Some California Schools Locking Children In Closets

Jun 27, 2008 12:19 am US/Pacific
Anna Werner

(CBS 5) Locking children in closets doesn't sound like something that could possibly happen in California's school system. But CBS 5 Investigates has uncovered evidence that it is a hidden problem, not reported by schools, and unknown to many parents.

A closet in a classroom that brings the memories back for a student we will call Chris.

"The door is closed, it's totally dark. There is a little tiny beam of light that comes under the door, but that's it." Chris told CBS 5 Investigates. When he was asked if he was trapped, he responded, "Pretty much."

Chris was a 6th grader at Mendenhall Middle School in Livermore. Despite his high IQ, behaviors resulting from a diagnosis of ADHD landed him in a special education class. He quickly discovered that anything considered 'misbehavior', like getting up out of your chair or not completing class assignments meant a trip to the closet.

"You really don't understand what it's like until you actually go through it," Chris said.

He says he was put in the "Quiet Room" a lot, and there was no getting out. "They would sit on the door so you couldn't get out and then sometimes they would put a chair up against the door," Chris recalled. "I sat in there for a whole school day one time."

And once, he tried to resist going in and a teacher got physical.

"He twisted my arm up behind my back and then he just pushed me and I hit the wall pretty hard," Chris said. "I felt intimidated kind of, because I mean he is bigger than me and he knows that."

How can that happen? Most parents can't imagine it: Their child shut into a room, sometimes as small as a closet. Under California law, it's only supposed to happen if the child is a danger to themselves or others. But advocates tell CBS 5 Investigates it's happening far more frequently than that.

Leslie Morrison is an investigator with Protection and Advocacy Inc., a non-profit that works with the disabled. "I think it's an enormous problem," she said. "In all of the cases that we investigated, the underlying incident that triggered restraint and seclusion is non-compliance with staff direction. They didn't do what the teacher asked them to do."

For example, there is a fenced area that looks kind of like a dog run at the John F. Kennedy School near Modesto. A U.S. Department of Education investigation found children were left here without access to a toilet, water or food, even some who had medical conditions including diabetes, seizures and asthma.

"Seclusion is very psychologically traumatizing, especially for children. Children fear being locked in a closet," Morrison said.

And it's not just seclusion. Morrison said teachers also sometimes physically restrain children improperly. Such as a 6-year-old who came home with duct tape on his clothing. It was used to literally tie him into a chair at a school in Southern California.

And staff at many schools also engage in so-called "take downs." Morrison said, "The most common one is face down on the floor and then you lean into their back or sides so that they can't breathe."

But Morrison said without proper training, "As the child is struggling to breathe the person is holding them down on the floor to stop the struggling. And what happens is you actually stop them breathing."

Morrison's group is backing SB 1515, legislation by California State Senator Sheila Kuehl that would limit restraints and ban seclusion. But some who work in the field oppose it.

Carroll Schroeder heads the California Alliance of Child and Family Services, a lobbying group for non-profit providers which opposes SB 1515. "If and when the time comes, you need to have at least those two options available to you," Schroeder said. "If those kids don't have that option of that room, either the schools call the police, and the police will pick them up, or they will be suspended from school."

But not according to Frank Marone, a recognized behaviorist with B*E*T*A Behavior Education Training Associates. The group works with students with disabilities. "We have been able to illustrate that restraint is not necessary," he said.

They work with students such as Mario McMillan, who is autistic. "He would start hitting, throwing chairs, throwing his shoes," his mother Rufina McMillan told CBS 5 Investigates. At his former private school in Oakland, Spectrum, documents show teachers physically restrained McMillan on numerous occasions.

"I was very worried," Rufina McMillan said. "Maybe he would stop breathing."

But at the Via school, where Mario goes to school now, and where Marone trains teachers only positive behavior techniques and not to use restraint or seclusion, a big change. "He's calm now, totally calm," his mother said.

Meanwhile, Chris is now home-schooled and doing better. But he said that he can't forget that closet. "Human beings aren't supposed to be treating each other like that, you know," Chris said. "I mean it's just not supposed to happen."

After Chris's family filed a complaint, the Livermore School District shut his special education program down. John F. Kennedy School in Modesto said they have changed their practices as a result of the government investigation. As for Spectrum, they say they use safe and approved techniques to restrain students when there is danger.

Editor's Note: The following are statements from schools reacting to the CBS 5 Investigates report on children being restrained or shut into closets at California schools.

Statement by Chris Holmes
Regional Director, West
Spectrum Center Schools

The emotional and physical well-being of our students and staff are paramount and we do everything humanly possible to safeguard them. Our students have significant, complex needs and our staff is specially trained to respond to students in an appropriate therapeutic manner. For example, we redirect students' behavior by encouraging them to take a short break with a staff member or participate in some other activity that allows them to re-engage the required educational task. At times, the Individual Education Program (IEP) team, including parents and school district representatives, may determine that seclusion is necessary for occasions when a student is in severe crisis and may seriously injure himself or others.

In other cases, staff members employ safe and approved hands-on, non-mechanical techniques to help manage a student who is in danger of causing serious injury to himself or others. In all cases, these actions are taken with the student's safety, dignity and privacy as our most important priorities.

Statement by Jane Johnston
Assistant Superintendent
Stanislaus County Office of Education

We worked with an outside expert consultant to review practices at John F. Kennedy School (JFK). As a result we have increased documentation of responses to student behaviors and training for staff over the last year. While rarely used as a behavioral management strategy, escorting a student to an area where they can calm down rather than physically restraining them is often the best option. It is also often the most dignified and respectful option, as well as the safest for students and staff.

We continue to be very proud of our program which focuses on positive behavioral interventions. Our students (approximately 57 out of the 14,000 special education students in Stanislaus County) are severely handicapped and behaviorally challenged. While their behavior problems have impeded their ability to be successful in their home schools, they make significant progress at JFK.

Ruling: Hicksville improperly removed home instruction

BY JOHN HILDEBRAND john.hildebrand@newsday.com
June 26, 2008
NewsDay.com

A state review officer has ruled that the Hicksville school system acted improperly in canceling home instruction for a developmentally disabled student whose case became a focus of statewide efforts to improve special-education services.

The student, Billy Schafer Jr., 17, made headlines two years ago, after his parents complained of his detention for misbehavior in a 5-by-6-foot "timeout" chamber at a Nassau BOCES center. The teen had been referred to the center by his home district.

A multimillion-dollar legal action filed by the parents against Hicksville and the Board of Cooperative Educational Services is pending in federal district court in Central Islip.

In their lawsuit, William and Janet Schafer accuse Hicksville of cutting off their son's home instruction and therapy in retaliation for their decision to withdraw the teen from the BOCES center. The son has since enrolled in a private school.

The Schafers also petitioned the state for restoration of educational services formerly provided for their son at home.

Following hearings on that petition that extended over nearly two years, a state review officer, Paul Kelly, granted the parents' request on Friday. Kelly ordered Hicksville to provide the son with three hours of weekly home instruction, along with behavioral, speech and physical therapy.

Hicksville's administrative assistant for community services, Catherine Knight, had no comment on the decision when contacted by Newsday.

Kelly's ruling did not deal directly with the retaliation issue. It did find, however, that the district "improperly removed" home services from Billy Schafer's education plan without advance notice to the parents and without their consent. Hicksville has not yet announced whether it plans to appeal.

The Schafers also petitioned the state for restoration of educational services formerly provided for their son at home.

Following hearings on that petition that extended over nearly two years, a state review officer, Paul Kelly, granted the parents' request on Friday. Kelly ordered Hicksville to provide the son with three hours of weekly home instruction, along with behavioral, speech and physical therapy.

Hicksville's administrative assistant for community services, Catherine Knight, had no comment on the decision when contacted by Newsday.

Kelly's ruling did not deal directly with the retaliation issue. It did find, however, that the district "improperly removed" home services from Billy Schafer's education plan without advance notice to the parents and without their consent. Hicksville has not yet announced whether it plans to appeal.

The Schafers also petitioned the state for restoration of educational services formerly provided for their son at home.

Following hearings on that petition that extended over nearly two years, a state review officer, Paul Kelly, granted the parents' request on Friday. Kelly ordered Hicksville to provide the son with three hours of weekly home instruction, along with behavioral, speech and physical therapy.

