Thread by @ekverstania

I wish to remind you that the BCBAs who work at the Judge Rotenberg Center are credentialed by the BACB. The BACB takes away the credentials of professionals who violate their code of conduct. The BACB code of conduct permits torture. #ABAisAbuse

https://twitter.com/AutSciPerson/status/1412608660279279617

Who's on the board of this organisation which tortures disabled children?

Chairman of the Board at the Judge Rotenberg Center: Henry Slucki, Ph.D.
Psychologist, Senior Research Associate at University of Southern California, School of Medicine, Department of Human Behavior
Co-producer and Co-Host of weekly talk radio program on disabilities
#ABAisAbuse

Who else is on the board of the JRC?

Jessica E. Van Stratton, Ph.D., BCBA-D, LBA
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Western Michigan University
Advisor, Student Autism Alliance of Michigan
Member, Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI)

#ABAisAbuse

Who else is complicit?

Richard Malott, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, Western Michigan University
Former president of the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI)
Consultant, Guest Lecturer, and Editor

Businessmen are in on it too.

Thomas Brady
Senior Vice President, Senior Credit Officer - Commercial Banking, Rockland Trust Company
Decades in business analysis, relationship management, business development and various leadership roles.

#ABAisAbuse

Every BCBA, every member of the ABAI who says, "my ABA is not like that" but who accepts being credentialed by the same people who endorse these torturers needs to ask themselves why they wear these letters behind their name with pride.

They JRC is recruiting too! They're seeking another a full-time BCBA right now. "Candidates should be interested in using state-of-the-art behavioral systems" AKA shocking disabled people in horrific ways.

Starting salary for a torturer at the Judge Rotenberg Center is $85,000 for BCBA and $100,000 for BCBA-D (plus up to $10,000 in bonuses and employer retirement contribution). Negotiable schedule, excellent benefits. Contact Rob Duquette at [e-mail] or 781-828-2202.

If you want more details about what it's like working at the torture center, chat to Glenda Crookes, the Executive Director, at 781-953-2805 or mail her at [e-mail]. Maybe give her tips about additional creative ways of harming autistic people until they smile.

Would you, as an autistic person, like to experience a state-of-the-art behavioural management programme? Then don't delay, be tortured today! JRC has an open admissions policy throughout the year.

If you are interested in being tortured using electric shocks, begin by harming yourself, then email Julie Gomes at [e-mail], or speak with a member of the Judge Rotenberg Center Admissions Staff at 1-888-575-9375 and ask them to torture you.

Remember, this is no Mickey Mouse torture outfit! You will be tortured by people working under the governance of professional BACB-accredited torturers.

Did you know? You can have a tour of the torture facility? Here's the form to schedule your visit to the Judge Rotenberg Center. web.judgerc.org/JudgeRotenberg…

Remember, you cannot report the torturers to the Governing Board for Torture, the BACB, even though the BACB have a process for reporting ethics violations. That's because torture is perfectly allowable if your method was designed to work as torture. bacb.com/ethics-informa…

Don't forget, Ivar Lovaas designed ABA to include electric shocks from the start. It changed later. The Judge Rotenberg Center is closer to the original ABA as designed by Lovaas than any other ABA available today.

How is it that parents allow this to be done to their children and even advocate for it? The Judge Rotenberg Center trains them. They even train other family members. They may send staff to the victim's home to train parents and siblings on how to 'manage' their behaviour.

Some say that we shouldn't judge ABA based on a few bad apples. The BACB's ethics allow for torture—they're an obvious bad apple. ABAI allows torturers to be members, and provides a lecturing platform for the torturers, and accepts sponsorships from them. ABAI is obviously bad.

What about CARD? They train and certify people in ABA too?

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1133460182284034048

People say in ABA, the problem is when there's no good governance. So, we already know that the BACB, ABAI and CARD can't be relied upon for providing governance; after all, they're OK with people being strapped with electric shock devices! So, who can do good ABA governance?

