"School" that administers electric shocks raided

Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts, is a "school" for children and adults with emotional or behavioral problems. Some of the students are either autistic or mentally challenged. The center has long been known as 'Rottenberg', especially since a scandal last August in which 2 students were punished by being given electric shocks, following a hoax phone call by someone posing as a supervisor ordering the punishment. One of the victims of this "treatment" was severely burned by it.

It's hard to believe a "school" was giving electric shocks in this decade, but the Rotenberg Center is not a school but an abusive death camp. It's considered a behavior modification facility. The difference between Rotenberg and other behavior modification programs is that Rotenberg is for special needs students. It charges $220,000 a year per student, a cost picked up by state governments and school districts.

Six students have died under the center's care, resulting in lawsuits and official probes. It forces many students (some as young as 9) to wear backpacks 24/7 containing devices designed to shock them. Painful shocks are administered even for minor transgressions. In a separate story from last August's scandal, one student was hogtied face-down on a restraint device and shocked repeatedly. Another was shocked over 5,000 times in one day.

Massachusetts has tried to shut the center down. It used to be called Behavior Research Institute but was renamed for the late Judge Ernest Rotenberg because it was he who allowed the center to continue abusing students. At the time of the judge's ruling, shocking wasn't used yet, but the center did use other violence such as shoving ammonia under students' noses and pinching their feet.

The state of New York, which sent students to Rottenberg, issued rules that said students from that state could not be shocked for minor infractions. But believe it or not, a group of right-wing activists intervened and got a court order preventing these new guidelines from taking effect. The center also prohibits employees (by making them sign an agreement) from talking about their experiences, even after they don't work there anymore.

But now Massachusetts State Police have raided the Rotenberg Center and seized documents about last August's incident. Although investigators told the "school" to save the videotapes of the shocks, the center disobeyed this order by destroying the tapes. There are also allegations of financial improprieties by the facility.

This place needs to be shut down - and pronto.

(Source: http://www.nospank.net/n-a06c.htm;
http://fornits.com/smf/index.php?topic=25786.0)