Short Summary...

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     The Judge Rotenberg Education Center is a residential school and treatment center for developmentally disabled, intellectually disabled, and mentally ill children and adults. Psychologist, Matthew Israel founded the facility in 1971, in Rhode Island. He originally called it the Behavioral Research Institute but changed it to the Judge Rotenberg Education Center (JRC) after Ernest Rotenberg, an Attleboro, Massachusetts probate judge, who in the 1980s and 1990s, continuously sided with the center and paved the way for the use of electric shock on disabled students.

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     In 1976, Israel opened a facility in California, which he had to step down from because he was irresponsible, unlicensed, and he and his staff were abusing disabled people. He worked at and ran schools in Rhode Island and Massachusetts until 2011 when he was forced to resign to avoid being prosecuted for destroying evidence of his staff abusing two teen students. 

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     Currently, the Judge Rotenberg Education Center operates over 50 residences, all in Massachusetts, with the main campus located in Canton. According to the Association for Behavior Analysis International's 2022 report on contingent electric skin shocks, there are approximately 292 students and 52 of them receive shocks as part of their treatment. 

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The school uses outdated behavior modification methods using punishment and rewards, which have proven to be violent, traumatizing, and completely ineffective at curbing self-injurious or aggressive behavior. 

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     The students at the Judge Rotenberg Center have been subjected to pinching, slapping, squeezing, water sprays to the face, peppers on the tongue, smelling ammonia, cold showers, wearing a helmet that blasts static, sensory deprivation, seclusion, restraint (chains, boards, chairs, hoods, mitts, and personal), contingent food programs, humiliation, and even electric shocks. Many of these punishments were ordered by courts to be stopped, because they are extremely cruel, but seclusion, restraints, and electric shocks continue to be used. 

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Disabled students at the Judge Rotenberg Center are denied compassion, respect, and proper medical care. They are stripped of autonomy and their human and civil rights as they live under the constant threat of punishment and abuse. ​

     Many ex-students, disability rights activists, human rights activists, doctors, psychologists, medical professionals, lawmakers, civil rights organizations, government agencies, and the United Nations consider the "therapy" that the Judge Rotenberg Center Administers to be torture. Numerous investigations over the past 50 years have found that a lot of the staff is abusive towards students. Evidence of this well-documented, yet the facility remains open.​