As noted in my post, my son had very severe self-injurious behavior (head-banging). This behavior worsened when aversives were used and I will not describe how I truly feel about the notion of skin shock therapy being used on my son.

I have known many “high-functioning autistics” and I’m not sure they would use the word “easy” to describe experience.

I’m highly offended by your Mengele type defense of a barbaric treatment of autistic people. Anyone that searches through archives more than a year old to defend JRC is either a practicing clinician there or one of the barbaric and heartless parents who put their children there. I intend to expose everyone that is a vendor to JRC. JRC is going to be shut down, count on it.

Tells us Janet, what recently occurred in the state of Mass. with the so called psychologists representing themselves to the courts in Mass as far as their qualifications? They were found to have lied to the court. I have video tape of one of those liars explaining how they lie in the brief to the court to describe behaviors (i.e. describing to the court that a student saying “you stink” as aggressive behavior warranting a shock).

Mr. Miller, did you witness situations like that? Could you elaborate further if you did?

The parents are psychologically intimidated too: Israel holds the sword of Damocles over them, threatening them that if JRC is shut down, their children who are intractably unmanageable without those electrified fanny-packs will be deposited overnight on their doorsteps without a shred of further support. No wonder they clamor and sing JRC’s praises upon command.

Legislation that would indeed have shut down the abuses at JRC was killed in committee in the Massachusetts legislature — by a single spoiler vote held by Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, who has a nephew attending JRC.

Israel is a clever manipulator: he orchestrated the derailment of the career of Philip Campbell, the former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation, who attempted to shut JRC down.

Half a dozen JRC staffers recently acted in the capacity of licensed mental health professionals — and were advertised as such by JRC — *without* appropriate licensing. As far as I know, criminal litigation on this matter is still proceeding through the state court system.

The whole thing stinks to high heaven and is a blot upon my home state.

ABC Nightline did leave out many facts. For example, I told ABC in my 2+ hour interview with them about JRC tying students into restraints on a four-point board and shocking them five times consecutively (over 10 minutes, or 40 minutes, whatever is on the student’s plan) for certain behaviors. The person with the remote control in one hand that you saw on the documentary, and a timer in the other hand, would remain out of sight from the student on the board to administer the shocks. That is to create as much panic and fear in the student as possible to make the punishment far worse than the shocks itself. This was all pre-approved by parents and the judges and the laws of Massachusetts.

There are worse things I’ve seen at Judge Rotenberg Center. Imagine watching a 40+ year-old adult male, in there with suicidal tendencies from a young age, get attacked three times per week by an adult male staff with a plastic knife. The student was left in restraints all day long for this procedure so that he was unable to defend himself. Then while the student is screaming for his life, TRYING HIS BEST TO DEFEND HIMSELF WHILE TIED IN RESTRAINTS, and the staff tries to jam the knife down the student’s throat while yelling the words,”Do you want to swallow a knife? DO YOU WANT TO SWALLOW A KNIFE???,” someone with the hidden remote control presses the button to shock the student. The student had tried to commit suicide by swallowing a small Exacto Knife blade, and this was their “treatment” for suicide! Ever see the movie Clockwork Orange?

Not only was this “treatment” traumatic for this student being attacked by the staff with the plastic knife and shocked while defenseless, the “treatments” were done right in front of 40+ other students and 7 – 9 staff in the large Workshop room. If other students screamed or jumped up in response to watching their classmate get attacked like this, they too would get shocked!

Again, all of this was pre-approved by the judge and is legal in Massachusetts. I have papers from the Department of Mental Retardation (DMR) who investigated it to prove that this “treatment” was not “abuse” because it was ordered by the judge.

The student was not permitted a counselor to offer any type of counseling or psychotherapy, as they believed that it would be counterproductive to their stimulus-response behaviorist approach.

Dr. Matthew Israel, the owner and Director of Judge Rotenberg Center, was a personal student of Dr. B.F. Skinner, the behaviorist behind ABA. Dr. B.F. Skinner even visited Dr. Israel at the Behavior Research Institute, later renamed to Judge Rotenberg Center, while the Behavior Research Institute was located in Rhode Island. They relocated to Massachusetts after Rhode Island became outraged by the death of one or more students at that school.

The investigator from the Department of Mental Retardation told me that he was not a doctor to diagnose the bloody scabs as “burns”, that I was also not a doctor to diagnose the bloody scabs as “burns”, and therefore the accusation of “burns” from the electric shocks could not be validated – even if we could provide photographs of the actual injuries. He said even doctors could not diagnose the injuries from photographs, and would risk lawsuit to diagnose the bloody scabs (scabs on top of previous scabs, resulting from so many scabs that anywhere you move the electrodes on the arms, legs or torso will result in placing the electrodes on top of another scab) because doctors have not studied the phenomena of these types of injuries from these specific electric shock devices enough to be able to call it “burns”.

I came to the conclusion myself that there is a scam and coverup taking place, and that people are prevented from knowing the truth about the laws in Massachusetts that they support.

Best wishes to Massachusetts Senator Joyce while he tries to change those laws.

- Greg Miller
Former JRC Teacher’s Assistant

It turned out not to be a very “productive” meeting, but I certainly felt better after giving them a little lecture in how to treat a fellow human being (a 5 year old one, at that).

Usually I’m a pretty good negotiator, able to move towards win/win situations. I don’t try to hit people’s “hot buttons” because then they shut down and you never get anything from them. But sometimes you just have to call outrageous behavior out on the carpet.