UN calls for investigation

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/02/un-investigation-shock-treatments-autism

UN calls for investigation of US school's shock treatments of autistic children

Massachusetts special-needs facility is believed to be the only one in the world that uses 'aversive therapy' in treating children.

(JRC MIGHT be the only facility that uses electric shock "therapy",

but they aren't the only one to use "aversive therapy".

Many facilities use aversive "therapy" techniques such as restraint, seclusion, skin pinches, rubber band snaps, squirts of water and/or ammonia and other methods.)

The shocks are generated by a device known as a GED which children are made to carry 24 hours a day in backpacks or around their waist. Photograph: Rick Friedman

The UN's special rapporteur on torture has made a formal approach to the US government over a special-needs school near Boston that inflicts electric shocks on autistic children as a form of behavioural control.

Mendez has told the Guardian that he has opened discussions with the US mission to the UN in Geneva as a first step towards investigating the school.

The rapporteur plans to contact the US state department and has the option of reporting the matter to the UN human rights council.

Mendez said he was "very concerned" about the use of electric shocks, which are inflicted on autistic children through pads applied to their skin.

"The use of electricity on anyone's body raises the question of whether this is therapeutic or whether it inflicts pain and suffering tantamount to torture in violation of international law," he added.

The Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts, is believed to be the only institution in the world in which disabled and disturbed children are subjected to electric shocks to in a system known called "aversive therapy".

The shocks are generated by a device known as a GED which children are made to carry 24 hours a day in backpacks or around their waist.

About half of the school's students carry the generators that are triggered by care assistants using remote-controlled zappers, which then send a electric charge to skin pads on the children's arms and legs.

The Guardian is one of very few media organisations that have witnessed the school in operation.

In recent weeks opposition to the controversial electro-shock treatment has reached fever pitch. A rally demanding the end of the practice was due to be held outside the Massachusetts state house at noon Saturday followed by a march at the JRC itself at 3.30pm.

The spotlight that the UN rapporteur is putting on the school is given added poignancy by the fact that Mendez was himself subjected to torture by electric shock at the hands of the Buenos Aires police in 1975.

He was abused with electric prods.

"I feel very strongly that electricity applied to a person's body creates a very extreme form of pain. There a lot of lingering consequences including mental illness that can be devastating," Mendez said.

This is the second time the UN has intervened over the school. Mendez's predecessor as torture rapporteur, Manfred Nowak, also called for a federal US investigation.

Outrage over the school was taken to a new level in April when for the first time the public was able to see video footage of a child being subjected to the shocks.

The video, played in a Boston courtroom, showed then 18-year-old Andre Mc being given 31 shocks over a seven-hour period in 2002.

In the video Andre can be heard screaming and shouting "Help me. Help me." He is restrained with belts, face down on a board as the electricity is discharged into his body.

Andre's mother, Cheryl Mc, who was suing the school for mistreating her son, told the court that when she visited him soon after he was given the zaps "I couldn't turn Andre's head to the left or to the right. He was just staring straight. He didn't blink."

The Mc family reached a settlement with the JRC, which claimed it was merely following a judge-approved treatment plan for Andre.

But in the wake of the video, calls for the electric shocks to be banned have grown.

"We are closer now to closing down the JRC than we have ever been," said Ari Ne'eman, president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network that is run by and for autistic adults. "This issue is deeply personal – this could be happening to us."

Laurie Ahern of the campaign Disability Rights International that has opposed the treatment for many years said aversive therapy amounted to "a horrific form of torture".

"What happened to Andre in that video is worse than anything I have ever seen done to a prisoner of war or a political victim around the world," she said.

$16m on lawyers' fees

As public anger builds, there are mounting political moves to restrict the school's activities. A bill that would ban aversive therapy has already passed the Massachusetts state senate and is now being considered by the house.

A leading proponent of the bill, Massachusetts senator Joyce, said in a live chat on the Canton Patch website that "for too many years, we have failed our moral obligation to defend these defenseless children".

He said that the school had managed for decades to continue its controversial practice through a combination of secrecy and legal threats, spending $16m on lawyers' fees between 2000 and 2010.

Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants.

Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you.

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Ben lin