United Nations calls it torture, FDA is looking at banning it, JRC calls it treatment!
“I felt like I was being punished for being born, punished for being disabled.”
“It was like being underground in hell.”
“I would ask God to make my heart stop because I did not want to live when that (electric shock) was happening to me.”
“I just want to die and make it (electric shock) stop.”
—These are the words of students subjected to electric shock at JRC—
The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), founded in 1971 by Matthew Israel, has long been infamous in the developmental disabilities community. Yet, most people are unaware of the torturous aversives characterized as therapy carried out at the center. The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) is the only place left in the U.S. that acknowledges using large-scale aversives, or punishments, as part of a systematic behavior program to control people with developmental disabilities, mostly autistic people, many of whom also have intellectual disabilities.
JRC uses multiple kinds of large-scale aversives. However, one particular issue is the use of a remote control shock device, known as a “GED,” which uses a combination of high amperage and electrode spacing to deliver a punishment more painful than a commercial stun gun. Survivors who have been subjected to the GED report a life of terror punctuated by extreme pain. JRC says the shock is “like a bee sting” and claims its victims are not afraid.
As one mother said, “JRC is trying to shock them out of Autism”; “It is easy to control people when you hurt them”. But these treatments are not effective in the long run and cause more damage to the mind and body, even resulting in deaths.
#ADAPTandRESIST #StopTheShock