Torture of autistics at the Judge Rothenberg Center

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Amnesty International needs to know about this. I think the Human Rights Campaign as well. I think this outrages me more than Wal-Mart, BP, the GOP, Enron, AIG, and MTV combined.

Unfortunately, a bunch of the human rights organizations have been contacted about this, but few have shown interest. Also, according to a friend of mine whose mother worked in AI, the American chapter can't do anything about the JRC, because AI is set up in such a way where people cannot work on human rights issues within their own countries.

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For what it's worth, I went to an event at my law school the other day to a discussion with the governor (I live in MA, where the JRC is based), and brought up the subject. He says he agrees that the practices they use there are inhumane, but I didn't get a sense of how far he would push to have the place shut down given the opportunity.

This is a horrible "school" where they torture juveniles on the autistic spectrum as well as sometimes people with other issues such as ADHD, bipolar, PTSD and Asperger's. They give very painful electric shocks for even the most minor offenses like swearing and sometimes they play awful mind games like ordering a person to disobey the rules and then shocking hir if si doesn't do it and shocking hir more if si doesn't do it. Originally they beat the patients with spatulas, pinched their feet and made them inhale ammonia. They stopped that when they realized that the patients got used to it over time. The patients now spend all their time hooked up to a sort of backpack with electrodes on their skin so they can be shocked. The school claims that this is the only way to help the severely autistic. Even if that were true, which I highly doubt, most of the juveniles there are on the higher functioning end. The courts have repeatedly ruled in their favor after attempts at shutting them down, though they have now been found abusive and given a slap on the wrist. Basically they said "Okay, you can still torture kids, but try not to kill any this time." That's right, people have died here. In fact, when one reporter visited the school she interviewed a very obviously coached girl in the presence of many supervisors. A little girl quickly held up a paper that said "help us." She did this at considerable risk since she was probably caught by the security camera and in blatant violation of logic they will shock students if they find out they misbehaved via camera. I am not making this up. This is something right out of the 19th century. Something really needs to be done. I'm just not sure what. :-/