Opinion: Time to end torture at JRC

By Guest

Dear Editor:

On Sunday, July 22, we had four knowledgeable speakers on the subject of emotional disabilities and the history of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC) speak to us at the First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church. Our mission is to get the use of the electronic shocking devices outlawed. These GEDs, which can be activated remotely, are used on children at the JRC as punishment, not treatment.

John Randal, CEO of the Amega Group, which runs group homes for the emotionally and mentally challenged, told us about the methods they use without having to torture their clients with remote electronic devices that can burn the skin. He spoke of specific instances where Amega has taken on some of these children who have been so abused at the JRC, and without shocking, but massaging, they have helped cure them of their destructive behaviors.

Mary Ann Kinnealey of Canton, long a worker for humane treatment of those among us who can’t defend themselves, gave us the history of the JRC, which was founded by Matthew Israel. He also owned several other similar schools, at which six deaths occurred. She told us that the JRC commands some of the highest fees per client for any school for the emotionally disabled. This is indeed big business, although the JRC is a nonprofit.

Israel has escaped jail for destroying the tapes of the shocks being given to two boys after ignoring a court order not to destroy them. However, what happens in the future remains to be seen.

Kinnealey told us that the parents of these emotionally disabled children are threatened with the immediate discharge into the streets of their children should they testify negatively at these State House hearings (five so far) to the truth of what is happening.

Also speaking was Joan Nordgren, a former teacher and past co-president of the Canton branch of the AAUW. Nordgren has volunteered as a hospital patient representative, and last year she took leave after seven years as a Massachusetts state ombudsman in nursing homes.

After reading disturbing reports about a Behavioral Research Institute in Rhode Island — the predecessor to the JRC — Nordgren started doing research on the subject, and her findings motivated her to become an activist against these painful “aversives.”

Nordgren ended by asking, “Why in a town that is so caring (e.g. FISH program, food pantry, senior center, great support for our students, strong church participation, etc.) do we tolerate, without outcry, the only establishment in the U.S. that has disabled people walking around with electric backpacks which cause suffering in addition to the pain that these individuals bear already. We know that there are other programs that will accept and help these individuals. Let’s spread the word!”

Following Nordgren was Poly Cobb, the voting commissioner in Cambridge and an expert on the subject of aversives and the history of the JRC. Cobb related the many hearings and the wonderful work of Senator Brian Joyce in getting the Senate bill passed to stop the abuse of electronic shocks. She rightly called these shocks “punishment,” cruel and inhuman.

To the weak defense that this is the place of “last resort,” it was pointed out that there are at least seven alternative schools in this area that can work with these children.

After we heard Elisabeth Cole Sheehan feelingly and hauntingly sing “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child,” we went to the chapel, where our helpful AV engineers had set up a feed so that we could hear and see Joyce’s May presentation to the Senate on the situation at the JRC. Unfortunately, the bill was not passed by the House.

To think that such a horrible place could exist in Canton, protested by two busloads of human rights activists in June, puts a bad taste in the mouth of any decent Canton citizen. We will be meeting again to plan some actions, hopefully involving the Massachusetts House of Representatives. And the human rights activists will return to march again past the blank awnings of the JRC. Our Canton Police were wonderful in their shepherding of us past that dreadful place, as they have seen the burns and heard the screams of the injured children. No matter what these children have done, they do not deserve the torture they suffer there. How long will such torture be legal in Massachusetts? And how can we endure its presence in Canton?

Please contact Representative Bill Galvin and request that he co-sponsor yet another bill to outlaw the shocking treatment at the JRC. How many times do I have to turn on the TV and watch Canton being pilloried as a town that houses this place of torture?

You, dear citizens of Canton, are invited to visit the blog at jrc-information.blogspot.com for further information. The Canton Citizen itself has written articles on this place for your perusal, available in their archives (bottom right of home page) at thecantoncitizen.com.

Sincerely,

Alice C. Brown

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