For people who don't know the history of the Judge Rotenberg Center and the torture of disabled people which is fully allowed by the American government, here's the repository: autistichoya.net/judge-rotenber…

BACBs, just remember, your credential can be revoked if you publicly badmouth the BACB. They will NOT revoke your credentials if you torture children, though, as long as you keep proper records of how you tortured them according to prescribed procedure.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1133372947530440704

Parents of autistic children who undergo ABA: As long as your child is tortured within the rules of the governing body, there is nowhere that you can complain about the torture. If the court orders the torture, you must allow it, or flee the country. neuroclastic.com/2019/07/03/mot…

Remember, this is not about one rogue outfit. The Judge Rotenberg Center would be a rogue institution of their leaders and staff were not credentialed professionals and members of professional associations which ALLOW what they do. Our eyes should be on those organisations.

The power also vests with the American government. The administration under the leadership of Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barrack Obama and many American presidents before, have considered the options and decided NOT to listen to disabled people. #ABAisAbuse

https://twitter.com/autistichoya/status/1412618813854605315

Please, African parents of disabled children, the ABAmongering foreigners are abusers. They make you feel important and educated by teaching you their ways, but they are colonising your mind to abuse your children. They come with gifts, but in the end they demand money.

Not every foreigner is a bad person, but these people are bad for you. They will feed all your weaknesses. They will kill your child's strengths. You will believe that they are good as they all believe they are good too, like any other coloniser who thinks he's civilising you.

And because it is a tradition in many places for children to be silent in deference to elders, you will think that what they are doing is not bad, because they are teaching children to behave obediently.

But they are not teaching what is natural. The children are learning to be obedient to what is unnatural. They are forcing African children into their behaviour factory. They will teach you to do this to your own children and to believe in it.

tania.co.za/global-autism-…

Listen to the children.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1133388406975868928

Listen to AFRICAN children.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1378353819684376582

Listen to the autistic adults in Africa who share their insights. They were once autistic children.

https://twitter.com/karen_muriuki/status/1412338508245749763

If you listen to the ABA people, they will tell you that your child is lost in their own world, and you must pull them out. Your child is not lost in there. Your child is not selfish. Your child is different.

This is not a selfish woman. I have seen her, whenever a friend is struggling, she reaches out and says, you can talk to me, I will support you. Sarsh is an autistic African woman with a heart for others. Listen to African autistic people.

https://twitter.com/BosiborySarsh/status/1338156969794949122

"We are the change."
— Zekwande Mathenjwa, nonspeaking autistic African activist

https://twitter.com/AutisticSpeak/status/1405785852366708739

"

You may think autistic Africans don't know what's good for them—that they need 'evidence-based therapies' which 'experts' recommend, even if they hate those therapies.

You are being fooled. The 'evidence' is bad science. They are lying about the science.

Now, let's go back to the School That Tortures Disabled Children, the one condoned by the BACB and ABAI. The school's marketing department will tell you that it's very nice. Within the facility there's a movie theatre, hair salon, teen lounge...

But there's a catch.

If you're at the school to be programmed like a robot (they call it Positive Programming), you can't simply go to these places whenever you want, or during your free time.

All your behaviour gets tracked on charts like these. If you don't behave like they want, you lose points. It's like you're in one giant Alternate Reality Game that you didn't choose to play.

positiveprogramming.judgercblog.org/example-charts/

As an many games, you can gain points. The difference is, you don't get to opt out. You need to play all the time. If you lose your cool, you can't just switch off or walk away. You're the actual character in the game. They can control you with the shock device strapped to you.

If you act out the role they created for you according to their targets, you can accumulate points and exchange them for Rewards.

What Rewards can you get in the alternate reality world of the Judge Rotenberg School for Torture? He are some examples...

Each classroom for so-called "developmentally delayed" students has its own "Classroom Reward Store" which is like a living room, with plush chairs, TV, stereo and games.

By displaying the "desired academic or other behaviours", students can earn a chance to take a break, watch some TV and relax on the chairs. (The same things ordinary people do without having to earn points.)

