Rotenberg founder set to face charges, Expected to quit over 2007 shock case

Boston Globe

Patricia Wen and Brian McGrory 25, 2011

The founder of the controversial Judge Rotenberg Educational Center is scheduled to face criminal charges in Dedham today arising from a night in 2007 when two special needs teenagers at the center were wrongfully administered dozens of electrical shocks, according to the father of one of the victims and another person with knowledge about the case.

In a deal reached with the state attorney general’s office, Matthew Israel, 77, is expected to be spared prison time in return for stepping down from the Canton-based center that he founded 40 years ago and accepting a five-year probationary term, said Charles Dumas, the father of one of the two victims in the 2007 case who said he spoke yesterday with prosecutors. As part of the agreement, the school’s day-to-day activities will also be overseen by a court-approved monitor.

A court official who works at the Norfolk County Superior Court said that today’s schedule of cases lists a defendant named Matthew Israel facing two charges, misleading a grand jury and accessory after the fact to a crime.

The charges against Israel are believed to be related to the destruction of some of the center’s digital surveillance tapes that would have showed what occurred the night of Aug. 26, 2007, in one of the center’s residential group homes in Stoughton. That night, staffers received a prank phone call from someone posing as a supervisor, saying two teenagers, including Dumas’s son, should be administered electrical shocks as punishment for bad behavior earlier that day.

The attorney general’s office declined comment on the case yesterday, as did Ernest Corrigan, a longtime spokesman for Israel and the center. On May 2, Corrigan had issued a press release announcing Israel’s retirement, effective June 1. In the release, which made no mention of a pending criminal case, Israel is quoted as saying, “I am now almost 78 years old, and it is time for me to move over and let others take the reins.’’

The case marks a dramatic turn in the career of the Harvard-trained psychologist, though it does not appear to end the center’s unorthodox practices that have generated national controversy: the use of skin-shock treatments to discipline behaviorally troubled children.

His tactics have been condemned as barbaric and savage by many top medical and mental health professionals. But despite some injuries and even deaths at the facility, the center has continued to get state approval to operate as a special-needs school serving some 200 students with serious emotional and behavioral problems, including autism and intellectual disabilities.

JRC whistleblower Greg Miller describes their torture

The Canton Patch
Opinion
by Greg Miller
April 17, 2012

Letter to the Editor: Former Teacher's Aid at Judge Rotenberg Center Comments on FOX TV Video of JRC Shock Treatments

Former Judge Rotenberg Center employee responds to Fox News video released in court last week.

Editor's note: This is a Letter to the Editor by former JRC employee Gregory Miller. Miller is commenting on the graphic Fox TV video  of JRC student Andre McCollins being shocked that was shown in court last week.

My name is Greg Miller.  I worked at the Judge Rotenberg Center as a Teacher's Assistant (with Massachusetts Teacher's Certification) for three years, starting in January of 2003, and ending in March of 2006.  I resigned and left on my own accord, then I wrote Dr. Israel a letter to inform him why I resigned.  I was interviewed for Mother Jones Magazine, for Boston Globe, and for ABC Nightline, in 2007.

I wanted to add more information regarding the 4-point board shocks and the context in which they were used.  What you do not see in this student's case on this video that I did observe with other students is the added element of psychological torture through the means of positioning the staff with the remote control outside of the door of the room with a silent timer.

Normally when a student knows he or she is about to get shocked, they instinctively tense up their muscles in anticipation of the shock as soon as a staff reaches for the remote control.

You can see Andre [McCollins] in this video tensing up his body in anticipation of the 16th or 17th shock out of 31 shocks that he received for the day.

By having the staff with the remote control and timer stand outside of the classroom door, the student would not know when the next shock was coming.  For some students, the amount of time between each shock would be varied, say a five minute wait before one shock then a 15 minute wait until the next shock, so that the student on the four-point board would literally go crazy in anticipation by not knowing when the next shock was going to take place.  When the shocks are spaced out over time at uneven intervals, and without the ability to see a staff reach for the device, students would tense up their bodies and scream, over and over, thinking that the shock was about to take place, until their muscles would get so tired that they could no longer tense up.  The student then would sadly "give up" in apathy, much like a prey who has already lost.

This added element of varying the minutes between the electric shocks in my opinion was much worse than the horrific shocks themselves.  It added a whole other dimension of helplessness and hopelessness to a student who was already tied up to the board and getting shocked.

