Torture of autistics at the Judge Rothenberg Center

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The topic of this thread is supposed to be on the school and the mistreatment of the students there. However, there can be some leverage I guess in bringing Hitler into this since some are comparing the school's techniques to Hitler's techniques of opression.

Since Hitler is gone, there is no way for sure to diagnose him. But, if what is written about his personal life is accurate, we might come close. The only caution is that Hitler often staged things. So when we see him in the public and in privacy, the photos were often staged for propaganda purposes. Anyway, here are the theories:

*Borderline Personality Disorder---believed by researcher Waite who believed Hitler was in full control of himself.

*Schizophrenia---proposed by many researchers who claim he was delusional and hallucinating during the latter years of his life.

*Psychoses in a Narcissistic Personality---believed by many since he was unable to be confronted with reality. As for the narcissism, many believe he definitely had narcissism---I think most of us have little difficulty in seeing this in him. His use of methamphetamine could also have led to psychotic episodes.

*Asperger's Syndrome---believed by researcher Michael Fitzgerald since Hitler had fixated interests, lack of apparent empathy, one-sided conversations, lack of reprocity, withdrawn and friendless, etc. It is interesting to note that he had a portrait of Henry Ford near his desk, and Ford has been considered by some to have had AS/autism.

The problem with diagnosing Hitler is the fact that he staged so much as to what was seen. His unusual facial gestures and stares were rehearsed under the guidance of a master magician in Germany. As for lacking friends, I think it is safe to say he was somebody that a lot of us might not want to get near. What I see as not fitting Asperger's Syndrome in Hitler is that he did have the ability to influence many people to follow him---his leadership skills were effective. We with AS/autism are typically a bit challenged when it comes to influencing others to follow us. Hitler believed strongly in the supernatural. He believed that he was the reincarnation of a medieval knight. He relied heavily on occultists to guide him. Typically, we with AS/autism are more fact based and dismiss the supernatural (not all, but most). With Hitler's drug use, very probable delusional thoughts, and narcissistic personality, the claim of AS is difficult to make. But it is possible he had AS. But I think if he did have AS, it was accompanied by other conditions.

Ok...back to the topic of the school.

There seem to be quite a few different articles based on this school. Some of them has witness accounts but it's hard to tell which are reliable...

There are some first hand letters on the school's site but naturally they would only show the good ones. I wonder if it would be possible to contact some people who formerly attended the center.

You might do well researching the evidence brought before the court in the various lawsuits that have been filed against the center...

what's truly depressing is that this has been going on for a very long time and it's not exactly news.

According to this article they are advocates of B.F. Skinner.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2006-10-03/ ... -of-shock/

Here's your info...
http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/school-shock <-- An article
http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthread.php?tid=4033 <-- I can't get a direct link to it, but here's another forum that has a pdf link to the official New York State Education Department report on the center.

If anyone wants to know more about abusive practices against the disabled in other "gulag schools," institutions and even public schools, there's more info out there.

I am hesitant to say this since I cannot prove this for reasons that will be obvious. I talked to a woman I know about this and she said it was true. She very briefly worked there as a therapist, though not a shocker, and she said that it was pretty horrible. She had to quit because they kept pressuring her to authorize shocks when they were totally unnecessary and it was so disturbing to see it that she could not take it. She says that shocks might be helpful for the extremely severe of the autistics who engage in severe self injury but only in those cases. However, according to her the shocks were used for very minor things like making a move to get out of their seat in class. I cannot tell you her name because for legal reasons she cannot disclose this stuff and if she were to then she could get in serious legal trouble. She has been very helpful to me and I would never break her trust but she told me I could quote her as long as I didn't say who she was or give any way of her being discovered. I don't want her to get in trouble. If you do not believe me I understand but I am just throwing this out there.

The problem here is summed up well by Glider18. We don't have the complete facts.

What we probably do have is a good deal of our own experience of being badly treated by NT's in whom we first placed our trust. Like teachers and other professionals. What we've got to remember is these are human beings and although NT's are good at giving the impression they know what they are doing most of the time, quite often they don't.

If they are treating Aspies like this then maybe they are not being deliberately cruel , perhaps they just don't know what the hell else to do with us. Remember electric shock is only an abstraction of many negative stimuli. like punch, or a series of calculatedly hurtful words, or aggressive, senseless actions. This is part of their natures and they can't help it until shown how to act differently. They really are stupid in this way.

NT's work by following example. We have to show we can find the blindingly obvious solutions they can't . We have to demonstrate to them how to act differently or they will never get this.

BF Skinner : I studied this guy. If this is all about reinforcement and based on his theory of Behaviorism then here is a case of NT's taking stuff about other human beings way too abstract and literally, which is I guess one dimension of what they accuse us of doing, which is why they treat us they way they do, which is why we respond the way we do, which is why they latch onto a theory which abstracts and they can apply literally.


They have a serious self-reinforcing tautology going on here. Which is a very useful thing to know if you get into a level argument with them. It's also a very useful thing to keep in mind if you are looking for deeper structural weaknesses in shall we say "other things".

Just to let them know.

If you want to understand why they are prone to doing stupid and senseless things like this there is a very famous experiment by Stanley Milgram.

This is Sick.
Somebody should punished all involved.

They should all be locked up, for life. Lock them up, and throw away the key.

'School of Shock' Under Federal Investigation

— By Jen Phillips
| Wed Feb. 24, 2010 10:26 AM PST

More than two years after Mother Jones published a groundbreaking investigation of the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), a private school in Massachusetts that uses electric shocks to discipline its mentally ret*d and autistic students, the federal government is finally looking at the school. The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division says it has opened a "routine investigation" (PDF) of the Rotenberg Center in response to a September 2009 letter signed by 31 disability organizations that contended the school violated Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"The initial response of the Department of Justice was that they didn't believe that they could take action because they didn’t believe they had jurisdiction over privately operated facilities," wrote Nancy Weiss of the National Leadership Consortium on Developmental Disabilities. "I suggested to them that they consider jurisdiction under the ADA on the basis that people with disabilities are being treated in ways that are neither legal nor would be tolerated if applied to people who do not have disabilities." Weiss reported that the DOJ couldn't give her an estimate on how long their investigation would take.

This is far from the first time the Rotenberg Center has come under fire for its controversial punishments, called "aversives" which include food restriction, isolation, and physical restraints. Because some children from District of Columbia attend the residential school, DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee called for an investigation into the center in 2007, and Massachusetts State Senator Brian Joyce has introduced several laws to ban the use of electric shock devices on students. This is not to mention a damning investigation by the New York State Education Department and statements by then-Governor Elliot Spitzer that the school was "wrong" and he would pull New York students if possible. This could be disastrous for the Rotenberg Center as New York state supplies, and funds, many of the school's out-of-state students. More recently, JRC was fined tens of thousands of dollars for allowing 14 unlicensed clinicians to label themselves "psychologists." Although the House Education and Labor Committee recently introduced a bill that would ban the use of restraints on students, and another which would establish an abuse reporting system for residential schools which could potentially apply to the Rotenberg Center, this is the first real federal attention the school has received. And while disability rights groups are celebrating the DOJ's investigation, if the DOJ decides in the JRC's favor, it will be a major setback. Wrote Weiss, "We can only keep our fingers crossed that this is the first step in righting a long history of wrongs."



http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/02/sch ... estigation

Thank you flyingkittycat

I hope something will finally be done about this.

Electric Shock "Therapy" (more like torture) is illegal to use on criminals. But what makes it ok for use on students?