Joyce Applauds FDA Recommendation on Judge Rotenberg Center Skin Shock Ban

BOSTON – Senator Brian A. Joyce is applauding a recommendation of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel that the use of the Graduated Electronic Decelerators (GEDs) to administer painful electric shock devices to disabled children at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) in Canton be stopped, saying that the risks outweigh the benefits of using such a device. The recommendation, made by the FDA’s Neurological Devices Panel, is one of several recommendations on the use of shock treatment in the country that will be made for the FDA administration’s consideration.

“I’m encouraged by the panel’s recommendations and hope that the FDA will help finally end this horrific practice once and for all,” said Joyce. “Intentionally inflicting pain on a child with disabilities in order to control behavior is a barbaric practice that should have no place in our state.”

For well over a decade, Senator Joyce has led the fight to ban the use of painful electronic skin shock devices known as GEDs at the JRC. The latest FDA recommendation comes on the heels of multiple investigations and both civil and criminal complaints against the facility and its operators. In 2010, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into the JRC after receiving a letter of complaint from 31 disability groups. Also in 2010, the United Nation’s Special Rappoteur on Torture deemed what was happening at the JRC “torture” and asked the United States government to intervene. In May 2011, Attorney General Martha Coakley indicted the Executive Director of the JRC, Matthew Israel, on criminal charges resulting from a 2007 incident at the school in which innocent children were seriously harmed. In 2012, the JRC was sued by the mother of a student who was strapped facedown and shocked 31 times by JRC staff for “tensing up” his body.