Life as an Extreme Sport

Shock therapy hurts kids at school

Oiy. Where to even start?


A state report on a Massachusetts school for the disabled said electric shocks were administered to students – sometimes as they bathed – for offenses as minor as nagging, swearing and sloppy appearance.

“Various injuries to students have been reported” at the Judge Rotenberg Center, according to the report released Wednesday by the New York Education Department.

The school in Canton, Massachusetts, receives $50 million a year from New York state to care for and educate about 150 youths because there is no space available in New York for the intensive treatment.

The Rotenberg Center provides an intensive, 24-hour program that begins with a typical school setting, but about half the residents require the “aversive therapy” of electric shock, according to Rotenberg staff. The center describes the one- to two-second shocks as similar to a bee sting.

For years, the state has contracted with the facility, where autistic and other disabled students wear backpack-like devices that shock them when they misbehave.

Even the folks at AJOB appear relatively speechless.