Decades of attempts to stop painful skin shocks to control the behavior of autistic and disabled residents at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) in Canton has been hitting walls for 30 years. Most recently, in Feb of 2024, Massachusetts House Bill H.180 an act regarding the use of aversive “therapy”, that would have made this practice and all institutional abuse illegal, was sent to study by the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons With Disabilities effectively killing the bill. JRC spent $500,000 in lobbying last year which included money paid specifically to lobby against this bill, some of which was paid directly to committee members who made the decision to send the bill to study.

JRC, which stands as the sole facility in the country to use electric skin shock on the developmentally disabled, currently operates under the protection of a thirty-six year old consent decree. That decree was entered, and has remained in place, after State agencies resorted to pretextual and bad faith regulatory practices to disrupt JRC's operations in the 1980s and 1990s allowing the JRC to be run without oversight for 36 years since the Consent Decree was implemented. The State agencies that remain bound by the decree have since moved for its termination without success.

This battle to protect our most vulnerable citizens has been fought for decades by state agencies, politicians and hundreds of advocates spanning across not only the USA but the world. In 2013 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture concluded that the GED violates the UN Convention Against Torture. The Association For Behavior Analyst International (ABAI) stated “we strongly oppose the use of contingent electric skin shock (CESS) under any condition”. Regardless of these statements, over the past few years, many attempts have been hit with roadblocks by our state courts and politicians.

State records obtained by 25 Investigates reveal years of documented abuse. In September 2023 Investigates found Judge Rotenberg Center has had 325 license non-compliances since 2016.

• February 2022: EEC found a staffer physically assaulted a resident “8 different times” during an overnight shift when the resident was “non-compliant and refused to stay in bed and go to sleep.”

• February 2021: EEC found a staffer abused a disabled adult resident by putting pepper and hot sauce on the resident’s hands. The resident flinched in pain when placed in a shower. And an abuse report wasn’t filed with the state for ten days.

• December 2020: EEC said a staffer failed to supervise a child who made a serious suicide attempt.

• February 2020: Video footage showed staff pushing a resident into a washing machine, pulling the resident into a room by the arms. While staff tried to restrain the resident, a male staffer appeared to punch the resident’s head, leaving a bruise.

While the JRC contends that they only use the shock device for dangerous behaviors their own literature states they can predict a dangerous behavior and will shock for things as simple as raising a hand. Examples of the abuse inflicted by their General Electronic Decelerator (GED) skin shock device include.

• After the center received a hoax phone call alleging that two residents had misbehaved earlier that evening, staff woke them from their beds, restrained them, and repeatedly gave them electric shocks. One of the residents received 77 shocks and the other received 29. After the incident, one of the residents had to be treated for burns.

• Andre McCollins, a New York City autistic teenager, was restrained on a four-point board and shocked 31 times over the course of seven hours. The first shock was given after he did not take off his coat when asked and the subsequent thirty shocks were given as punishments for screaming and tensing up while being shocked. In the video, McCollins can be heard shouting "Someone, help me, please!" The JRC staff listed not taking off his coat as a "major disruptive behavior", for which he was administered a GED shock.

In March 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally banned the use of Electric Shock Devices (ESD) in particular contexts, saying the devices provide an “unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury.” The FDA’s ban only extended to the use of ESDs for treating self-injurious or aggressive behavior, still allowing their use for the treatment of smoking addiction, among other purposes.

On July 6, 2021, In a 2-1 decision the Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ban stating the FDA’s ban violated federal law by interfering with the authority of healthcare practitioners to practice medicine, paving the way for the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC) in Canton, Massachusetts, to continue its electric shock therapy.

In December 2022 the FDA was legally granted the right to ban the device in an end of year omnibus bill. As of now they have taken no action.

On September 7, 2023 the Supreme Judicial Court Judge ruled in favor of the JRC in regards to the most recent appeal to the consent decree stating "If the department seeks to get out from under the decree, it must wait for a legislative solution".

And most recently on February 7, 2024, the legislative solution we have been working on, Massachusetts House Bill H.180, was killed by politicians who sat in the hearing and listened to 40 people testify in favor of the bill including many professionals in the field of treatment who have been successful with positive treatment on similar individuals to those at the JRC, survivors of the shock treatment who were told they would be dead without the treatment but are now in positive environments and are flourishing, autistic individuals who have received negative ABA “therapy” , State agency officials, disability organizations etc..

Most horrifically, despite the state agencies battling to ban the practice, DCF began sending kids taken from abusive conditions to this abusive facility in September of 2020. JRC is a non-profit organization paying no taxes to our state. It costs $291,414 per year to keep ONE resident at the JRC, paid for in tax dollars. For the fiscal year 2021 the center got $89 million or 98% of its total public support and revenue from state government agencies. By the fiscal year end, DCFS had spent $2.8 million and government grants totaled $4,651,447.

53 intellectually disabled people are currently being shocked to control their behaviors! Some for over 20 years! We must finally end this barbaric practice!