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Mother Jones
 Why
Can't Massachusetts Shut Matthew Israel Down?
News: Radical behaviorist Matthew
Israel has a one-size-fits-all solution to all variety of troubled
kids: Document their misdeeds and discipline them—using social
isolation, food deprivation, and electric shocks.
August 20, 2007
By Jennifer Gonnerman
In Massachusetts, Matthew Israel's
critics have been trying to put him out of business for more than
two decades. The first major battle took place in 1985—before Israel
even started using shocks—after a 22-year-old student named Vincent
Milletich died while in restraints at one of Israel's homes. The
state Office for Children tried to close down Israel's facility, but
he fought back with a lawsuit and a PR blitz. (For example, much as
he does with journalists today, Israel showed videos of his methods
to pioneering behaviorist B.F. Skinner, who was famously opposed to
the use of painful punishments known as "aversives." Skinner then
issued a statement saying that such extreme patients might require
aversive therapy.) In the end, Judge Ernest Rotenberg, for whom the
facility is now named, decreed that the program could stay open,
though Israel would have to obtain court approval every time he
wanted to use aversive therapy on a student.
In the mid-1990s, Massachusetts
again tried to close down Israel's program—which by then had started
to use electric shocks—and again he prevailed. This time, a judge
declared that the state Department of Mental Retardation had waged a
"war of harassment" against Israel, accused its commissioner of
lying on the witness stand, stripped the agency of its power to
regulate Israel's facility, and ordered the state to pay the $1.5
million in legal fees and other costs that Israel had racked up. The
commissioner was forced to resign, a cautionary tale for any other
state official thinking of taking on Israel.
Meanwhile, a parallel battle over
Israel's use of aversives has been fought in the Massachusetts state
Legislature. Since the late 1980s, a bill to ban their use has been
introduced in every legislative session—and every time it has failed
to become law. Emotional hearings on the pros and cons of aversives
have become a regular ritual. Critics (professors, disability
activists, mental-health experts) testify against the use of
aversive therapy, while parents plead with lawmakers not to pass the
bill, insisting that without aversives their children's self-abusive
behavior will escalate.
In this battle, Israel has the
perfect ally: state Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, whose nephew Brandon has
been in Israel's care since age 12; Brandon, now 27, is one of
Israel's most challenging cases, with a long record of extremely
self-injurious behavior. This is the same Brandon who Israel once
shocked more than 5,000 times, prompting him to make a new device
that could deliver much more pain. Nevertheless, Brandon's parents
credit Israel with saving their son's life, and his uncle has helped
ensure that no bill banning aversives becomes law.
So in a bird-in-hand strategy,
state Senator Brian A. Joyce, whose district includes the Rotenberg
Center, has introduced two new bills that—while not proposing an
outright ban on aversives—would regulate their use much more
strictly. "The harsh reality is we're doing this to innocent
children in Canton, Massachusetts," he says. "If this treatment were
used on terrorist prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, there would be
worldwide outrage."
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