Fwd: Benefit pics, a three-part Dallas Morning News piece, GRASP's new Subscr...

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A large, post-holiday backlog email for you all that carries seasons greetings to you all from GRASP...

• Benefit pics. Some visuals before you get to the heavy reading. Thanks to all who participated and helped us honor , and the Schwallie Scholarship winners. Click here.

• GRASP welcomes Yvona Fast as it's new Subscriptions Manager. Yvona is the author of a book on employment issues and she is a frequent columnist to several publications as well as a contributor many online groups. Though her talents will no doubt be underutilized at GRASP, we are thrilled to have her. And we include an article she wrote on the recent NYU contraversy (below, as is so with the other articles included). A more in-depth bio of her follows her article below.

• A three-part Dallas Morning News piece by Jacquielynn Floyd

• A sad Boston Globe piece reporting on more inhumane treatment at the Judge Rothenberg Center (wanna know why they charge states so much money per resident? Because the cost of the lawyers they need to keep the school from being closed is enormous).

Yours, y'all,

Carley

Executive Director

GRASP

The Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership, Inc.

666 Broadway, Suite 830

New York, NY 10012

mjcarley@...

www.grasp.org

----------------

Parents see daughter's Asperger's as extraordinary gift

03:20 PM CST on Monday, December 24, 2007

Jacquielynn Floyd writes a column for The Dallas Morning News.

First of three parts

Jessie Kierbow was a toddler strapped in her car seat the day her father

realized she could read.

"Look, Dad!" she chortled, pointing at a street sign on Abrams Road from

which the "A" had peeled away. "Brams!"

When her parents took her to enroll in kindergarten, she casually picked

up a library book and started reading aloud with flawless pronunciation

and inflection, drawing an astonished circle of goggle-eyed teachers.

r (left) and Mike Kierbow knew early on that daughter Jessie

was special – as she read her first word from her car seat. Jessie has

Asperger's, a form of autism often characterized by social difficulty

and above-average intelligence.

Last year, as a fourth-grader, she bested middle school kids in a school

district spelling competition. Entranced by popular anime cartoons and

video games, she taught herself to read and write in Japanese. For fun.

"When I first started, I thought it was really difficult," she confided,

quickly writing a neat row of character symbols that represented my

name. (I had to take her word for it.) "Now it's pretty easy."

Jessie, now 11, is an extraordinary child. She's hyperlexic, meaning she

has had an exceptional reading ability from an early age. It's linked to

her Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism often characterized by social

difficulty, physical awkwardness, above-average intelligence and

laserlike intellectual fixations.

That clinical aggregate of medical definitions doesn't begin to portray

this engaging child who proves that, while love may not conquer all, it

can make all the difference in the world.

"I'm so proud of her," said her mother, r. "Nobody has a kid

like Jessie. I'm just so lucky."

"Lucky," perhaps, is an odd self-description from the parent of a child

who has, after all, a diagnosed disability. But love for their daughter

has led Jessie's parents to make what, in contemporary society, might be

considered remarkable accommodations.

, a smart, straightforward woman with a quick sense of humor, cleans

houses for a living. It's not her first career choice, but it affords

the flexibility to pick up Jessie at the end of the school day.

She lives in a small apartment not far from Mockingbird Station – houses

in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood are out of her price reach, but

she lives there so Jessie can attend highly rated Stonewall

Elementary School.

Her ex-husband, Mike Kierbow, a remodeler, splits custody down the

middle. She and Mike remain friends and frequently take Jessie out

together. Sometimes, they all go on vacation together.

"Our priority is Jessie. That hasn't changed," said Mike. "She has

always been surrounded by love, and there's no reason for that to be any

different."

If there were hard feelings in the wake of divorce – and when aren't

there? – they have put them aside with astonishing grace. Kids know when

Mom and Dad aren't getting along, even if it's covered with a veneer of

chilly rote politeness.

Eleven-year-old Jessie Kierbow, with language arts teacher Margaret

Sorrells, excels at reading and even taught herself Japanese last year.

But Jessie's isn't a broken family; it's just reconfigured. She has not

had, like many children of divorced parents, to lead a bifurcated existence.

More than anything, it seems to be her parents' willing accommodation

that has allowed Jessie to escape the anxiety and depression that many

Asperger's kids endure.

