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As you read this there is at least one treatment facility in the United States that uses electric shock as an aversive therapy. The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC) in Canton, Massachusetts forces some of its students to wear graduated electronic decelerators (GED), essentially electrodes, strapped to their bodies. These devices are powered by remote control. These devices are legal in our country.
The staff are not allowed to use their own discretion but are instructed to use the device whenever a student breaks any rule. There are reports of students at the school being shocked for infractions as small as standing up without permission, crying, and tearing a Styrofoam cup. The CBS Evening News obtained a video of a young man being restrained and shocked for not removing his jacket when he was told to.
The scale and nature of these infractions does not matter. No human being should be subjected to electric shock.
The practices at JRC came to light as a result of lawsuit filed by the young man in the CBS Evening News video. Andre McCollins was permanently injured in 2002 when he was restrained to a board and shocked thirty-one times within seven hours.
The lawsuit wasn’t filed until 2012; ten years later. It takes a profound kind of bravery to stand up and ask for justice when one has suffered at the hands of people who were meant to be caretakers.
There is a tendency in our culture to assume that medicine and the law have evolved to a point that is humane, to frame everything barbaric as having taken place in a removed past that none of us were part of. This assumption is dangerous. It makes looking away from injustice far too easy.
By bringing this lawsuit Mr. McCollins called attention to the ongoing practices at the JRC. This suit made the fact that the use of electric shock in aversion therapy is still legal public knowledge. It is up to us to see that electric shock is banned.
Last month members of ADAPT held a twelve day vigil demanding that the FDA ban the use of electric shock. There are ways that those of us in California can get involved too. If you are moved to help, please call the FDA at 888-463-6332 and demand that they release the regulations that would ban electric skin shocks at the JRC. You can also contact Scott Gottlieb, the Director of the FDA via email at [email protected] or via Twitter @SGottliebFDA
Christian McMahon, Communications Specialist, The Arc of California