WEBVTT - Part Two: The Judge Rotenberg Center 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:07.520 Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:12.560 talk about real bleak shit and boy howdye? My guest 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:16.880 today Aidan Bonacci Aiden. Did I get it right this time? Yes? 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:21.280 You did? And thanks for having me question Mark? Yeah, 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:23.840 how are you? How are you enjoying learning about the 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:28.640 Judge Rodenberg Center. I am not surprised, but I'm also 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:32.480 very depressed. Yeah. Well, it's about to get a lot worse. 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:40.199 Uh actually significantly worst, vastly worse. Fun. How do you 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:50.080 feel about electrocuting children? Yeah, that's the right response. Um, 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:55.280 can we stop with the electricity once? Please? Got no? No, no, 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:58.920 it's uh yeah. We actually should start this episode by 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:00.720 talking a bit more about the parents who have made 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:03.560 Matt Israel's career possible. It should be clear by everything 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:05.399 I've said so far that I think they're wrong and 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:08.679 in some cases profoundly abusive. But people who are wrong 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:11.560 can have compelling reasons for being wrong that are not 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:15.720 easily dismissed. George Nazareth, former head of the Rhode Island 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:17.840 Human Rights Committee and the first person to take a 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:20.040 serious deep look at the fund up workings of b 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:22.759 R I probably put it best when he was asked 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.600 by a reporter from the Boston Phoenix why so many 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:29.560 parents would sign off on approval to have their children abused. Quote, 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.280 desperate parents will sign anything. You become desperate about a 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:36.480 lot of things. Some of the parents at b r 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:38.960 I are now saying they want the program to continue. 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:41.360 They think the state will send their children back home. 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:43.960 Some parents would blow their brains out if the states 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:47.360 sent their children back home. They've been through the mill. Yeah, 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:52.880 I mean, there's it's they have the reasons. But at 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:57.000 the same time, it's like, just because it may seem 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.920 like the right thing doesn't mean this. It's certainly not 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:01.920 and I'm not trying to say And part of what 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:05.360 I'm getting at here is that a lot of these 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.960 parents why they like the b r I isn't that 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:12.120 it's helping their kids. It's that it's keeping their kids away. 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:15.280 And the Judge rd Bricks Center is taking kids from 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:18.799 multiple states. They're taking the most severe kids. And it's 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.320 not right that a lot of parents are willing to 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:24.960 accept this school because it keeps their kids away. But 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:28.280 that's the that's that's where they are and there it 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:30.560 is not a thing of like they're not it's not 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:32.880 that I don't think they see themselves as being cruel. 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:35.720 I think they're unthinkably desperate in a lot of cases, 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:38.360 and they're not. There aren't a lot of options for them, 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.799 and that's that doesn't defend this because again I'm we're 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:44.680 spending ten thousand words and two hours talking about how 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:48.320 bad this place is. Oh yeah, it's excuseable, but yeah, 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:55.320 but it's not unexcusable. Yeah it's not. Okay, it's not acceptable, 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:58.560 but it is the result of a desperation more supreme 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:03.040 than I think most people can asp um especially, and 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:05.240 this becomes less the case because now I think the 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.840 parents who were defending it have options. It's fucking nineteen 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:13.600 eighty five. Like autism as a diagnosis is five years old. 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:16.560 What options do you have? Not that this was the 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.000 right one, but there's just not a lot of good ones, 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:25.400 and there's yea or even any of them besides this one. Yeah, 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:28.679 and it's you know, even even if there were in 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:30.800 in you know, there are in some cases other options 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:32.400 for parents. And I don't want to also make it 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:34.680 like look like it was more. But also the amount 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:37.760 of education the parents might have about what's available is minimal, 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.720 Like it's just you have to again really want to 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:44.960 emphasize that we're not we're not trying to whitewash either 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:47.400 the parents or what's happening at this facility, but like 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:52.160 it's a desperate situation. Um, And that's that That's part 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:54.400 of what I think condemns Matt Israel more because he 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:57.280 is taking advantage of this desperate