Instead, she's a smart, funny, affectionate kid who loves to laugh and

share her enthusiasms.

"Here, I'll write you a story," Jessie offered recently, when we all met

for Japanese food (her favorite treat) at Tampopo Cafe.

While the grown-ups talked, she borrowed my notebook and dashed off an

original composition about a princess named Sayaka and a wicked dragon

named Dai-Ryu, accompanied by Japanese translations.

Part of Jessie's charm is her elegant logic, a good-tempered directness

that seems equal parts adult wry humor and childlike innocence.

If something strikes her as funny, she's happy to share the joke, even

if it's a kind of inside-family gag that outsiders might not grasp: "My

dad says drinking beer makes you smarter!" she said merrily, as Mike

slapped his forehead in comic chagrin.

Jessie doesn't dissemble or obfuscate. She doesn't seem particularly

troubled by the realization that she's "different" from other kids. In

her world, she's just Jessie, which is fine with her.

In fact, the differences that preoccupy so many of us don't always occur

to Jessie. Mike recalls that she once came home from school puzzled by

an assignment to write about "a famous African-American."

"It didn't make sense to her that there were different races based on

skin color," he said. "She really didn't think about a whole group of

people as being different from another that way."

She's also oblivious to the petty cruelties that people so often use to

separate themselves from each other. It's one of her loveliest assets.

worries, though, about the cold reality that, while we sometimes

talk a good game about "diversity" and "celebrating differences," some

people's definitions are awfully narrow.

"I've always been scared about how other kids would treat her," she

said. "They can get so mean."

Jessie has flourished at the elementary school she has attended since

kindergarten. Next year, though, she starts middle school.

Academic adjustment won't be a problem, but social adjustment might,

said: "She can read Japanese, but she can't tie her shoe.

"She can draw and write. She loves good music. She'll pick anything up

and read it, including a dictionary. She doesn't care about fashion or

how her hair looks."

Jessie Kierbow is a bona-fide original. I understand, just a little, her

parents' dilemma: They don't want her to experience the inevitable pain

of not fitting in – but they prize her quirky singularity.

If love and family support will get Jessie through those tough

adolescent years, though, there's no need for worry.

"I don't think she'll need me to take care of her forever," said.

"But I'd like to."

© 2007, The Dallas Morning News, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

--------------------

At Stonewall Elementary, being different is embraced

03:19 PM CST on Monday, December 24, 2007

Second of three parts

Jacquielynn Floyd writes a column for The Dallas Morning News.

For the woebegone Dallas school district, bad news seems to hit the

headlines with clockwork predictability. Small wonder that a lot of

parents don't want their kids in a DISD school.

But Jessie Kierbow's parents wish she never had to leave. Stonewall

Elementary School is one of the district's profound successes, a

place where all that sometimes-hollow happy talk about tolerance and

achievement has real and palpable meaning.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

Life with Jessie: The joys and challenges of being different

• Dec. 23: For family, Jessie comes first

• Dec. 24: DISD school helped Jessie blossom

• Dec. 25: Living with Asperger's syndrome

It's common for children who, like Jessie, have Asperger's syndrome, to

loathe school: Their characteristic quirks and social deficiencies make

them ready-made targets for bullies. According to some studies, as many

as 90 percent of Asperger's kids have reported being tormented at

school, sometimes on a daily basis.

There's a social alchemy at Stonewall that somehow escapes that kind of

routine cruelty. Perhaps it's because, for years, the school has housed

deaf-education and other special-ed programs alongside the mainstream

student population. Maybe it's because the close-knit neighborhood just

east of Mockingbird Station attracts supportive, involved parents. A lot

of parents, in turn, credit the school's warm and gifted staff.

Jessie likes the school she has attended since kindergarten just fine,

although, she told me with brisk matter-of-factness while giving me a

tour of the building, "Once you're in the fifth grade, there's no

dillydallying!"

Academically, Jessie has nothing to worry about. She has exceptional

language ability – at 10, she taught herself Japanese, and she

frequently peruses the dictionary to pass the time.

But social adjustment for Asperger's kids is typically tough, said

Freida Apodaca, who was Jessie's fourth-grade special-education teacher.