Once a month, the Center holds a special lunch where disabled children and adults choose the menu and hang out with each other and with their torturers...

...provided that they achieve the prerequisite behavioural milestones in the alternate reality game, of course.

There is also a The Big Reward Store with arcade-style games, a ball pit, pinball machine, foozeball table, snack machines, and a lounge with a big-screen TV.

These are all things that can be earned by behaving non-autistically. If you're severely apraxic, or very anxious, or if you have major sensory issues, or impulse control problems, etc., etc. etc. that would be hard.

At the Contract Store in the Rewards Space of the alterate reality world inside the Judge Rotenberg Center, students can buy items with money they’ve earned by working hard on academic and behavioural goals in the previous week.

In fact, the students get Behavioural Contracts to earn the privilege of visiting the Contract Store. Everything they do is recorded and scored. If they meet their behavioural targets for the week, they can buy clothing, jewellery and other items at the Contract Store.

But that's not all! With enough points, the incarcerated children and adults can earn the privilege of leaving their alternate reality world for a while on outings and field trips in the Real World.

By being constantly controlled, monitored, measured, shocked and rewarded, they are prepared for a world which doesn't quite work precisely that way; but...

...since some of them don't get to leave, they are at least prepared for an indefinite existence in this strange cultish place with its bizarre, inhumane rules.

The Judge Rotenberg Torture Center has an admissions policy: no matter how distressed your behaviour, no matter how extreme your suffering, they will take you into the Center. And as Lovaas explained, once you have deliberately harmed a child, you're bonded to that child.

Just like Lovaas, the 'experts' at the Judge Rotenberg Center believe that if you are engaged in self-harm, the best way to get you to stop that is for them to harm you more, both physically and psychologically.

I feel that I need to periodically remind you that the BACB and ABAI are OK with this, that key staff and board members are credentialed with these organisations, and that all this is within the ethical framework of these organisations. This is NOT SECRET. It is done openly.

The Judge Rotenberg Center do not deny running this weird behavioural token economy of punishments and rewards within its walls. They don't merely admit it—THEY BRAG ABOUT IT.

Ask them. Ask the boss. Ask the staff. Ask them if they really have a Contract Store, a Big Reward Store and Classroom Reward Stores. They will tell you: every action is either a behavioural transaction or a defiance of a Contract.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1412850049713856514

This is the life they have taught parents to believe is best for their distressed children, and parents have fought alongside the torturers to ensure that the torture remains legal.

What about the psychological well-being of the people incarcerated at the Judge Rotenberg Torture Center?

Well, the 'experts' at the Center have decided that if your behaviour is compliant to its targets, then you must be psychologically OK. They work that into your mental health programme in practical ways. Here's how they explain it, verbatim:

"It is important that all aspects of the treatment program, including any counseling that is provided to the student, be fully coordinated with the rest of the JRC program, and that the counseling be conducted and offered in a behavioral manner."

#ABAisAbuse

"Traditional and Behavioral counseling is provided by clinicians with doctoral or masters level training in behavioral psychology."

#ABAisAbuse

The professionals complicit in the abuse are all licensed: psychologists, clinical social workers, mental health counselors, and (of course) Board Certified Behavior Analysts.

So you may be thinking, wait, isn't it just the ABA therapists—RBTs, BCBAs, etc.—who are directly involved in these abuses?

Nope, unfortunately not. As you saw when I listed the board members, many people in other professions still retain their professional credentials as well, in spite or being involved in the torture.

In fact, Ron Leaf (not at the JRC, but a torturer in his own right), is still a licenced psychologist. He worked with Ivar Lovaas and recently dedicated a book to him.

autismpartnership.com/profile/dr-ron…

Leaf says, "When children who need 30-35 hours of intervention on a year round basis only receive 12-20 hours of intervention for 42-45 weeks per year, or are receiving education from those who are not experts in ABA or receiving a regime of unproven eclectic approaches,..."

