‘School of Shock’ Intl. Complaint Filed

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The Judge Rotenberg Center, a private school that uses electric shocks to punish its special needs students, has been on quite the roll since we profiled it in 2007. Just a few months ago, the Department of Justice opened a federal investigation into the school’s unorthodox practices. Now, an international human rights organization has filed an “urgent appeal” with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. The group, Mental Disability Rights International, created a lengthy report called “Torture Not Treatment” that details the school’s use of restraint boards, food deprivation, isolation, and electric shocks to keep its disabled and emotionally troubled students in line. “JRC is the only facility of any kind in the US—and perhaps the world—that uses electricity combined with long-term restraint and other punishments to intentionally cause pain to children with behavioral challenges and calls it treatment,” said report author Laurie Ahern. To read the report in its entirety, click here (PDF).