Updated — Concerns over the use of shock therapy on special needs students in a Massachusetts school have prompted the UN’s special rapporteur on torture to take action by investigating the school.
The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), a special needs school near Boston, came under fire in April after a video emerged showing school staff strapping an 18-year-old autistic student to a table and exposing him to multiple rounds of electroshock therapy in 2002.
The school states that the student was acting “aggressively”. However, security cameras show that the treatment occurred after the student refused to take off his jacket in class.
Juan Mendez, the UN special rapporteur, said he was subjected to torture by electric shocks in 1975 by the Buenos Aires police and was “very concerned” about electric shock practices on autistic students in schools.
“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.
JRC is alleged to be the only school in the world to subject disabled and disturbed students to electric shocks in a system known as “aversive therapy”.
According to the Guardian, one of very few media organizations to witness the school in operation, nearly half of the student population carries a shock generator in a backpack or around their waist. Students are made to wear the devices 24 hours a day, which are activated by remote-control zappers by care attendants, sending electric shocks to students’ arms and legs.
This is the second time the UN has scrutinized the school. Manfred Nowak, Mendez’s predecessor, also called for a U.S. investigation of the school in 2010.
(MintPress) – Video of a disabled student being subjected to electroshock therapy at his Massachusetts school that surfaced for public viewership on Wednesday has been met with widespread criticism. The incident not only brings the use of electroshock therapy into question, but corporal punishment in schools across America, where 19 states still allow the form of physical discipline in its schools.
The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), a special needs school in Canton, Massachusetts, is in court in an attempt to justify its use of electroshock therapy against then 18-year-old disabled student Andre McCollins in 2002. The student allegedly suffered 31 shocks in a seven-hour span, which resulted in his hospitalization. The school said McCollins was acting “aggressively,” but video footage captured by a security camera shows the treatment was brought on after the student refused to take off his jacket in class.
McCollins was strapped to a table where he was subjected to the electroshock therapy by school staff. During a trial session, his mother, Cheryl McCollins, told a jury that she never gave a preauthorized consent for the treatment and that she had “no idea that they tortured children in the school.”
According to Raw Story, JRC officials said the shocks were used as a routine therapy that hopes to pacify mentally and emotionally troubled students and that the treatment has seen widespread use on other students in the school. They argued that McCollins’ “aggressive” behavior justified the electroshock therapy.
Electroshock treatments
Also called electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), the treatment, according to the ECT Handbook developed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists Special Committee on ECT in the United Kingdom- the therapy was developed for major depressive disorders, mania, acute schizophrenia and catatonia. In 1938, the year it was introduced, it was discovered that the shocks provided an anesthetizing effect on patients with mental troubles.
It is difficult to tabulate the frequency ECT is used and for what reasons. Few states have laws in place that require treatment facilities from disclosing the information to the state. The latest reports from Texas showed that in the mid-1990s, about one-third of the psychiatric facilities in the state used ECT, saying it was given to 1,650 on average annually.
One aspect of the McCollins case that the World Health Organization (WHO) could take issue with is that Cheryl McCollins said she never gave informed consent for the treatment. In its “Resource Book on Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation,” the WHO wrote that ECT should be practiced only with proper anesthesia and informed consent.
“Although significant controversy surrounds electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and some people believe it should be abolished, it has been and continues to be used in many countries for certain mental disorders,” the organization wrote. “If ECT is used, it should only be administered after obtaining informed consent. And it should only be administered in modified form, i.e. with the use of anesthesia and muscle relaxants. The practice of using unmodified ECT should be stopped.”
It is unclear from the ongoing trial whether the school offered any supplemental anesthesia or muscle relaxants to Andre.
Corporal punishment in American schools
The McCollins case also brings the use of corporal punishment in schools to light, as 19 states in the US still have laws protecting teachers from punishment if they physically discipline a student. Many of those states are in the southern portion of the country. Private schools in many states are exempt from the laws and are allowed to choose whether or not to use the form of discipline, but New Jersey and Iowa have outlawed the act in private institutions as well.
Under human rights law, corporal punishment is “any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort.” US law does not formally define what constitutes as corporal punishment and what does not.
In the United States, corporal punishment is usually administered with a paddle across the buttocks. The Center for Effective Discipline published research in 2008 that showed 223,190 students in America were subjected to corporal punishment during the 2005-2006 school year. The leading states by percentage of students struck were Mississippi (7.5), Alabama (4.7) and Arkansas (4.5). The use of corporal punishment is falling drastically, however. In 1976, over 1.5 million students were stuck as a form of discipline in their school. By 1990 that total was down to 613,760.
Massachusetts, the state in which McCollins attended school, banned the use of corporal punishment in 1971.
Some school districts across America allow for parents to “opt-in” or “opt-out” of schools administering physical discipline to their child. At Alexander City Schools in Alabama, students can decide whether or not to accept corporal punishment or an alternative form of discipline. “No student is required to submit to corporal punishment,” according to the district’s handbook.
2009 research by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) concluded that students with disabilities face corporal punishment at disproportionately higher rates, and include “paddling to smacking to throwing children into walls,” the group says. According to the research, students with disabilities make up 14 percent of the student population nationwide, but they account for 19 percent of corporal punishment incidents in schools during the 2006-2007 school year.
“Corporal punishment causes pain, humiliation, and in some cases deep bruising or other serious injury; it also can have long-lasting psychological consequences,” the ACLU wrote. “Students with disabilities may see their underlying conditions worsened as a result. Furthermore, it creates a violent, degrading school environment in which all students.”
The ACLU echoes the sentiments of many when it says that corporal punishment is archaic and dated. But some education practitioners defend it, especially with growing class sizes that can be difficult to maintain. The ACLU interviewed one teacher that said physical discipline is “cost- effective.”
“Educators, who face the difficult task of maintaining order in the classroom, may resort to corporal punishment because it is quick to administer, or because the school lacks resources and training for alternative methods of discipline,” the ACLU wrote. “One teacher pointed out that corporal punishment can be considered ‘cost-effective. It’s free, basically. You don’t have to be organized. All you need is a paddle.’”
In 2010, New York Democrat Carolyn McCarthy proposed legislation that would end the use of corporal punishment in schools. The bill passed through the House Committee on Education and the Workforce before being introduced the Congress. While the bill was visited, it did not go to vote or enacted.
Corporal punishment is handled differently in other parts of the world, although it is banned in many developed nations across the globe. Physical discipline of students is against the law in Russia, Spain, Ukraine, Poland, Philippines, Norway, Italy, Netherlands, Greece and the United Kingdom.
The Ukrainian Constitution and Law of Education bans corporal punishment, saying students and learners have the right “to the protection from any form of exploitation, physical and psychological violence, actions of pedagogical and other employees who violate the rights or humiliate their honour and dignity”
This story was updated by Muna Hassan.