The Stop The Shock Protest & Hill Day Coalition 2023 is asking you to sign the petition to have  Massachusetts legislators pass the Bill H.180 to stop Autistic & Disabled Residents at the JRC from being SHOCKED as a form of Behavior Modification

Background information: 

For over 30 years, the Judge Rotenberg Center has used "aversive shock therapy" on thousands of autistic and disabled people to change behaviors as small as not putting their jacket on. This treatment has never been peer-reviewed; it has no foundation in accepted medicine. In 2021, the Applied Behavior Analysis Institute issued a statement condemning its use. https://www.abainternational.org/about-us/policies-and-positions/position-statement-on-the-use-of-cess-2022.aspx

In 1996, the Judge Rotenberg Center was forced to move to Canton, MA after being forced to leave CA and RI for inhumane practices. It is the only facility in the America that is allowed to use “Aversive Shock Behavior Modification”, a type of controversial treatment where If patients do anything that is considered “rule breaking”, including not putting a jacket on, standing up, or any other infraction, they are shocked with a "graduated electronic decelerator"(GED) device that delivers a shock 6x more powerful than a police stun gun. The device used is designed by the Rotenberg Center with no oversight.

Over 6 patients have died at JRC; another suffered permanent brain injury as a result of receiving over 31 shocks while restrained to a table for 7 hours, while he with crying out, “Please stop, please stop”,

This “treatment” has no foundation in accepted medical practice. There are no empirical studies stating that it is effective. To the contrary, there are studies saying that it is damaging, dangerous, inhumane, and amounts to torture. 

We need your help to take this dangerous device away from the Rotenberg Center, a 501(c)(3) center that receives $291,000 taxpayer dollars per patient. Further, Matthew Israel, who designed this device, profits every time one is sold for patient use despite the fact that he was required to step down in 2007 because of a legal investigation. 

Our fight is hard. JRC routinely spends up $150K on lobbyists to keep this money making abuse factory working. There is a bill in the Massachusetts State House that would make it a crime to shock, hit, withhold food or water, or otherwise abuse ANY DISABLED PERSON IN ANY MEDICAL FACILITY. This would effectively ban the GED Shock Device!

We ask all of you to help sign the petition to appeal to legislators to pass the bill. Passing the bill would be the next step in the fight against the GED Devices and Judge Rotenberg Center.