Seven workers fired in electric skin-shock incident
Seven employees deemed responsible for a harrowing night of skin-shock torture at a special-needs school group home have been fired, officials at the Canton-based Judge Rotenberg Education Center said Thursday.
The revelation comes one day after school officials refused to disclose the status of suspended workers following an Aug. 26 incident in which two emotionally disturbed teenagers were given electrical shocks following a series of prank phone calls.
The employees were suspended immediately after the incident, and terminated Oct. 1 after an investigation was completed, school spokesman Ernest Corrigan said.
``We thought it was important that people understood our reaction to that event,'' Corrigan said. ``People are just learning about this now, but it occurred in August, and it was reported (to authorities) hours after its discovery.''
Six of the employees were assigned to a school-run group home in Stoughton, where the incident took place. The seventh employee was responsible for monitoring a bank of video cameras at the school's Canton campus.
A state agency responsible for overseeing the school confirmed the firings took place.
A state report released Wednesday concluded a former group home resident, posing as a supervisor, made a series of late-night phone calls instructing workers to awaken two residents, ages 16 and 19, and administer painful electric skin shocks as punishment for their behavior earlier in the evening.
The calls, between 2 a.m. and 4:45 a.m. on Aug. 26, resulted in the students receiving multiple two-second skin shocks -- 77 to one of the students, and 29 to another. Both were initially awoken as skin shocks are first administered, and at one point were both pinned down in four-point restraints so could not move or fight back.
The report says the staff members ignored the pleas of the students, as well as other horrified group home residents, and blindly followed the instructions of the prank caller.
Five of the six staffers had worked a double or triple shift, and most had been on the job less than three months, the report said. The staffers were described as concerned and reluctant about the orders, but failed to verify them with the central office or check treatment plans to make sure the teens could receive that level of shock therapy, it said.
The incident renewed calls on Beacon Hill for an end to the use of electric skin shocks and other forms of corporal punishment at the school. In addition, Gov. Elliot Spitzer of New York -- which sends emotionally troubled students to the Rotenberg Center for treatment -- said the school's punishment therapy is ``wrong, and should be ended.''
The center is believed to be the only school in the nation that uses skin-shock punishments to change destructive behavior. The center says the treatments are used in a minority of cases, and only with parental, medical, psychiatric and court approval.
A second report on the Aug. 26 incident by the state Disabled Persons Protection Commission is pending.
Tom Benner may be reached at tbenner@ledger.com.
The Patriot Ledger