Speaker 1: It's behind the Bastards. The podcast that yet again opened
Speaker 1: with a tonal noises because I couldn't I couldn't think
Speaker 1: of an introduction. Uh. This is partly the fault of Sophie,
Speaker 1: who is not here today, um for reasons of of
Speaker 1: of pure selfishness. Um. No, she hasn't a bunch of
Speaker 1: unbelievable number of meetings. My guest today is Aiden Aidan
Speaker 1: Bonacci Banacci Bacci, Aidan Bonacci. Aiden, you want to tell
Speaker 1: the audience a little bit about yourself. My name is
Speaker 1: Aidan Bonacci Um as of today, twenty eight year old.
Speaker 1: Uh autistaic theater major. I tweet a lot, I do
Speaker 1: a lot of like freelance work. It's nice to be here.
Speaker 1: Nice to have you on, Aiden, and you are it's
Speaker 1: your birthday, so happy birthday. Thank you, Thank you for
Speaker 1: for making the time to show up. In the episode today,
Speaker 1: we're we're going to talk about something all fun is
Speaker 1: the wrong word. Have you heard of the Judge Rotenberg Center.
Speaker 1: I'm that sounds familiar, but yeah, it's um it's not
Speaker 1: a good place, obviously, this is the show that this
Speaker 1: is um so one of the reasons you're obviously you're
Speaker 1: you're an actor, you do theater stuff, but you're also,
Speaker 1: as you said, autistic. And I wanted to bring in
Speaker 1: somebody who was for this episode because we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking a lot about kind of well, I would say,
Speaker 1: the dark ages of autism treatment. But this is still
Speaker 1: going on although it's bad, Um, it's really bad, UM.
Speaker 1: And this is I think when I reached out online looking, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I want you to do an episode that
Speaker 1: was going to touch on a lot of issues of
Speaker 1: like autistic, like health care for autistic people. Folks expect
Speaker 1: that I was either gonna do Hans Asberger, who is
Speaker 1: absolutely a bastard um, or talk about there's a number
Speaker 1: of things that this could have been. But we're talking
Speaker 1: about the Judge Rodenberg Center, and specifically we're talking about Um,
Speaker 1: the guy who who started it. So I want to
Speaker 1: start by noting that autism didn't enter the d s
Speaker 1: M as like a diagnosis until nineteen eighty. Obviously, people
Speaker 1: were using the term before then. It was a thing
Speaker 1: that a lot of medical professionals recognized existed. But there's
Speaker 1: often a gap between when something is sort of like
Speaker 1: recognized and when it actually enters the d s M,
Speaker 1: and even when it entered the d s M and
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, the diagnostic criteria for being declared autistic were,
Speaker 1: to put it bluntly, more or less bullshit. Um, somebody
Speaker 1: couldn't be autistic if their symptoms weren't a parent before
Speaker 1: they were thirty months old, which we now know a
Speaker 1: lot for a lot of people. It's like not until
Speaker 1: you're your three or four that like stuff become that
Speaker 1: symptoms become a parent. Um. And a bunch of things
Speaker 1: we now recognize the signs of autism weren't recognized back then.
Speaker 1: It was it was at like it just in terms
Speaker 1: of like from a from a clinical standpoint, they didn't
Speaker 1: have a good handle on like how to know if
Speaker 1: somebody was autistic or not yet. Um. And kind of
Speaker 1: making matters more complicated was the fact that many of
Speaker 1: the doctors who were kind of pioneers and autism research
Speaker 1: where ship shows as well. Um again, Hans Asberger, the
Speaker 1: guy whose name gave us yeah, worked with the Nazis
Speaker 1: to euthanize disabled people. Uh not a well we got
Speaker 1: a little fat Yeah. Well we'll talk about him at
Speaker 1: some point. I bring all this up to to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that the history even like recognizing autism is fraught, UM,
Speaker 1: and the history of educating autistic people through like the
Speaker 1: school system is equally problematic because obviously, like once you
Speaker 1: know that this is a thing, schools are going to,
Speaker 1: you know, try to develop standards for how to how
Speaker 1: to teach people who have autism, and UM, generally they're
Speaker 1: going to do a bad job of this. UM. That's
Speaker 1: been most of the history of the education system and
Speaker 1: auto is UM. And I have a little bit of
Speaker 1: personal knowledge here. I was a para professional for a
Speaker 1: special ed classroom for about eighteen months. The kids I
Speaker 1: worked with, Yeah, and it was not UM that we had.
Speaker 1: There were kids with a variety of of of of
Speaker 1: different kind of things. A lot of them were autistic. UM.
Speaker 1: We had a kid who had a severe who had
Speaker 1: had a head injury and like had had literally had
Speaker 1: like a chunk of her brain scooped out in a
Speaker 1: car accident. UM. We had kids with with Down syndrome.
Speaker 1: We had you know, in my classroom, they were mostly UM.
Speaker 1: I think the term we, the term used at the
Speaker 1: time was nonverbal, which meant they couldn't communicate well or
Speaker 1: at all. In a lot of cases via language, and
Speaker 1: you know, we would develop we would use sign language,
Speaker 1: we would use like cards, We had a bunch of
Speaker 1: different kind of systems we would try to use to
Speaker 1: help the kids communicate. And all of my my coworkers
Speaker 1: cared a lot, but we also had effectively zero academic training.
Speaker 1: They were like, out of I don't know twenty or
Speaker 1: so people in the unit that I was in, there
Speaker 1: were like two people who had gone to school to
Speaker 1: any extent for what we were doing, and the rest
Speaker 1: of us were just kind of yeah, we didn't know
Speaker 1: what the funk we were doing. Yeah, um, And I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, from the I've mentioned being a
Speaker 1: special at a couple of times, and some people I
Speaker 1: think make assumptions about the kind of the worst case
Speaker 1: scenario for that. I don't believe we did anything that
Speaker 1: was like harmful in terms of our our our teaching techniques.
Speaker 1: We weren't using any of the stuff that we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about today, any of like the really brutal methods
Speaker 1: that have been used. But I don't think anything we did.
Speaker 1: Most of what we did was very useful either because
Speaker 1: we didn't really know what we were doing, like we
Speaker 1: That's part of The problem with I don't know the
Speaker 1: whole when when kind of the education system intersects with
Speaker 1: healthcare in any way, is um, most don't really get
Speaker 1: good results exactly don't. And as somebody who was in
Speaker 1: Special Edge from like first grade through fifth grade that
Speaker 1: you definitely got a lot more of they really wanted
Speaker 1: to try, but there really wasn't much they could do
Speaker 1: in terms like helping out and one that they really cared.
Speaker 1: But you can definitely tell compared to like other classes
Speaker 1: that they're kind of shorthanded, yeah, shorthanded and not. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of specialized knowledge that is required, both
Speaker 1: in terms of like how to educate kids who may
Speaker 1: you know, interpret kind of verbal command or verbal stimuli
Speaker 1: or whatever in a different way, who maybe who may
Speaker 1: have kind of sensory um like would be fundamentally like
Speaker 1: kind of see and hear differently than everybody else. Like
Speaker 1: that requires a lot of specialized knowledge to work with.
Speaker 1: Outside of that, there's also like medical stuff like again,
Speaker 1: I was going to this job with no training and
Speaker 1: when I started was dealing with like a grand mall
Speaker 1: seizure every day. Um, and it is I didn't like
Speaker 1: we didn't we didn't like get good information on what
Speaker 1: to do with that stuff. It was kind of like
Speaker 1: learn on the job, which is not not a good
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be learning on the job if you're treating
Speaker 1: children having Yeah, no, not something you really want to
Speaker 1: leave a few weeks, if not a lot more training officire. Yeah. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: some of the students that I worked with had really
Speaker 1: serious issues with violence. And again I've mentioned this before. Um,
Speaker 1: from most of them, this was an occasional thing. It
Speaker 1: would be maybe once a year, and it wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't their fault. It was something kind of flipped
Speaker 1: in their head and they would they would get aggressive
Speaker 1: generally because they were frightened. Um. But there were some kids,
Speaker 1: one particular kid that was my major have to deal with,
Speaker 1: for whom violence was a really daily issue and the
Speaker 1: problem was severe in this kid's case. When you're talking
Speaker 1: about kids with problems like that where they are either
Speaker 1: very self injurious and this this kid I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: was injured himself more than he injured other people. That's
Speaker 1: a serious issue because he's not only a danger, he
Speaker 1: could he could seriously injure other people. Um, he could
Speaker 1: seriously injured, kill himself. Um that's a real issue, and
Speaker 1: it's a real issue that our school, which was a
Speaker 1: normal high school, was not at all equipped to handle.
