The Shocking Truth

Part II

You don't know. You don't know what it's like to be the parent of a student at the Judge Rotenberg Center. You don't know what it takes to hear all this and still come out in favor of the school, and you don't know because you don't have a kid who pulls out her hair in bloody clumps, who seems to enjoy that, okay, a kid whose scalp resembles that of a frontier settler worked over by a furious native. And then to see her today: happy, smiling, a brunette like any other brunette. And all thanks to JRC. Her life saved by the machine. Saved. And that's just one kid. Just one story. You see, there's another side.

For over 20 years state legislators have authored bills attempting to ban JRC's use of skin shocks. For over 20 years the bills have failed to pass. Attribute it, if you must, to the usual suspects: the lobbyists JRC employs, Brian S. Hickey Associates, among the most powerful on Beacon Hill and to whom JRC paid $120,000 in 2007, more than any other Hickey client. Or to state Representative Jeff Sanchez, Brandon's uncle, who gives JRC an entrenched and influential ally in the chamber. But those aren't the real reasons the bills fail. The real reason is because the parents want them to. Out of desperation the parents find JRC, and then out of a fierce loyalty they defend it.

So it went this year. Senator Joyce, who says reining in the school "would be among the most meaningful things I've ever been involved with," wrote legislation with state Representative John Scibak to limit the Judge Rotenberg Center's use of aversives. The thinking was, if they couldn't beat the school, they could maybe at least inhibit its "torture" (Joyce's word). But at a public hearing in January, 15 parents, one grandmother, and one sister spoke about the school, many of them coming from out of state, all of them pleading with legislators not to inhibit the school's practices. Several others who couldn't do so in person did so in writing. The letters from parents of JRC students stacked 6 inches high.

And so, for the 21st year, despite the news in the confidential report that a another student was shocked at least 28 times at Arthur's behest, leading to first-degree burns, the bill did not make it out of committee. In May, Joyce sneaked his anti-JRC measure into the state budget as an amendment, a last-ditch attempt with uncertain prospects. And advocates for the disabled have no one to blame for JRC's survival but the parents of its students.

Here are some other things you don't know.

Out on Turnpike Street in Canton, there is a rise in the road, and just after that a low-slung building with big bay windows from end to end. The Judge Rotenberg Center is not the dreary place you might imagine but a well-lit, almost antiseptically clean school whose classrooms are painted in bright colors—this one blue, that one red—and outfitted with sofas and big-screen televisions for kids who've behaved properly. In one such room, on a purple couch, is P. J. Biscardi. He is 41 years old, but looks no older than 16, with his tousled hair, thin mustache, and slight frame. You go to JRC and people surround you: No fewer than eight staffers and parents are on this trip surveying the grounds. One of them is P.J.'s father, Peter, a short, auburn-haired man, thick in the waist, who smiles when he sees his son. He walks over. "Have you been a good boy?" Peter asks. P.J. at first is unresponsive, but then whispers his affirmation. It goes like this for a few more moments, before Peter says, "Give me a kiss," and P.J. smacks a big one on his father's cheek.

At age three, P.J. was diagnosed with autism. One summer, while Peter drove the family to Cape Cod, P.J. grabbed his father's hair and pulled it out, blood smearing the upholstery. Peter and his wife, Maureen, had to lock everything in their house in Burlington—drawers, file cabinets, anything that could be opened—so P.J., then maybe all of 10, wouldn't destroy the place. Or kill himself. But it didn't matter: P.J. was violent. P.J. was violent, and P.J. was curious. One year, at a holiday meal with the extended family, P.J. sneaked into the bathroom and sipped Drano. Drano. Maureen had never yelled louder in her life. They rushed him to the hospital, where doctors announced, mercifully, that P.J. had only suffered chemical burns. Another time, P.J. took one of Peter's razor blades to his arms. "Hurt, hurt," he said, when Maureen saw the blood-soaked towel. P.J. was known to ram his body into the walls; you've never see a linebacker hit a wall with such force, Peter says. He tipped out dresser drawers, knocked over shelves of books. P.J. bit himself so much that a giant callus formed on the skin between his thumb and wrist, growing larger every time he drew fresh blood. The Biscardis' other children, an older sister and younger brother, never wanted their friends over. Peter and Maureen both blamed themselves for P.J.'s behaviors. Were it not for that, well, they knew a lot of parents of autistic children who had divorced.

The school district didn't want P.J. The Biscardis couldn't keep him at home. So they tried four treatment centers. At the last place, the drugs temporarily stunted P.J.'s growth. He was 12. Peter wasn't comfortable with the level of medication, especially since the drugs didn't seem to do much to keep the kid calm. The school's doctor told Peter, "If you don't increase the dose, we're not going to keep him here."

The Biscardis heard about Israel's center, then still called the Behavior Research Institute, through a parents' group for autistic children. Israel showed the Biscardis the success he'd had with his Skinnerian positive reinforcement. With the most troublesome kids, each small positive action earned a reward, and each reward became subsequently harder to attain. This is known at Israel's school as "contracts." Israel also told them about the aversives, the muscle pinches and spanks used in the years before the GED.

Three decades later, P.J. is still at JRC. The callus on his hand smoothed over long ago. After P.J. makes a visit home to Woburn, where they now live, the house is in the same shape it was when he arrived. And no locked cabinets.

When the Biscardis first sent their son to JRC, they liked the paper trail the school created: every action and contract recorded, charted, mailed to them by the stack. "You're talking about chopping down some trees to generate this paper," Peter says. None of P.J.'s earlier schools gave this level of detail. The school also catalogs, on disks, stored footage of P.J. from the omniscient cameras. Some former JRC staffers may not like being monitored, but for Maureen and Peter Biscardi no other school is as transparent. They can view every restraint, every shock, whenever they'd like. And they've asked to do that.

P.J. is on the GED, but he seldom acts out. Maureen had reservations about a stranger's shocking her son—still has them. "I hate the thought of my son getting shocked," she says. "It bothers me terribly. But if you asked me whether I would rather him be shocked for a short period of time or beat himself up or bite himself severely or slice himself up with a razor blade, the answer is simple."

She continues, "We want what's best for our son. Not what's best for JRC." They are not above finding another home for P.J. But no home has been better.