OLD SCHOOL: Patients at the Judge Rotenberg Center wear electrodes (above) and get 60-volt zaps by teachers. (AP)
She was only 12 years old but pulling out her hair until she had bald spots. She banged her head into walls so hard, her retinas detached from her eyes.
Marcia Shear was terrified her daughter Samantha would die from her tantrums — until a controversial out-of-state school took her in and strapped her arms and legs down and zapped her with electricity.
The Long Island mom says shock treatment saved her little girl’s life.
“People call [the school] a torture chamber,” said Shear, of Roslyn Heights. “If it didn’t exist, my daughter would be in the ground right now. She wouldn’t be alive.”
Shear is one of several parents fighting to keep their children at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Mass., as New York and federal agencies ramp up campaigns to crack down on the school.
In December, the Food and Drug Administration warned the facility that its electric device isn’t approved, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced the center would no longer receive federal money.
The New York State Education Department sent a cease-and-desist letter to JRC a month later, ordering the school to stop shocking New York children approved for the treatment.
“Until you have a child like this, you don’t understand,” Shear said. “I was always thinking, ‘Who’s going to help her? What’s going to happen?’ Finally, I can sleep at night.”
Samantha, now 20, has autism and is moderately developmentally disabled.
About 120 New York City students and dozens more from across the state live at JRC, where “aversives,” or unpleasant punishments, are used to alter behavior.
Today, only nine New Yorkers receive shock treatments there. These are administered through a graduated electronic decelerator device, worn as a backpack connected to electrodes placed on the arms, legs and torso. When students lash out, staff simply click a remote to deliver a two-second, 60-volt shock.
In 2012, the city Department of Education spent $13 million to place local students in the school at a cost of about $108,555 a head.
Ilana Slaff said her brother, Matthew, 41, of The Bronx, banged his head so much he required surgery, and he punctured his eardrums after plunging his fingers into his ears.
Matthew, who has autism, came to JRC when he was 17. The GED device gave him a more normal life, she said.
“No parent easily makes the decision to give their kids shocks,” said Slaff, a psychiatrist. “Politicians are looking to be politically correct. But we’re looking out for the rights of our family members.”
The practice has its share of opponents.
“You’d think this kind of treatment went out the door 40 years ago,” said City Council member Vincent Gentile (R-Brooklyn). “How can we let this happen today?”