situation to test his 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:02.720 weird you like, human avioral modification theories. He's taking advantage 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:06.440 of this horrible, horrible situation. Yeah, like what you mentioned 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:10.080 in the last part, he sees them more as features 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.600 than as actual children, and this is just something to 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.479 show off. Yeah, something how good he is it plugging 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:20.160 in new stimuli to alter their behavior, and it doesn't 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:22.560 matter to him. I think that this is that he's 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:25.320 just torturing these kids and to stopping behavior. He's not 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.520 changing anything. He's not he's not helping them. He's temporarily 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:32.440 stopping them from doing something via violence. I don't think 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:34.840 he cares because the behavior has stopped, and he has 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:37.520 no problem continuing the violence forever. In fact, he gets 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:41.800 he gets paid if he gets to continue the violence forever. Yeah, Um, 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:46.520 it's real bleak. Oh yeah, So George Nazareth, the guy 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:48.840 who gave that quote about some parents would blow their 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:50.719 brains out if they sent their children back home. They've 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:53.120 been through hell. Nazareth is number one. He's the guy 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:55.240 who carries out the first big investigation of b r 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:58.880 I and condemns it unequivocally. He's also the parent himself 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:01.479 of a mentally disabled daughter. I don't know how to 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:03.680 be more specific about her condition than that, because in 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:07.080 the nineteen article where I found this, she's just referred 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:10.839 to as retarded. The fact that a thoughtful, compassionate and 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:13.680 very ethical man like George Nazareth would use that term 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.400 for his own daughter is a sign of how primitive 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:20.000 the things were in that period in terms of science um. 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:22.840 Because this was not considered an offensive term. There are 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.960 advocacy agencies called like the Organization for Retarded Persons and 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.080 what UM that use that word. And I bring this 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:33.560 up because the primitiveness of the terminology and use suggests 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:36.239 how primitive the other methods of treatment were as well. 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.200 While the Judge Rodenberg Center was marked out by experts 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:41.880 at the time for its brutality, the gold standard of 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:44.720 care during that period also involved a lot of unnecessary 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:47.520 force and medication, which is a kind of force. Why 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:49.719 these parents say they're worried their kids would get stuck 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:52.120 in an institution and drug to unconsciousness. That is not 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:54.600 a lie or an unreasonable fear. A lot of these 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:57.920 people are an impossible situations. Matt Israel promised he could 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:00.560 help their kids, and in many cases he at least 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:02.680 seems to have delivered. And one of the things that 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.720 he does that makes this such a that makes them 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:07.960 so good at getting these people to believe in him, 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.359 is these are beautiful facilities. These are not dank and 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:14.760 frightening looking places. They're not run down. They're colorful, they're 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:18.200 filled with toys and statues of creatures, and like they're 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:21.719 he makes them look extremely friendly and comfortable. So if 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:23.600 you're a parent taking your kid in, this place looks 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:26.000 like a wonderful place for your kid to live and 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:28.640 and and and be treated. And he can say like, hey, 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.400 your kid's been biting or tearing open his skin, and 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:33.480 that stops after a couple of weeks, and maybe you 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:35.919 don't notice why it's stopping and what he's doing to 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.760 stop it. You know. Um, it's also a lot of 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:43.120 the parents who defend him aren't entirely aware of what's 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:44.960 going on at the school, and you can blame them 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.480 some degree for not availing themselves of the information that's 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:51.039 out because there are reports on this place. But that 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:56.839 is the situation, um so by n Matt is Reel School, 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:59.360 which is still called the Behavioral Research Institute at this 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.880 point where seeved eighty seven thousand dollars per student per year, 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.240 and a lot of that wound up in Israel's pocket. 