Students had been given electric shocks The founder of a controversial educational center where Washington-area schools have sent dozens of special-needs students is facing criminal charges for destroying tapes that showed school officials administering electric shocks to two teenagers — including one from Alexandria.
Matthew Israel, 77, was indicted by a grand jury on charges of destroying evidence and misleading a witness and investigators in connection with an August 2007 incident at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Mass.
Israel’s indictment stems from the night of Aug. 26, 2007, when a prank caller posing as a school supervisor instructed orderlies to punish two male students with electroshock therapy.
As first reported by The Washington Examiner in 2008, the students, including a 16-year-old from Alexandria, were dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and hooked up to electroshock machines.
The student from Alexandria was given two dozen shocks to the skin, and the other was given 77 shocks while he was restrained on a flat surface for three hours.
Rotenberg employees notified authorities of the incident, which was caught on tape by video cameras the center had installed throughout its residential buildings, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.
But the videotapes later disappeared.
Prosecutors say Israel ordered one of his employees to destroy the recording, telling the employee that the video was no longer needed because the investigation had concluded.
“[Israel] attempted to destroy evidence of the events and mislead investigators,” Coakley said.
After reports about Rotenberg surfaced in The Examiner and elsewhere, the D.C. Council passed a law banning any city ward from being sent to a school that used abusive therapy.
At his arraignment Wednesday, Israel entered a sentencing agreement requiring him to resign as director of the Rotenberg Center and terminate all other involvement with the school by June 1. He also was placed on five years’ probation as he awaits trial.
Alexandria’s school system began sending special-needs children to the Rotenberg Center in 2002; meanwhile, the District had been sending students there for more than a decade — at the cost of $227,000 per child annually. School officials did not return phone calls to determine whether they are still sending students to the Rotenberg Center.
