for the use
of painful shock aversives to be brought to an end.
DRI urges the Department of Justice and the Obama Administration to
fulfill its obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture. DRI
calls for a blanket ban on the use of electric shock as aversive
treatment for children or adults with disabilities across the nation.
There is nothing stopping JRC from shocking kids already in their
center -- or moving their facility to a different state to avoid the
new Massachusetts regulations. The Department of Justice has an open
investigation into the treatment of children at JRC. We ask you to
write a personal appeal to the investigators to help ensure that this
torture is put to an end once and for all, and is never allowed to be
duplicated anywhere else in the United States.
We are one large step closer.
Thank you for your continued support,
Laurie Ahern,
President
Eric Rosenthal,
Executive Director
Disability Rights International | 1156 15th Street, NW | Suite 1001 |
Washington | DC | 20005
More info:
http://http://www.disabilityrightsintl.org