Hicksville's administrative assistant for community services, Catherine Knight, had no comment on the decision when contacted by Newsday.

Kelly's ruling did not deal directly with the retaliation issue. It did find, however, that the district "improperly removed" home services from Billy Schafer's education plan without advance notice to the parents and without their consent. Hicksville has not yet announced whether it plans to appeal.

Texas town reels from horrific abuse in its midst

By PAUL J. WEBER, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jun 22, 5:44 PM ET

MINEOLA, Texas - In the windowless front rooms of a former day care center in a tiny Texas community, children as young as 5 were fed powerful painkillers they knew as "silly pills" and forced to perform sex shows for a crowd of adults.

Two people have already been convicted in the case. Now a third person with ties to the club, previously known in town only as a swingers group, is set to go on trial Monday not far from Mineola, population 5,100.

"This really shook this town," said Shirley Chadwick, a longtime resident of Mineola. "This was horrible."

Patrick Kelly, 41, is charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child, tampering with physical evidence and engaging in organized criminal activity.

In all, six adults have been charged in connection with the case, including a parent of the three siblings involved.

Jurors this year deliberated less than five minutes before returning guilty verdicts against the first two defendants, who were accused of grooming the kids for sex shows in "kindergarten" classes and passing off Vicodin as "silly pills" to help the children perform.

Jamie Pittman and Shauntel Mayo were sentenced to life in prison. Kelly also faces a life sentence if convicted, and Smith County prosecutors hope for another swift verdict.

Thad Davidson, Kelly's attorney, said his client passed a lie-detector test proving his innocence and worries about getting a fair trial in Tyler, 25 miles southeast of Mineola, which is in Wood County.

"I think it's impossible to get a fair trial within 80 miles of Smith County," Davidson said.

Mineola, about 80 miles east of Dallas, is a close-knit, conservative bean-processing town of with more than 30 churches. Residents there want to put the scandal behind them as quickly as possible.

The one-story building where prosecutors say four children — the three siblings, now ages 12, 10 and 7, and their 10-year-old aunt — were trained to perform in front of an audience of 50 to 100 once a week has been vacant since the landlord ousted the alleged organizers in 2004.

Down a slight hill is a retirement home, and even closer is the office of the local newspaper. Doris Newman, editor of The Mineola Monitor, said rumors of swinger parties spread around town but that no one mentioned children being involved.

Newman, who can see the building from her office window, said she remembers the parking lot filling up with more than a dozen cars at night.

In August 2004, an editorial under the headline "Sex In the City" opined that if the swingers left quietly, "we'll try and forget they've infiltrated our town with their set of moral standards."

"It's not that we're trying to look the other way," Newman said. "But there's a lot more to Mineola than that."

According to a Mineola police report, the department first investigated a complaint in June 2005 in which the siblings' foster mother said one of the girls described dancing toward men and another child saying that "everybody does nasty stuff in there."

In the second trial, Child Protective Services caseworker Kristi Hachtel testified, "I've seen a lot and I never in my wildest dreams imagined this. They were preyed upon in probably one of the most heinous ways possible."

The children are now doing better, the welfare agency said.

"Through counseling and therapy sessions, these children are now finally feeling secure and safe," agency spokeswoman Shari Pulliam wrote in an e-mail.

Permanent custody of the three siblings was given to John and Margie Cantrell. This week, prosecutors in California charged John Cantrell with sexually assaulting a child in the state 18 years ago. Margie Cantrell said her husband is innocent.

Kelly's attorney moved Friday asking to postpone the trial in light of the allegations against Cantrell, a state witness. Texas Child Protective Services said it would be "common" for the agency to investigate.

The Rev. Tim Letsch is opening a church in the yellow-plastered building where the children were abused. He acknowledges that building a congregation might be difficult because of the stigma attached to the property.

"You got to decide whether you're willing to forgive those kind of things," Letsch said. "It's a hard deal. Especially for a spiritual person to walk in and say, 'This happened here.'"

Boy suffocated during school punishment - UPDATE

Coroner's Report
Graeme Hamilton, National Post, With Files From Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, June 20, 2008

MONTREAL - After nine-year-old Gabriel Poirier was discovered lifeless in his classroom last April 17, his parents were told their autistic son had stopped breathing after hiding under a heavy therapeutic blanket.

Now a coroner has revealed that Gabriel's teachers had tightly wrapped him in the buckwheat-stuffed blanket, leaving only the tips of his ears sticking out, as punishment when he became disruptive. They left him unsupervised in a corner for 20 minutes, returning when a timer sounded.

Gabriel was unconscious and blue in the face. He was rushed to hospital, where he died the following night surrounded by his family.

In a report published yesterday, Coroner Catherine Rudel-Tessier concluded the child suffocated. She said the teachers at the special-needs school in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., failed to follow guidelines for the blankets, which are used commonly to calm autistic children.

"He was only 53 pounds, he was so small," Gilles Poirier, the boy's father said at a news conference yesterday. "How can they wrap him up like that in a 40-pound blanket? How can this treatment be tolerated?"

Ms. Rudel-Tessier said proper use of the blanket called for a child to be rolled at most once and for his head to be left uncovered. The blanket was to be used as a relaxation therapy, not as a punishment, and teachers were supposed to keep an eye on children using the blankets.

"A child rolled 'at least four times' in such a heavy blanket is under restraint," the coroner wrote.

Jean-Pierre Menard, a lawyer representing Gabriel's parents, is calling for changes to legislation to control the use of restraints in schools. The parents are also planning to sue the Hautes-Rivieres school board.

The coroner said use of the blankets should be ceased until clear guidelines are established. Basic rules would include ensuring the blanket is not too heavy for the child, never covering the child's head, ensuring that vital signs can always be observed, never rolling the child in the blanket and ensuring the child can get out if he wants to.

Kathleen Provost, executive director of the Autism Society of Canada, said weighted blankets can be calming for autistic children when used under the guidance of an occupational therapist. "They have a therapeutic use and can be relaxing," she said.

Mr. Menard said the parents were surprised to learn Gabriel had been placed in the blanket as a punishment. The school board had initially said it was a natural death and that Gabriel had gone under the blanket on his own.

"The principal said they found Gabriel under the blanket and he wasn't breathing. The parents thought that something had happened while he was sleeping and that was how he died," Mr. Menard said. He said the school board later told the media that Gabriel had hidden under the blanket.

Mr. Poirier said he cannot understand why his child was placed in a restraint. "He was a very gentle boy," he said. "Sometimes he was loud, but he was never aggressive or violent. I just don't understand how this happened," he said, tears streaming down his face.

ghamilton@nationalpost.com

Autistic boy likely suffocated: coroner's report

Brett Bundale , The Gazette
June 19, 2008

A coroner's report released today revealed suffocation as the probable cause of the death of a nine-year-old autistic boy.

The boy's parents described the reports findings as a "shock" because the school told them he had passed away "naturally and calmly."

The boy, Gabriel Poirier, attended a specialized school in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, in the Montérégie region of Quebec.

On April 17, Gabriel began to disturb his class with loud sounds. After being told repeatedly to calm down by a teacher, he was rolled in a weighted blanket. With his arms by his side, he was left on his stomach for over 20 minutes with only his toes exposed.

When the teacher went to check on him, he was "listless and blue in the face," the Coroner's report said. The teacher called 911 but the boy was already in a deep coma and passed away the next day in the Sainte-Justine hospital.

"He was a very gentle boy. Sometimes he was loud, but he was never aggressive or violent," Gilles Poirier, the boy's father, said today.

The parents' lawyer, Jean-Pierre Ménard, said vulnerable children like Gabriel need better protection.

"We're asking Minister Courchesne to implement a legal framework to regulate how these children are handled," Ménard said.

Weighted blankets are custom-made blankets filled with a specific material that gives the blanket added weight. They are considered an effective tool for helping calm down high-energy children, especially autistic children who respond well to sensory therapy.

"They have a therapeutic use and can be relaxing," said Kathleen Provost, executive director of the Autism Society of Canada.