Speaker 1: And I feel very comfortable saying I had no business
Speaker 1: working with a kid whose needs were so specialized. UM So,
Speaker 1: I understand the need for residential facilities that can take
Speaker 1: care of some of kids with issues this severe and
Speaker 1: an ongoing basis. There's just cases like that where you
Speaker 1: run to need people who are specialized in that type
Speaker 1: of work and can be responsible and not have to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, ship, what I do? Yeah, And there
Speaker 1: are for some of these kids you need two seven
Speaker 1: care because again you can't necessarily predict their self injurious
Speaker 1: behavior or they need a tremendous amount of consistency in
Speaker 1: order to make progress, and you just can't do that
Speaker 1: in eight hours a day at a public school. Um
Speaker 1: So the problem. So again I'm starting this by saying,
Speaker 1: I get that there is potentially a need for residential facilities,
Speaker 1: but as we've discussed on the show before, many residential
Speaker 1: schools with kids for behavioral issues are fucking nightmares. And
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the Allan School here, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: like troubled kids schools. Um. And those places are nightmares
Speaker 1: in catering to kids who are if not neuro typical,
Speaker 1: than at least not you know, generally not dealing with
Speaker 1: autism or a particularly specialist diagnosis, their kids with like
Speaker 1: a behavioral issue, their kids who got into drugs or something.
Speaker 1: Right at a place like the law school. When you
Speaker 1: take it to a further step of specialization, where you're
Speaker 1: dealing with with children with autism or children with other
Speaker 1: very specific diagnoses, that's a whole another ball game. Um.
Speaker 1: And it gets a lot sketchier because there's a lot
Speaker 1: less specialization to deal with these places. So if you
Speaker 1: kind of can bill yourself as an expert in whatever
Speaker 1: these kids have, you can get away with a lot
Speaker 1: of really terrible treatments, and people looking at in from
Speaker 1: the outside will be like, well, I guess that's just
Speaker 1: what you do with those kids, you know. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not surprising. Yeah, And that's the subject of today
Speaker 1: the Judge Rotenberg Center. So our story starts with a
Speaker 1: man named Matthew Israel. He was born at some point
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. I have not found an exact year.
Speaker 1: He was a contemporary of Michael Ducocus. They were friends
Speaker 1: so around when Ducacus was artinism and I guess when,
Speaker 1: uh when? Um, matt Israel was born. He was born
Speaker 1: in Brookline, Massachusetts. His dad was a lawyer. He was
Speaker 1: the youngest of two brothers. And to the extent that
Speaker 1: Matthew has told interviewers about his family, he claims that
Speaker 1: his parents were loving and seldom spank him. Um. So
Speaker 1: that's good, and that's gonna be relevant here in a
Speaker 1: little bit. But punishment was not a central focus of
Speaker 1: his parents parenting strategies. Um. He went to Brookline High
Speaker 1: School and he was good friends again with Michael Ducaucus,
Speaker 1: who would later be governor of Massachusetts and would also
Speaker 1: fail to become the president. Um, Matthew and Michael ran
Speaker 1: across country track together and we're good friends. This will
Speaker 1: become relevant later. Now we know a lot less about
Speaker 1: Israel's early life than I would prefer, but we do
Speaker 1: know that in high school he was kicked out of
Speaker 1: an honor society after he spoke out against the school's
Speaker 1: plan to allow athletes and people who pursued non academic
Speaker 1: extracurricular activities into the club. He told one interviewer that
Speaker 1: it was too much of an artificial reward system. So
Speaker 1: he didn't like that the Gifted program was being extended
Speaker 1: to people who were good at I don't know, like
Speaker 1: music and theater. He oh, yeah, okay, one of those Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of those guys like it's not math. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not football. I mean, yeah, he's he's just he's
Speaker 1: a little bit of an elitist, maybe, like an academic
Speaker 1: elitist and specifics. So in nineteen fifty is Reel started
Speaker 1: at Harvard. He was fascinated with behavioral psychology, and he
Speaker 1: had the good fortune to be taught by one of
Speaker 1: the single most influential psychologists in the history of the discipline,
Speaker 1: a guy named B. F. Skinner. Skinner was probably the
Speaker 1: dominant psychologist of the mid twentieth century, and he specialized
Speaker 1: in what's called behaviorism. Skinner believed that all human behavior
Speaker 1: could be boiled down to environmental operant conditioning and the
Speaker 1: reinforcement of selected responses with rewards or punishment. Skinner essentially
Speaker 1: rejected the idea of free will, which he acknowledged quote
Speaker 1: seems to question dignity or worth as and if people
Speaker 1: don't have free will. If we're just robots responding to stimuli,
Speaker 1: maybe we don't have any dignity yourself worth. But as
Speaker 1: he pointed out, this also meant that under his analysis
Speaker 1: of behavior, blame for bad behavior and credit for good
Speaker 1: behavior we're both shifted to the environment. So you're never
Speaker 1: responsible if you do bad or good things. It's the
Speaker 1: result of the stimuli that has been fed into your brain. Um,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, not my view of reality. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty bleak y yeah. I mean it's it's bleak
Speaker 1: in some ways because it kind of reduces, it flattens
Speaker 1: the moral universe. Um. But it also means that like, potentially,
Speaker 1: if you can figure out how to feed in the
Speaker 1: good stimuli to people's brains, you can stop you know,
Speaker 1: genocide and whatnot. You could you could deal with all
Speaker 1: of that just by feeding people different different input um.
Speaker 1: His hope was that accepting this, like accepting this reality
Speaker 1: about how people worked, would lead to a new organization
Speaker 1: of society based around social trolls that would be more
Speaker 1: purposeful than the random positive and negative reinforcements in society.
Speaker 1: In other words, like we're just the result of the
Speaker 1: stimuli that's been fed into us. Um, but because it's
Speaker 1: being kind of fed in randomly, and nobody's nobody's making
Speaker 1: a concerted effort to make sure that like specific goods,
Speaker 1: stimuli you know, kind of are are are put into
Speaker 1: people's heads. Um, that's why all this messed up. That's
Speaker 1: why society is so messed up. And if you could
Speaker 1: just be consistent and whatnot, you could fix all these problems.
Speaker 1: That's that's Skinner's kind of roughly Skinner's idea, I am again,
Speaker 1: I'm flattening a decades long career and psychology. This is
Speaker 1: the gist of it. Um Skinner wrote, quote, man struggle
Speaker 1: for freedom is not due to a will to be free,
Speaker 1: but to certain behavioral processes characteristic of the human organism,
Speaker 1: the chief effect of which is the avoidance of, or
Speaker 1: escape from, so called aversive features of the environment. Physical
Speaker 1: and biological technologies have been mainly concerned with natural aversive stimuli.
Speaker 1: The struggle for freedom is concerned with stimuli intentionally arranged
Speaker 1: by other people. The literature of freedom has identified the
Speaker 1: other people and has proposed ways of escaping from them
Speaker 1: or weakening or destroying their power. It has been successful
Speaker 1: in reducing the aversive stimuli used in intentional control, but
Speaker 1: it has made the mistake of defining freedom in terms
Speaker 1: of state of mind or feelings, and it has therefore
Speaker 1: not been able to effectively deal with techniques of control
Speaker 1: which do not breed escape or revolt, but nevertheless have
Speaker 1: aversive consequences. It has been forced to brand all control
Speaker 1: is wrong and to misrepresent many of the advantages to
Speaker 1: be gained from a social environment. It is unprepared for
Speaker 1: the next step, which is not to freemen from control,
Speaker 1: but to analyze and change the kinds of control to
Speaker 1: which they are exposed. See you see what he's saying there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm seeing what he's saying. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ways you can definitely miss interpreter and construe it. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And it's you can see both sides of this to
Speaker 1: where like, right now in the US, the ideology of
Speaker 1: freedom as it's often interpreted by particularly folks on the right,
Speaker 1: has lit in the situation where like people are showing
Speaker 1: up armed outside of schools because they don't think kids
Speaker 1: should be made to wear masks during a pandemic. Um,
Speaker 1: and that is a problem. And he's kind of pointing
Speaker 1: out that, like, Um, but the kind of the the
Speaker 1: tech the angle he's looking at this from is that
Speaker 1: like the ideology of freedom, Um has has made it.
Speaker 1: His has kind of made it seem like a bad
Speaker 1: guys sort of thing to try and analyze the stimuli
Speaker 1: people are exposed to and alter them in order to
Speaker 1: change their behavior. Um and Skinner thinks that that's what
Speaker 1: we ought to be doing. Right. So Skinner was interested
Speaker 1: and nothing less than the controlled future evolution of human
Speaker 1: beings with proper conditioning techniques. He believed all conflict, responsible behavior,
Speaker 1: and the calamitous consequences of freedom could be erased. As
Speaker 1: Skinner wrote, quote, a scientific view of man offers exciting
Speaker 1: post abilities. We have not yet seen what man can
Speaker 1: make of man. And I mean I can see he's
Speaker 1: definitely looking at it from a positive angle. It's just
Speaker 1: there's a lot to work around with that, at least
Speaker 1: in my opinion, there is. And I think Skinner a
Speaker 1: big chunk of what he's doing is kind of a
Speaker 1: response to everything that happened in the first part of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. The disasters under state communism, the gin
Speaker 1: sides of the Nazis, the horrors of the world wars,
Speaker 1: and this idea that like, well, this is clearly terrible,
Speaker 1: we could if we can make people better, if we
Speaker 1: can like, if we can feed them better stimuli, we
Speaker 1: can stop all this. At the same time he's kind
Speaker 1: of doing He's what he's saying, you can find not
Speaker 1: dissimilar things that the Nazis were saying, Man, can we
Speaker 1: can make the human race better by kind right away?
