UN calls for investigation of US school's shock treatments of autistic children

Installation

Massachusetts

with special needs is supposed to be the only one in the world that uses "aversion therapy" for the treatment of children

special UN rapporteur on torture has made a formal approach to the U.S. government through a special needs school near Boston, inflicting electric shocks on autistic children as a form of control behavior.

Juan Mendez told the Guardian, which has opened talks with the U.S. Mission to the UN in Geneva, as a first step towards school education.

He plans to contact the U.S. State Department and has the ability to stand for Human Rights of the UN.

Mendez said he was "very concerned" by the use of electric shocks, which are imposed on children with autism through the electrodes are applied to the skin.

"The use of electricity in the body of anyone raises the question of whether it is therapeutic or inflicting pain and suffering amounting to torture in violation of international law , "he added.

Judge Rotenberg Center

in Canton, Massachusetts, is believed to be the only institution in the world where children with disabilities are subject to disruption and electric shocks to a system known as a "aversion therapy."

shocks are generated by a device known as a GED that children are made to wear 24 hours a day in backpacks or around your waist.

About half of the students in the school make generators that are activated by care assistants with people connected to the remote control that sends an electrical charge on the pads of skin on the arm children and legs.

The Guardian is one of the few media who witnessed the operation of the school.

recent weeks, opposition to the controversial electro-shock treatment peaked. A demonstration demanding an end to the practice to be held outside the Massachusetts State House at noon on Saturday followed by a march by the ICC at 3:30 pm.

attention of the Rapporteur of the UN is at school is given added poignancy by the fact that Mendez was himself tortured by electric shock at the hands of police in Buenos Aires 1975.

was abused with electric batons.

"I firmly believe that electricity applied to the body of a person creates extreme pain. There are many consequences, including persistent mental illness can be devastating," said Mendez.

This is the second time that the UN has intervened in the school. Mendez predecessor as rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, has also called for an investigation Fed.

Outrage

the school was transferred to a new level in April, when the first public opportunity to view images of a child is subjected to shocks.

The video, broadcast on a court in Boston, showed after 18 years André McCollins gives 31 shots in a seven hour period in 2002.

Andre

In the video you can hear screaming and yelling, "Help me. Help me. "He is attached to his stomach on a table that electricity is discharged into your body.

Mother

Andrew McCollins Cheryl, who continued the school for abusing his son, told the court that when she visited him shortly after he received zapping "I could not not turn his head to the left or right André. looked directly. He did not flinch. "

• McCollins family has reached an agreement with ITC, who claimed that it was only after a judge approved a treatment plan for Andre.
• But after the video, called the ban electric shock increased.

"We are closer now to the end of the CCI of what we did," said Ari Ne'eman, president of the Autism Self-Defending Network is run by and for adults with autism. "This issue is very personal - it could happen to us."

Laurie Ahern Disability Rights International Campaign which opposed the treatment for many years, said aversive therapy amounted to "a horrible form of torture."

"What happened to Andrew in this video is worse than anything I've seen to a prisoner of war or a victim in the political world," he said.
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