But occupational therapists have developed a set of rules and protocols that must be followed when using a weighted blanket, Provost said.

bbundale@thegazette.canwest.com

Zero Tolerance: The School Woodshed

Published Online: June 9, 2008
Published in Print: June 11, 2008


By Rhonda B. Armistead

A 1st grader is disciplined for “sexual harassment” after smacking a classmate’s bottom on the playground and the police are called in; a high school student is expelled after a butter knife brought to school accidentally falls out of her locker; a 17-year-old is arrested and expelled for shooting a paper clip with a rubber band.


Few policies in education have proven to be as universally ineffective—even counterproductive—as “zero tolerance.” Brought to prominence in 1994 when Congress enacted the Gun-Free Schools Act to address weapons-based school violence and drug problems, zero-tolerance edicts have become the virtual woodshed of school discipline: They are solely punitive, and lack any positive connection to schools’ primary purpose—learning and development.

A zero-tolerance program’s goal is to act as a deterrent and provide swift intervention for misconduct, sending a strong, “one strike and you’re out” message to students. It prescribes non-negotiable punishment (typically, suspension or expulsion) for a specified behavior, regardless of the extent or context of the infraction. Possession of a butter knife and possession of a switchblade, for instance, automatically receive the same punishment, even though common sense indicates a different intention and degree of risk...

Father sues over face-down restraint of autistic boy

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Ocean View School District, teachers named in suit claiming boy's broken nose, emotional wounds.

By ANNIE BURRIS
The Orange County Register

HUNTINGTON BEACH The father of an 8-year-old autistic child has filed suit against the Ocean View School District, two teachers and the city, claiming that a restraint technique used on the boy resulted in emotional and physical damage.

Robert Velasquez alleges negligence, civil rights violations and false imprisonment in the suit, filed in Orange County Superior Court. He also claims the teachers did not have the proper training to use the "prone restraint'' on his son in the Sept. 6 incident.

Former Lake View Elementary School teacher Gina Messig and assistant teacher Mai Vo used a prone restraint to control the boy, a special education student, when he started throwing objects in the classroom and hitting teachers, a school report said.

Velasquez said his child had scratches, bruises and a broken nose after the incident.

District officials said all of the special education teachers are trained adequately for their jobs. They declined to comment on the lawsuit. Messig and Vo could not be reached for comment. City officials said they anticipate being dismissed from the case.

Velasquez said his son has been agitated and had trouble sleeping because of nightmares since the incident.

"He is never going to be my baby like he was," he said. "No child deserves prone restraint."

Prone restraint – which means the person is held face down – is rarely used and is usually the last resort to control a child, experts say.

According to a report by Messig, the boy, then 7, was running in his classroom, trying to escape out the door and attempting to knock over a wheelchair. The boy then grabbed a girl by the hair and pulled her to the ground, Messig wrote.

The teachers tried to calm the boy and eventually dismissed the rest of the children from the classroom to play outside, the report said.

Velasquez said his son continues to go to Lake View but works with a new teacher. He said he has been trying to get his son transferred to the Speech and Language Development Center in Buena Park and is waiting to hear back from the school on whether the switch is approved.

He is asking for least $25,000, according to the suit filed last month. Velasquez also told The Register he would like to see cameras put in special education classes to prevent similar situations.

A bill proposed by state Senator Sheila Kuehl from Los Angeles and Ventura counties that limits physical restraint techniques is set to go before a committee on Wednesday. The bill would require teachers to "avoid the deliberate use of prone restraint techniques whenever possible.''

Contact the writer: aburris@ocregister.com or 714-445-6696

Block Island officials defend room in school basement

10:23 AM EDT on Saturday, June 14, 2008

By Katie MulvaneyJournal Staff Writer

NEW SHOREHAM — Room 20 in the basement of the Block Island School is small and bare. Its concrete floor is painted green, its ceiling sky blue with white clouds, its main window covered with plywood. And, until earlier this week, its knob-less door had double bolts on the outside.

An anonymous letter raising questions about the room and a DVD showing it arrived at The Providence Journal, three television stations, and the attorney general’s office last week. In the brief video, a camera silently pans the room, showing the locks. It also shows pillows and blankets in a jumble on the floor, an open utility outlet, chipped paint and fingerprints smudging the walls. The letter makes no allegations, but raises questions about whether unruly children might have been sent there.

On Tuesday, Davida Irving, principal of the two-story school since last July, acknowledged that there might be such a room, but didn’t know its location. She said she had been told it was developed in consultation with Bradley Hospital as a space for a child “to chill out.” Asked if there were external locks, she went to look, returning perplexed. “I’ve never seen a student locked in there since I’ve been here,” she said.

During the interview, she placed a call to Supt. Leslie A. Ryan, who was off island. Ryan told her not to let a reporter see the room.

When the superintendent, who doubles as special-education director, returned on the 3 p.m. ferry, she said the school lawyer would issue a statement the next day as she stormed to her car.
Calls that evening to all five School Committee members were not returned. Teachers reached for comment said they knew nothing of the room, or were reluctant to talk. One said it was a special-education issue and she didn’t have the authority to discuss it.

Jack Lyle, the school’s previous superintendent, said there was no such room when he led the district from 2004 until Ryan took over in 2006. “That wouldn’t have happened on my watch,” Lyle, now a practicing lawyer, said. “That would go against every fabric of my being.”

An official at Bradley Hospital denied any involvement. “There is not a chance. Nobody would have worked on a room like that,” said Dr. Dale Radka, director of Bradley School who oversees all consultation with school districts. “Bradley doesn’t consult anybody about these kinds of locked facilities.”

It is common, he said, to have focus rooms in which students can quietly calm down, but a locked seclusion room would only be used as a last resort to prevent a very disturbed child from endangering him or herself or others. But, he added, there should be stringent policies and a highly trained staff in place first.

He speculated that more districts would turn to such approaches as budget cutbacks sway them to integrate high-needs children into public schools.

The Journal returned to the Block Island school Wednesday morning, and Ryan again rebuffed attempts to view the room, saying she had to protect students. She handed out a statement that read:

The Block Island School excels in providing support and appropriate education to all of its students. We have never taken punitive action involving locked doors or any other archaic practice. Specifics of behavior plans designed for special-needs students are confidential and, on this island, can prompt immediate identification of the student. We have a team of qualified and caring teachers and therapists who advocate every single day for every single child.”

Ryan refused to answer questions. “I’ve given you a statement and that’s the end.”

She referred the reporter to Vincent Carlone, the island’s chief of police.

In his office looking out on Old Harbor, where the ferries come in, Carlone said that he investigated the room Tuesday after a television reporter asked about it. He concluded there were no safety concerns, adding that the two outside locks had already been removed.

The district created the room, he said, as a way to keep a specific child with violent tendencies on the island, instead of being sent to a residential facility away from family. A difficulty of living on an island is having limited access to services readily available on the mainland, he said.

Asked why a police chief was talking about an education matter, he said school officials were restricted by “confidentiality laws.”

The superintendent told him, he said, that one or two aides always accompanied the child. The room was used “infrequently” and had not been used “recently,” he said. He was unable to be more specific. He said he had heard nothing about any other children being placed in the room.

“I don’t know if they locked that lock,” he said. But, he said, the child enjoys the room.

“No one’s in danger,” the chief said. School officials “go out of their way to help the kids.”

He emphasized that the superintendent told him the room had been set up in consultation with Bradley, an East Providence hospital specializing in children facing emotional, mental and behavioral challenges.

Told that Bradley denied any involvement with the room, the chief said, “They [school officials] wouldn’t lie to me.”

Repeated efforts to get the name of the Bradley contact were denied. School lawyer Denise Myers said, through the chief, that such disclosure would violate a federal law that protects the privacy of personal health information.

After getting clearance from Myers, Carlone took The Journal to see the room. A Journal photographer, however, was barred from taking pictures.

A thin floor mat lay in one corner with a pile of fabric resembling a blanket on top. The plywood on the window is there to prevent a student from striking the glass, Carlone said. The door has a small rectangular window and holes where the locks had been removed.

“If they made a mistake, they made a mistake with the locks,” the chief said. “But they certainly didn’t do it to hurt anyone.”

The wife of a School Committee member reprimanded the reporter, saying it was a private matter.

