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Judge Rotenberg Educational Center

Name: Judge Rotenberg Educational Center

DBA: Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, Inc

Additional Name(s): Behavior Research Institute (1971-1994)

Status: Open

Founded: 1971

Religious Affiliation(s): Nonsectarian

Owner: Self (Non-profit)

Founder(s): Matthew Israel

Accreditation: N/A

Licensure: Licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services and Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

Address: 250 Turnpike St, Canton, MA 02021

Additional Address: 240 Turnpike St, Canton, MA 02021 (Business offices)

Capacity: 120 (combined)

Genders: Boys and Girls

Age Range: 5-Adult

Facility Type: Day and Residential Treatment Center

Phone Number(s): 781-828-2202

Website: https://www.judgerc.org/

NPI Codes: https://opennpi.com/provider/1699958025

About

The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC, founded in 1971 as the Behavior Research Institute) is an institution in Canton, Massachusetts, United States, housing people with developmental disabilities, emotional disorders, and autistic-like behaviors. The center has been condemned twice for torture by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. The JRC is known for its use of the Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED), a device that administers electric shocks to residents through a remote control. The device was designed by Matthew Israel, the institute’s founder, and is in use at this institution only. The Judge Rotenberg Center’s behavior modification program uses the methods of applied behavior analysis and relies heavily on aversion therapy. Aversives used by the JRC include contingent food programs, long-term restraints, sensory deprivation, and GED shocks. While JRC claims to rely mainly on positive behavior support and contends that aversives are used only as a last resort when positive intervention has failed, multiple state reports have stated that aversives were used for minor infractions, and that no significant positive behavior support programs exist.

What is the GED Device?

The Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED) is an aversive conditioning device that delivers a powerful electric skin shock to punish behaviors considered undesirable. The GED was created by Matthew Israel for use on students at the Judge Rotenberg Center as part of the school’s behavior modification program. Matthew Israel created the GED to replace the older behavior modification methods used, including spankings, pinches, and muscle squeezes. The GED is attached to the student’s body. Using a remote control, staff generate an electric shock to the patient’s skin. GED Shocks may be administered for actions as simple and innocuous as:

Flapping their hands
Standing up
Swearing
Not taking off a coat
Noises or movements that they make because of their disability
Screaming in pain while being shocked
Failing to be neat
Wrapping one’s foot around the leg of a chair
Stopping work for more than ten seconds
Closing one’s eyes for more than five seconds
Minor acts of noncompliance
Using the bathroom without permission
Urinating on oneself after being refused the right to use the bathroom
Attempting to remove the GED

While the school advertises its behavior modification device program as safe, effective, and backed by science, these claims are disputed by independent experts, who have consistently found that the GED may produce serious harms including neuropathy, psychological trauma, and third-degree burns. Matthew Israel has cited Ivar Lovaas’s use of a cattle prod on autistic children as justification for the center’s use of electric skin shocks.

Urgent Need for Regulation and Reform

The Judge Rotenberg Center has a long history in Massachusetts. Attempts to stop the use of the GED at JRC span as far back as 1979. The following timeline outlines key events in JRC’s history and past attempts from activists and residents towards reforms:

In 1971, Matthew Israel founded the center as the Behavior Research Institute (BRI) in Providence, Rhode Island. Initially, it had just two residents, one
autistic and the other schizophrenic.
In 1975, the BRI expanded to include group homes in Massachusetts, and in 1976 it opened another branch in California.
As early as 1979, authorities in New York State had published two reports on the Behavior Research Institute in which signs of physical and mental abuse were documented. One report found that the institute’s methods were only effective through the means of coercion, and that the residents relapsed into their old behavior as soon as the immediate threat of punishment was gone.
In 1983, while corporal punishment was against the law in Massachusetts, the Behavior Institute was granted special permission to use aversives. The institute was welcomed by some state officials due to its near-zero rejection rate.
In 1993, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation said that the school had “repeatedly failed to comply with a number of state regulations” and threatened to take away its certification.
In 1994, the center changed its name to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center “to honor the memory of the judge who helped to preserve the program from extinction at the hands of state licensing officials in the 1980s.”
In 1996, JRC moved from its original location near Providence, Rhode Island to its current facilities in Canton, Massachusetts.
In 2006, it was found that 14 of the school’s 17 psychologists, including the director of psychology, lacked proper licenses. Due to reimbursement requirements, it was found that the JRC had overbilled the state by nearly $800,000. As of 2008, this money had not been returned to the State.
A 2006 report by the New York State Education Department found that the GED device was regularly used when there was no threat of serious physical harm or injury. The report also found that despite the center’s claims, no significant positive behavioral support program existed.
In its 2006, the Massachusetts Department of Education found that unsigned Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) were being utilized for residents at JRC and that the center did not have a written policy indicating that it must obtain consent before revising or changing an IEP.
In 2010, the American human rights organization Disability Rights International filed an appeal with the office of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, stating they believed the residents were being subjected to human rights abuses due to the center’s use of aversives. The then-Special Rapporteur, Manfred Nowak, sent what he described as “an urgent appeal to the U.S. government asking them to investigate.”
As the result of a 2011 ruling by the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, Governor Deval Patrick’s administration imposed regulations that only residents whose treatment plans approved the GED before that time were still permitted to receive it, but new residents enrolled into the JRC were no longer allowed, by law, to receive the GED as part of their plan.
In 2011, Israel was forced to resign from his position as director of the Judge Rotenberg Center as part of a deferred prosecution agreement after being indicted on criminal charges related to the abuse of residents. Six residents have died of preventable causes at the center since it opened in 1971.
In 2013, the Special Rapporteur declared that the use of the GED device violated the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

Notable Incidents

In 2002, a Black student was restrained to a board and shocked 31 times over the course of 7 hours for refusing to remove his coat.
In 2012, surveillance footage of the event was made public. The student can be heard screaming in pain and begging for the shocks to stop. He was hospitalized for over a month and did not return to the JRC, which his mother sued.
In 2007, following a prank call instructing staff members to wake a resident and administer shocks, a resident received 77 shocks in total that night.

Deaths

Danny Aswad was a 14-year-old autistic boy died at the JRC in 1981 while restrained face-down to a bed. The Institute was not authorized to use
restraints on its residents at that time.
Vincent Milletich was a 22-year-old autistic man who died at the BRI in 1985. He had been restrained and forced to wear a white noise emitting sensory deprivation helmet when he died of asphyxiation after suffering an epileptic seizure.
Abigail Gibson was a 29-year-old woman with a seizure disorder, who was detained at the BRI and subject to regular physical aversive by the program.
Linda Cornelison was a 19-year-old non-verbal and intellectually disabled resident of the Center who died in 1990 of complications related to a gastric perforation. Cornelison’s expressions of pain were interpreted as misbehavior by staff, who administered 56 physical aversives over five hours before calling an ambulance. At the time off her death, Cornelison had been a resident of the Center for seven years, and had been subjected to 88,719 aversives.
Silverio Gonzalez was a disabled 16-year-old who died in the Center’s custody in 1998. He was housed there for 11 months before making an attempt to free himself by jumping from a transport bus. He died from head trauma sustained in the fall. His mother, Olga Cepeda, sued the Center after his death

Legislative Goals

Unsilenced believes so-called ‘Aversion Therapy’ has no place in mental health care and should be immediately banned.

We support

MA Bill H225
An Act Regarding the Use of Aversive Therapy which seeks to prohibit the use of procedures which cause physical pain or deny a reasonable human existence to persons with disabilities.

New York S08935
Prohibits the use of aversive conditioning which includes any procedure which causes obvious signs of physical pain.