"Intellectually, she understands that we're in school to learn, and the

teachers are here to help us," Ms. Apodaca said. "In an emotional sense,

she knows she reacts to things differently. She started out with a lot

of barriers, like not knowing how to make friends."

Ms. Apodaca likened Jessie's initial encounter with school to the

experience I might have of parachuting into a foreign country whose

language and customs I don't share: "You wouldn't know what's expected."

Teachers at Stonewall have tutored Jessie not just in academics but in

relating to the people around her. It's pleasant work, Ms. Apodaca said.

"Jessie's a great kid. She's fun. She's got a great sense of humor."

Jessie was all business the day I visited her language-arts class at

Stonewall last month. The kids were starting a new book, Island of the

Blue Dolphins, and she read part of the opening chapter aloud, her pitch

and intonation perfect.

It's one thing for the grown-ups to like you, of course, and quite

another for the kids to accept you on the playground. Jessie is an

extraordinarily gifted child, but one of her most shining triumphs came

last year when she advanced to the finals of the district spelling

championship – and the student body was abuzz with excitement.

"In some schools, it's a stigma if you're a special-ed student," said

principal Olivia . "Here, the children don't know the difference."

It's easy to love the school itself, a vintage art-deco building with a

cozy interior reminiscent of an earlier era. The gymnasium, the hardwood

polished to a matte sheen by generations of kid-sized tennis shoes,

served as a dance studio on the day I visited.

The fifth-graders were studying ballroom dancing for physical education

(why didn't they have this when I was a kid?), concentrating hard as

they step-hopped, step-step-hopped. Jessie towered over her partner –

fifth grade is an age of dramatic and sometimes comic physical

disparities – but they worked their way earnestly through the steps.

"Jessie just doesn't see anything negative," language-arts teacher

Margaret Sorrells told me later in the morning, while the kids were

working in groups on poster illustrations. "She brings out the best in

everybody. She's very innocent, and children respond to that."

But the school itself, she said, provides a safe harbor for kids who

might not quite fit in elsewhere.

"Maybe it's because all the parents have bought into it, or because this

is a real cross-section of Dallas," Ms. Sorrells said. "Everybody rises

to the best level. The rules are just expected and everybody knows it –

they don't have to be enforced."

She echoed a sentiment I heard from a lot of other Stonewall teachers

and parents: "This is something that's right about the DISD."

Inevitably, of course, word has gotten out. Jessie's parents made

significant sacrifices to get their daughter into Stonewall as a

kindergartner. Her mom lives in one of the neighborhood's few apartment

complexes, unable to afford a house in the rapidly gentrifying

neighborhood, but unwilling to settle for a more affordable area elsewhere.

Stonewall is closed to incoming transfers from other schools; there's

just no more room. Turnover is low, and Ms. herself, who has

been there for 17 years, has declined offers to go elsewhere.

The neighborhood's changing economics are a topic that Ms.

approaches carefully. When another apartment complex was torn down last

year to make way for expensive new houses, 30 low-income kids had to

transfer to other schools – a loss, in her estimation.

"Our children are exposed to many different kinds of kids at a very

young age, and they learn acceptance," she said.

"When the Jessies of the world come along, they understand."

This is Jessie's final year in the school she has attended for so long.

Next year, she starts middle school.

"She's such a sweet, sweet kid," Ms. Apodaca said. "She can socialize

now and feel confident with it. She keeps her heart and mind open to

what people are willing to offer her."

Jessie's family and school have provided her with a sturdy foundation

that many Asperger's children – that many children in general – don't get.

She knows that being different can be hard, but that it can be managed.

And she knows the people who really count wouldn't change a thing.

© 2007, The Dallas Morning News, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

----------------------

Asperger's brings out absurd, shields darker social habits

03:18 PM CST on Monday, December 24, 2007

Third of three parts

Jacquielynn Floyd writes a column for The Dallas Morning News.

Jessie Kierbow was a strikingly low-maintenance baby. She was so good,

in fact, that her parents were occasionally uneasy.

"She never cried," said Jessie's mom, r. "We couldn't tell when

she was sick, because she didn't cry. And she was fascinated with the

ceiling fan – she could stare at it for hours."