The state police and a prosecutor from the attorney general’s office visited the school Thursday. They will discuss their evaluation with state education officials, Maj. Steven G. O’Donnell said later.

The investigation is expected to conclude in the next few weeks, according to Michael J. Healey, spokesman for the attorney general.

“It looks like the room was used as some sort of time-out space,” Healey said. “I really doubt we’re talking about anything of a criminal nature.”

After The Journal inquired about regulations involving locked isolation rooms, Marvin Abney, the assistant to the education commissioner for equality and access, called school officials Thursday. He was assured that the locks had been taken off the room, Elliot Krieger, spokesman for the Department of Education, said.

Rhode Island regulations do not allow unobserved time-out rooms or rooms used solely for time-outs. They also do not allow a student to be confined alone in a room without access to school staff.

“Any kid in a locked room would concern the state — period,” Krieger said. “That seems to be a safety problem.”

Yesterday afternoon, the School Committee met in closed session to discuss the issue. Chairman Bill Padien could not be reached for comment.

The individual behind the DVD and the letter sought anonymity yesterday, saying he feared there would be retribution against his family for blowing the whistle on the locked room in the basement.
kmulvane@projo.com

School of Shock

Eight states are sending autistic, mentally retarded, and emotionally troubled kids to a facility that punishes them with painful electric shocks. How many times do you have to zap a child before it's torture?

Jennifer Gonnerman June 13, 2008 Features
The Texas Observer

Rob Santana awoke terrified. He'd had that dream again, the one where silver wires ran under his shirt and into his pants, connecting to electrodes attached to his limbs and torso. Adults armed with surveillance cameras and remote-control activators watched his every move. One press of a button, and there was no telling where the shock would hit—his arm or leg or, worse, his stomach. All Rob knew was that the pain would be intense.

Every time he woke from this dream, it took him a few moments to remember that he was in his own bed, that there weren't electrodes locked to his skin, that he wasn't about to be shocked. It was no mystery where this recurring nightmare came from—not A Clockwork Orange or 1984, but the years he spent confined in America's most controversial "behavior modification" facility.

In 1999, when Rob was 13, his parents sent him to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, located in Canton, Massachusetts, 20 miles outside Boston. The facility, which calls itself a "special needs school," takes in all kinds of troubled kids—severely autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar, emotionally disturbed—and attempts to change their behavior with a complex system of rewards and punishments, including painful electric shocks to the torso and limbs. Of the 234 current residents, about half are wired to receive shocks, including some as young as nine or ten. Nearly 60 percent come from New York, a quarter from Massachusetts, the rest from six other states and Washington, D.C. The Rotenberg Center, which has 900 employees and annual revenues exceeding $56 million, charges $220,000 a year for each student. States and school districts pick up the tab.

The Rotenberg Center is the only facility in the country that disciplines students by shocking them, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers or child molesters or any of the 2.2 million inmates now incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons. Over its 36-year history, six children have died in its care, prompting numerous lawsuits and government investigations. Last year, New York state investigators filed a blistering report that made the place sound like a high school version of Abu Ghraib. Yet the program continues to thrive—in large part because no one except desperate parents, and a few state legislators, seems to care about what happens to the hundreds of kids who pass through its gates.

In Rob Santana's case, he freely admits he was an out-of-control kid with "serious behavioral problems." At birth he was abandoned at the hospital, traces of cocaine, heroin, and alcohol in his body. A middle-class couple adopted him out of foster care when he was 11 months old, but his troubles continued. He started fires; he got kicked out of preschool for opening the back door of a moving school bus; when he was six, he cut himself with a razor. His mother took him to specialists, who diagnosed him with a slew of psychiatric problems: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Rob was at the Rotenberg Center for about three and a half years. From the start, he cursed, hollered, fought with employees. Eventually the staff obtained permission from his mother and a Massachusetts probate court to use electric shock. Rob was forced to wear a backpack containing five two-pound, battery-operated devices, each connected to an electrode attached to his skin. "I felt humiliated," he says. "You have a bunch of wires coming out of your shirt and pants." Rob remained hooked up to the apparatus 24 hours a day. He wore it while jogging on the treadmill and playing basketball, though it wasn't easy to sink a jump shot with a 10-pound backpack on. When he showered, a staff member would remove his electrodes, all except the one on his arm, which he had to hold outside the shower to keep it dry. At night, Rob slept with the backpack next to him, under the gaze of a surveillance camera.

Employees shocked him for aggressive behavior, he says, but also for minor misdeeds, like yelling or cursing. Each shock lasts two seconds. "It hurts like hell," Rob says. (The school's staff claim it is no more painful than a bee sting; when I tried the shock, it felt like a horde of wasps attacking me all at once. Two seconds never felt so long.) On several occasions, Rob was tied facedown to a four-point restraint board and shocked over and over again by a person he couldn't see. The constant threat of being zapped did persuade him to act less aggressively, but at a high cost. "I thought of killing myself a few times," he says.

Rob's mother Jo-Anne deLeon had sent him to the Rotenberg Center at the suggestion of the special-ed committee at his school district in upstate New York, which, she says, told her that the program had everything Rob needed. She believed he would receive regular psychiatric counseling—though the school does not provide this.

As the months passed, Rob's mother became increasingly unhappy. "My whole dispute with them was, 'When is he going to get psychiatric treatment?'" she says. "I think they had to get to the root of his problems—like why was he so angry? Why was he so destructive? I really think they needed to go in his head somehow and figure this out." She didn't think the shocks were helping, and in 2002 she sent a furious fax demanding that Rob's electrodes be removed before she came up for Parents' Day. She says she got a call the next day from the executive director, Matthew Israel, who told her, "You don't want to stick with our treatment plan? Pick him up." (Israel says he doesn't remember this conversation, but adds, "If a parent doesn't want the use of the skin shock and wants psychiatric treatment, this isn't the right program for them.")

Rob's mother is not the only parent angry at the Rotenberg Center. Last year, Evelyn Nicholson sued the facility after her 17-year-old son Antwone was shocked 79 times in 18 months. Nicholson says she decided to take action after Antwone called home and told her, "Mommy, you don't love me anymore because you let them hurt me so bad." Rob and Antwone don't know each other (Rob left the facility before Antwone arrived), but in some ways their stories are similar. Antwone's birth mother was a drug addict; he was burned on an electric hot plate as an infant. Evelyn took him in as a foster child and later adopted him. The lawsuit she filed against the Rotenberg Center set off a chain of events: investigations by multiple government agencies, emotional public hearings, scrutiny by the media. Legislation to restrict or ban the use of electric shocks in such facilities has been introduced in two state legislatures. Yet not much has changed.

Rob has paid little attention to the public debate over his alma mater, though he visits its website occasionally to see which of the kids he knew are still there. After he left the center he moved back in with his parents. At first glance, he seems like any other 21-year-old: baggy Rocawear jeans, black T-shirt, powder-blue Nikes. But when asked to recount his years at the Rotenberg Center, he speaks for nearly two hours in astonishing detail, recalling names and specific events from seven or eight years earlier. When he describes his recurring nightmares, he raises both arms and rubs his forehead with his palms.

Despite spending more than three years at this behavior-modification facility, Rob still has problems controlling his behavior. In 2005, he was arrested for attempted assault and sent to jail. (This year he was arrested again, for drugs and assault.) Being locked up has given him plenty of time to reflect on his childhood, and he has gained a new perspective on the Rotenberg Center. "It's worse than jail," he told me. "That place is the worst place on earth."

One Punishment Fits All

The story of the Rotenberg Center is in many ways a tale of two schools. Slightly more than half the residents are what the school calls "high functioning": kids like Rob and Antwone, who have diagnoses like attention-deficit disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other emotional problems. The other group is even more troubled. Referred to as "low functioning," it includes kids with severe autism and mental retardation; most cannot speak or have very limited verbal abilities. Some have behaviors so extreme they can be life threatening: chomping on their hands and arms, running into walls, nearly blinding themselves by banging their heads on the floor again and again.

