ABC's Nightline airs a program about aversive punishments including shock treatments at the Judge Rotenberg Center, a school for children with behavioral and emotional disabilities in Mass.
The practices were condemned in a report by the Mental Disability Rights Center in a report published in April, Torture not Treatment. Using aversive techniques such as restraint, skin shocks, solitary confinement, food deprivation on children, and people with disabilities, has been soundly criticized by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak.
The Judge Rotenberg Center responded with a 150-page report asserting their techniques save children from warehousing and psychotropic medications.
This document will also explain why aversives are a scientifically proven form of treatment and not a form of torture, and why persons with developmental and psychiatric challenges have a right to have the option to choose aversive therapy to cure or ameliorate their behavior problems.
In 2007 Mother Jones called the Judge Rotenberg Center "School of Shock"