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:07.720 His compensation topped out I think around two thousand at 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:11.000 three hundred thousand dollars a year UM so he's making 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:15.040 a very comfortable income, but at the same time he 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:17.200 is putting most of the money into this facility. These 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:20.560 are expensive facilities to run there in many cases multiple 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:25.280 full time employees per student um. That Boston Phoenix article, 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:27.600 which was a major source for episode one, was written 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:30.000 during the massive series of legal battles between the State 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:33.320 of Massachusetts and b r I. Thanks to Judge Rodenberg, 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.520 those struggles eventually went Israel's way, but at the time 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:38.720 the article was written, he did not know that. And 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:42.880 the piece ends on this ominous line quote, if Massachusetts 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:45.320 shut down b r I. Israel says he may open 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:48.520 group homes in Rhode Island. Israel thinks the current crackdown 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.200 may lead to greater understanding of his philosophy and allow 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:54.640 him a greater array of behavioral modification tools. I've never 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:57.720 used electric shock, he says in his calm soft voice. 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:00.640 I wouldn't rule it out, particularly if were deprived of 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:03.560 other procedures. It's more effective and you wouldn't bruise or 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:10.440 cut the skin. Oh fuck, yeah, that's real bad's And 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:12.400 I kind of flipped out a little when I read 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.400 that in this nineteen article. UM. And I should note 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:18.280 here the only reason I have access to that article 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:20.760 because that's a thirty six year old article. He was 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:24.360 originally published in a physical newspaper. I was able to 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:27.800 read it because several copies have been archived by different 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:32.480 disability justice advocates. Autistic civil rights advocates have a very 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:37.840 particular interest in documenting that Israel's early career and his crimes. Also, yeah, 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:39.640 they're doing this because they think he's basically a war 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:42.360 criminal U, which by the way, the U n agrees 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:46.400 with UM. And they're they're trying to make sure, like 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:51.400 I'm assuming an autistic civil rights advocate who was like, 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.200 came across an old copy of that read that into 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:56.200 piece where he starts talking about how he's looking into 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:58.840 electric shock, and was like, well, this needs to be preserved, 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:01.720 like at some point there's going to be a reconciliation 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.800 commissioner or whatever, and we need to document this ship. 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:07.920 When we left off in the late nineteen eighties, b 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:10.520 r I was still b r I, but Judge Rotenberg 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:12.760 had just saved it, or, to be more accurate, the 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:16.760 judge had saved its ability to use physical punishments on students. 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:21.439 In nineteen nine and other student, Linda Cornellison died. Yeah, 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:23.480 it's it's a weird c O R N E l 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:25.920 I S O N. I've never seen that last name before, 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:29.600 but I think Linda Cornellison um in nineteen nineties she 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:33.880 died and she was a non verbal student at the facilities. Mean, 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.280 she's she's not really able to use language to communicate, 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:38.760 and one day she started grabbing her stomach while she 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:40.679 was on the bus to school. And a lot of 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:42.280 these kids, they'll go to a school and then they'll 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:44.560 go home to a residential facility that b r I 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:48.480 runs when she arrived at the at the at her school, 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.280 a nurse decided that she was just acting to try 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:53.840 to get attention or something and sent her back to class. 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:56.120 After school, she was sent back to a b r 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:59.240 I run residential home where she lived. Staff were angry 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:01.760 at her bad bay behavior. They believe this nurse basically like, oh, 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:04.480 she's she's playing around by pretending to have stomach pain, 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:08.320 So they gave her thirteen spatulus bankings, twenty nine finger pinches, 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:12.000 fourteen muscle squeezes, and forced her to inhale ammonia five times. 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:17.280 She died in the hospital the next day. Um, yeah, 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:22.160 and again her The cause of death was gastric perforation, 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:24.480 which I don't think was caused by any of the 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:26.800 adversives that were done at the school, but the fact 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:29.280 that she was not taken to the hospital earlier, her 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:32.880 pain was not treated seriously. That's certainly their fault. And 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:37.959 also sup, yeah, very very bad, Like I would feel 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:40.280 comfortable saying they killed her, even though maybe they didn't 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:43.160 cause the thing that I would say the ammonia was 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:49.360 just like yeah, And Linda's mom and says she never 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:52.760 her daughter never had gastro intestinal problems before. Um, it's 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:55.160 maybe it might even be possible that like the stress 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:57.480 from all the adversives had helped cause the gas. I'm 0:10:57.480 --> 0:10:59.680 not a doctor. