Thread by @AutismInspired

The majority of ABA professionals surveyed are aghast at the torture perpetrated by the JRC.

ABAI allows the JRC a platform to justify the abuse.

How many ABA professionals are prepared to stand up, be loud, and make their voices heard at #ABAI2022?
neuroclastic.com/900-aba-profes…

Let us not forget who oversees the torture at the Judge Rotenberg Center and, who has the power to revoke these people's credentials: @BACB_Inc are complicit.

A credential from @BACB_Inc does not in any way attest to your competence to work with humans or other mammals, given that the BACB absolutely permits these abuses, which are not allowed elsewhere in society, even when interrogating crime suspects. #StopTheShock

@BACB_Inc only implements practices which it regards as 'evidence-based'.

This includes torturing human beings without their consent to meet targets which the victims did not set themselves.

This is 'evidence-based practice'.

Indeed, the practices endorsed by @BACB_Inc are based on peer-reviewed studies. This means that these practices are supported by GROUPS of people who deem torture to be acceptable.

Such is the nature of the ABA industry.

Some professionals say that only a handful of people in the ABA industry actually support torture.

This may be true. Clearly, though, this handful of people have enough power to drive the decisions in the leading organisations in this multibillion dollar industry.

Industry professionals are beginning to learn that they are part of something much bigger than themselves. As they begin to realise that they have been duped into an abusive industry, some are beginning to jump ship.

amazon.com/Autism-Industr…

Others imagine that they can reform an industry that was established on research into the use of violence to change behavior.

Naively, they are perplexed that violence remains firmly entrenched in the profession's fallback position.

Planned Ignoring is considered to be one of the least invasive approaches in ABA.

Adult survivors of Planned Ignoring have spoken about the devastating and ongoing effect it has had on their anxiety in adult relationships.

This is of no concern to @BACB_Inc, ABAI and other custodian organisations in ABA.

It stands to reason that people who cannot see electric shocks as torture will most certainly not regard the ostracism of small children by powerful adults as a source of psychological harm.

Some of the most convincing evidence produced by the ABA industry is based on the use of violence to bring about behavioral change, including academic achievement, and actions associated with affection, such as smiling or hugging.

Violence is a treasured and celebrated part of American culture, and some families even own instruments of violence auch as semi-automatic weapons, designed explicitly to kill as many people as quickly as possible.

America is also strongly rooted in capitalism.

Both of these values, violence and capitalism, are part of ABA, and are seen clearly in the violence and token economy of the Judge Rotenberg Center.

By employing fear and violence, and by turning every human interaction into a transaction, the Judge Rotenberg Center takes some of the most disabled people in society and turns them into grinning graduates, conditioned to respect the values of American society.

This is peer-reviewed, evidence-based practice, where evidence is obtained without consent, and peers are complicit to torture.

While we urge ABA professionals to speak against torture, we realise we're asking them to speak against ABA's foundational 'evidence-based practice'.

We realise also that we are asking them also to reject the peer reviewers who approved the violence-based studies as valid evidence.

Indeed, this would also mean having to reject the ethics committees which approve studies that do things that disabled people deem harmful.

Additionally, the editors of journals that approve studies designed in ways that violate disability rights would also have to be rejected.

Once the foundation of violence and all the so-called 'evidence' supporting this foundation has been removed from ABA, perhaps it will be possible to talk about reform?