An Enquiry Into The Judge Rotenberg Center & ABA Therapy

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http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/full-stat ... d=17702331

The below is from the above link, which I posted yesterday, but from page two, which I just now read. This is an illustration of how the shock treatment helped two people, though there are also on the JRC website 118 letters describing this which I have only read a very few of so far.. The original reason I posted this link was because of something I read on page one, but will get to that later.

This testimony does not in any way prove that such treatment is either necessary or more effective than alternative approaches.

The parent who says "they know nothing" and "they have no solutions to offer" is lying. Some of the critiques of the GED system are from former JRC employees who know much more about it than the parents. Some of the critique is from therapists who know of successful alternative treatments.

It seems to me that having signed off on the systematic torture of your child, any parent has a strong psychological motivation to believe that what they have done is somehow beneficial. The alternative is to recognize that one has been complicit in something monstrous. It's natural for anyone to want to disbelieve this about themselves.

Some people employed at the JRC are most likely reading this thread, so if you have something to say to them, why don't you say it here, as some of them will read it. What to you want to telll them? That they are all torturers and to quit their jobs and stop torturing people? This makes no sense. It seems there are many professional educators and psychologists working them. You think they are all torturers? Yes, I know some people think people are torturers when they really are, but also some other people think some other people really are torturers when they really are not. and often it is not so cut and dried..

For instance, if a parent is taking a splinter out of the finger of a child who for whatever reason cannot understand the rationale of this, then this child may think and feel he is being tortured though he is really being helped, and this deed will actually save him from far greater suffering. However, the point could also be made that an immature or even sadistic parent could deliberately be unnecessarily rough when taking the splinter out of the finger of a child he is angry with, but his general intent could still be to help them, not that this makes the roughness right. A person could also leave a splinter in when a child starts screaming because he does not want it taken out, and this could be done to punish the child..

So material can get kind of complex, with various factors and elements mixed in together with various people's subjective interpretations and motives, these people being of various levels of sophistication or gullibility and having various degrees of information, and I think this is what is happening here and has been happening in regard to that center.

My comments in bold.

It to get back to writing on this thread now. First, a qualifier. This thread was never meant to be about keeping the Judge Rottenberg Center open or closing, per se,, though I said it is okay with me if people want to use this thread to organize to try to close it or whatever, My aim here is to enquire into the subject of aba therapy and also try to understand what went wrong with that in this instance and also, as all my threads, to look at ourselves and out own brain function in relationship to how we process these ideas and react or if not react, then try to consciously respond and undetstand what happened at this particular center.

I was going to start writing here two weeks ago, but the same day saw this thread by Verdandi (this kind of synchronicity around thread topics seems to happen a lot with me on WP), and I did want want this thread to appear to be in competition with that thread,, so I waited. If you want to sign the petition (I myself would not sign it, as under very strictly controlled circumstances that are properly audited such as in a hospital or medical center, perhaps, that kind of treatment can be used to help a very limited population that nothing else can help. but I do think that the way it was used at the JRC was very wrong, even criminal. You can go to that thread to see the petition or I am also going to put the link here when I write my next message,, as I want to talk about something that was on that petition that disturbed me and which relates to the topic of this thread. When I saw the petition I wanted to write about it, but, again, did not want to deflect from the topic of Verdandi's thread. So good, Verdandi, because of this post here, more people will probably sign your petition, though I recommend not to sign it, but no big deal what I recommend or who signs it, as the die is probably already cast in regard to what happens with that kind of shock therapy.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp6018450.html#6018450

Edited to add--what I want to write about next is that many people were working at that center for various lengths of time, some of them for quite a while, and knew something was wrong there, and yet did nothing about it. Imo, they were in a confusing situation, to be sure, but this is something to look at, not only about them or even so much about them, even, but to look at ourselves and see if we do the same kind of thing, too, such as if we are in a dysfunctional family or a job situation where there is punishment and reward, as the people who were working there were obviously being rewarded in some way.

Everything anyone needs to know about JRC:

http://jrcabuse.tumblr.com/

I couldn't even finish reading that.

Ah, yeah, sorry. It's full of explicit descriptions of torture and abuse.

I've just finished reading that page and the images that I now have in my mind are horrendous. I don't believe in the shocking of our autistic brothers and sisters just for being the way that they are.

JRC is the most overtly abusive I know of, but lots of other institutions are equally abusive but with nicer exteriors and more effort into hiding the bad stuff.

Just commenting there because a big problem JRC represents is that if it does close down, that doesn't mean the problems it represents are solved.

I know this is a volatile topic which makes it even more difficult to sort out certain issues that are complex, such as for example mentioned in my last message that people who worked there saw all kinds of injustice and did not do that much if even anything about it until after the fact they made a petition or whatever. I don't see how the device not being FDA approved (which of course it should have been and they lied about, which is terrible) has much of anything to do with the wrong use of the device by subjective unaware people. A whole bunch of people, many with good intentions were involved in that.

This has to be included into the sorting out process. This is why I say it all comes back to sorting and grading. Those people could not sort out what was going on their from there own fear, their own feeling of self-importance, their own jobs and careers and whatever else, even their own altruistic motivation which was probably for many mixed in with it all. I suggest to try to look from this angle. WHY could they not do it? Are we that different from them? Well I know in one way at least I am and I used to be a teacher and in one job was fired for standing up to the use of a restraint technique I recognized as inappropriate the first time I ever saw it, and that first time I saw it is the time I protested, and the next day I was fired. I will write more about this later.