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna speculate 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:02.040 further other than to say that by not taking this 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:04.960 problem seriously when she started to complain. And this is 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:09.120 again part of like the biggotry, I guess you would say. 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:10.880 I think, yeah, biggotry is a fair thing to say. 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:14.240 Because she's not verbal, they assume she's not capable of 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:19.600 expressing a serious concern about health problem. Right, she has 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:21.679 to be just like fooling around trying to trick you. 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:25.439 Um and um that's that is a kind of biggotree 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:26.800 and it led. It's a bigger tree that led to 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:30.959 this girl's death. Um so Um. The state found after 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:33.880 the autopsy and whatnot, that that while b r I 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:37.480 had not caused her death, uh, that it had quote 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:40.640 violated the most basic codes and standards of decency and 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:43.760 how it treated her. Um. And while so, while there 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:46.520 were no charges on Matt Israel or the facility as 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:48.960 a result of Linda's death, it did have an impact 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:51.439 on him. He decided that there were too many different 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:53.839 kinds of physical punishment at his school, and the nature 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:56.440 and impact of those punishments varied too much from teacher 0:11:56.480 --> 0:11:59.040 to teacher. In other words, he was concerned that one 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.000 employee's pinch could be a mild pinch and another could 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:05.960 cause a bleeding wound. He wanted more uniform physical aversives, 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:08.360 and he decided that electric shocks were the best way 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:11.480 to do this. The machine he picked was called the 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:15.240 Self Injurious Behavior Inhibiting System. It was made of an 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:17.960 electrode and a radio transmitter, which were attached to the 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.320 arm or leg via velcrow. The shock was described as 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.480 like being like struck by a rubber band, you know, 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:26.000 somebody pulls back a rubber band, Like not serious, not 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.680 a real, like a very mild shock, and it lasted 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:32.680 about a fifth of a second. One nine to ninety 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:35.520 paper on the s I B. S Civice system said 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:39.160 the shock caused quote almost complete elimination of self harming behavior. 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:42.840 We can debate whether or not this kind of treatment 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:45.400 is ever ethical, but it is important to note and 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:48.240 whether it's ethical is again a separate question from whether 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:49.880 or not it works. We'll talk about that a bit later. 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:52.839 To abate that. Um. It is important to note here 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:55.839 that this machine was not designed as a punishment. They 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:58.560 were not trying to shock kids to punish them. They 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:02.240 were trying to interrupt them when they were harming themselves. Right, 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:05.559 The people who made this machine felt that such extreme 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:08.640 measures were justified if the mild shock would stop a 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.199 kid from biting through their hand or bashing their head 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.600 against the wall. And again, I am not saying this 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:16.400 is the right move, and and in fact that the 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:18.760 evidence suggests that this doesn't really work all that well, 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:21.560 I get why. I don't think these scientists who say, 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:25.000 well let's try this, we're being monsters, even though we 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.440 can say this was a bad road to go down 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:30.160 and did not help your They are not trying to 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:33.199 punish kids. They're trying to stop kids from hurting themselves. 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:37.920 And again, it doesn't work, but it's not. The start 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:40.760 road for this technology is not monstrous. Yeah, it's not 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:46.720 fully malicious. It's just you could say unethical, you can 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:50.600 say unwise, ineffective. They're not They're not doing what Matt 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:54.679 Israel comes to do. They're not trying to hurt these kids. Um. 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:59.240 They are trying to interrupt dangerous behavior. UM. I just 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:02.959 think that's important to note because you you again, it's 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:04.800 this thing that you see in science, where like someone 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.000 will have an idea that isn't inherently horrible, but because 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:10.320 of how another person takes it and evolves it, it 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:14.080 becomes something profoundly abusive. UM. I just think it's important 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:16.280 to note this doesn't start as an abusive behavior. It 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:19.920 starts as as a desperate attempt to stop people from 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:23.960 hurting themselves. Israel School was an early adopter of sibbis. 