Students shocked in prank

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Three students at a controversial Massachusetts clinic where D.C. special education students have been farmed out for years were mistakenly subjected to electric shock treatments as part of a prank, The Examiner has learned.

The episode is part of a state criminal investigation focused on the Judge Rotenberg Center, said officials close to the case. Nine D.C. students are housed at the clinic, to the distress of some city officials.

“I’m just appalled,” said D.C. Council Member Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3. “I just don’t understand how we can let our children be there. Obviously, they need to be rescued.

“I feel like driving up there myself,” Cheh added.

The Massachusetts investigation began in late August, after a student at the center called staff and pretended to be center founder Matthew Israel, investigative documents show.

The pretender told staff that he wanted the three wards, one of them a child from Virginia, hooked up to electrodes. One of the students was shocked 29 times. The other two were shocked 77 times each, documents show and sources said.

The sessions were videotaped and the videos were viewed by a state investigator, but Rotenberg officials have since destroyed the tapes, sources said.

Nancy Alterio, executive director of the Massachusetts Disabled Persons Protection, told The Examiner that her agency had investigated the claims and its report was expected within weeks.

Center spokesman Ernest Corrigan declined comment.

Rotenberg is one of hundreds of special education vendors paid hundreds of millions of dollars to look after D.C.’s most vulnerable children. It has been the subject of dozens of complaints in Massachusetts for years, from allegations of sexual abuse to assault, documents show.

The Examiner reported last week that city officials continued sending children to the center weeks after Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee ordered Rotenberg cut off the city’s approved vendors list.

The nine children left at the center have told D.C. officials they want to come home, school documents obtained by The Examiner show, but their way is blocked by a combination of desperate parents — who believe the center is the last hope for their troubled kids — and bureaucratic incompetence.

State Superintendent Deborah A. Gist has hired a team of outside investigators to examine special education vendors, including Rotenberg.

Got a tip on the special education system? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or send e-mail to bmyers@dcexaminer.com.

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