The Rotenberg Center has long been known as the school of last resort—a place that will take any kid, no matter how extreme his or her problems are. It doesn't matter if a child has been booted out of 2, 5, 10, or 20 other programs—he or she is still welcome here. For desperate parents, the Rotenberg Center can seem like a godsend. Just ask Louisa Goldberg, the mother of 25-year-old Andrew, who has severe mental retardation. Andrew's last residential school kicked him out after he kept assaulting staff members; the Rotenberg Center was the only place willing to accept him. According to Louisa, Andrew's quality of life has improved dramatically since 2000, when he was hooked up to the shock device, known as the Graduated Electronic Decelerator, or ged.

The Rotenberg Center has a policy of not giving psychiatric drugs to students—no Depakote, Paxil, Risperdal, Ritalin, or Seroquel. It's a policy that appeals to Louisa and many other parents. At Andrew's last school, she says, "he had so many medicines in him he'd take a two-hour nap in the morning, he'd take a two-hour nap in the afternoon. They'd have him in bed at eight o'clock at night. He was sleeping his life away." These days, Louisa says she is no longer afraid when her son comes home to visit. "[For him] to have an electrode on and to receive a ged is to me a much more favorable way of dealing with this," she says. "He's not sending people to the hospital."

Marguerite Famolare brought her son Michael to the Rotenberg Center six years ago, after he attacked her so aggressively she had to call 911 and, in a separate incident, flipped over a kitchen table onto a tutor. Michael, now 19, suffers from mental retardation and severe autism. These days, when he comes home for a visit, Marguerite carries his shock activator in her purse. All she has to do, she says, is show it to him. "He'll automatically comply to whatever my signal command may be, whether it is 'Put on your seatbelt,' or 'Hand me that apple,' or 'Sit appropriately and eat your food,'" she says. "It's made him a human being, a civilized human being."

Massachusetts officials have twice tried to shut the Rotenberg Center down—once in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. Both times parents rallied to its defense, and both times it prevailed in court. (See "Why Can't Massachusetts Shut Matthew Israel Down?" page 44.) The name of the center ensures nobody forgets these victories; it was Judge Ernest Rotenberg, now deceased, who in the mid-'80s ruled that the facility could continue using aversives—painful punishments designed to change behavior—so long as it obtained authorization from the Bristol County Probate and Family Court in each student's case. But even though the facility wasn't using electric shock when this ruling was handed down, the court rarely, if ever, bars the Rotenberg Center from adding shock to a student's treatment plan, according to lawyers and disability advocates who have tried to prevent it from doing so.

Since Evelyn Nicholson filed her lawsuit in 2006, the Rotenberg Center has faced a new wave of criticism and controversy. (See "Nagging? Zap. Swearing? Zap," page 41.) And again, the facility has relied heavily on the testimonials of parents like Louisa Goldberg and Marguerite Famolare to defend itself. Not surprisingly, the most vocal parent-supporters tend to be those with the sickest children, since they are the ones with the fewest options. But at the Rotenberg Center, the same methods of "behavior modification" are applied to all kids, no matter what is causing their behavior problems. And so, while Rob would seem to have little in common with mentally retarded students like Michael and Andrew, they all shared a similar fate once their parents placed them under the care of the same psychologist, a radical behaviorist known as Dr. Israel.

Dr. Israel's Radical Behavior

In 1950, matt israel was a Harvard freshman looking to fill his science requirement. He knew little about B.F. Skinner when he signed up for his course, Human Behavior. Soon, though, Israel became fascinated with Skinner's scientific approach to the study of behavior, and he picked up Walden Two, Skinner's controversial novel about an experimental community based on the principles of behaviorism. The book changed Israel's life. "I decided my mission was to start a utopian community," he says. Israel got a Ph.D. in psychology in 1960 from Harvard, and started two communal houses outside Boston.

One of the people Israel lived with was a three-year-old named Andrea, the daughter of a roommate. The two did not get along. "She was wild and screaming," Israel recalls. "I would retreat to my own room, and she'd be trying to pull away and get into my room, and I'd have to hold the door on one side to keep her from disturbing me." When company would come over, he says, "She would walk around with a toy broom and whack people over the head."

Through experiments with rats and pigeons, Skinner had demonstrated how animals learn from the consequences of their actions. With permission from Andrea's mother, Israel decided to try out Skinner's ideas on the three-year-old. When Andrea was well behaved, Israel took her out for walks. But when she misbehaved, he punished her by snapping his finger against her cheek. His mentor Skinner preached that positive reinforcement was vastly preferable to punishment, but Israel says his methods transformed the girl. "Instead of being an annoyance, she became a charming addition to the house."

Israel's success with Andrea convinced him to start a school. In 1971, he founded the Behavior Research Institute in Rhode Island, a facility that would later move to Massachusetts and become known as the Judge Rotenberg Center. Israel took in children nobody else wanted—severely autistic and mentally retarded kids who did dangerous things to themselves and others. To change their behavior, he developed a large repertoire of punishments: spraying kids in the face with water, shoving ammonia under their noses, pinching the soles of their feet, smacking them with a spatula, forcing them to wear a "white-noise helmet" that assaulted them with static.

In 1977, Israel opened a branch of his program in California's San Fernando Valley, along with Judy Weber, whose son Tobin is severely autistic. Two years later, the Los Angeles Times reported Israel had pinched the feet of Christopher Hirsch, an autistic 12-year-old, at least 24 times in 30 minutes, while the boy screamed and cried. This was a punishment for soiling his pants. ("It might have been true," Israel says. "It's true that pinches were being used as an aversive. The pinch, the spank, the muscle squeeze, water sprays, bad taste—all those procedures were being used.") Israel was in the news again in 1981, when another student, 14-year-old Danny Aswad, died while strapped facedown to his bed. In 1982, the California Department of Social Services compiled a 64-page complaint that read like a catalog of horrors, describing students with bruises, welts, and cuts. It also accused Israel of telling a staff member "to grow his fingernails longer so he could give an effective pinch."

In 1982, the facility settled with state officials and agreed to stop using physical punishments. Now called Tobinworld, and still run by Judy Weber, it is a $10-million-a-year organization operating day schools near Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Rotenberg Center considers itself a "sister school" to Tobinworld, and Israel makes frequent trips to California to visit Weber. The two were married last year.

Despite his setback in California, Israel continued to expand on the East Coast—and to generate controversy. In 1985, Vincent Milletich, an autistic 22-year-old, suffered a seizure and died after he was put in restraints and forced to wear a white-noise helmet. Five years later, 19-year-old Linda Cornelison, who had the mental capacity of a toddler, refused to eat. On the bus to school, she clutched her stomach; someone had to carry her inside, and she spent the day on a couch in a classroom. Linda could not speak, and the staff treated her actions as misbehaviors. Between 3:52 p.m. and 8 p.m., staffers punished her with 13 spatula spankings, 29 finger pinches, 14 muscle squeezes, and 5 forced inhalings of ammonia. It turned out that Linda had a perforated stomach. She died on the operating table at 1:45 a.m.

The local district attorney's office examined the circumstances of Vincent's death but declined to file any charges. In Linda's case, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation investigated and found that while Linda's treatment had "violated the most basic codes and standards of decency and humane treatment," there was insufficient evidence to prove that the use of aversives had caused her death.

The local district attorney's office examined the circumstances of Vincent's death but declined to file any charges. In Linda's case, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation investigated and found that while Linda's treatment had "violated the most basic codes and standards of decency and humane treatment," there was insufficient evidence to prove that the use of aversives had caused her death.

Israel purchased a shock device then on the market known as sibis—Self-Injurious Behavior Inhibiting System—that had been invented by the parents of an autistic girl and delivered a mild shock that lasted .2 second. Between 1988 and 1990, Israel used sibis on 29 students, including one of his most challenging, Brandon, then 12, who would bite off chunks of his tongue, regurgitate entire meals, and pound himself on the head. At times Brandon was required to keep his hands on a paddle; if he removed them, he would get automatic shocks, one per second. One infamous day, Brandon received more than 5,000 shocks. "You have to realize," Israel says. "I thought his life was in the balance. I couldn't find any medical solution. He was vomiting, losing weight. He was down to 52 pounds. I knew it was risky to use the shock in large numbers, but if I persevered that day, I thought maybe it would eventually work. There was nothing else I could think of to do...but by the time it went into the 3,000 or 4,000 range, it became clear it wasn't working."