"...it is highly unlikely that their child will reach his potential."

Ron Leaf stresses that therapies should not be mixed: if there is speech therapy, it should be ABA-based. If there is occupational therapy, it should be ABA-based. EVERYTHING must be ABA-based.

#ABAisACult

So, you can understand now why the Judge Rotenberg Center is such a proud bastion of ABA: they have built a whole world inside the walls of the institution to ensure that inmates are ALWAYS living within the framework of punishment and rewards, non-stop, every moment of the day.

When ABA therapists say, "OMG my ABA isn't like that" then, honey, yours isn't real ABA. You shouldn't be calling it ABA. Give it a different name: Limp ABA. Pretend ABA. Half-baked ABA.

THIS IS PROPER ABA. Proper ABA is hardcore. Ron Leaf knows. The BACB know. The JRC do it.

If you want to do real ABA, you need to torture people who don't comply to your demands. You're allowed to. You're an American. Torture is what Americans do. The government voted on this and they said it's fine. If disabled people won't do what you tell them, torture them.

If you don't like it, you can flush your BCBA or RBT credential down the sewer, along with your ABAI membership. That's what those organisations stand for. That's what their ethical framework is designed to protect: the right to torture disabled people who do not meet your goals.

The FDA ruling is a victory not only for the Judge Rotenberg Center, but also for the BACB, validating their code of ethics which allows people to be treated less humanely than dogs. neuroclastic.com/2019/11/24/bcb…

The BACB wants the behavioural token economy to move beyond the microcosm of the Judge Rotenberg Center and into every aspect of the lives of autistic people.

How do we know this?

Senior roleplayers connected to the BACB are lobbying hard and openly for BCBAs to provide mandatory ABA training to professionals in clinical disciplines, such as in the American Speech Language and Hearing Association (ASHA).

Speech Language and Hearing Pathologists (SLPs) are obliged to register with ASHA, and if they break ASHA's rules, they can lose their licence to practice.

Behaviourists are pushing within ASHA to ensure that SLPs who work with autistic children will lose opportunities if they don't have ABA credentials.

The same thing is happening in Occupational Therapy in the USA.

They want ABA to infiltrate and dominate every aspect of autistic children's lives, even those not walled up in a place like the Judge Rotenberg Center. The behavioural token economy must follow autistic children everywhere: at school, at home, and in every type of therapy.

The BACB allows therapy to include the torture in these situations—provided that it is controlled torture, practiced under the auspices of a licenced torturer, with the victim's responses being documented, of course.

Now, to understand the court's ruling a little better, here is how @autselfadvocacy explains it: "The DC Circuit Court ruled that the FDA has the authority to ban a device completely, but does not have the authority to ban only one possible use of a device."

"The next step is clear: the FDA must completely ban the GED and similar devices. ASAN calls on the FDA to immediately pursue a new, complete ban. We will continue to advocate fiercely until this torture is finally ended."

Source: autisticadvocacy.org/2021/07/asan-d…

A luta continua—the struggle for justice and freedom continues.

The BACB is complicit. Every BCBA, every RBT working with an autistic person or some other disabled person, is credentialed according to a code of ethics which explicitly allows for torture when the professional believes that the end justifies the means. #StopTheShock

Should ABA Lite, Fake ABA, Nice ABA, Unicorns and Rainbows ABA, Play-Based ABA or any other type of not-genuine-hardcore ABA be permitted, though, if there's a ban on shock devices?

What if someone says they actually WANT to have ABA for themselves?

Now, such people are rare, but I'll tell you a story about one of them tomorrow, and then you can see what the challenge is.

I'll give you a clue, though:

Even though ABA can theoretically be done with consent, BCBAs are not trained to work with the boundary created by consent.

They are trained to break you.

It's about money, but it's not only about money. It's also about power.

The people in power are scared. They are afraid that the people they torture will gain access to communication, and speak out. While their token economy rewards speech, they know that many will never speak.

