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 dozensof 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.”