The ability for students to tense up their muscles in anticipation of a shock gives the student at least some hope of protecting themselves from severe pain, and with that gone, and with the muscles and student voice giving out from repeated tensing up of the muscles and the screaming and crying, some students appeared to resign their will to live.

For those who have not been there in person to witness those psychiatric "treatments," it may be difficult to visualize how significant those varied timed shocks were to students, or to imagine how bad those treatments really were.  I cannot imagine any sane parents watching a video of their child receiving that kind of treatment and approving of the treatment for their child.  I do NOT believe that parents have made an "informed consent" when they have their children placed on those treatments because they have not seen what those treatments actually look like until now.

I am also certain that other parents, including those whose children are NOT placed on 4-point boards for electric shocks, are not giving an informed consent to have their children shocked at JRC.  Parents, with one exception that I saw in my entire three years at JRC, were not permitted into the classrooms.  If parents could spend time inside the classrooms, they would see students getting shocked for many mild behaviors, with no distinction made between tearing a small thread or a paper cup as different from tearing posters off the walls.  The student plan says to shock them regardless.  There was no distinction between standing up and politely raising a hand to ask to go to the bathroom versus standing up in an act of aggression.

Worst of all was when one student had a behavior, and ALL of the students were punished in the room of up to 40 students by having to watch their classmate get shocked, which I view as being significantly penalized due to the severe trauma.  For this reason, I believe that all of the children were being punished even though they were not exhibiting any behaviors, merely for being there in the classroom minding to their own task.

I was having nightmares as a teacher, and some of the other staff who I spoke to were also having nightmares.  We were not even wearing backpacks with electric shock devices or electrodes strapped to our bodies!  The students often did not know if they had exhibited a behavior, or if it was a classmate who had exhibited a behavior.  It was not uncommon when one student had a behavior for the staff to merely reach for the remote control on his or her belt, triggering five or seven other students to all react in panic with behaviors that cause each of the children to get shocked.  One student would yell out in fear, another might jump out of his seat, another student might try to pull her electrodes off of her skin or scream, or another student might hold the arm of the staff who had the remote control.

Another student might throw down his task onto his table in a panic, and other students might just sit in their seats and scream and yell.  All of these behaviors were defined as "GED"-shock behaviors, and we were required to shock all of the students exhibiting these behaviors along with the one student who had the initial behavior.

On a number of occasions, a staff would reach for a pencil in an apron pocket triggering students in their state of high anxiety to think that the staff was reaching for the remote controls, and resulting in groups of students being shocked when they reacted.

I don't believe a parent has made an informed consent to such treatment until they have been in the classroom and have seen their child and other children react together under such great stress.  If I had nightmares as a staff from working at JRC, and I did not have electrodes tied to me, just imagine what it is like for non-verbal children who are tied to the electrodes and devices in their backpacks 24-hours per day!

One parent approved a plan for her son with autism to get shocked every time he closed his eyes for 15 seconds while at his desk, but I believe that was just one bad parent who didn't like the fact that her son had autism.  For most of the parents, I believe they were largely misinformed and desperate.

Personally, I never intentionally shocked a student tied to a 4-point restraint board, nor had I shocked a so-called "high functioning" student (which meant mostly normal cognitive and verbal abilities) in my three years at the Judge Rotenberg Center.  I worked mostly with students with autism who had severe behaviors and who I did not see tied to 4-point restraint board to be shocked multiple times.

But I was working in the room a number of times when higher functioning students were tied to the 4-point restraint boards getting shocked, which left me feeling nauseous and in nightmares for days until my doctor advised me to leave for the sake of my own health.

If I could emphasize two messages in response to watching the video clip on Fox News of Andre McCollins, it would be to say, "Yes!  It really is that bad, and much worse!", and that Andre's mother absolutely must be genuine in saying that she did not give an informed consent for her son to be treated in that way.  Parents may sign permission for their children to be shocked, but that is very different from actually seeing the treatments and how the treatments are executed.  There is no "informed" consent until parents have seen what they are actually approving.


Teen tied and shocked for hours, mom calls it torture, Judge Rotenberg Center

FOX TV 25 Boston
Sunday, 19 Feb 2012
by Mike Beaudet
Kevin Rothstein Producer kevin.rothstein@foxtv.com

(FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - Video of a disabled teen tied down and given painful electric shocks for seven hours should be made public, the youth's mother said, so everyone can see what she describes as the "torture" her son went through at the controversial school, the only one in Massachusetts that uses pain to treat its clients.