They're determined to limit what nonspeaking people can say. The battle against ABA is therefore also a battle for the communication rights of nonspeaking autistic people. ABAmongers will travel over land and sea to stop communication.

Join the fight.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1333798307034923014

Here's a reminder that personal hardship doesn't automatically turn you into an empathic human.

Henry Slucki is a holocaust survivor. He escaped over the mountains by foot, with his family.

He's described as a "progressive, secular Yiddishist, resisting tyranny with insight and love".

He just happens to also be the chairman of an institution that commits crimes against humanity by torturing disabled people with electric shocks.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1412845585389047810?s=19

And one of the problems with merely banning the devices is that it does nothing to change the mindset of the torturers.

In their ableist minds, they see themselves as the benevolent rescuers of the poor sad and broken autistic sods who no-one else was prepared to have. They turn no-one away. Their admissions policy is clear. No-one is too broken to be saved by torture.

Now, you may think that my repeated, emphatic use of the word 'torture' is inappropriate given that this 'therapy', no matter how ableist and misguided, was developed with good intent, to save the 'client'.

Then let me remind you of the Dominican Order and what they became known for.

The Dominican Order was established in the Middle Ages to combat beliefs that didn't align to the official teachings of the Catholic Church, by whatever means possible. While the Dominicans were often good at debating, they were also known for torture.

So far I haven't used trigger warnings in this thread. You may have felt that some of the tweets needed such warnings.

Some of the tweets to follow will DEFINITELY carry warnings, as does this lesson about the Dominican Order and how they used torture. thegreatcoursesdaily.com/the-dominican-…

What matters here for our context is not how the Dominican inquisitors tortured people, but why. Like the people at the Judge Rotenberg Center, they did it to "save" people. Clearly, they also did it to maintain power.

This is what the BACB other ABA organisations are there for. They are the 'churches' that impose their religion on autistic people to 'save' them. They work with governments to try to persuade them to allow their benevolent 'missionary work'.

The American government heavily sponsors these missionaries.

We usually use the word 'conversion' when we talk about someone changing their religion, either by choice or under duress.

For example, in 771 Charlemagne became king of the Franks, a Germanic tribe in Western Europe. He embarked on a mission to unite all Germanic peoples into one kingdom, and convert his subjects to the Catholic religion.

One of his ways of converting people was to march them to a river at swordpoint and give them the option: change your beliefs or you're dead, bro.

It worked.

In the West today, it isn't legal to kidnap and torture people to convert to a different religion, but we do have Conversion Therapy, created by Lovaas and others to convert people from homosexual to heterosexual, and from autistic to 'normal'.

Conversion Therapy is still legal for use against homosexual and transgender people in many countries.

When used against autism, it is known as Applied Behavioural Analysis, or ABA. ABA also has applications in corporate HR management.

When I return to this thread, I will talk more about the Dominican Order, the refinement of torture, and the inquisitors who travelled around the country to 'save' people and the church from heretical beliefs by forcing people to confess.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1413080947264737282?s=19

Imagine the mindset of the people who promote, refine and practice the torture of ordinary defenceless people.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1412933638778466307?s=19

These are Respected People With Good Intentions.

...as one would expect from a man who has seen hardship and devoted his life to religion, a man like Dominic Guzman, who founded the Dominican Order in the early 13th Century.

The BACB are complicit.

The ABAI are complicit.

The universities pay the board members, the government sponsors the torture chambers.

Every person who pays membership dues and supports these organisations is complicit to torture.

#StopTheShock

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1412870160474574865?s=19

Before I continue discussing the mind of the torturer, let me just pop something into here. The torturers will tell you that what #ActuallyAutistic people say on Twitter is irrelevant.

They will tell you that their inmates have the Other Type of Autism, where they harm themselves, and where some of them don't speak. So, they say, the torture is justified.

They are wrong.

Many of us have engaged in self-harming behaviour. Torture doesn't help. #StopTheShock

Many do not speak. Torture doesn't help. #StopTheShock #ListenToNonspeakers

The inquisitors of the Dominican Order were able to carry on high-level intellectual debates much like the behaviourist professors of today who calmly defend torture in academic terms.