When it came time for preschool, experts for the school district where

the family then lived examined Jessie and decided she was mentally retarded.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

Life with Jessie: The joys and challenges of being different

• Dec. 23: For family, Jessie comes first

• Dec. 24: DISD school helped Jessie blossom

• Dec. 25: Living with Asperger's syndrome

Video: Jessie and her parents enjoy Japanese food

That couldn't be right: Jessie wasn't like other kids, but she was

already scary-smart. Barely out of diapers, she could already read.

She hated sudden loud noises – "She clapped her hands over her ears,"

said – and she seemed to prefer her own company to being around

other children.

Finally, they found out what made Jessie so different: She had

Asperger's syndrome, a neurobiological disorder that most researchers

consider a form of autism.

Asperger's is classified in the medical journals as a disability, but

Jessie has the structures she needs to cope. She has wise, attentive

parents and an unusually supportive school environment.

As with other forms of autism, Asperger's diagnoses have been on the

increase in recent years.

In part, it's because it has been highlighted in the media.

Kuzmich, for instance, a former contestant on TV's popular reality show

America's Next Top Model, has been outspoken about her Asperger's.

And then there's the simple fact that more doctors and diagnostic

specialists recognize it when they see it.

Although the syndrome was identified in the mid-1940s by Viennese

pediatrician Hans Asperger, too many kids, until recently, were written

off with cruel dismission as odd, incorrigible or mentally deficient.

Early diagnosis is critical, so children can start learning specific

strategies for dealing with the people around them. Too often, people

with Asperger's suffer from depression and frustration as a consequence

of the social isolation they feel.

In his highly readable memoir about living with Asperger's, author

Elder Robison describes the anger his behavior used to inspire in the

people around him. Its title is Look Me in the Eye: My Life with

Asperger's, a refrain that echoes back to his earliest memories. A key

trait of Asperger's is difficulty looking other people directly in the eyes.

Mr. Robison, who worked creating technical effects for the rock band

Kiss and today is a businessman in Massachusetts, recounts a painful

childhood of feeling like a misfit. His condition was finally diagnosed

at age 40.

"Asperger's is not a disease," he writes. "It's a way of being. There is

no cure, nor is there a need for one."

People with Asperger's stand out as "odd" because they're different.

Their behavior seems unusual to most people because their brains work

differently. The easy social cues that most of us take for granted – the

chitchat, the appearance of interest or concern – don't make instinctive

sense to a person with Asperger's.

"Those just aren't automatic responses for these kids," said Dr.

McLane, a Dallas pediatric psychologist whose practice includes many

children with Asperger's. "The good news is that these are concrete

behaviors someone can learn."

It has become routine for Jessie's parents to issue her gentle reminders

to hit those social marks: answering general questions with an equally

polite generality, for instance.

Eleven-year-old Jessie Kierbow (second from right) gives a short report

to the other members of her class after a class exercise at Stonewall

Elementary School.

There's a disarmingly candid logic to the Aspergerian thought process.

Should you say, carelessly, "We should have lunch some time," most

people will answer, "Yes, we should." A person with Asperger's is more

likely to say, "OK, when?" or, "No, I don't think I want to."

The other key aspect of Asperger's is an intense, laserlike focus on a

narrow range of interests. Most of us are generalists in the things we

think about; people with Asperger's tend to be super-specialists.

With Jessie, it's all things Japanese: language, art, books, food,

Pokemon cards, games and videos. Her dearest dream is to visit Tokyo.

"Tell me who you like better," she wrote me in a recent e-mail. "Sig,

Rulue, Lemres or Schezo?"

She attached an anime video for me to watch. I had to remind her that,

not being able to read Japanese, I couldn't tell one from another (I

have since learned to recognize a little cartoon guy whose name means

"Acorn Frog." Jessie's favorite is a character whose name translates

rather oddly as "Strange Klug").

"It can be a variety of things," Dr. McLane said. "Trains, vacuum

cleaners, geography, storm drains – those narrow interests will

preoccupy a lot of their time."

Jessie's parents work to balance her familiar enthusiasm with new ones.

She loves music, for instance, and is crazy about game shows. A common

trait among Asperger's kids: They have a predictable format and often

deal with language. She can rattle off the names of popular game-show

hosts going back 30 years.

Her dad, Mike Kierbow, shares Jessie's keen sense of absurd comedy.

