Questions for Glenda Crookes and Nathan Blenkush from Judge Rotenberg Center Regarding Electroshock Torture » NeuroClastic

Questions for Glenda Crookes and Nathan Blenkush from Choose Rotenberg Heart Relating to Electroshock Torture » NeuroClastic

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Requires Accountability Relating to the Use of Electroshock Torture at Choose Rotenberg Heart

As organizations all over the world proceed to ponder writing place statements in opposition to the usage of electroshock torture as corporal punishment as used at Choose Rotenberg Heart (JRC), now we have questions for Glenda Crookes, govt director, and Nathan Blenkush, director of scientific providers at JRC.

Content material discover: this text comprises descriptions of abuse and loss of life. Reader discretion suggested.

Choose Rotenberg Heart tries to distance itself from the abuses of the previous, however lots of the identical individuals who beforehand witnessed, carried out analysis on, professionally introduced on, participated in, and defended in court docket the abuses at JRC stay in management roles to today.

We name on Glenda Crookes and Nathan Blenkush to reply the questions beneath.

As Affiliation for Habits Evaluation Worldwide®, the BACB – Habits Analyst Certification Board, The American Speech-Language-Listening to Affiliation, and American Occupational Remedy Affiliation – AOTA think about place statements, we urge them to make sure these questions are answered.

We urge the BACB to implement its ethics code and strip of their credentials any conduct analyst complicit with partaking in and defending shock torture. An ethics code that neglects to forestall torture and that empowers individuals to have interaction in any such abuse in opposition to disabled individuals is willfully negligent.

We urge all individuals in the US to go to https://StopTheShock.In the present day and spend 60 seconds utilizing The Arc of the US’s software to ask your senators to cross the FDA Amendments Act of 2022.

We ask everybody on this planet who cares concerning the rights, security, and dignity of disabled individuals to proceed partaking within the efforts to finish this follow. One efficient option to advocate is to make use of the hashtag #StopTheShock on social media to create posts and have interaction with posts others have created.

This difficulty is essentially about respecting rights. JRC as a matter of coverage strips individuals of their rights, and the first one is the best to be heard.

Whereas it’s stark at JRC— individuals are de-voiced and disempowered by the courts to allow them to legally be tortured— the impression echoes in each single classroom, remedy middle, group house, and day program throughout the nation and broader world.

Disabled individuals and their family members are terrorized by the information that the skilled associations and credentialing our bodies answerable for the care of disabled individuals are unwilling to intervene.

Of their authorized risk in opposition to NeuroClastic, JRC’s lawyer made the declare that JRC has by no means harmed a consumer. This daring assertion displays a terrifying angle in direction of disabled individuals and an conceited and reckless disregard for accountability.

The questions beneath have been written by Jeff Newman, autistic social employee and abuse investigator.

Picture descriptions: beneath are ten sq. photos with black backgrounds and white textual content. You may entry a text-based model of those questions with sources by clicking right here.

Questions for Glenda Crookes, executive director, and Nathan Blenkush, director of clinical services, Judge Rotenberg Center
You've held senior positions at the Judge Rotenberg Center in an era when people were starved in a "food reinforcement" program that forced people to “earn” their calories, and the Judge Rotenberg Center utilized Behavior Rehearsal Lessons. During these lessons, clients would  be ordered to do a behavior that violated their behavior contract. They were shocked for saying no. They were shocked for doing the behavior. Were these strategies effective treatment? If so, why aren't you doing them now? Did you only cease these practices because regulations were stopping you?
If they were not effective treatments, why did you support them for all those years? 
Glenda: You took the executive director position after Matthew Israel was indicted for destroying evidence and misleading a grand jury in a case of abuse against a resident who was shocked 77 times after a prank caller reported two teens misbehaved earlier in the day. JRC staff forced the teens out of bed in the middle of the night, and one was shocked 77 times and the other 29 times. Nathan: You've worked as a clinical director at JRC for 16 years, reporting to Israel until his ouster. Israel accepted a plea agreement that required him to end his relationship with the Judge Rotenberg Center to avoid criminal prosecution. At the same time, the Judge Rotenberg Center board of directors agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement to avoid being charged themselves. You were both employed at JRC in 2007 when this incident occurred and took on new responsibilities when Israel agreed to leave in a plea deal in 2011. Was justice served in these charges and agreements?
Around the same time as the deferred prosecution agreement, the Judge Rotenburg Center offered the most substantial concessions to date on its practices- ending Behavior Rehearsal Lessons, the food reinforcement program, and [allegedly] only shocking for self injury and physical aggression. What role did the board's deferred prosecution agreement have in these concessions? Did JRC attempt to maintain the right to use these procedures?
In your transition from shocking for general behavioral management to [allegedly] only shocking only for self injury and aggression, it seems your regulators objected to how many "precursor" or “antecedent” behaviors were then included in people's plans-- being shocked for standing up, pressurizing the ears, urinary incontinence, or swearing, as examples. Many of the behaviors identified as precursor behaviors are indications of sensory or emotional dysregulation and are attempts to self-soothe. Are shocks only administered during life-threatening circumstances, or are individuals being penalized for attempting to self-soothe? What emotional and sensory regulation strategies are first attempted to help clients regulate their sensory and emotional activation? Was it effective treatment to shock for those types of precursors? Were your regulators wrong?
Matthew Israel publicly presented on the effectiveness of the GED in treating clients with diagnoses like psychosis, epilepsy, motor disinhibition conditions, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Indeed, behavior plans from the Judge Rotenberg Center note punishment for "stating you hear voices." Did you object to this use of the GED? Can you explain why the GED is effective in treating these conditions? If it’s effective, why is the Judge Rotenberg Center not currently using this treatment?
Linda Cornelison was nonspeaking and diagnosed with autism, psychosis, and “unspecified cerebral conditions.” She was on medication for “non-directed [involuntary, unintentional] motor activity.” On Linda’s behavior plan, making noises and “silly laughing” were treated with aversives like spanking, painful pinches, being force-fed hot sauce, vinegar, and other aversive or painful foods. How many times was Linda punished for motor symptoms she could not control? As Linda was dying from gangrene and a perforated gastric ulcer, she was punished physically at least 56 times, plus multiple ammonia applications, in a four hour span. Glenda, you were employed when this happened. What did you do to hold people responsible for the torture of a person who had tried for days to communicate she was ill? What do you do to ensure no one is cruelly tortured for behaviors that result from unintentional motor activity?
The night she died, was Linda Cornelison exercising her “right to effective treatment”?
Israel states that students entering the Judge Rotenburg Center would be weaned off of psychotropic medication to be replaced with aversive and GED electroshock punishment use, and only after these aversives had failed would medication be considered to be reintroduced. Nathan, you have written several research documents on the negative impacts of psychotropic medication. Is Israel’s position your position? Is the GED more effective in supporting mental health than mental health medications? Israel also stated that Behavioral Counseling was only available to people who were meeting their behavioral contracts. Should treatment be considered a reward?
Over decades, the Judge Rotenburg Center presented and argued that the GED was effective in treating a laundry list of diagnoses- Autism, psychosis, intellectual disability, and mental health conditions- and was the most effective response to an expansive list of behaviors. If all those uses are no longer reliable, if you no longer stand by that research and those assertions, why should we view the Judge Rotenberg Center's and Israel's research into use of the GED to treat self injury and aggression any differently than all of these historic practices? Alternatively, if regulators didn’t stop you, would you still be doing all these things that you previously witnessed, performed research on, professionally presented on, and defended in court?
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