Speaker 1: But I was leaning towards yet And Skinner is not
Speaker 1: a eugenicist. But anytime you're saying we can improve the
Speaker 1: human race through like selective decisions and whatnot that may
Speaker 1: limit people's freedom, you're not on a totally different wavelength.
Speaker 1: Then you can also but draw some comparisons to like
Speaker 1: the idea of the new Soviet man, and these these
Speaker 1: strains of thought, these I and they're all cutting from
Speaker 1: a similar place, which is that like in the early
Speaker 1: half of the twentieth century, you're seeing all these horrible calamities, um,
Speaker 1: human caused calamities, these terrifying wars and famines and genocide,
Speaker 1: and you've got a lot of people being like, well
Speaker 1: maybe we maybe we could do better than that. Um.
Speaker 1: The problem is that it can lead you in some
Speaker 1: and again I really want to easy. Skinner is not
Speaker 1: a Nazi. He's not talking about eugenics. But you can see,
Speaker 1: you can see how people could take some of the
Speaker 1: things he's saying and turn them in unsettling directions. To
Speaker 1: the road can be to how can be paved with
Speaker 1: good intentions? Yes, yeah, and I that's that's not so
Speaker 1: much Skinner because he's certainly not the bad guy here,
Speaker 1: But that's kind of where his ideology leads. Matt is real.
Speaker 1: Um So Matt fell in love with Skinners theories. At
Speaker 1: the library one day he found a book his professor
Speaker 1: had written but not assigned to the class, a book
Speaker 1: called Walden two. And I'm gonna quote from a write
Speaker 1: up in Boston Magazine quote. The controversial book is about
Speaker 1: a utopian society where behaviors can be modified for the
Speaker 1: benefit of all inhabitants. It is based on Skinner's theory
Speaker 1: of operant conditioning. If an action is rewarded, it increases
Speaker 1: the likelihood that the person will perform the action again.
Speaker 1: This is, after all, how Skinner had taught pigeons to
Speaker 1: play table tennis by rewarding the behaviors that led to
Speaker 1: their game. Israel Lasers said of the book. It was
Speaker 1: a real inspiration. I knew what I wanted to do
Speaker 1: with my life. It was a feeling similar to those
Speaker 1: claiming to have religious conversions. I wanted to start a
Speaker 1: real utopian behavioral community. And this is um He's not
Speaker 1: the only one who gets impacted this way by Walden two.
Speaker 1: There's actually a whole subculture that forms around trying to
Speaker 1: build utopian communities based around Skinner's ideas of operant conditioning. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I'm also interested in utopian communities. I planned one day
Speaker 1: to start one that will build a paradise on Earth
Speaker 1: before it's torn us under in a hail of fire
Speaker 1: and bullets from the f d A. And Matt had
Speaker 1: the same ambition, m Oh yeah, I mean, who wouldn't
Speaker 1: Who wouldn't want to build a paradise based around the
Speaker 1: fundamental moral precept that you shouldn't be told by the
Speaker 1: government what pills are and aren't healthy, or what pills
Speaker 1: do and don't contain lead. I think we have the
Speaker 1: freedom to ingest all sorts of brain pills and to
Speaker 1: claim that they care all sorts of diseases. And I
Speaker 1: I challenged the f d A to increase their munitions
Speaker 1: budget enough to stop me. So Matt had a similar ambition,
Speaker 1: without desiring an armed conflict with the f d A.
Speaker 1: But being a young PhD candidate just getting started in
Speaker 1: the world, he didn't really have a way to achieve
Speaker 1: this dream, and sort of his his desire to start
Speaker 1: a utopian community and his lack of resources led to
Speaker 1: a period of depression for him. He later said, it
Speaker 1: was a very difficult period. I thought about committing suicide.
Speaker 1: If I couldn't bring a community into existence, what since
Speaker 1: was life worth living? So he worked on his doctor
Speaker 1: and he helped b. F. Skinner teach pigeons to play
Speaker 1: ping pong. In nineteen sixty he received his doctorate, and
Speaker 1: he used his formidable skill as a hype man to
Speaker 1: try and raise capital to start a firm teach selling
Speaker 1: teaching machines. His goal was to spend the profits from
Speaker 1: this business into a utopian social project, but the business
Speaker 1: didn't do well, and in nineteen sixty six, Israel was
Speaker 1: not particularly close to achieving his dream. That year, though,
Speaker 1: he attended a walden To conference where other weird b F.
Speaker 1: Skinner nerds talked about how to start their own utopian societies.
Speaker 1: Eighty three people attended, and he met a couple of
Speaker 1: folks who were willing to get involved in such a
Speaker 1: project with him. And it was a very minor scale
Speaker 1: at this point. So in nineteen sixty seven, he and
Speaker 1: a couple of these folks start a communal home in Arlington, Virginia.
Speaker 1: Um and it's as utopian communities go, very small. It's
Speaker 1: basically Matt Israel, a guy and his girlfriend, a teacher,
Speaker 1: and her young daughter named Andrea. UM. So not a
Speaker 1: big community. And this little girl, Andrea was, according to
Speaker 1: Matt Israel, a real problem. He later said quote she
Speaker 1: walked around the living room with a toy broom, hitting people.
Speaker 1: She also screamed and threw tantrums often enough that Israel
Speaker 1: claims I was forced to do behavior modification. So this
Speaker 1: is the first time that he tries to alter a
Speaker 1: human being through operat conditioning, right, um or at least
Speaker 1: his first recorded times. I don't know that's a weird
Speaker 1: I guess you could see. It's not any different than
Speaker 1: like any other parent being like, oh, this kid is
Speaker 1: doing something they shouldn't be doing. I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: like punish them or try otherwise to get them to
Speaker 1: stop doing the thing. But it's not your kid. They
Speaker 1: start seeing dicey. Yeah, it starts getting dicey, And I
Speaker 1: guess like it's kind of unsettling too. For whatever reason,
Speaker 1: it's less unsettled to be like, oh, you know, my
Speaker 1: kid is is throwing tantrums, so I'm going to like
Speaker 1: do this in order to try to get them to stop.
Speaker 1: That's less unsettling to me than saying like, oh, this
Speaker 1: kid is engaged in bad behavior and I'm going to
Speaker 1: condition them to do better behavior through like operation. It's like,
Speaker 1: not you're grounded, but you're going to get modified. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to get modified. That's unsettling a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: He says he got the mom's permission to work on
Speaker 1: her child. We've got only his word here. I have
Speaker 1: not heard any interviews with any of the people who
Speaker 1: are in this with him. Um, But given what comes next,
Speaker 1: I will note that Matt Israel is really good at
Speaker 1: convincing parents to let him experiment on their kids. So
Speaker 1: I don't have trouble believing that water to it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he probably did get Andrea's mom's permission. The
Speaker 1: methods he used to alter her behavior were called aversives.
Speaker 1: Put bluntly, aversives are unpleasant stimuli done to a person
Speaker 1: or animal in order to change their behavior. The classic
Speaker 1: example of an adversive would be a punishment, although aversives
Speaker 1: are not always administered as punishments, because like a punishment is,
Speaker 1: somebody does someone does something undesirable, and you do something
Speaker 1: undesirable to them to make them associate the two. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a punishment. Aversives can be punishments, but they can
Speaker 1: also occur before the behavior. There's a number of ways
Speaker 1: to apply them. We'll talk about that a bit later.
Speaker 1: The first adversive he used was time out. When Andrea
Speaker 1: would scream, Matt would put her in a bedroom, close
Speaker 1: the door, and hold it shut. He would keep track
Speaker 1: of how long she screamed at him through the door
Speaker 1: using a chart. Over time, her tantrums diminished. But Israel
Speaker 1: also found the act of holding a door shut on
Speaker 1: a screaming child to be exhausting and demoralizing for obvious reasons,
Speaker 1: and ye seems kind of bad. At one point, his
Speaker 1: patients ran out and he slapped Andrea, saying there's no
Speaker 1: screaming and time out now. This would mark the first
Speaker 1: time Matt used physical violence on a child to alter behavior.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't say in interviews what impact this hat
Speaker 1: on her, But according to an interview with Israel and
Speaker 1: the Boston Nix, here's what came next. Quote. He began
Speaker 1: to use a combination of rewards and punishments with Andrea.
Speaker 1: I was a tremendous source of reward for Andrea, he says,
Speaker 1: she was very cute, very smart, and very appreciative of attention.
Speaker 1: I found that a combination of extraordinary rewards an occasional
Speaker 1: aversive made an environment that helped change her whole personality.
Speaker 1: Matt Israel's training had begun with Skinner, who believed you
Speaker 1: didn't need to use aversions, but Israel could see the results.