"This is worse than a nightmare," Cheryl McCollins said about her disabled son, Andre. "It is horrific. And poor Andre, who had to suffer through this, and not know why."

The ordeal began after Andre hit a staff member. Inside a classroom, as a camera was recording, he was tied to a restraint board, face down, a helmet over his head.

He stayed like that for seven hours without a break, no food, no water, or trips to the bathroom. Each time he screamed or tensed up, he was shocked, 31 times in all. His mother called the next day to check on him.

"I said, 'Andre.' I said, 'Hello.' And so he said, 'Help me,'" McCollins said.

After spending three days in a comatose state, not eating or drinking, Andre was taken to Children's Hospital, where he was diagnosed with "acute stress response" caused by the shocks.

"The doctors took all the shackles and all those things off of him. Andre's not talking to me. I'm just holding him and telling him how much I love him, and asking him please to talk to me, just tell me what happened," McCollins said.

What happened that morning in October 2002 became clear after the Rotenberg Center showed her the video of Andre's ordeal, recorded by the classroom camera.

"When I viewed the tape, I saw Andre walking into a room, someone asking him to take off his coat. Andre said no, they shocked him, he went underneath the table trying to get away from them. They pulled him out, tied him up and they continued to shock him," McCollins said.

"When you look at that videotape, what was the purpose of all those shocks?" asked FOX Undercover reporter Mike Beaudet.

"I have no idea," McCollins replied.

"Did you get an apology?" Beaudet asked.

"No, they felt what they did was therapy," McCollins replied.

"Does that look like therapy to you?" Beaudet asked.

"No, it was torture," McCollins said.

For now, the public can't see for themselves what Andre's treatment looks like because the Rotenberg Center asked a Norfolk Superior Court judge to seal the video tape, saying it would be unsettling for viewers who didn't understand the context. The judge agreed, and the video remains under a protective order.

"This is video they fought vehemently not to release, fought vehemently to keep quiet and I think now are very concerned that this tape is out there," said attorney Andrew Meyer, who represents Andre McCollins in a lawsuit against the Rotenberg Center.

"The Judge Rotenberg Center has consistently gotten away with being able to soft sell their treatment, to whitewash what they've done about it being therapeutic: 'It's not so bad, it helps these children.' But the eyewitness accounts that we now have about what actually goes on at this center puts to lie everything they've been saying," Meyer said.

But not everyone agrees. When asked about the perception that electric shock therapy is torture, school attorney Michael Flammia said, "Absolutely wrong."

Flammia would not talk about Andre McCollins.

"But I can tell you I'm familiar with every kid who has been at the school, who have been at the school over 20 years and I can promise you the treatment here is safe, it's effective, it's administered properly and every kid has benefited enormously from it," Flammia said.

"We talked with a parent who says, 'Put that video out there, let the public see what happened to my son here. Let them see what she calls torture,'" asked FOX Undercover's Beaudet.

"The matter is in the hands of the courts and we have complete confidence in the court system on that particular matter," Flammia replied.

"So you don't want us to see that video?" Beaudet asked.

"It's in the hands of the court," Flammia replied.

But McCollins says the public needs to see the video of what happened to her son.

"I hope this stops it. I hope this tape being exposed puts an end to this torture. Because I feel it. You watch it, you feel it," McCollins said. "How do we sit here and let this go on?"

It's certainly getting tougher for the Rotenberg Center to use these shocks.

New York and Massachusetts recently barred shocks on new students, though the school is fighting those restrictions in New York and is planning to do so here.

This is also not the first time this kind of video has become a problem for the center. Last year, the school's founder, Matthew Israel, was indicted on charges that he ordered video of improperly shocked students to be erased despite an ongoing investigation.

Israel agreed to a deal that gives him pre-trial probation in exchange for his stepping down from the school.

Read more: http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/undercover/teen-tied-and-shocked-for-hours-mom-calls-it-torture-20120219#ixzz1nF9kXJ00

A Former Judge Rotenberg Center Worker Speaks Out, Letter to the Editor

Canton Patch

September 13, 2011
Greg Miller worked for the Rotenberg Center in Canton for three years and speaks about his experience.