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:27.120 Matt liked the consistency of the shock. He liked that 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:30.080 applying it required less manpower than holding down a child 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:32.640 to assault their feet. Uh the b R. I tested 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:35.800 it on twenty nine students over fourteen months. When early 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:38.680 guinea pig was Brandon Sanchez, an autistic boy who was 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.960 also the nephew of a state representative. From Wired quote, 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:44.720 Brandon banged his head until he cracked it open. He 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:46.560 wants chewed off part of his tongue. He was a 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:49.400 ruminator too. He would vomit, chew the vomit, swallow it, 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:52.720 and vomit again. The acidity was burning his esophagus. The 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.840 vomiting was causing him to lose weight. Israel thoughts Sibis 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:57.600 might be the only way to save this twelve year 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:00.880 old's life. Brandon was down to fifty two pounds. Israel 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:03.680 and his staff started with the treatments. Fifty shocks became 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:06.560 a hundred, a hundred became five hundred, five hundred became 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.800 a thousand, and they still shocked more. Brandon wasn't responding, 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:12.560 so two thousand shocks and then three thousand, four thousand. 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:15.320 After roughly five thousand shocks in a day, is Reel 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.360 told his staff to stop. The shocks weren't strong enough, 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:21.960 is Reel thought. He asked Sibis's developers to increase the voltage. 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:25.040 They refused, and that's when Israel made his own machine. 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:30.560 M So you see what's happened here. That's first off, horrific. 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:33.120 If you're doing that five thousand times and it doesn't work, 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:35.840 the problem isn't it's not strong enough. The problem is 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:38.920 it doesn't work. Yeah, I was gonna say, after like 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:41.880 shocking a kid five thousand times, to be like, hey, 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:46.120 maybe we're not doing it right. And and the people 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:48.600 who developed this again didn't intend it to be used 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:50.160 this way, because he is using it the way he 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.680 uses all aversives as a consistent punishment for a thing 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:55.360 that they do. So they do a behavior they're not 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:57.880 supposed to do, you punish them with a shock. That's 0:15:57.880 --> 0:15:59.840 not what this is intended for. This was intended to 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:04.880 disrupt someone physically from from an action. Um. It was. 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:06.840 It was kind of like a tourniquet. It was an 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:10.520 emergency procedure, you know. Um. And he is not using 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:12.600 it that way, and the way he's using it doesn't work. 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.120 But instead of realizing maybe you're going down the wrong road, 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:19.640 he decides that they just need to be electrocuted more. Um. 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:23.320 The machine that they built was called well he and 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:25.000 he works with an engineer on this, right, he doesn't 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:26.960 do it all on himself. But the machine that Israel 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:32.760 has built that he calls the graduated Electronic descelerator like decelerate, 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:36.960 you know, like the opposite of acceleration. Um. He. This machine, 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.480 the g E D, would become Matt Israel's main claim 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:42.800 to infamy. It was three times stronger than Civice, and 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:45.560 its shock lasted a full two seconds instead of one 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.600 fifth of a second. Now this is a significant escalation, 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:51.560 and it's a dangerous one. But around a year of 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.280 testing the g E D, Israel became convinced that it 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:57.360 still was not strong enough. Students had gotten used to 0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:00.000 the shocks, so he developed a new, even more power 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:03.520 a ful device, one that could deliver extremely painful shocks. 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:07.440 Israel was not the first psychologist working with this community 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:10.439 to use electric shocks. I have our Lavas, a doctor 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:13.200 with U C l A, had experimented with cattle prods 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:16.240 on children in the early nineteen seventies. He was a 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:20.120 major advocate for electric shocks as a behavioral modification aid 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:24.720 early on. But in nineteen eighties seven uh this doctor 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.639 Lavas published a study that showed that after forty weeks 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:30.719 of one on one therapy, autistic preschoolers could attain what 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.520 he called normal functioning without any kind of aversives. In 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.800 nineteen three, Lavas admitted that he had been wrong, and 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:41.560 he strongly rejected his early work, saying that shock therapy 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:44.240 was at best a short term solution that did not 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:46.920 fix problems and was not worth the pain it caused. 