Speaker 1: Punishment is a fact of culture, he says. When the
Speaker 1: police find you for parking in a no parking zone,
Speaker 1: that's punishment. Andrea had been a spoiled bratt, but she
Speaker 1: became a pleasant, attractive, charming feature in the house. So
Speaker 1: that's a little unsettling to write that attractive. I don't
Speaker 1: like that part. I don't like that, and I don't
Speaker 1: like describing a human being as a feature. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a little unsettling too. It's like two bedrooms,
Speaker 1: one bath, one attractive feature, Yeah, one attractive small child. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's the way he talks about people is consistent the unnerving.
Speaker 1: It will only get more so. But you know what's
Speaker 1: not consistently unnerving? Um, I don't know what products and services?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, the products and services to help keep this
Speaker 1: a float. And and we guarantee here behind the bastards
Speaker 1: that less than a fifth of our sponsors have ever
Speaker 1: referred to a small child as an attractive feat And
Speaker 1: that's as good as you're gonna get in the podcast business. Look, honestly,
Speaker 1: that's spressive. Yeah, we we we worked hard for those numbers.
Speaker 1: We're back so at Around the same time Matt Israel
Speaker 1: started his Arlington Commune, he had formed a national organization
Speaker 1: with a very dystopian name, the Association for Social Design.
Speaker 1: Its objective was to establish a network of associated experimental
Speaker 1: communities and cities throughout the world. He was essentially taking
Speaker 1: there's this subculture of Wolden Two fans who are all
Speaker 1: trying to build these little utopias based off of Skinner's ideas,
Speaker 1: and he's trying to unite them in kind of like
Speaker 1: a physical social network. Now there's a guy named Hilkey
Speaker 1: Coolman who's a historian of this subculture. He's a historian
Speaker 1: of like specifically, the people who like rallied around Walden
Speaker 1: to uh and Coleman writes that Israel's goal was to
Speaker 1: take B. F. Skinner's utopian experiments a step further. Privately,
Speaker 1: Israel started to call his work Walden three. That said,
Speaker 1: his first utopian experiment did not end well, as happens
Speaker 1: with most of these experiments, the adults themselves couldn't get along,
Speaker 1: and eventually the whole thing fell apart. I've never heard
Speaker 1: an interview with the other adults who lived with Matt,
Speaker 1: but I would very much like to. I suspect his
Speaker 1: behavior was a larger part of things than he led on.
Speaker 1: He tried another communal living situation after that, which also
Speaker 1: fell apart. And this quote from the Boston Phoenix gives
Speaker 1: some context as to why the problem with the houses,
Speaker 1: says Israel, was that the residents weren't really buying into
Speaker 1: the behavior mod mode. There was very little control over
Speaker 1: the part participants. Israel says, they could always move out. Coleman,
Speaker 1: who has studied this whole subculture extensively, also blames Israel
Speaker 1: for the collapse of his two utopian projects and the
Speaker 1: collapse of the Association for Social Design. From a write
Speaker 1: up and Wired quote it Live in Walden to Coleman
Speaker 1: blames Israel, suggesting he is the commune's patriarch when of
Speaker 1: his inhabitants to live lives based on altering one another's behavior,
Speaker 1: the others and the communes and the Association thought this
Speaker 1: was no life at all. So you get what he's
Speaker 1: saying here, like this is this is an extension of
Speaker 1: what he's saying about this kid. He's treating these people
Speaker 1: not like people but like machines, and he's angry that
Speaker 1: they have the ability to leave. They don't just passively
Speaker 1: take his input. They have the ability to say like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't like this and I'm going. And he's not
Speaker 1: a fan of that. No, it's not enough control for him.
Speaker 1: And you can see how a guy whose attitude who's
Speaker 1: who's who blames the failure of his utopian communes on
Speaker 1: free will might not be the guy you want having
Speaker 1: total control over a group of autistic children who are
Speaker 1: forced to live in his residential facility. Oh. Absolutely, you
Speaker 1: can setting in a bad direction, right when his issue
Speaker 1: is it's the fact that these people can leave as
Speaker 1: the real problem. So it's my opinion that Matt Israel
Speaker 1: is sort of a predator. And I based that in
Speaker 1: large part the fact that once his two utopic experiments
Speaker 1: failed because the adults wouldn't do whatever he said, he
Speaker 1: decided to start a school. Specifically, he wanted to start
Speaker 1: a school for kids whose disabilities would render them less
Speaker 1: able to defend or advocate for themselves. This is not
Speaker 1: far from how he trained framed it, and this is
Speaker 1: what he says in an interview about his decision to
Speaker 1: start a school quote maybe a school for the emotionally disturbed.
Speaker 1: He says behaviorism is the kind of thing, particularly in
Speaker 1: these days, that has been allowed to be applied to
Speaker 1: the handicapped. So he's like, adults won't let me do
Speaker 1: this to them, but people that you do this to
Speaker 1: handicap kids. And as a note here, we're going to
Speaker 1: read a number of quotes from articles and individuals who
Speaker 1: use terms for people with autism and other and other
Speaker 1: um diagnoses that are not modern or appropriate terms. I
Speaker 1: am not changing the wording these people used because in
Speaker 1: part it's very useful and understanding how they think about
Speaker 1: these kids, um, like erasing parts of it and yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be kind of lessening the monsters or exactly exactly, well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to be doing that. So Israel
Speaker 1: claims that he got the idea to start a school
Speaker 1: when he visited a hospital in Providence and this hospital
Speaker 1: had a residential program for emersial emotionally disturbed kids. And
Speaker 1: when they say emotionally disturbed, a lot of these kids
Speaker 1: are I wouldn't even I wouldn't call them like, I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're they have their emotional but like their their
Speaker 1: kids with who are maybe autistic, who have something going on,
Speaker 1: and there's not any kind of good treatment program, and
Speaker 1: so people register that is like, oh, it's emotionally disturbed,
Speaker 1: when it's like no, really, you don't know how to
Speaker 1: talk to this kid, or communicate to this kid or
Speaker 1: or help them like integrate into society, and so they're unhappy.
Speaker 1: Like that's what a lot of times we talked about
Speaker 1: emotionally disturbed. That's what we're talking about is these kids
Speaker 1: who just nobody people have not figured out a good
Speaker 1: way to integrate them into society, and so want to
Speaker 1: integrate them. People don't want to integrate them, Yes, and
Speaker 1: they're unhappy for very justifiable reasons. Um. So the director
Speaker 1: of this residential facility, like Matt Israel comes to visit
Speaker 1: and like, look at how they're they're working with these kids.
Speaker 1: And the director of the facility asks him a quote,
Speaker 1: do you think behavior modification would work on autistic children?
Speaker 1: Israel told them, yeah, I think it will, And so
Speaker 1: he decides to he starts a unit in that hospital
Speaker 1: to experiment on this with six kids, using a mix
Speaker 1: of food rewards, spankings, time outs, and spraying them in
Speaker 1: the face with a bottle of water to alter their behavior. Right,
Speaker 1: so from the cats, Yeah, yeah, what a bit cats.
Speaker 1: He loves spraying kids in the face. That's actually a
Speaker 1: big part of for decades his his um and and
Speaker 1: again when we talk about like critiques of Skinner, Skinner
Speaker 1: when he's talking about altering people's behavior, is not really
Speaker 1: a big fan of aversives, but Israel really focuses down
Speaker 1: on them and seems to think that like like punishments,
Speaker 1: and in a lot of cases physically violent punishments like
Speaker 1: spanking are the best way to to to to end
Speaker 1: behaviors that are bad from these kids. Um. So he
Speaker 1: starts this. He does this for nine months or so,
Speaker 1: working with these kids, and it goes well enough, at
Speaker 1: least by his jest definition of it. Than in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, he starts the behavior Research Institute in Providence,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island. Now, autism again was not a recognized DSM
Speaker 1: diagnosis in but there were, of course autistic people. There
Speaker 1: have been autistic people since the presumably the beginning of
Speaker 1: the human race. Um. One of the things that's very
Speaker 1: frustrating is like the anti VAC people will be like, look,
Speaker 1: autism has gone up a thousand percent in the last
Speaker 1: twenty years. You know, this is evidence that there's some poisons.
Speaker 1: Like no, you just called these kids emotionally disturbed and
Speaker 1: hit them in the seventies like they were still there.
Speaker 1: You just put them in psych works. Yeah, you put
Speaker 1: them in psych words. They sometimes they got killed, like
Speaker 1: it was never very uh like they were around though,
Speaker 1: you just pretended they weren't. Um. Yeah, So there on
Speaker 1: day one, as he starts the Behavioral Research Institute Israel,
Speaker 1: has two patients. It starts from a very small standpoint.
Speaker 1: His His first two patients are a schizophrenic adult male
Speaker 1: and a teenager with autism. Um. From the beginning, Israel's
Speaker 1: plan was to alter behaviors and his patients that were
Speaker 1: antisocial by using aversive stimuli. And again he was very
Speaker 1: focused on punishment. The b R I saw early success.
