Electric shock torture of autistics ban finally a reality!

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I got an email from ASAN that says the following! It's profoundly wonderful news although the article does say that the Judge Rotenberg Center will likely sue to be able to continue to use electric shock punishment on autistics as a behavioral modification.


"Today, the Food and Drug Administration released their final ban on the electric skin shock devices used to torture children and adults with disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center. The rule will go into effect in 30 days. The JRC will have 180 days to transition people currently subject to this torture off of the devices.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network welcomes this ban, which will finally end decades of shock torture at the JRC. We are relieved beyond measure that soon our community members will no longer be punished with dangerous electric shocks for doing things like standing up without permission, making noises, or crying in pain. This ban is long overdue. During the six years that the ban sat at the FDA, people were terrorized, injured, and traumatized as the JRC continued to use electric shocks to punish and control them.

The FDA final ban was released after decades of work from advocates in every sector who brought the abuse to light, insisted that it was wrong, and fought to end it. Disability rights organizations, nationally and in every state, came together with an unprecedented level of consensus to oppose this torture. Self-advocates in Massachusetts and across the country made it their mission to stop the shocks. Provider and professional organizations stood up to their purported colleagues and worked to end the abuse of people with disabilities. Lawyers brought lawsuit after lawsuit against the JRC. Doctors provided expert testimony against the use of electric shock devices. Some people who were part of the harmful systems enabling the Judge Rotenberg Center — including regulators, policymakers in state government, and some of its former staff — reversed course, spoke out against the torture, and fought to end it. We are grateful to everyone who took a stand, and to the volunteers and grassroots organizers who joined ASAN’s advocacy campaigns and helped us hold the FDA accountable.

Above all, we are grateful to the survivors of the Judge Rotenberg Center. Without their advocacy, testimony, and the evidence they brought forward, publicly and privately, this regulation would not have been finalized. To the survivors, we say: what happened to you was wrong. It never should have happened. You did not deserve it. We are so sorry that you went through this. We are so sorry that it took us so long to stop it. You deserve so much better, and we will fight to make sure you have everything you need.

The release of the FDA ban is a landmark victory — and it is not enough. What happens next will be critical. The JRC will almost certainly sue to delay or prevent the ban’s implementation; we must stay in the fight, or risk ending up back where we started. And while the JRC will be forbidden from using electric shock devices, it is still allowed to use other forms of torture and abuse, including starving its residents, as a means of punishment and to control behavior. Nor is the JRC the only residential facility which tortures, injures, and kills people with disabilities. Their use of electric shocks may have been unique, but deliberate abuse by staff is endemic to congregate settings. When we isolate people with disabilities in segregated settings, then give service providers total control over every aspect of our lives, we are facilitating abuse and neglect.

We must do better for all people with disabilities. We must finish closing the institutions that still exist across the country. We must end the use of aversives, restraint and seclusion, and abusive “therapies” across the board, and we must make meaningful, robust community living services a reality in every state. We must hold accountable the systems that allowed the Judge Rotenberg Center to torture with impunity, and ensure that violence against people with disabilities is recognized as violence even when it is done “for our own good.” The Judge Rotenberg Center itself, which has demonstrated an unyielding ideological commitment to torturing people with disabilities, must be shut down, and the survivors must finally be supported to live safe, self-determined lives in their communities.

The release of the ban on electric shock devices is a hard-won victory and a testament to the power of disability advocacy. It is also just one of many necessary changes, and it comes decades too late. We have been forced to spend years debating whether people with intellectual and developmental disabilities feel pain like everyone else; whether our disabilities disqualify us from having human rights; and whether we deserve to live free from fear and abuse. The next changes can’t come fast enough."

What and where is the Judge Rotenberg Center?!

It's a school in Massachusetts. From their website:

"The JUDGE ROTENBERG CENTER (JRC) is a day and residential school located in Canton, Massachusetts licensed to serve ages five through adult. Since 1971, JRC has provided very effective education and treatment to both emotionally disturbed students with conduct, behavior, emotional, and/or psychiatric problems, as well as those with intellectual disabilities or on the autism spectrum.

Our specific goal is to provide each individual with the least intrusive most effective form of treatment to ensure his/her safety, the safety of others, and promote healthy growth and development. JRC is committed to providing the most effective educational program possible. "

I’d never heard of the place either.
Good that it’s being stopped: hopefully their appeal against the ruling will be lost.

Good news, Magna. Thanks for posting.

This is a sickening practice.

FINALLY!!

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME for America to let this happen all these decades.