Together, they slyly invented a hilarious game show called "Hillbilly

Spelling Bee." Their comedy routine made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt.

Meeting Jessie, talking to her and swapping e-mails over a series of

months made me think hard about the polite social veneer we all adopt to

make the world think well of us. What would we be like without the

protective armor of conventional social behavior?

Whether she would be a dramatically different person without Asperger's,

I can't say. But 11-year-old Jessie Kierbow is one of the most genuine

people I have ever met. She's funny, sweet, affectionate and

astonishingly bright.

And it's absolutely real, because Jessie simply does not have the

ability to fake it. If she says she's happy to see you, you can take it

to the bank.

If people with Asperger's, as a group, lack the natural social skills

most of us use every day, they also tend to lack some of our darker

social habits too: artifice, manipulation, spite. Not, on balance, a bad

trade-off.

"It's a misperception that there's no positive outlook for these kids,"

Dr. McLane said. "It's not true that they're not going to be able to go

to college or get married or hold a job. They can do it if they're

taught the right skills."

I hope Jessie learns everything she needs to navigate through life.

She has taught me a thing or two already.

© 2007, The Dallas Morning News, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

------------------------------

December 24, 2007 at 10:23:20

Who Kidnapped My Child?

by Yvona Fast - Op-Ed News

You may have seen the ads posted in kiosks and on billboards. They read

"We have your son. We are destroying his ability for social interaction

and driving him into a life of complete isolation. It’s up to you

now…Asperger's syndrome" or "We have your daughter. We are forcing her

to throw up after every meal she eats. It’s only going to get

worse…Bulimia." These disorders are portrayed as criminals, insinuating

an evil villain has kidnapped the child.

According to the ads sponsor, the NYU Child Study Center, 12 million

kids are "held hostage by a psychiatric disorder". These "ransom notes"

were "designed as a provocative wake up to create awareness and spark

dialogue about childhood psychiatric disorders, one of America’s last

remaining silent public health epidemics."

Provocative they were - and they sparked lots of dialogue. The ads were

not up very long before the chorus of disapproval, led by sixteen

different autism organizations, began. Leaders of GRASP, MAAP, AHA and

other groups sent a joint letter of protest to Dr. Koplewicz of the NYU

Child Study Center - and spread word of the ad campaign to their

members. Parents, adults on the autism spectrum, and advocacy groups

kept up the barrage of e-mails, phone calls, and letters requesting NYU

to stop the overly negative ads that portrayed children with the six

disorders (autism, Aspergers, ADHD, depression, bulimia, and

obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as captives of an evil Mafia.

The ads had shock value and brought these issues to center stage - but

they were misleading. People with these impairments are not prisoners of

an outside force, as the ads implied. Aspies don't live in complete

isolation, and Autistics can interact socially and care for themselves -

some quite well.

These scary threats with an attached label brought attention to the

disorders - but they failed to explain what the disorders are, didn't

offer diagnostic criteria, and didn't suggest a course of action. Will

such doom and gloom make any parent acknowledge the possibility of a

disorder in their beloved child?

I was born with a neurological impairment - not kidnapped by an evil

Mafia. While I was growing up, there was no name for my disability - so

I was called obnoxious, rude, crazy, irresponsible, and lazy. I was

ostracized, bullied, tormented.

Most people don't understand the serious nature of disabilities. They

lack personal experience with disability, and don't know what these

conditions are. They can't comprehend how these disorders can apply to

someone like me - someone who is intelligent and educated.

My lifelong neurological condition makes me a little odd, so I don't fit

into this society. While I'm kind, caring, thoughtful, loyal, and

dependable, my ability at social interaction is impaired. I look at

things and don't see them. I look at faces and can't read them. I meet

people and can't remember them. I try to be polite and am rude. I can't

partake in a group conversation without either being rude and

interrupting, or being quiet, reserved and shy.

My disability is an obstacle - but it is not insurmountable. By learning

about it, I have learned to live with it. Yet I often end up on the

outside looking in when people don't take the time to get to know me.

Their lack of enlightenment leads to intolerance, rejection, or at the

very least, indifference to the reality that disabled folks like me deal

with daily. That's why many of us are unemployed or under-employed and

have trouble making or keeping friends.