Speaker 1: And again I don't know, like I don't have an
Speaker 1: objective way of evaluating whether or not it was successful.
Speaker 1: But it was successful in the financial sense, and that
Speaker 1: he was able to convince people that his work was
Speaker 1: good and get more money and get more patients enrolled.
Speaker 1: And generally it is the state enrolling these patients, you know, um, success, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they considered it a success. And it's also these are
Speaker 1: these are kids who have generally very severe behavior issues,
Speaker 1: and are the states are like, well, obviously a regular
Speaker 1: high school isn't a good place for them. This guy
Speaker 1: says he can help even the most extreme kids. Let's
Speaker 1: pay him to take them off our hands. We don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about them anymore. Um. And there's always
Speaker 1: with this, it's always framed as like, well, no one
Speaker 1: else could help these kids. But there's always a huge
Speaker 1: there's always a huge angle of like, well, but you
Speaker 1: didn't really too, you wanted to get rid of these kids,
Speaker 1: and he offered you a hole to put them in.
Speaker 1: You know that's always a chunk of this Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: So uh. The b R I, yeah, was was financially
Speaker 1: successful early on. In nineteen seventy two, is really open
Speaker 1: to residential program for the school in a wing of
Speaker 1: a facility for schizophrenic patients. By nineteen seventy five, Life
Speaker 1: he'd opened a second home in sekonk. Two years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven, he founded a West Coast branch
Speaker 1: of b r in California. He opened several more residential
Speaker 1: homes on the East coast after that, and by nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty he had completely given up on his dreams of
Speaker 1: creating a utopia in favor of building schools for these
Speaker 1: kind of of of patients. Wired talks briefly in their
Speaker 1: article about his early methods. Quote. They used diversive therapy
Speaker 1: at b R I. They used positive reinforcement to food
Speaker 1: and toys in an air continuous stream of compliments for
Speaker 1: behaving well. But it was the aversives that drew attention.
Speaker 1: Teachers pinched students, spanked them with spatulas, stuck ammonia pellets
Speaker 1: beneath their nostrils. And put them in white noise helmets.
Speaker 1: Israel saw aversive therapy and still sees it as the
Speaker 1: best response to self injurious and disruptive behavior. He almost
Speaker 1: never doped his pupils, a position he holds to this day.
Speaker 1: He believes drugs often only saved the patient, they do
Speaker 1: not solve her problems. Israel then is now put his
Speaker 1: trust in punishment. So didn't them but give him a smack.
Speaker 1: He'll give him a smack, He'll he'll he'll spray them
Speaker 1: with ammonia. Like there's all sorts of it. Is like
Speaker 1: he's right, and that a lot of like the medication
Speaker 1: treatments that are given to these kids are horrible, Like
Speaker 1: they're just drugging them into non existence in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases, which is fucked up. And he's recognizing that.
Speaker 1: And he's also this is part of how he gets
Speaker 1: a lot of parents on this side, because parents see
Speaker 1: what it's like to have their kids drug like this
Speaker 1: and they're horrified by it. And he's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: simple punishment, I can stop these behaviors. The problem is
Speaker 1: that a lot of what he's doing is torturing them
Speaker 1: into not doing these behaviors. Um and when you hear pinching, right,
Speaker 1: you may think that's kind of weird or even that's
Speaker 1: kind of sucked up, but you're probably imagining something a
Speaker 1: lot less violent than the reality. Right, Like a pinch
Speaker 1: we don't consider to be serious violence. I wouldn't, but
Speaker 1: now I'm nervous. Yeah, yeah, you should be. So. The
Speaker 1: very first report on abuse within the Behavior Research Institute
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen seventy three as the result of
Speaker 1: a an investigation by the Massachusetts Human Rights Committee. They
Speaker 1: produced a report on conditions in Israel school that pointed
Speaker 1: out that matt advocated pinching kids and squirting water in
Speaker 1: their faces. Teachers were under strict pressure to end bizarre
Speaker 1: behavior in their students, and under two weeks, they could
Speaker 1: lose their job if they did not eliminate a behavior
Speaker 1: by deadline, and so as deadlines approached, teachers started quote
Speaker 1: pinching harder and harder to meet their goal. Workers at
Speaker 1: b r I told one Human Rights Committee member they
Speaker 1: felt that quote they were turning into monsters. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine allegation of abuse in Israel's facility provides more
Speaker 1: graphic context. Quote on October night, according to court documents
Speaker 1: CORWINSA and Corwin's. The person making the complaints says she
Speaker 1: saw Israel fingernail pinching the bottoms of twelve year old
Speaker 1: Christopher Hirsch's feet. Israel was administering a behavioral reversal lesson
Speaker 1: to get Hirsh to stop defecating on rugs and in
Speaker 1: the shower. Corwyn said she heard the boy cry and
Speaker 1: scream in pain. The next morning at br I, worker
Speaker 1: named Nancy Tibo got sick to her stomach when she
Speaker 1: saw her his feet. There were open blisters and a
Speaker 1: reddish substance using from them. She testified employees continued to
Speaker 1: pinch the boy's feet. Corwin returned to work after two
Speaker 1: days off. She was horrified at what she found. The
Speaker 1: insteps of both Christopher's feet had a considerable amount of
Speaker 1: blisters and a considerable amount of open bloody patches where
Speaker 1: the skin had been entirely removed. She said, fucking girl,
Speaker 1: So this is not like a pinch your mom would
Speaker 1: give you where something when she got like ticked at you.
Speaker 1: Like these are caused like bleeding wounds, like trying to
Speaker 1: rip the skin off almost and a lot of it
Speaker 1: is because they're doing this over and over again, sometimes
Speaker 1: dozens of times, because right, that's what you you want
Speaker 1: to have consistently be reinforcing. I guess that that whatever
Speaker 1: they did was bad. And again, when he talks about this,
Speaker 1: Israel is always like, well, we're trying to stop self
Speaker 1: injurious behavior. And I think people think about that like
Speaker 1: kind of some of the stuff I saw, if that
Speaker 1: was if that's literally how it was being used, it
Speaker 1: was like, look, we're just trying to stop them for
Speaker 1: potentially killing themselves. I guess I would say, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but he's also defining self injurious behaviors like
Speaker 1: pooping on the ground, which I don't is not going
Speaker 1: to kill them. It's it's not good, like you should
Speaker 1: not poop on the ground, but that's not a danger
Speaker 1: to the child's life. Um. And again I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it would be justified to pinch bloody sores in them
Speaker 1: if they were slamming their head into something. But that's
Speaker 1: how he tries to frame it, is that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know this is horrible, but we're trying to stop
Speaker 1: them from permanently injuring or killing themselves. And it's just
Speaker 1: such a serious situation. The reality is that they're doing
Speaker 1: this for any kind of behavior they consider unpleasant. Um
Speaker 1: and by trying to fix this problem, they're making dozens
Speaker 1: more yes, yes, significant issues now. The entire time b
Speaker 1: r I grew and expanded across the East Coast and
Speaker 1: over to the West Coast, there were constant investigations and
Speaker 1: allegations of misconduct from the beginning. What is happening in
Speaker 1: these schools is marked out as fucked up and problematic.
Speaker 1: That nineteen seventy three report by the Human Rights Committee
Speaker 1: ended with deep concern over the impact of such aggressive
Speaker 1: behavior modification techniques could have on an individual. Quote. This
Speaker 1: is especially true when the individuals are severely handicapped children
Speaker 1: who may not comprehend the reasons for being subjected to
Speaker 1: such intense systematic procedures without specific criteria for determining deviant behaviors,
Speaker 1: an individual with behaviors of questionable deviancy might be subjected
Speaker 1: to a therapy program of excessive intensity merely because his
Speaker 1: parent or teacher had a low tolerance for the particular
Speaker 1: behavior exhibited. So they're saying what I'm saying, which is
Speaker 1: that like, well, you say, this is only for the
Speaker 1: most severe cases but the severity of a bad behavior
Speaker 1: is determined by the person doing violence to the child,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's just because they don't like a kid
Speaker 1: making noise. Um. Again, I'm not saying that any of
Speaker 1: this would be justified if it was only being used
Speaker 1: on kids with severe behaviors, but it's being used on
Speaker 1: for anything that that the staff find unpleasant. The fight
Speaker 1: is yeah, exactly. The head of value evaluator on that
Speaker 1: report was a guy named Nazareth, and he later told
Speaker 1: an interviewer that the students he saw at Israel school
Speaker 1: had been turned into robots. Quote. He controls everything. He's
Speaker 1: an egomaniac. It's either his way or no way. I'm
Speaker 1: absolutely amazed he's still in business now. The article in
Speaker 1: which Nazareth gaves Nazareth gave this quote was published in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, and Nazareth was amazed because between nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, when the reports of abuse at his fastility
Speaker 1: started in nineteen eighty five, a ton of people in
Speaker 1: multiple states had tried to shut Matt Israel the held
Speaker 1: down and they all failed. From the Boston Phoenix quote
Speaker 1: in April nineteen seventy six, is Reel expanded his program
Speaker 1: by founding a parallel reward and punishment school home for
Speaker 1: six children in Van Nuys, California. The National Society for
Speaker 1: Autistic Children and s a C, now known as the
Speaker 1: National Society for Children and Adults with Autism, the country's
Speaker 1: leading advocacy group for those with autism, took a long,
Speaker 1: hard look at his reel expansion. On December ninety six,
Speaker 1: Israel was officially bounced from n s a C founding
Speaker 1: following allegations that he was practicing as a clinical psychologist
Speaker 1: directing both day and residential programs in the state of
Speaker 1: California without obtaining a professional license. Israel denies the charge.