Ari Ne'eman
One thing worth noting: this FDA rule prohibits the use of the JRC's form of aversive electric shock device. It doesn't (and wasn't expected to) prohibit aversives altogether. There's still a lot of activism to do on that front.
1:57 PM · Mar 4, 2020·Twitter Web App
Ari Ne'eman
@aneeman
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6h
Replying to
@aneeman
There are no circumstances where it is appropriate to subject people with disabilities, regardless of age, severity or background, to pain as a means of behavior modification.
Ari Ne'eman
@aneeman
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6h
There are no circumstances where it is appropriate to subject anyone, regardless of disability status, to aversives. We need to ban them, period. This is an important first step.
Ari Ne'eman
@aneeman
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6h
Nor should it escape our notice that people with disabilities still reside within the Judge Rotenberg Center - the fight to close that facility and all institutions must be ongoing.
Ari Ne'eman
@aneeman
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6h
Still, this is an important victory and worth celebrating. Activists have been fighting to stop the use of these devices for longer than I have been alive.
Ari Ne'eman
@aneeman
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6h
I wish people like Tom Nerney, who made this a major focus of his time and energy, were still with us to see this day. <3
Ari Ne'eman
@aneeman
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6h
I am awe of our movement for the time and energy we have put into this issue and frustrated with our society that this simple, small step took so many decades.



Lydia X. Z. Brown, Esq.
@autistichoya
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9h
f*****g FINALLY. THIS HAS BEEN LITERALLY YEARS IN THE MAKING. I AM CRYING TEARS OF JOY RIGHT NOW.
FDA Takes Rare Step to Ban Electrical Stimulation Devices for Self-Injurious or Aggressive Behavior
SILVER SPRING, Md., March 4, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- After careful consideration, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration today published a final rule to ban electrical stimulation...
benzinga.com
Lydia X. Z. Brown, Esq.
@autistichoya
Noting the ban doesn't come into effect for 30 days for most people, and for 180 more (half a f*****g year) for others currently at JRC, so this is far far from ideal (esp because it is literally decades overdue) but it is much better than what the FDA *has* been doing forever.
10:59 AM · Mar 4, 2020·Twitter Web App
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Lydia X. Z. Brown, Esq.
@autistichoya
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9h
Replying to
@autistichoya
And of course, the place still needs to be shut down completely - along with all other institutions.

(Major props to the many, including Jennifer Msumba​, Ian Monteleone Cook, Shain M. Neumeier​, Emily Titon, Nancy Weiss, and many others, who've worked on this for years.)
Lydia X. Z. Brown, Esq.
@autistichoya
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9h
WE ARE NOT FINISHED YET.
Lydia X. Z. Brown, Esq.
@autistichoya
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9h
For those who aren't familiar with the history, you can read all about it here:

JRC is the ONLY institution in the US known to use painful electric shock as punishment on disabled people. 90% of those confined there are BIPOC; 85% are Black or Latinx.
Judge Rotenberg Center
Living Archive & Repository on the Judge Rotenberg Center’s Abuses Note: This page and all links on it discuss electric shock, other abusive and coercive treatments, institutions, and oth…
autistichoya.net
Lydia X. Z. Brown, Esq.
@autistichoya
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9h
JRC first opened in 1971 as Behavior Research Institute before changing its name in the 1990's. They began using the shocks in 1988, but used all manner of other physical abuse/torture before then, and still do today. They ascribe to an extremist form of behaviorism.
Lydia X. Z. Brown, Esq.
@autistichoya
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9h
The device they use to shock people is called the Graduated Electronic Decelerator. It's in its fourth version now, the GED-4. JRC's founder deliberately designed a device to emit a shock more powerful and painful than a police taser. They shock people for any noncompliance.
Lydia X. Z. Brown, Esq.
@autistichoya
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9h
Survivors and other advocates have fought to stop the shocks for DECADES. All of us who've been working on this still have a long way to go; the whole goddamn place needs to close.

I'm with ASPartOfMe on this one.

I'm so happy this practice will be stopped. It's torture, plain and simple, and a flagrant violation of human rights. This should have been recognized a bazillion years ago.

I agree the place should shut down. You can't change the culture just by removing the electric shocks.

But: autistic voiced are having an impact. The more independent autistics are managing to help institutionalized autistics. That is a major milestone, and a cause for celebration. It feels wonderful.

This is some of the best news I've heard in a long time!

This is great! So many people haven’t heard of the Judge Rotenberg Center, which is a shame. I think if more people knew about it, this stuff would have ended long ago.

Thank GOD........ about time is a understatement , had a feed on google news come up about a old nazi guard at a concentration system from WW2 discovered living in the US , They called him out and are deporting him according to the article . 'This was just a guard ' Now the torturers at the Rothenberg center are being merely forced to stop torture ." Aversive treatments" .

Am aware some of the readers may not see the parrallel in these but , And quite sure few , if any of the readers here, Have had to be afflicted by electric shock techniques employed by these ..(Sarcasm implied here ) THESE KIND SWEET CARING CARERS OF THE DISABLED .at Rotenberg Center.
The people employing these methods should be considered criminal . in my humble opinion.
The phrase: cruel and unusual punishment , comes to mind .These people are being held in a captive environment . Most likely few of them ,, may possibly even be aware of the injustice . that is being done there . When in those circumstances , you only percieve your "immediate environment ."
Which obviously by the reports on this place is pretty bad .