Naming the condition allows it to be defined and leads to appropriate

treatment, enabling disabled individuals (and their parents, spouses,

friends) learn to use their strengths to work around their problems,

manage their lives and live in their communities. Although skills in

areas of deficit may never reach a "normal" level, they can improve.

Speech pragmatics can be taught. Occupational therapy can help with

motor issues.

Instead of using scare tactics that portray these disabilities as evil,

we need to help the world to see past our disabilities to our strengths,

accept us, and accommodate our deficits. Neurotypicals live in a world

that accommodates them. For example, many neurotypicals don't

communicate well in writing - but I do. Instead, I have trouble

communicating in real-time speech riddled with body language I can't

interpret - something most people do naturally.

Disabilities have stigma. Not talking about them enhances that stigma.

If we want people to take these disorders seriously, we'd better make

sure they know the disorders are serious. However, we have enough

problems without the negative attention these ads depict.

The protest succeeded. Thousands of letters and phone calls from

parents, mental health professionals, educators, advocates, and others

did the trick. After just two weeks, NYU agreed to pull the ads.

“Obviously we hit a nerve that we didn’t want to hit," said Dr.

Koplewicz. "We would like to move forward and harness the energy that

this campaign has generated to work together so that we do not lose one

more day in the lives of these children. We hope you will partner with

us to bring the issues surrounding child and adolescent mental health to

the top of America's agenda. Work with us as we fight to give children

and their families equal access to health insurance, remove the stigma

that the term "psychiatric disorder" so clearly still elicits, and, most

importantly, support the drive to make research and science-based

treatment a national priority."

While we want to draw attention to the disorders and educate society

about these disabilities, we shouldn't portray the disabled as people

possessed by an evil Mafia, or as tragic cases who need our pity. We

should show disabled people in a positive light. This will help society

to accommodate our differences, to accept us and see that, when

accommodated, we can be valuable, contributing citizens in our communities.

www.wordsaremyworld.com

Yvona Fast is an author, freelance writer, food columnist, editor,

researcher and speaker. Her first book is a career guide for individuals

with Asperger Syndrome or Non-Verbal Learning disability. She is

currently working on her second book, My Nine Lives, a memoir she's

writing with her mother, a Holocaust survivor. An excerpt, Escape from

the Ghetto, won honorable mention in the North Country Public Radio

writing contest. Her weekly column, North Country Kitchen, offers a

medley of nutritional information, historical facts, and easy, seasonal

recipes that help the reader prepare wholesome family meals and achieve

a healthy lifestyle.

------------

Staff faulted in use of shock

Report says orders went unquestioned; No checks of teens' treatment plans

A state report has identified numerous failures by staff at a group home run by the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center. (WENDY MAEDA/GLOBE STAFF)

By Wen

Globe Staff / December 20, 2007

STOUGHTON - A state report identifies multiple failures by staff members of a group home that allowed two emotionally disturbed teenagers to be given dozens of electrical shocks at the direction of a caller posing as a supervisor.

The report says none of the six staff members in a Stoughton residence run by the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center on the night of Aug. 26 acted to stop the harrowing events for three hours, despite ample reasons to doubt the validity of the caller's instructions to wake the boys in the middle of the night and administer painful shock treatments, at times while their arms and legs were bound.

The caller said he was ordering the punishments because the teenagers had misbehaved earlier in the evening, but none of the home's staff had witnessed the behavior that the caller cited. As the two boys' screams could be heard throughout the house, near-mutiny erupted among the other boys, who insisted that the accused teenagers had violated no rules. One boy even suggested the call was a hoax, according to the report by the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, which licenses group homes.

The staffers, inexperienced and overworked, were described as concerned and reluctant, yet nobody verified the orders with central office, nor did anybody check treatment plans for the two teenagers to be sure they were permitted to receive that degree of shock therapy.

The Rotenberg Center has long been controversial for punishing students with two-second shocks, delivered through electrodes attached to their skin, and it is now permitted only on residents with court-approved "aversive therapy" plans.

In addition, the report said staff at the Stoughton house did not know who the shift supervisor was that night; the senior staffer did nothing to intervene.

By the time a call was finally placed to the central office and staff members realized their mistake, one teenager had received 77 shocks, well in excess of what his treatment plan allowed, and the other received 29. One boy was taken to the hospital for treatment of two first-degree burns.