Speaker 1: Denies the charge charge that pain infliction and other physically
Speaker 1: coercive techniques are now employed when it is not necessary
Speaker 1: to do so. Israel was chiden for his apparent lack
Speaker 1: of respect for rules and regulations. There is unsatisfactory evidence
Speaker 1: that you are reputable and responsible in relation to the
Speaker 1: operation of a licensed facility, and or that you have
Speaker 1: the ability to comply with applicable regulations, The department wrote, First,
Speaker 1: you have shown a disregard for the law by operating
Speaker 1: your program without first obtaining a license from this Department
Speaker 1: to do so. Also, you are apparently engaged unlawfully in
Speaker 1: the practice of psychology without securing a California license. So
Speaker 1: his work in California get shut the hell down because
Speaker 1: he's abusing kids and he doesn't even have a license
Speaker 1: to be the first Wild Days was able to open
Speaker 1: it up in the place. Yeah, it kind of seems
Speaker 1: like someone should have caught that before. Yeah. Yeah. Israel
Speaker 1: was ordered to cease and desist operation or face legal
Speaker 1: action that would close down his school. The day after
Speaker 1: the scheduled shut down, according to published reports, the students
Speaker 1: parents proclaimed that they had taken over the facility and
Speaker 1: we're running it as a co op. The school, which
Speaker 1: had started as a branch of the b r I
Speaker 1: and Providence, severed ties with the parent institute and formed
Speaker 1: its own corporation, b r I of California. Matt Israel
Speaker 1: went from the guy in charge to just a consultant.
Speaker 1: The new school applied for a license, and the move
Speaker 1: was helped by California Governor Pat Brown, whose law firm
Speaker 1: represented b r I of California. The institute got its
Speaker 1: group home license, and it received the only permit ever
Speaker 1: granted by California to use aversives physical aversives. So he's told,
Speaker 1: you can't be teaching here because you're abusing kids and
Speaker 1: you have no license. And so immediately the school says, oh,
Speaker 1: now we're a parent co op and Matt has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with this school. But also we're going to
Speaker 1: use our connection to the governor of California to get
Speaker 1: a license to use all of the techniques that he
Speaker 1: got in trouble for using. But hey, he's not around anymore.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it, spoilers, he's still there. They just
Speaker 1: start claiming that now he has nothing to do with it. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: and this is versions of this are going to happen
Speaker 1: again in the future. Um it would come to it
Speaker 1: would become something of a pattern for Israel. In nine,
Speaker 1: the state or the City of New York balked at
Speaker 1: Matt Israel's request to increase per people tuition from thirty
Speaker 1: one thousand, six hundred dollars to thirty eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: The state investigated, and, according to The New York Times,
Speaker 1: found b r I was in violation of New York
Speaker 1: state law. They ordered Israel to stop using physical aversives
Speaker 1: on New York State students. In his Providence facility. Instead,
Speaker 1: Israel threatened to kick them out. This prompted a group
Speaker 1: of New York City parents to sue the state and
Speaker 1: federal court and keep their kids at b r I. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the parents one. We'll talk more about the parents throughout
Speaker 1: this episode, but it's important to note right here that
Speaker 1: from day one he has enjoyed tremendous support from a
Speaker 1: lot of parents who have kids in his facilities. Others
Speaker 1: have sued him. Obviously it's not universal, but a lot
Speaker 1: of them will sing this guy's praises to the heavens.
Speaker 1: This is partly because b r i s number one
Speaker 1: rule is that they will turn no child down, no
Speaker 1: matter how severe or violent their behavior. So again, if
Speaker 1: there's a kid that you know you can't deal with
Speaker 1: as a parent, I can't. I'm not capable of handling
Speaker 1: my child's behavior. If you're a teacher and you know,
Speaker 1: like we are, school can't handle his kid's behavior, you
Speaker 1: know br I will take them. And that's a big
Speaker 1: part of the support that he gets is because a
Speaker 1: lot of these parents and that these these schools are
Speaker 1: just overwhelmed with dealing with these kids, and b r
Speaker 1: I as a lifeline. So they they're afraid that if
Speaker 1: the school shuts down, they're going to have to take
Speaker 1: care of these kids again, or to be fair, some
Speaker 1: of them are concerned, well, if the school shuts down,
Speaker 1: the only place for my kid is a mental institution
Speaker 1: where they're going to be doped up twenty four hours
Speaker 1: a day. You know. So that's that's understandable in a sense,
Speaker 1: like it's like sometimes you just aren't capable of handling it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's there. Yeah it's again. Israel is pretty
Speaker 1: clearly the bad guy here, and I thinks of making
Speaker 1: questionable calls, but they're not they're not villains. They're not
Speaker 1: doing this to be cruel. I'm sure some of them
Speaker 1: are shitty parents, but a lot of them are just like,
Speaker 1: I have no idea how to handle this kid, and
Speaker 1: obviously there's not resources for me. You know. It's it's
Speaker 1: the wild West in a lot of this period in
Speaker 1: terms of like any kind of of treatment for particularly
Speaker 1: kids with much more severe behaviors. Um and uh. I
Speaker 1: get the desperation, even though I think it leads them
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction. It's not unreasonable, but they're desperate.
Speaker 1: But you know who's not desperate The products and services
Speaker 1: that sponsored podcast. That's right there. They are content in
Speaker 1: the knowledge that that that you'll love them, um, you
Speaker 1: will spend the money. Definitely. We're back. In January of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, the State of New York sent a
Speaker 1: follow up team to b r I for a three
Speaker 1: day unannounced evaluation visit and the report was remarkable. Quote
Speaker 1: the January team found b r I to be a
Speaker 1: professionally conceived, well documented, and rigidly implemented behavior modification program.
Speaker 1: It's effect on the students was the singular most depressing
Speaker 1: experience that team members have had in numerous visitations to
Speaker 1: human service programs. So they're both are this is a
Speaker 1: very professional, well documented they're very consistent. None of this
Speaker 1: is like slapdash er haphazard, and it's the most depressing
Speaker 1: thing we've ever seen. And that's saying something. That's saying something.
Speaker 1: The report listed the behavioral modification programs that a number
Speaker 1: of students were under. One kid's program was as follows.
Speaker 1: Biting self fifteen minutes, helmet, no vision, white noise, handplay,
Speaker 1: spank but noses, pinch but out of seat, spank but
Speaker 1: biting others, cool shower five pinches foot, hands to head, muscle, squeeze,
Speaker 1: shoulder clapping, say no rocking, water squirt. These are yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a list. It is And it's again, as
Speaker 1: someone who did this and was I think bad at
Speaker 1: teaching special LEAD, I can't imagine punishing most of these.
Speaker 1: But like like a lot of kids will do like
Speaker 1: you know, they call it hand play. You know, they'll
Speaker 1: do like they'll flap or something, they'll make motions with
Speaker 1: their hands specifically, Like we never punished that. It's just
Speaker 1: the thing that like, well, okay whatever, who cares like
Speaker 1: it's not hurting them or anybody else. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: in my experience it was definitely one of those things
Speaker 1: were they never I did get the time outs and
Speaker 1: obviously like some punishers by being ground and whatnot. But
Speaker 1: then there'll be things where because I do digital ot
Speaker 1: and do the hand wave thing just like focus and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird how people who at least we're trying to
Speaker 1: work in special ED were less reactive to it than
Speaker 1: people who aren't. It just seems like, yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: you've got to have kind of a right mindset with
Speaker 1: the only that because it's not harmful, it's just no
Speaker 1: and to focus. It may look weird, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not hurting them or anyone else as opposed to like,
Speaker 1: there are some behaviors on this that would need to
Speaker 1: be dealt with, Like if a kid is biting themselves,
Speaker 1: you know you want to stop that somehow, right, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta stop that. But I'm not convinced a white
Speaker 1: noise helmet is necessarily the right way to deal with it.
Speaker 1: That said, we had a couple of kids who did
Speaker 1: bite themselves and I never we never figured out a
Speaker 1: good way to stop the behavior either. Um So I
Speaker 1: don't know, like, but it does seem like a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that they are dealing punishing with aversives
Speaker 1: are not bad for the kids. They're not really problems
Speaker 1: other than that the parents or the staff don't like
Speaker 1: the behavior. You know, they're rocking, they're clapping, they're waving
Speaker 1: their hands. That's not bad for them. It's just that
Speaker 1: it annoys the staff, and so the staff punish it
Speaker 1: with punching or with pinching and with with banking and stuff.
