An Enquiry Into The Judge Rotenberg Center & ABA Therapy

Post Reply New Topic

littlebee,

If you read the blog I linked to you would find an explanation of how JRC employees are indoctrinated into the JRC "culture" that condones and encourages torturing children.

This is not a complex issue. This is not an ambiguous issue. Nothing you posted has anything to do with what's wrong with JRC. You're equivocating - still! - over how to interpret the institutionalization and torture of disabled children.

No one with a shred of compassion is going to agree with you.

My personal aim is to use this topic as a learning tool for enquiry about autism and human brain function. If people want to discuss this center from other angles that is fine, but I will probably be responding to your replies from my own perspective.

Again, the function of this thread is to understand ourselves better. This is the primary aim, but if people want to do a project such as try to affect what is happening at The Judge Rottenberg Center, it is possible for that to happen in conjunction with understanding ourselves better.

Everything anyone needs to know about JRC:

http://jrcabuse.tumblr.com/

I do think that the existence of places like the JRC--and other places that are just as bad and worse--has an effect even on the lives of autistic people who never have to stay in an institution, or at least never have to stay long-term. The threat of the institution is always there. You always know how precarious your independence and self-determination are. It's there at the back of your mind, just wearing away at you. Your rights aren't guaranteed. Your freedom isn't protected. You're always at risk, and you can never count on protection.

It's like a free black person before slavery was abolished, thinking, are they going to declare me a slave and sell me? It did happen, after all (a Northern free black man told his story of being kidnapped into slavery in "Ten Years a Slave", which I recently read and which is recommended reading for any American history student ever).

Living like that, with the threat always there, can be exhausting. You feel pressured to constantly assert how independent you are. Every time you ask for help, you wonder, is this what's going to make them think that I can't live on my own? And if you have a regression or a depressive episode, or your epilepsy causes brain damage, or you become physically ill--and you can't predict if those things will happen--not only will you be likely to be institutionalized, but once you are, you're going to be at greater risk of mistreatment, neglect, and abuse than neurotypical patients would be. Living on your own becomes a matter of survival, not just preference and ability. People burn out because they can't juggle self-care and work and still stay sane, because they know the alternative is unacceptable. Especially if they're poor--state hospitals, poor-quality care, undereducated and underworked aides. You never know whether you're going to get one of the bad ones. You could get someone who's great and competent and professional, or you could get a sadist. And it's the luck of the draw. You don't even know if you'll be believed if you say you're being mistreated.

Is it any wonder how desperately some of us try to declare ourselves "high-functioning" or "not disabled"? It's survival. And it makes you feel horrible because you know some of your autistic brothers and sisters can't pass as NT if they really need to, and they're even more stuck than you are--they're living the nightmare you dream about every night. Living with that reality, feeling helpless to get them out, means you're affected even when you're not the one who's trapped.