This day was a turning point in the history of Israel's operation—that's when he decided to ratchet up the pain. The problem, he decided, was that the shock sibis emitted was not strong enough. He says he asked sibis's manufacturer, Human Technologies, to create a more powerful device, but it refused. "So we had to redesign the device ourselves," he says. He envisioned a device that would start with a low current but that could increase the voltage if needed—hence its name, Graduated Electronic Decelerator or ged—but he abandoned this idea early on. "As it turns out, that's really not a wise approach," he says. "It's sort of like operating a car and wearing out the brakes because you never really apply them strongly enough. Instead, we set it at a certain level that was more or less going to be effective for most of our students."

Thirty years earlier, O. Ivar Lovaas, a psychology professor at ucla, had pioneered the use of slaps and screams and electric jolts to try to normalize the behavior of autistic kids. Life magazine featured his work in a nine-page photo essay in 1965 with the headline, "A surprising, shocking treatment helps far-gone mental cripples." Lovaas eventually abandoned these methods, telling cbs in 1993 that shock was "only a temporary suppression" because patients become inured to the pain. "These people are so used to pain that they can adapt to almost any kind of aversive you give them," he said.

Israel encountered this same sort of adaptation in his students, but his solution was markedly different: He decided to increase the pain once again. Today, there are two shock devices in use at the Rotenberg Center: the ged and the ged-4. The devices look similar and both administer a two-second shock, but the ged-4 is nearly three times more powerful—and the pain it inflicts is that much more severe.

The Mickey Mouse Club

Ten years ago, Israel hung up a Mickey Mouse poster in the main hall, and he noticed that it made people smile—so he bought every Mickey Mouse poster he could find. He hung them in the corridors and even papered the walls of what became known as the Mickey Mouse Conference Room. Entering the Rotenberg Center is a bit like stepping into a carnival fun house, I discovered during a two-day visit last autumn. Two brushed-aluminum dogs, each nearly 5 feet tall and sporting a purple neon collar, stand guard outside. Giant silver stars dangle from the lobby ceiling; the walls and chairs in the front offices are turquoise, lime green, and lavender.

Israel, 74, still holds the title of executive director, for which he pays himself nearly $400,000 in salary and benefits. He appears utterly unimposing: short and slender with soft hands, rounded shoulders, curly white hair, paisley tie. Then he sits down beside me and, unprompted, starts talking about shocking children. "The treatment is so powerful it's hard not to use if you have seen how effective it is," he says quietly. "It's brief. It's painful. But there are no side effects. It's two seconds of discomfort." His tone is neither defensive nor apologetic; rather, it's perfectly calm, almost soothing. It's the sort of demeanor a mother might find comforting if she were about to hand over her child.

Before we set off on our tour of the facility, there's something Israel wants me to see: Before & After, a homemade movie featuring six of his most severe cases. Israel has been using some of the same grainy footage for more than two decades, showing it to parents of prospective students as well as visiting reporters. They've already mailed me a copy, but Israel wants to make sure I watch it. An assistant slips the tape into the vcr, Israel presses the remote, and we all stare at the screen:

1977: An 11-year-old girl named Caroline arrives at the school strapped down onto a stretcher, her head encased in a helmet. In the next shot, free from restraints, she crouches down and tries to smash her helmeted head against the floor.

1981: Janine, also 11 years old, shrieks and slams her head against the ground, a table, the door. Bald spots testify to the severity of her troubles; she's yanked out so much hair it's half gone.

Both girls exhibit autistic behaviors, and compared with these scenes, the "After" footage looks almost unbelievable: Janine splashes in a plastic pool, while Caroline grins as she sits in a chair at a beauty salon. "Most people haven't seen these pictures," Israel says, setting down the remote. "They haven't seen children like this, so they cannot imagine. These are children for whom positive-only procedures did not work, drugs did not work. And if it wasn't for this treatment, some of these people would not be alive." The video is extremely persuasive: The girls' self-abuse is so violent and so frightening that it almost makes me want to grab a ged remote and push the button myself. Of course, this is precisely the point.

Considering how compelling the "After" footage is, I am surprised to learn that five of the six children featured in it are still here. "This is Caroline," one of my escorts says an hour or two later as we walk down a corridor. Without an introduction, I would not have known. Caroline, 39, slumps forward in a wheelchair, her fists balled up, head covered by a red helmet. "Blow me a kiss, Caroline," Israel says. She doesn't respond.

A few minutes later, I meet 36-year-old Janine, who appears in much better shape. She's not wearing a helmet and has a full head of black hair. She's also got a backpack on her shoulders and canvas straps hanging from her legs, the telltale sign that electrodes are attached to both calves. For 16 years—nearly half her life—Janine has been hooked up to Israel's shock device. A couple years ago, when the shocks began to lose their effect, the staff switched the devices inside her backpack to the much more painful ged-4.

Rogue Science

In 1994, matthew israel had just 64 students. Today he has 234. This astonishing rate of growth is largely the result of a dramatic change in the types of students he takes in. Until recently, nearly all were "low functioning," autistic and mentally retarded people. But today slightly more than 50 percent are "high functioning," with diagnoses like add, adhd, and bipolar disorder. New York state supplies the majority of these students, many of whom grew up in the poorest parts of New York City. Yet despite this change in his population, Israel's methods have remained essentially the same.

Israel has long faced criticism that he has not published research about his use of electric shocks in peer-reviewed journals, where experts could scrutinize it. To defend his methods, he points to a bibliography of 110 research articles that he's posted on the Rotenberg Center website. This catalog seems impressive at first. Studied more closely, however, it is not nearly so convincing. Three-quarters of the articles were published more than 20 years ago. Eight were written or cowritten by Lovaas, the ucla-affiliated behaviorist. One of America's leading autism experts, Lovaas long ago stopped endorsing painful aversives. And Lovaas' old studies focus primarily on children with autism who engage in extreme self-injury—not on troubled teens who have been diagnosed with adhd or add.

But then, it would be hard for Israel to find contemporary research supporting his program, because the practice of treating self-abusive kids with pain has been largely abandoned. According to Dr. Saul Axelrod, a professor at Temple University and an expert on behavior modification, "the field has moved away from painful stimuli because of public outcry and because we've devised better techniques," including determining the cause of an individual's self-abuse.

Another expert Israel cites several times is Dr. Brian A. Iwata, a consultant on the development of sibis, the device Israel modified to create his ged. Now a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Florida, he's a nationally recognized authority on treating severe self-abuse among children with developmental disabilities. Iwata has visited the Rotenberg Center and describes its approach as dangerously simplistic: "There appears to be a mission of that program to use shock for problem behaviors. It doesn't matter what that behavior is." Iwata has consulted for 25 states and says there is little relationship between what goes on at Israel's program and what goes on at other facilities. "He may have gotten his Ph.D. at Harvard, but he didn't learn what he's doing at Harvard. Whatever he's doing, he decided to do on his own."

Paul Touchette, who also studied with B.F. Skinner, has known Israel since the 1960s when they were both in Cambridge. Like Israel, Touchette went on to treat children with autism who exhibit extreme self-abuse, but he isn't a fan of Israel's approach either. "Punishment doesn't get at the cause," says Touchette, who is on the faculty of the University of California-Irvine School of Medicine. "It just scares the hell out of patients."

Over the decades, Touchette has followed Israel's career and bumped into him at professional conferences. "He's a very smart man, but he's an embarrassment to his profession," Touchette says. "I've never been able to figure out if Matt is a little off-kilter and actually believes all this stuff, or whether he's just a clever businessman."

Big Reward Store

At the rotenberg center, an elaborate system of rewards and punishments governs all interactions. Well-behaved kids can watch TV, go for pizza, play basketball. Students who've earned points for good behavior visit a store stocked with dvd players, cds, cologne, PlayStation 2, Essence magazine, knockoff Prada purses—anything the staff thinks students might want. But even more prized is a visit to the "Big Reward Store," an arcade full of pinball machines, video games, a pool table, and the most popular feature, a row of 42-inch flat-screen TVs hooked up to Xbox 360s.