Speaker 1: And I find that pretty disturbing. Um And I should
Speaker 1: note that the white noise helmet they're putting on these kids,
Speaker 1: is described elsewhere is basically being a football helmet with
Speaker 1: an opaque screen that blocks vision while white noise fills
Speaker 1: the person's ears. Now, the squirting that they'll do the
Speaker 1: water bottles was generally water mixed with compressed air, but
Speaker 1: some students would also have ammonius sprayed near their nose
Speaker 1: every fifteen minutes as an aversive, which is real pretty
Speaker 1: fucked up, like about the water, but yeah, ammonius definitely worse.
Speaker 1: Um and well, a lot of these aversives were administered
Speaker 1: as punishments, and the traditional sense that was not always
Speaker 1: the case. And to explain what I mean by that,
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote again from the Boston Phoenix. One
Speaker 1: of the most bizarre measures they saw was an Israel
Speaker 1: technique dubbed behavioral rever so lessons. Israel believes that for
Speaker 1: his treatment to work, particular behavior must occur often enough
Speaker 1: for the people to get consequated, that is, rewarded or punished.
Speaker 1: When targeted inappropriate behavior comes at a low frequency, Israel
Speaker 1: believes it makes it more difficult for the student to
Speaker 1: grasp the connection between the behavior and the consequence. At
Speaker 1: b r I, Israel has solved his problem by having
Speaker 1: the staff encourage the beginning stages of bad behavior. Kathy,
Speaker 1: one of the New York residents, was stealing food and drink.
Speaker 1: To get her to stop, the br I staff first
Speaker 1: urged her to steal so they could punish her. The
Speaker 1: New York team found these instructions taped to her classroom table.
Speaker 1: Kathy is to receive one stealing opportunity per hour. She
Speaker 1: should be prompted to steal the juice squarter, and a
Speaker 1: spank is to be administered. If Kathy does actually steal
Speaker 1: the juice, she is to receive the helmet and white
Speaker 1: noise for fifteen minutes. So the point, that's pretty bad, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not like that's real abusive, like forcing kids to
Speaker 1: engage in bad behavior, or pushing them at least to
Speaker 1: engage in bad behavior so you can punish them often
Speaker 1: enough to stop the behavior. This seems kind of unhinged.
Speaker 1: Um in the State of New York agreed. They called
Speaker 1: consequating entrapment, which feels fair to me. Yeah. The evaluation
Speaker 1: team summarize their feelings LESLIE rather than being a program
Speaker 1: of neglect which harms children by not assisting them at growth,
Speaker 1: the b r I program utilizes a current professional ideology
Speaker 1: to deny children the opportunity to grow, to deny them
Speaker 1: any choices, to deny them normal experiences in leisure time, pursuits,
Speaker 1: to deny them any opportunities for fun, to deny them
Speaker 1: the opportunity to demonstrate anything other than a few pre
Speaker 1: selected responses. So you're not letting these kids evolve naturally
Speaker 1: as human beings. You're even forcing them to do bad
Speaker 1: behavior so you can punishment if you see like occasional
Speaker 1: bad behavior, you're forcing it to become constant, so you
Speaker 1: can punish. You are you're denying them the right to
Speaker 1: grow the way a person grows. Yeah, and so it
Speaker 1: could be like, hey, I don't like the kid, I
Speaker 1: can just make them to this or plant something on them,
Speaker 1: and then I can punish them, and then I can
Speaker 1: punish them. Yeah, you get the feeling that did happen
Speaker 1: christ you know it's again Unford, you know, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: messed up. So the state restricted bris use of physical
Speaker 1: punishments on New York students. That's the result of this investigation.
Speaker 1: But they and they made an agreement with bri I
Speaker 1: that physical aversives would only be used in situations where
Speaker 1: a child posed serious physical danger to himself or others,
Speaker 1: and only after less violent diversives had already failed. Well,
Speaker 1: all this was going on, Well, this whole set of
Speaker 1: investigations and is going on. A Los Angeles based placement agency,
Speaker 1: which like Places Kids and Facilities, voted to halt funding
Speaker 1: to b r I after a review of their operation
Speaker 1: found serious injury had been caused by the program's aversive therapies.
Speaker 1: Parents again fought to block the move, saying their children
Speaker 1: would be sent to state hospitals where they'd be drugged,
Speaker 1: put in solitary confinement, and worst of all, given electric shocks.
Speaker 1: Keep that in mind. The parents won again. California Governor
Speaker 1: Pat Brown was said to him been a major reason
Speaker 1: for this. The whole breujaha was sparked in large part
Speaker 1: by the Corwin allegations, which I quoted from above. That's
Speaker 1: the kid whose feet were pinched until he had bleeding blisters.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy nine, Matt Israel published a rebuttal to
Speaker 1: those allegations, wherein he claimed that he didn't see any
Speaker 1: broken skin on the child he'd pinched, just a tiny
Speaker 1: blood blister that cleaned up after a few days. Quote meantime,
Speaker 1: Christopher Hirsch is alive, well, happy, healthy, behaving better than ever,
Speaker 1: and with not a single serious or semi serious injury
Speaker 1: from any treatment procedure administered by me or the staff
Speaker 1: of b r I California. Shortly after that rebuttal was published,
Speaker 1: Christopher's father took his son to a doctor to have
Speaker 1: him evaluated. The boy was so panicked that it took
Speaker 1: three adults to hold him down while they tried to
Speaker 1: examine his feet. One observer at the time recalled, there
Speaker 1: was no part of the skinny boy's body that didn't
Speaker 1: have a bruise. Then they took off his shoes. It
Speaker 1: was horrible. Christopher's father claims the insteps of his son's
Speaker 1: feet were filled with oles the rough size and circumference
Speaker 1: of a cigarette burn. B r I had been granted
Speaker 1: special state permission to do pinching procedures, but the state
Speaker 1: argued that the specific kinds of pinching that had been
Speaker 1: done to this kid was not allowed, and they actually
Speaker 1: had like legal definitions of the type of pinching you
Speaker 1: were allowed to do, which is weird to me, but
Speaker 1: even within the kind of fucked up standards of what
Speaker 1: you could do to a kid. At the time, b
Speaker 1: r I is crossing lines. There were other victims in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy eight, Michael Cutler was admitted to the
Speaker 1: e r after being abused at the Providence facility. To
Speaker 1: stop him from running away, the staff had handcuffed him
Speaker 1: to a chair. He was hospitalized with blood poisoning in
Speaker 1: his arm. His mother claims when she saw him that quote,
Speaker 1: Michael looked like Auschwitz and was covered with black and
Speaker 1: blue bruises on his thighs and lacerations on his body.
Speaker 1: The only advers since she had approved for the school
Speaker 1: to give her son was a cold shower. In nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: the school had its first death, Robert Cooper Jr. A
Speaker 1: twenty five year old autistic student at b r I
Speaker 1: who was taken to Rhode Island Hospital after he started vomiting.
Speaker 1: He died at the hospital of a hymorrhagic bowel infarct,
Speaker 1: and a medical examiner's investigation found no negligence on the
Speaker 1: part of b r I, but noted that they had
Speaker 1: not followed proper emergency procedures in taking him to the hospital.
Speaker 1: Robert's parents defended the school quote it was difficult for
Speaker 1: myself or my wife to allow Bobby to be pinched
Speaker 1: or spanked. But there were no alternatives. Every other alternative
Speaker 1: was no alternative. In a state institution, he would have
Speaker 1: become a vegetable. On June seventeenth, another student died, Donnie Aswad.
Speaker 1: He was restrained in bed by a contraption that kept
Speaker 1: him flat on his stomach. He died somewhere between nine
Speaker 1: and ten am while restrained. The coroner ruled his death
Speaker 1: was also was caused by mental retardation and cerebral malformation,
Speaker 1: which is pretty fucked up. And I think the first
Speaker 1: one it made, that first death may have had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the school, right, the kid had boweled disorders.
Speaker 1: They were just irresponsible and not getting him to the hospital. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but that they may not have caused it. I
Speaker 1: think the coroners wrong on this one because we know
Speaker 1: that restraining people in this way, this is why a
Speaker 1: lot of cops have killed people this way, right, And
Speaker 1: the fact that he's like, oh no, it was he
Speaker 1: he died of mental retardation, not being restrained on his
Speaker 1: belly um for a long period of time. Yeah, seems
Speaker 1: pretty messed up to me. Um. The State of California
Speaker 1: decided there was enough doubt as a result of this
Speaker 1: case to put the school on a two year probation.
Speaker 1: So even though the corner says this isn't their fault,
Speaker 1: California evaluators are like kind of seems like this is
Speaker 1: their fault. From Wired quote in, the States Department of
Speaker 1: Social Services filed a sixty three page legal complaint alleging
Speaker 1: abuse at the school. The complaint claimed, among other things,
Speaker 1: that b r I withheld meals, showed staff how to
Speaker 1: hide students injuries from regulatory agencies, and strangely encouraged students
Speaker 1: to act out for a film crew, the footage to
Speaker 1: be used later to just to demonstrate how the children
Speaker 1: had behaved before b r I. Later that year, the
Speaker 1: state reached a settlement with b r I in California
Speaker 1: the school could use anything more punishing than a water spray.