One reason the staff may not have been more suspicious of the call was that it was not unusual to receive orders over the phone to administer electric shocks or other discipline. To provide round-the-clock monitoring of its residents, as well as monitor the staff's compliance with procedures, the Rotenberg Center, based in Canton, uses an extensive set of surveillance cameras in its group homes. A central office employee watches a bank of television screens, and is authorized to initiate discipline by phone.

The six staff members have been suspended, as was the video surveillance worker on duty that night, according to the report.

As a result of the investigation, Rotenberg officials have expanded training for staff, instituted new telephone verification procedures, added oversight at group homes, and eliminated delayed punishment, the use of shocks long after an alleged offense.

The report identifies the caller as a former resident of the center with intimate knowledge of the staff, residents, and physical layout of the Stoughton group home. The caller's motivation and identity have not been disclosed. Police are looking into filing criminal charges.

The incident has put the Rotenberg Center, which draws its 250 students from across the country, on the defensive again about its unorthodox use of electric-shock treatments. The residents, both children and adults, are autistic, mentally retarded, or have serious emotional problems. Rotenberg officials, who have weathered two attempts by Massachusetts officials to close the center, have defended the school's shock-treatment plans as effective for some students and vow that the events of last August will not be repeated because of the newly implemented safeguards.

"This has never happened before," said Ernest Corrigan, a spokesman for the center. "It was a perfect storm of things that went wrong that night."

The state report, based on extensive interviews with center staff and residents, gives a detailed account of what happened on that sweltering August night.

Six staff members worked the overnight shift at the group home at 66 Clancy Way, a tan house located in a quiet cul-de-sac in Stoughton. Five of the six had already worked a double or triple shift, while the sixth worker showed up at 10 p.m. None had much experience caring for emotionally disturbed boys at the group home. Most had been on the job less than three months.

Still, as bedtime approached, the staff felt the night had gone well. No significant behavioral problems had erupted within the house, which has a capacity for 12 males.

At about 2 a.m., the telephone rang. The staff member who had arrived at 10 answered the kitchen phone, the only one working in the house. The battery of a cordless phone, the only one with caller ID, had run out.

The caller told the staff member to wake up three residents and administer shocks for their behavior earlier in the evening. The staff member "began to comply with every direction given," the report said, and other staff members also followed the directions.

Even though the staff did not witness any of the alleged offenses, they assumed that the caller had seen the infractions on the television surveillance screens in the Canton main office and that he had the authority to order the punishments.

The staff was "apprehensive" and confused about the caller and discussed what to do, but they went ahead with the punishments because they were told by the caller that they would be "evaluated" if they did not obey, the report said. The caller, who made a series of calls between 2 and 4:45 a.m., had detailed knowledge of the inside of the house and led the staff to believe that he was watching them on surveillance screens at the central office.

Two residents, ages 16 and 19, were initially given shocks while still asleep, and later while in restraints in the recreation room. The teenagers repeatedly asked what they had done wrong and were told they were being given shocks because of "behaviors they had exhibited during the 9:00 p.m. hour," the report said.

While the residents were being administered shocks, they requested that nurses be called, the report related. One of the two residents receiving the shocks yelled that the shocks to his leg were "killing him." The other complained that the shocks caused him such pain that "he felt as though he was about to have a stroke."

That student was given water to drink by the staff, but no medical personnel were called in immediately, which the state report says was inappropriate.

Meanwhile, other residents woke up as chaos erupted in the house. One yelled that the call might be "a prank" and that staff should try to verify the call with authorities, the report said.

Around 5 a.m., the staff appeared ready to mete out the shock-therapy punishment on the third resident, but for a reason that's unclear, someone called the central office. Only then did they realize they had been tricked.

Rotenberg officials say that, within hours of learning about the episode, they contacted law enforcement authorities. Group home officials are required by law to immediately report any cases of suspected abuse.

Later that day, several anonymous calls came into the telephone hotline of the Disabled Persons Protections Commission, also saying that wrongful shocks had been given to residents.

Ironically, the same video equipment used to monitor misdeeds of the residents was invaluable to investigators to determine the culpability of the Stoughton staff and of the center's leadership.

Wen can be reached at wen@....

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

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