Warning: Some of the content in this letter may be disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.
By Greg Miller
There is so much for me to share about my three years of experience as a staff in Judge Rotenberg Center that I wanted to share them in writing.
Please note that other former JRC teachers and staff and even psychologists have contacted me in the past to tell me that they appreciate my speaking on behalf of the students, and to tell me of legal threats that keep them from speaking out vocally against JRC’s practices. I can share only my own experiences and opinions. No doubt JRC has attempted to discredit me and what I have to share.
My Background
I worked for the Judge Rotenberg Center for over three years, between 2003 – 2006. I worked as a Teacher’s Assistant, and I turned down offers to work at JRC as a classroom teacher because I was too busy with my studies.
I have a Master’s Degree in Elementary Education from Lesley University. I previously taught as a classroom teacher in Watertown Public Schools, Lincoln Public Schools, and Winchester Public Schools. I worked too many hours as a classroom teacher to be able to also study alternative medical approaches for the treatment of children with learning difficulties and autism, and JRC offered me an opportunity to continue to work with children and youth while putting myself through school with ideal work hours.
The reason why I remained at JRC for three years instead of leaving on my first day of training was that I liked JRC’s commitment to getting students off of psychiatric drugs. Students were arriving at JRC looking very drugged up and in very rough conditions. I was a very dedicated worker and supporter of JRC at the start of my employment. JRC always treated me fairly as an employee.
Then my opinion of JRC started to change significantly to where I felt I needed to leave JRC and to speak out against its practices. I started to get signs of traumatic stress while working at JRC, and my doctor advised me repeatedly that I should leave JRC for my own health reasons. I became more aware of what was actually happening to individual students at JRC that parents were not permitted to see, and I wondered how many parents would actually be supportive of JRC if they saw what was happening to their children as I did.
My Opinion on the Use of JRC Shock Therapy
I believe that electric shocks are harmful not only to the student receiving a shock, but to all other students in the room witnessing the traumatic shock incidences. Electric shocks are not necessary to help JRC’s population of students. I saw much use of electric shocks that I felt were unwarranted to appear in student plans, and it seemed to me that individualized student plans were designed without proper oversight or adequate safeguards to prevent misuse of the shock devices.
I was having signs of traumatic stress including nightmares, night sweats, and elevated blood pressure, so that my doctor advised me that I needed to leave JRC. So imagine what it is like and what harm is being done to students who are actually on electric shock devices, who are committing no "wrong" behaviors, but who must witness their classmates getting shocked all day long!
I have witnessed the traumatic effects of electric shocks not only on the students receiving shocks, but also on other students in the room witnessing the shock “treatments” even though they have exhibited no behaviors. It was not uncommon to have incidences where I would reach for my pencil in my JRC apron pocket, on which hung the remote controls, to have students crying out and or jumping up, or throwing their task up in the air, and even grabbing me, because they thought I was going to shock them.
These were all behaviors that would cause students to be shocked depending on the individual student’s plan, so groups of students would all get shocked together, all out of their reaction of fear due to myself or another staff reaching for a pencil in our pockets. If any staff chose not to shock students at such times, we would immediately lose our jobs for “refusing to follow student plans.”
I have participated as required in following student plans to shock multiple students, including when they reacted to watching a fellow classmate tied up in a restraint chair getting attacked by a staffer with a plastic knife (being held) to the student’s throat. This was a judge-approved Clockwork-Orange-type “treatment” for a student who swallowed a small X-Acto knife blade. A staffer, according to the plan, would run up to the student who had all four limbs tied all day long to a restraint chair, and pretend to force a plastic knife down the student’s mouth while another staff pressed the remote control to give a shock to the student. The staff would repeatedly yell in a gruff voice, “Do you want to swallow a knife?”
Sometimes a number of students watching this would act out in fear and receive shocks for jumping out of their seat, crying out, or dumping their task in reaction to the violence. I highly doubt that the judge ordered all 40 plus other students in the same classroom to have to watch this violent “treatment” of their classmate with his arms and legs tied to a chair. This took place day after day for weeks, with their classmate unable to defend himself in any kind of way. I felt nauseated just being in the room during those treatments, and I was not one of the humans with electric shock devices strapped to my body, so I could only imagine what the students were going through.
