The Shocking Truth

The kids who come to JRC often arrive heavily medicated. This is its own form of torture. Many of their parents write to politicians saying as much.

Joseph Assan's daughter, Amanda, of Queens, New York, was so snowed on psychotropic drugs—all of them prescribed by doctors at her treatment center—that she had to go to detox at 16. Once she returned to school, and was put on new meds, she ballooned to nearly 300 pounds. At JRC she's back to her normal weight and is off medication.

Roger and Barbara Forbes's son David was in a mental hospital before JRC. Upon his discharge, a pharmacist paused when asked to fill the prescription: He thought Roger had altered it. But sure enough, David was supposed to take 900 milligrams of Thorazine—a drug that was once seen as a viable alternative to a lobotomy—per day. The Forbeses say JRC saved David's life.

The letters go on. New York resident Charles Bryant says staffers at his son's previous school woke him up just to take more medication. Today Bryant calls Israel a "guardian angel."

Doris and Robert Hobbs of Northborough agree. Before JRC, their nephew, Marc, took the drugs prescribed to him until they induced a coma in 2004. He didn't wake up for nine days. He's now medication-free.

He's lucky, because drugs can do more harm than that. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is one of the diagnoses for which kids are admitted to the Judge Rotenberg Center. A leading prescription for ADHD, Ritalin, has been linked to 30 childhood deaths this past decade, says the American Heart Association. Another illness for which kids are admitted to JRC is bipolar disorder. A 2007 study funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health showed a fortyfold increase over the last 10 years in diagnoses among young people. But the Food and Drug Administration has approved no antidepressants to treat bipolar disorder in children, and only one antipsychotic. Children are instead given medications approved for adults—"off-label" prescriptions, they're called in the business—the side effects unknown. Well, not entirely. Rebecca Riley, a four-year-old from Hull, died in 2006 from an overdose of the medications prescribed to treat her bipolar disorder. In that same year, Massachusetts had 8,343 kids on off-label bipolar drugs, according to MassHealth.

Medications' side effects have always been apparent to those who send their kids to Israel's school. After Vincent Milletich died in 1985, some parents staged a press conference to counter the uproar. One father, Garrett Lamanna, of Newark, Delaware, thought it ironic that Milletich's death had drawn such attention, and yet every year children die from overmedication and the public barely notices.

Ultimately, you must make a choice. Drug-induced stupor or a two-second skin shock. Medication without end, and often without benefit, or the once-a-week skin shock the typical JRC student receives.

There's a reason Evelyn Nicholson is the only parent suing the school, and it's the same reason the legal guardian of the student shocked 70-some times said in the Disabled Persons Protection Commission report that, before that August night, he had been "totally happy" with JRC and the boy had shown the "most improvement" while there. It's why Eddie Sanchez, brother of Representative Jeff Sanchez, took his son Brandon off the machine at the state hearing in January. Jeff Sanchez let Brandon slap himself in front of all his fellow legislators, the slaps echoing through the room, alarming bystanders and twisting Brandon's neck hard against his right shoulder. It's the same reason why Eddie testified moments later, "If it were not for this program, my son would be dead. And if it weren't for that, I would blow his freakin' brains out. That's what I would do for my son."

This is love. It is so strong that the parents of the Judge Rotenberg
Center would rather shock their children than see them hurt any more, so strong that they would rather kill their own than have them face life without the machine.