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:50.359 So Lavas pretty fucked up to cattle prod kids. But 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:56.200 he eventually he does his recently, yeah yeah, yeah, um, 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:58.320 I was wrong. This is fucked up, don't do it 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:01.920 now when Matt is really and I should also note 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:03.679 that I don't want to make it seem too easy 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:05.960 what he's saying here, like these forty weeks of one 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:09.840 on one therapy, that's a lot of work. We'll talk 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:12.840 about this more. Yeah, it's a commitment. It is a commitment, 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:15.720 and it's what these kids deserve, obviously, but it's also 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:19.879 often what there's resources or what schools are willing to 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:22.720 devote resources with the state is willing to devote resources 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:26.119 to do um. And there's furthermore, the thought that because 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.640 the that the adults doing this work are not well 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:33.359 paid generally, there are some, there are some specialists who 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:36.040 are very well compensated. There are some there's some specific 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:40.040 facilities that train and higher professionals and pay them. Well, 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:42.439 that is not the norm. I got about eight dollars 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:46.400 an hour, and again, no training. You are not going 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:48.359 to get someone to perform the kind of one on 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:51.240 one therapy that Lavoss is showing can work on these 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:53.800 kids and can can stop these kind of behaviors. You 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:56.920 are not going to get that with someone making eight 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:59.679 dollars an hour, working eight hours a day. You know, 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:03.439 it's just not possible, and especially we brought this up 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:06.240 in part one where they had to do a quick 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:08.560 turnaround in like the two weeks with a lot of 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:13.720 these exactly and with that eight dollars an hour. And yeah, no, 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:17.840 it's just you don't have any means to do so 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:21.800 you do not. And it's so much of the problem 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:24.439 here and again Matt Israel is the primary bastard. But 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:29.439 the fact that on the whole, all the state usually 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:33.280 wants to do with these it's a mix. There will 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:36.000 do devote more resources to the kids who will be 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:38.680 able to work a full time job and like make 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:42.199 a living. Right. Um, a lot of these kids, for 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:44.320 whatever reason aren't aren't aren't going to be able to 0:19:44.320 --> 0:19:45.680 do that, They're not going to be able to live 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:47.960 what what I guess what you would say the state 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:49.960 considers to be a normal life, which is an economically 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:53.440 productive life. And so the goal becomes, how do we 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.080 wear house these kids for the least amount of money 0:19:56.320 --> 0:19:59.240 as opposed to is there anything we can do to 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:01.760 to give them a your life, to help them like 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:07.200 be healthier? Um? And it's um, it's something we've seen 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.040 time and time again. It's not just here, it's like, 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:14.719 how how can we take these people who aren't going 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:18.960 to be productive quote unquote in sense and in economic 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:23.120 couple of sense and help them alford the leases amount 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:27.000 of money. It's yeah, honestly depressing and infuriate it is, 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:29.520 and it's it's again part of the villain here is 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:33.320 the reduction of human beings to their their pure economic potential. 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.560 So when Matt Israel started applying aversives to children with 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:40.960 behavioral issues in the early nineteen seventies, data on how 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:44.320 adversives worked was severely mixed. By the early nineteen eighties, 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:48.080 though clinicians and researchers had published significant studies showing positive 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:51.480 reinforcement could work in the most difficult cases. What it 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:56.520 required was constant quote functional analyzes, which is monitoring patients 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:58.720 all day and night to discover what is causing the 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:01.320 behavior and then to read a wreck those feelings. It's 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:03.119 basically saying that like, well, you need a level if 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:05.600 you're going to reinforce, if you're going to change these behaviors. 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:09.080 In positive reinforcement, it's it's a full, like twenty four 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:12.080 hours a day job monitoring these kids, seeing what's causing 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:17.000 the behaviors and redirecting them. That's obviously very expensive and difficult. Um, 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:19.560 the best solution is the most effortful and the most 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:23.440