I have witnessed terrible injuries including bloody scabs all over the torso, arms, and legs caused by the electrodes. While I have heard of Dr. Israel previously claiming that the injuries were due to staff not properly rotating electrodes after shocking a student, the reality was that some students exhibited behaviors resulting in up to 30 shocks in a day. Some students stopped their behaviors after receiving their maximum 30 shocks for the day. Most of the shock devices used two electrodes to pass current through a specific distance of human flesh to maximize the amount of pain from the same amount of current. Two red skin marks from electrodes per shock, times 30 shocks in a day, quickly adds up so that very soon electrodes will be placed over previous marks resulting in bloody scabs. In these cases, the multiple patches of bloody scabs have nothing to do with staff failing to rotate electrodes after shocking students. Rather it exemplifies that the electric shocks approach were not appropriate for the student, and that other approaches should have been found.
Dr. Israel has previously compared the electric shock devices to bee stings. I vividly remember nearly getting the wind knocked out of me during training at JRC back in 2003 when (I was) permitted to test out the weakest of JRC’s electric shock devices on my own arm. That was no bee sting!
I have worked with a young lady who was so underweight while on electric shock devices that she had a test tube sewn into her stomach to feed her when she would not eat enough. Upstairs there was a photo of her on the wall near Dr. Matthew Israel’s office from when she first entered JRC, looking comparatively plump.
I have witnessed a student with autism getting shocked for sitting at his desk with his eyes closed for more than 15 seconds because his mother didn’t like the fact that he closed his eyes. I wondered what it might feel like for me to try to shut my eyes at night to go to sleep after I had been shocked several times during the day for closing my eyes! Initially in his behavioral plan, the student was shocked for closing his eyes while walking down the hallway with the reason that it was “health dangerous” to close one’s eyes while walking down a short carpeted hallway.
Later, JRC added more and more places where this student would get shocked for closing his eyes. Students with autism characteristically see the world as over-stimulating and overwhelming. I saw a photograph of the student at a young age with his eyes closed while holding up a large fish on a fishing trip. I don’t believe students should be shocked for having autism.
Besides shocking a student for the behavior of “closing eyes” while sitting at one’s desk for more than 15 seconds, or while walking down the hallway, shocking students for reacting to their classmates getting shocked, or shocking a student with all four limbs tied to a restraint chair while a staff violently attacked the student with a plastic knife to teach him a lesson, there were many other behaviors for which students were shocked that felt absolutely wrong to me. Students during my time at JRC were shocked for tearing a paper cup or Kleenex while sitting and watching television during their break, shocked for standing up and raising a hand and asking to go to the bathroom, shocked for pulling apart a loose thread, shocked for going to the bathroom in one’s clothes after signing that they need to use the bathroom for over two hours, shocking a blind, nonverbal girl with cerebral palsy for making a soft moaning sound in an effort to communicate and also shocking her for holding a staff’s hand, to name a few examples of many.
I am still unaware of even one study done that demonstrates that student behaviors remain “changed” after leaving JRC, once off the shock devices.
I was told repeatedly as a staff member at JRC that not only were these student behavior plans permitted by the judge, but some of the plans were ordered by the judge. Looking back, I question what the judge knew. Certainly JRC had a huge lack of oversight and it seemed that there was inadequate protection for the students.
On more than one occasion, I remember arriving to work and being surprised by drastic changes to individual student plans, where many behaviors for which a student would be shocked were eliminated from the student’s plan or else moved to a “minor” category for which the student would not be shocked. I remember being told by a student’s case manager that the behavior plans were changed because the student had an upcoming court date to prepare for. I do not believe that the judges were given the full picture of what they were approving when approving electric shocks on students.
After looking back, and to summarize some of the atrocities I witnessed and participated in while working at JRC, it is difficult for me to understand how I could have done something so cruel to other human beings. No doubt I was operating on misinformation, and misled to believe many of the same arguments that I hear parents arguing today. I truly believed that JRC was the only school that could help this population of students without the use of psychiatric drugs that turned children into zombies and ruined their livers.
Some children, not all, do respond to the threat of pain as long as they are strapped up to electric shock devices. But it is my strong opinion that JRC used electric shocks for many behaviors when other alternatives were available, and to the exclusion of more effective treatments. Psychologists leaving JRC told me that they had other treatments based on real research in established psychological journals that they wanted to use, but they were not allowed to use those other methods because Dr. Israel favored exclusively the use of electric shocks.
Dr. Israel was out to prove the power of his electric shock devices, and in doing so, somewhere along the line the shock devices must have become more important to him than individual students. It is my opinion, as a former JRC teacher who later worked at another school serving a very similar student population as the JRC students with autism, that NO shocks are necessary to control student behaviors at JRC.
If I was given the opportunity, I would sincerely apologize to each and every student I shocked at JRC. I certainly applaud Senator Brian A. Joyce and many others who have worked so diligently to end what I consider to be torture. Torture that is allowed and exists only in Canton, Massachusetts.