“It’s terrifying that this can happen to people.”īut the school, where the practice has been in place for decades, and some parents of students have defended it, saying it stopped the students from hurting themselves or others when nothing else could. “How would anyone feel if they were being shocked on a daily basis and couldn’t get away from it?” said Sam Crane, the legal director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. The center serves and houses students - both children and adults - who have intellectual disabilities or behavioral, emotional or psychiatric problems.Ĭritics have called the practice dehumanizing and abusive, with the United Nations labeling it “torture” and the F.D.A.
The Food and Drug Administration sought to prohibit the devices in March 2020, saying that delivering shocks to students presents “an unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury.”Īlthough the F.D.A.’s ban was national, the school in Canton, Mass., appears to be the only facility in the United States using the shock devices to correct self-harming or aggressive behavior.
In a 2-to-1 decision, the judges ruled that a federal ban interfered with the ability of doctors working with the school, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, to practice medicine, which is regulated by the state. A Massachusetts school can continue to use electric shock devices to modify behavior by students with intellectual disabilities, a federal court said this month, overturning an attempt by the government to end the controversial practice, which has been described as “torture” by critics but defended by family members.
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