The Associated Press: Prank May Have Led to Shock Treatments
State officials are investigating complaints that at least two teenagers were given electric shock treatments at a residential center for people with special needs because someone telephoned fake orders to the staff.
Initial investigations showed that a former student at the Judge Rotenberg Education Center called in the orders on Aug. 26, Cindy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Early Education and Care, said Monday. Center officials reported the incident the following day, she said.
“There is still an ongoing criminal investigation,” said the school’s senior counsel, Ernest Corrigan. “We are working very closely with investigators.”
The state’s Disabled Persons Protection Committee is investigating a complaint that a third resident of the center — an adult — also received unnecessary shock treatments after the call, said Nancy Alterio, the committee’s executive director.
Hi! I’m Ashton Kutcher and you’ve just been punk’d!
I cannot remotely believe that school administrators would give electroshock “therepy” based on a friggin’ PHONE CALL!
The student should have to take 3 treatments for causing the others to receive them based on their “prank”
What state? Just quoting a passage that says “the state…” is rather vague. I know I can follow the link but why not give that sort of info directly?
THE GUY IN THE PHOTO LOOKS LIKE THE LEADER OF THE OTHERS OFF OF LOST.
Knowing nothing about the particular case, it is important to note that Electro-Shock-Therapy (Electroconvulsive Therapy – ECT) is nothing like what people have seen in the movies. Patients are NOT strapped into a chair with electrodes attached to there heads and bodies and then zapped with large and painful voltages/currents to create a negative association with a behavior.
ECT usually invloves a patient under short-term anesthetic / muscle relaxant, and is most often used in cases of depression, schizophrenia and catatonia to correct brain function. This is not a for of torture, not does the patient usually experience any physical discomfort.
This wouldn’t be a very useful punishment for the perpetrator(s) in this story. Nor is it likely to have been a huge ordeal for the patients.
All of that said, the perpetrators of this crime are clearly a bit twisted to pull such a prank.
#2 – Remember the McD’s managers that got the phone calls from the Fake Cop who ordered them to first strip search an employee, and then later basically told them to rape the young girl. And the McD Managers did it because some “Cop on the Phone told me too”.
Oh, I can believe this easily.
#5. I agree with your comments, entirely.
“ECT usually involves a patient under short-term anesthetic / muscle relaxant, and is most often used in cases of depression, schizophrenia and catatonia to correct brain function. This is not a for of torture, not does the patient usually experience any physical discomfort.”
However, it effects enormous changes
in electro-chemical brain behavior, which, in turn, effects enormous changes in in human intellectual
and emotional response, often long-term to permanent. The prankster
should be punished severely: Maximum
security prison for duration of life,
or 5 to 7 years as a Dvorak “cabana
boy”, whichever the court deems
appropriate.
#8 Agreed, and the staff should be questioned, and internal processes scrutinized too.
I mean if someone can place a phone call and impersonate a doctor, and therapy can be commenced without written verification from the alleged doctor, then something is pretty messed up with the way the institution runs.
From the article: “…people with special needs…”
aka retards that should have been strangled at birth, and then left for the wolves and buzzards…
Bring back insane asylums! with cages! sigh… those were the times!