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No more shock therapy for D.C. special
education youth March 5,
2008
By Michael Neibauer
WASHINGTON - The D.C. Council wants
to end the District’s long-term practice of placing youth in special
education facilities that practice shock and other potentially
painful therapies.
Legislation introduced Tuesday
comes in response to the dispatching of dozens of D.C. youth to the
Judge Rotenberg Center, a shock-therapy clinic in Canton, Mass.
The Examiner has written
extensively about abuses at Rotenberg, recently detailing an
incident in which three students were repeatedly shocked in error
after clinic staff fell for a prank. Four D.C. students remain in
the facility today, Attorney General Peter Nickles said Tuesday,
though the District “is moving heaven and earth” to get them out.
Under the bill, the Office of the
State Superintendent of Education would be barred from consigning
students to any school that uses “aversive education techniques,”
including noxious, painful and intrusive stimuli that cause pain,
withholding meals, electric shock, pinches and deep muscle squeezes,
and chemical restraints.
“These are some of the things that
are not prohibited at this time,” said Ward 3 D.C. Councilwoman Mary
Cheh.
Rotenberg is the only school in the
country authorized to use electric shock and other therapy on
mentally ill and disabled patients and children. It charges the
District more than $227,000 per child per year for its services.
Cheh has described Rotenberg’s
practice as “abuse.”
The school is under a criminal
investigation for the episode in which a prankster ordered its staff
to hook up three wards to electric shock machines in the middle of
the night. Two students were shocked at least 77 times.
Rotenberg officials say the
“aversive” therapy is more effective on mentally ill children than
psychotropic drugs. But Council Chairman Vincent Gray argued shock
therapy has no long-term impact on student behavior.
“It’s astounding that in the 21st
Century, in 2008, we still have programs that are using aversive
conditioning, with anyone frankly,” Gray said.
All 13 council members backed the
bill. Gray said he would move quickly to hold hearings and adopt the
legislation into law.
Fast facts
» About 2,200 special-ed students
are placed in out-of-city facilities.
» D.C. spends upward of $200
million a year on the placements.
» Vincent Gray: Bringing students
home “makes extraordinary human sense.”
mneibauer@dcexaminer.com
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