Speaker 1: The state also forbade Israel, who says he'd turned over
Speaker 1: control of the campus before US wants death from stepping
Speaker 1: foot on the north Ridge property. So again he would
Speaker 1: he'd already been kicked out of the school, But California
Speaker 1: I don't think they had evidence, hard evidence that he'd
Speaker 1: been working there, but they suspected it enough to legally
Speaker 1: forbid him from entering the property. In nine, Vincent Militek died.
Speaker 1: As like Vincent, was a b r I student, he'd
Speaker 1: been acting out at the residential home in Sea Conk
Speaker 1: and was restrained in a chair, His hands and feet
Speaker 1: were put in plastic cuffs, his face was masked and
Speaker 1: helmeted with a white noise machine, and he suffocated to death.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's pretty bad, um, But of course b r
Speaker 1: I was found again not to have caused the death.
Speaker 1: And you get the feeling that a lot of corners
Speaker 1: are just saying, like, well, if if a kid who's
Speaker 1: got some sort of mental disability dies in any way,
Speaker 1: it's the refault of that disability that they it's it's
Speaker 1: it's depressingly seems like it happened eventually type of deals.
Speaker 1: What they're going at. Yeah, um, And a district court judge, though,
Speaker 1: did find that the school had been negligent in approving
Speaker 1: the therapy for him, as they hadn't been Basically, it
Speaker 1: isn't their fault that he suffocated while they had put
Speaker 1: him in all this stuff, but it wasn't they should
Speaker 1: have monitored him more to make sure he didn't suffocate,
Speaker 1: which again seems like it was their fault, but whatever,
Speaker 1: I'm not a fucking judge. Later that and I guess
Speaker 1: we should give the judge credit because the coroner was
Speaker 1: willing to let them off entirely, and the judge does
Speaker 1: call them negligent, So I don't know. I guess that's
Speaker 1: your best fucking case scenario. You're only going to get
Speaker 1: a half one at this point. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Later
Speaker 1: that year, the Massachusetts Office of Children carried out an
Speaker 1: inspection of br I that ended with an order to
Speaker 1: close the school. The school appealed and counter suit, and
Speaker 1: a judge suggested that they compromised by ending the use
Speaker 1: of aversives. Matt Israel. Matt Israel complained that if aversans
Speaker 1: were ended or Matt Israel complained because and and said
Speaker 1: basically that like, okay, we ended all of our aversive
Speaker 1: train and my students all regressed and started carrying out
Speaker 1: the behavior again. He took this as proof that his
Speaker 1: aversive therapy worked. Right as soon as we stopped it,
Speaker 1: they all regressed and got worse. New York State investigators, though,
Speaker 1: said this is actually evidence that aversives don't work. The
Speaker 1: kids were not being treated in any way. They were
Speaker 1: being controlled by the threat of punishment, and quote, when
Speaker 1: that threat is removed, they revert to their original behaviors. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're basically being able to be unfucked with the mental
Speaker 1: torture they have been doing. Yeah. Yeah, And it's it's
Speaker 1: he's not treating them in any way. He's not he's
Speaker 1: not ending the behavior. He's just he's there. They're stopping
Speaker 1: the behavior temporarily because they're being tortured. Um. And it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's that's that's the core of what's happening here because
Speaker 1: to a lot of people, it does work in the
Speaker 1: short term. And that You've got a kid who keeps
Speaker 1: hitting himself, right you, Um, you punish him with like
Speaker 1: some form of like you're pinching him, or you're you're
Speaker 1: spanking him, or you're putting him in his helmet spraying
Speaker 1: with ammonium. Whenever he hits himself, he'll stop hitting himself
Speaker 1: as long as you're applying those punishments whenever he starts
Speaker 1: the behavior. But that's that's not helping him. That that's
Speaker 1: it's really all it's helping is like the adults around
Speaker 1: him who are unsettled by the behavior, but you're not
Speaker 1: providing him with anything better. I think you can make
Speaker 1: an argument that if this kid is, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: trying to like kill himself or whatever, and you apply
Speaker 1: in aversive therapy that stops the behavior, maybe that's the
Speaker 1: only option you have in that short term. But again,
Speaker 1: it's still not a long term solution, and the vast
Speaker 1: majority of these kids it's not that severe. Again, if
Speaker 1: you've got a kid who's trying to put their head
Speaker 1: through a glass window and you will apply in aversive
Speaker 1: in the moment to stop that behavior, uh, somehow, I
Speaker 1: guess you could make an argument for it. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that's the right thing to do, um, but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's still not going to solve the problem. You would
Speaker 1: need to they need long term therapeutic help, and that's
Speaker 1: not what is happening at b r I. B r
Speaker 1: I is just saying, as long as we keep torturing
Speaker 1: these kids, they won't engage in the behavior you brought
Speaker 1: them here for. But also they can never leave or
Speaker 1: stop being tortured, which is a nightmare. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to me because he's he's he's rejecting
Speaker 1: the use of like doping kids up in order to
Speaker 1: deal with this behavior. And yeah, it feels like it's
Speaker 1: just like doping in a different way. It's yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure we're not drugging them, but we are basically taking
Speaker 1: pemmony on spraying in the face. So and it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, drugging them doesn't work because you're just covering
Speaker 1: up the problem with drugs. It's like, well, you're just
Speaker 1: covering up the problem with fucking torture. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of kids would rather, if you have, if
Speaker 1: your choices, be doped up or be tortured. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: guess a lot of kids would choose dope if they Yeah,
Speaker 1: choice not that not Again, one of the issues you
Speaker 1: haven't just guessing this is that like, for kids this severe,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of good options at this point.
Speaker 1: That's not today and the school is still around today.
Speaker 1: Today there are a lot better options. But the fucking
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, it is the wild West for this.
Speaker 1: And so you do have to have some understanding for
Speaker 1: parents who are like, well, what are my fucking options,
Speaker 1: you know, and yeah, they don't have a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Not to mitigate Israel's behavior here, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of desperation on behalf of of of the parents and
Speaker 1: of the schools that are sending kids to b r
Speaker 1: I maybe, and they're also not in fully aware of
Speaker 1: everything that's happening at b r I too. Yep. So,
Speaker 1: as the court battles raged on, Israel eventually hit upon
Speaker 1: the idea of bringing one of his most self abuse
Speaker 1: of students before Judge Ernest Rodenberg for a hearing at
Speaker 1: the Bristol County Probade Court in six Rodenberg found Israel's
Speaker 1: presentation so convincing that the judge ruled that the patient
Speaker 1: would have chosen to go to b r I if
Speaker 1: they've been mentally capable of doing so. The Office for
Speaker 1: Children in b r I settled in nineteen eight seven.
Speaker 1: The States paid the school half a million dollars, and
Speaker 1: Judge Rodenberg ruled that b r I would be allowed
Speaker 1: to continue using a Verson's as long as each student's
Speaker 1: treatment plan was approved by a probate court. Matt Israel
Speaker 1: was so happy with this verdict that a few years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine four, he renamed his Behavior Research Institute
Speaker 1: in honor of the judge who had allowed his work
Speaker 1: to continue. From then on b R I was known
Speaker 1: as the Judge Rodenberg Center. Yeah oh boy, yeah, bad ship.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling? Aim? Oh, well, I will didn't think.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a lot, but I kind of figured
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some ship. Yeah yeah, I mean yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things. Unfortunately, especially with the whole
Speaker 1: wild West thing, it's definitely gotten a lot better in
Speaker 1: terms of getting treatment, in terms of whatnot, finding groups
Speaker 1: and finding people that can help you out. In terms
Speaker 1: of this, I'm just let's see where is it gonna go? Yeah,
Speaker 1: now we're good, but you know what is going to
Speaker 1: go somewhere? Good? The products and services that sponsor this show. Um,
Speaker 1: well no, it's not a products and services time. What's good?
Speaker 1: Is your your plugs? Oh yes, plugs? You can with
Speaker 1: your I'm just interrupting you and no, none of them.
Speaker 1: It's okay. I'm just trying to pull it up. Uh,
Speaker 1: don't have too much of My biggest presence is on
Speaker 1: Twitter at notch They'll be n O T C H
Speaker 1: T H E B and I just punched post a
Speaker 1: lot of political stuff bunch of stupid stuff. It's a
Speaker 1: fun time. Yeah. Well, um, that's the episode you can
Speaker 1: find us. I mean, where where you found us. Let's
Speaker 1: be honest, you found us. You know where we are.
Speaker 1: You're listening right now, like, don't don't funk around with me, like,
Speaker 1: you know where we are. You know where you are.
Speaker 1: You good at our other shows. Hard, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: be hard, alright. Episode over.