Students like the "brs" for another reason—it's the only place many can socialize freely. At the Rotenberg Center, students have to earn the right to talk to each other. "We had to wait until we were in brs to communicate with others," says Isabel Cedeño, a 16-year-old who ran away from Rotenberg in 2006 after her boyfriend, a former student, came and got her. "That was the only time you really laughed, had fun, hung around with your friends. Because usually, you can't talk to them. It was basically like we had to have enemies. They didn't want us to be friendly with nobody."

Students live grouped together in homes and apartments scattered in nearby towns and are bused to the facility's headquarters every morning. They spend their days in classrooms, staring at a computer screen, their backs to the teacher. They are supposed to teach themselves, using self-instruction programs that include lessons in math, reading, and typing. Even with breaks for gym and lunch, the days can be incredibly dull. "On paper, it does look like they're being educated, because we have lesson plans," says former teacher Jessica Croteau, who oversaw a classroom of high-functioning teens for six months before leaving in 2006. But "to self-teach is not exciting. Why would the kids want to sit there and read a chapter on their own without any discussion?"

Croteau says teachers have to spend so much time monitoring misbehaviors there's often little time left for teaching. Whenever a student disobeys a rule, a staff member must point it out, using the student's name and just one or two rote phrases like, "Mark, there's no stopping work. Work on your task, please." Each time a student curses or yells, a staffer marks it on the student's recording sheet. Teachers and aides then use the sheet to calculate what level of punishment is required—when to just say "No!" and when to shock.

Employees carry students' shock activators inside plastic cases, which they hook onto their belt loops. These cases are known as "sleds," and each sled has a photo on it to ensure employees don't zap the wrong kid.

Behaviorism would seem to dictate that staff shock students immediately after they break the rules. But if employees learn about a misbehavior after it has occurred—by, say, reviewing surveillance footage—they may still administer punishment. Rob Santana recalls that Mondays were always the most stressful day of the week. He would sit at his desk all day, trying to remember if he had broken any rules over the weekend, waiting to see if he'd be shocked.

Employees are encouraged to use the element of surprise. "Attempt to be as discreet as possible and hold the transmitter out of view of the student," states the employee manual. This way, students cannot do anything to minimize the pain, like flipping over their electrodes or tensing their muscles. "We hear the sound of [a staffer] picking up a sled," says Isabel, the former student. "Then we turn around and see the person jump out of their seat."

Employees shock students for a wide range of behaviors, from violent actions to less serious offenses, like getting out of their seats without permission. In 2006, the New York State Education Department sent a team of investigators, including three psychologists, to the Rotenberg Center, then issued a scathing report. Among its many criticisms was that the staff shocked kids for "nagging, swearing, and failing to maintain a neat appearance." Israel only disputes the latter. As for nagging and swearing? "Sometimes a behavior looks innocuous," he says, "but if it's an antecedent for aggression, it may have to be treated with an aversive."

New York officials disagreed, and in January 2007 issued regulations that would prohibit shocking New York students for minor infractions. But a group of New York parents filed a federal lawsuit to stop the state from enforcing these regulations. They prevailed, winning a temporary restraining order against the state, one that permits the Rotenberg Center staffers to continue using shock. The parents' case is expected to go to trial in 2008.

When they talk about why they use the shock device, Israel and his employees like to use the word "treatment," but it might be more accurate to use words like "convenience" or "control." "The ged—it's two seconds and it's done," says Patricia Rivera, a psychologist who serves as assistant director of clinical services. "Then it's right back to work." By contrast, it can take 8 or 10 employees half an hour or longer to restrain a strong male student: to pin him to the floor, wait for him to stop struggling, then move his body onto a restraint board and tie down each limb. Restraining five or eight kids in a single day—or the same student again and again—can be incredibly time-consuming and sometimes dangerous.

When they talk about why they use the shock device, Israel and his employees like to use the word "treatment," but it might be more accurate to use words like "convenience" or "control." "The ged—it's two seconds and it's done," says Patricia Rivera, a psychologist who serves as assistant director of clinical services. "Then it's right back to work." By contrast, it can take 8 or 10 employees half an hour or longer to restrain a strong male student: to pin him to the floor, wait for him to stop struggling, then move his body onto a restraint board and tie down each limb. Restraining five or eight kids in a single day—or the same student again and again—can be incredibly time-consuming and sometimes dangerous.

"Our Students Have a Tendency to Lie"

Rotenberg staff place the more troubled (or troublesome) residents on 1:1 status, meaning that an aide monitors them everywhere they go. For extremely violent students, the ratio is 2:1. Soon after I arrived, right before I set off on my tour, a small crowd gathered—it seemed that almost the entire hierarchy of the Rotenberg Center was going to follow me around. That's when I realized I'd been put on 5:1. As I began to roam around the school with my escorts, my every move monitored by surveillance cameras, I realized it would be impossible to have a private conversation with any student. The best I could hope for would be a few unscripted moments.

Ten years ago, a reporter visiting Israel's center would have been unable to talk to most students; back then few of them could speak. These days, there are more than 100 high-functioning kids fully capable of voicing their views, and Israel has enlisted a few in his campaign to promote the ged. "If we had only [severely] autistic students, they couldn't talk to you and say, 'Gee, this is really helping me,'" Israel says. "Now for the first time we have students like Katie who can tell you it helped them."

In the world of the Rotenberg Center, Katie Spartichino is a star. She left the facility in the spring of 2006 and now attends community college in Boston. Around noon, a staff member brings her back to the facility to talk to me. We sit at an outdoor picnic table away from the surveillance cameras but there's no privacy: Israel and Karen LaChance, the assistant to the executive director for admissions, sit with us.

Katie, 19, tells me she overdosed on pills at 9, spent her early adolescence in and out of psych wards, was hooked up to the ged at 16, and stayed on the device for two years. "This is a great place," she says. "It took me off all my medicine. I was close to 200 pounds and I'm 160 now." She admits her outlook was less rosy when she first had to wear the electrodes. "I cried," she says. "I kind of felt like I was walking on eggshells; I had to watch everything I said. Sometimes a curse word would just come out of my mouth automatically. So being on the geds and knowing that swearing was a targeted behavior where I would receive a [GED] application, it really got me to think twice before I said something disrespectful or something just plain-out rude."

As Katie speaks, LaChance runs her fingers through Katie's hair again and again. The gesture is so deliberate it draws my attention. I wonder if it's just an expression of affection—or something more, like a reward.

"Do you swear anymore?" I ask.

"Oh, God, all the time," Katie says. She pauses. "Well, I have learned to control it, but I'm not going to lie. When I'm on the phone, curse words come out."

The hair stroking stops. LaChance turns to Katie. "I hope you're not going to tell me you're aggressive."

"Oh, no, that's gone," Katie says. "No, no, no. The worst thing I do sometimes is me and my mom get into little arguments."

For Israel, of course, one drawback of having so many high-functioning students is that he cannot control everything they say. One afternoon, when I walk into a classroom of teenagers, a 15-year-old girl catches my eye, smiles, and holds up a sheet of paper with a message written in pink marker: HELP US. She puts it back down and shuffles it into her stack of papers before anyone else sees. When I move closer, she tells me her name is Raquel, she is from the Bronx, and she wants to go home.

My escorts allow me to interview Raquel while two of them sit nearby. Raquel is not hooked up to the ged, but she has many complaints, including that she has just witnessed one of her housemates get shocked. "She was screaming," Raquel says. "They told her to step up to be searched; she didn't want to step up to be searched, so they gave her one." After 20 minutes, my escorts cut us off. "Raquel, you did a great job—thank you for taking the time," says Patricia Rivera, the psychologist.

Once Raquel is out of earshot, Rivera adds, "Some of the things she said are not true, some of them are. Our students obviously have a tendency to lie about things." She explains that a staff member searches Raquel's housemate every hour because she's the one who recently stabbed an employee with a pencil.

The Rotenberg Center does not have a rule about how old a child must be before he or she can be hooked up to the ged. One of the program's youngest students is a nine-year-old named Rodrigo. When I see him, he is seated outside at a picnic table with his aide. Rodrigo's backpack looks enormous on his tiny frame; canvas straps dangle from both legs.

"He was horrible when he first came in," Rivera says. "It would take five staff to restrain him because he's so wiry." What was he like? "A lot of aggression. A lot of disruptive behavior. Whenever he was asked to do a task that he didn't feel like doing, he would scream, yell, swear. The stuff that would come out of his mouth you wouldn't believe—very sexually inappropriate."