And just like these modern-day torturers keep meticulous records, so did the torturers of long ago keep notes and records, all with the goal of magnanimously saving people's minds. Different methods, same holy mindset. #StopTheShocks

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1412913196873265155

As an ordinary parishioner in the 13th century, you had no rights. The pope, the Dominicans, all these powerful people could decide what was good for your mind and body.

I mean, don't educated, literate people know what's good for others? Doesn't their learning give them a right to talk over others? Autistic people are the peasant-headed heretics of today. The holy clergy of behavioural academia know what's best for them.

Why did government in the 13th century allow the Dominicans to torture their citizens?

Why does the US government not #StopTheShock TODAY?

Behaviourist academics make up bizarre and extremist theories and force them on people. They are the new corps of torturing clergy.

It has been decades since I last read 'Die Hond van God' ('The Dog of God') by NP van Wyk Louw. It is one of the greatest poems I have ever read. The title is based on the wordplay 'Domini canis' (God's dog) derived from Dominicanus, a person in the Dominican Order.

The poem is a long fictional monologue by a Dominican torturer, in which the torturer is humanised whilst doing exceptionally cruel things to a person he's working on over a period of time. The torturer is a fragile, guilt-ridden, doubting man, who longs to be comforted by God.

There is something so very Lovaas about the torturer. I can't give it to you in specific words, because that would mean having to trigger myself into opening up an article quoting Lovaas' own words, and usually when I look at that article, I don't get over it for months.

But I can give you the gist.

In NP van Wyk Louw's poem, the torturer feels himself bonding with the man he's torturing. He becomes tied to his soul somehow.

The horror of reading it, though, is that it is not an empathic bond—it flickers, but doesn't settle there—but rather, it is all tied up with the torturer's own belief system. The whole thing is about the torturer's own issues and insecurities.

In the end, the tortured man dies in peace; the torturer lives on.

It reminds me of how Lovaas describes the perverted bond that is established the moment you as an ABA therapist first deliberately injure an autistic child; and how you now can't ever stop, because now you're committed to the child, and stopping would be giving up on the child.

I put the word 'perverted' into that paragraph. Lovaas didn't call it perverted. He described it as something quite sacred. He explained how these children are all not human, how they need to be built into humans through this torture, and how society is "well".

There is something seriously morally damaged in people who can be so academic, so emotionally disturbing about something which any uneducated person, any dog even, can look at and see is wrong. But it is codified, it is turned into manuals, and it is sold to a nation, a planet.

They celebrate Ivar Lovaas today. They laud him. Professionals quote him, dedicate books to him, just like Catholics honour Saint Dominic, founder of the order of torturers.

Is this the place where I'm to say, #NotAllDominicans like people say #NotAllABA, so that we can argue about that and distract ourselves from saving people from torture?

I want to give you a few lines from the description of a book that is about to be published.

"...an in-depth understanding of the... principles that maintain social justice issues and... principles that promote self-awareness and compassion."

"...this collection of essays from subject-matter experts in various fields combines personal experiences, scientific explanations, and effective strategies to promote a better existence; a better world."

"Chapters investigate the self-imposed barriers that contribute to human suffering and offer scientific explanations as to how the environment can systematically be shaped and generate a sociocultural system that promotes harmony, equality, fulfilment, and love."

"The goal of this text is to help the reader focus overwhelming feelings of confusion and upheaval into action and to make a stand for social justice while mobilizing others to take value-based actions."

Sounds wonderful, right?

The book is about using ABA principles to establish a new world order.

Need I remind you that the Dominican Order, the order of torturers, also came out of a CHURCH, an institution supposedly founded based on a belief in love?

Just a reminder to people in the disability sphere outside the USA: this is definitely about you too. These organisations want to muscle in on your territory. They endorse torture as an option. Why would you want them to have influence in your country?

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1412844687057113089