"Rodrigo, come here," one of my escorts says.

Rodrigo walks over, his straps slapping the ground. He wears a white dress shirt and tie—the standard uniform for male students—but because he is so small, maybe 4 feet tall, his tie nearly reaches his thighs. "What's that?" he asks.

"That's a tape recorder," I say. "Do you want to say something?"

"Yeah."

"That's a tape recorder," I say. "Do you want to say something?"

"Yeah."

The Employee-Modification System

To understand how the Rotenberg Center works, it helps to know that it runs not just one behavior-modification program, but two—one for the residents, and one for the staff. Employees have no autonomy. If a staffer believes it's okay to shock a kid who is smashing his head against a wall, but it's not okay to shock someone for getting out of his chair without permission, that could spell trouble. "There's pressure on you to do it," a former teacher told me. "They punish you if you don't."

I met this former teacher at a restaurant, and our meeting stretched on for six hours. At times it felt less like an interview than a confession. "The first time you give someone a ged is the worst one," the teacher said. "You don't want to hurt somebody; you want to help. You're thinking, 'This has got to be okay. This has got to be legal, or they wouldn't be doing this.'" At the Rotenberg Center, it's virtually impossible to discuss such concerns with coworkers because there are cameras everywhere, even in the staff break room. Staff members who want to talk to each other without being overheard may meet up in the parking lot or scribble notes to each other. But it's hard to know whom to trust, since Israel encourages employees to file anonymous reports about their coworkers' lapses.

In addition, staff members are prohibited from having casual conversations with each other. They cannot, for example, say to a coworker, "Hey, did you see the Red Sox game last night?" "We don't want them discussing their social life or the ball games in front of the students or while they're on duty," Israel says. "So we'll sometimes actually have one staffer deliberately start a social conversation with another and we'll see whether the other—as he or she should—will say, 'I don't want to discuss that now.'" Monitors watch these setups on the surveillance cameras and punish staffers who take the bait.

Former employees describe a workplace permeated with fear—fear of being attacked by students and fear of losing their job. There are so many rules—and so many cameras—it's not easy to stay out of trouble. Employees quit or are fired so often that two-thirds of the direct-care employees remain on the job for less than a year.

New employees must sign a confidentiality agreement promising not to talk about the Rotenberg Center—even after they no longer work there. Of the eight ex-employees I interviewed, most did not want to be identified by name for fear of Israel suing them; all were critical of how the ged is used. Maybe, says one, the use of shocks was justified in a few extreme self-injurious cases, but that's all. "Say you had a hospital that was the only hospital in the nation that had chemotherapy, and they were treating people who had the common cold with it," she says. "I think the extreme to which they abuse their power has outweighed what good they do."

The Hard Lessons of Connie Chung

Matthew Israel has been fielding questions from journalists since the 1970s, but few have examined his operation as thoroughly—and critically—as the producers at Eye to Eye with Connie Chung did. In 1993, they spent six months investigating the facility. They even found an employee willing to go inside with a hidden camera. But Israel ended up getting the last laugh. As he recounts the story for me, he can barely contain his glee. "We refused to meet with her unless the parents could be in the same room," he says, grinning. "She talked to the parents, and they really gave it to her." This is no exaggeration: When Chung tried to ask him tough questions, his parent-supporters shouted her down.

Throughout this raucous meeting, Israel had his own camera rolling, too, which turned out to be a brilliant move. Before cbs got its 40-minute story on the air, Israel launched a national campaign to discredit both Chung and her report. He accused her of being "biased" and "hostile," and to prove it, he distributed edited videotapes of her interview to media critics and cbs affiliates. It worked. A New York Times television critic savaged cbs, accusing it of using "shabby tricks of the trade." Suddenly the story was not about whether the school had abused students—but whether cbs had abused the school.

"I don't think it was a positive thing for her career," says Israel, still smiling. It's late in the day, right near the end of my visit, and I'm starting to wonder why he's brought up this topic.

By now I've spent 22 hours with Israel and his staff—wandering around the facility, meeting parents they've brought in for me to interview. But before I depart, there's one more place I want to see, the room where they repair the geds. Israel and Glenda Crookes, an assistant executive director, agree to take me there. It is just past 7 p.m. and drizzling as we climb into Israel's Lexus for a short drive to the maintenance building.

There, Crookes and Israel lead me down a hall, past storerooms filled with red helmets, ged sleds, batteries and their chargers. The room at the end of the hall looks like it could be a repair shop for any sort of electronics equipment: scissors, screwdrivers, industrial-grade glue, a Black & Decker Pivot Driver. On one desk, I spot a form called a ged Trouble Report. The report explains that someone dropped off Duane's shock device because it was "making rattling noises." Crookes explains, "Anytime a screw is loose or anything is wrong with the device, it's automatically sent back here."

A Trouble Report on another desk suggests a more serious problem: "Jamie Z was getting his battery changed, Luigi received a shock." "What does this mean?" I ask. Crookes picks up the paper, reads it, then hands it to Israel and walks away. Her gesture seems to say, I cannot believe we just spent two days with this reporter and now this is the last thing she sees.

Israel stares at the report, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pair of reading glasses. Nobody says anything. Outside, one car after another races by, the tail end of the evening commute.

After a minute or two, Israel says, "Well, I don't understand the whole of it." He is still staring at the paper in his hand. "But there was apparently a spontaneous activation." The ged, in other words, delivered a shock without anyone pressing its remote.

This moment reminds me of something Israel told me earlier about the premise of Skinner's Walden Two, that by changing people's behaviors you can help them have a better life. But, Israel was careful to add, "The notion was that you needed to have the whole environment under control. With a school like this, we have an awful lot. Not the whole environment, but an awful lot."

He was right; he controls nearly every aspect of his facility. But all of his surveillance cameras and microphones and paperwork and protocols had failed to protect Luigi, a mentally retarded resident who had done nothing wrong.

Oregon teacher placed on paid leave after taping student to chair

Wednesday, June 4, 2008 3:49 PM PDT
By The Associated Press

OAKRIDGE, Ore. — A teacher in the Oakridge School District has been placed on paid administrative leave after allegedly taping a student to a chair because he wouldn't sit down.

Superintendent Don Kordosky declined to identify the teacher Tuesday, but confirmed she was removed from her Oakridge Elementary School classroom last week after the mother of a 9-year-old boy reported the May 28 incident.

The boy's mother, Becky Faile, does not have a listed phone number and could not be reached for comment Tuesday night. In interviews with local television stations, she said the teacher taped her son from his knees to his chest after he refused requests to sit down.

Faile said her son's poor behavior was not a strong enough reason for him to be humiliated in front of his peers. Faile said she has contacted a lawyer.

Under Oregon law, "a teacher may use reasonable physical force upon a student when and to the extent the teacher reasonably believes it is necessary to maintain order in the school or classroom."

It's unclear if masking tape is considered reasonable.

On the advice of her Oregon Education Association legal counsel, the Oakridge teacher is not commenting on the incident until district officials have provided her with the results of their investigation, said Dan Fisher, president of the Oakridge Teachers Association.

"It's a shame that the process has worked this way with the media coverage, because it's been almost a guilty until proven innocent thing," he said. "Even if she is totally cleared, she may never get her good name back."

http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/06/04/breaking_news/doc4846bfd72a0ea265914603.txt

Police: Teacher's Aide Attacks Autistic Student

POSTED: 10:11 pm EDT May 30, 2008
UPDATED: 10:28 pm EDT May 30, 2008

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. -- A Coconut Creek teacher's aide is under investigation after an autistic student was attacked with a metal chair at school earlier this month, police said.

The 17-year-old student's mother, Sandy Teich, said her world has been turned upside down after hearing what happened to her son, Michael.

The incident happened at Monarch High School on May 6, police said. According to Teich and police, a teacher's aide threw a chair at the boy during a confrontation in the gym.

Teich said her son's injuries were minor, but the incident has taken an emotional toll. She said she has asked the school board to remove Michael from the school.

Police said they have turned the case over to prosecutors and have recommended the aide be charged with child abuse.