Torture Still Exists

[Ste11aeres]

So the news says that UN officials are demanding prosecution for US torture. Good. Torture is a horrible practice that should not be allowed. UN Officials Demand Prosecutions for US Torture - ABC News

Meanwhile, torture is still carried out on students at the Judge Rotenberg Center. The FDA is still considering banning it (but has not yet actually done so. This "considering" process has been going on for several years), and no one is demanding that the perpetrators be prosecuted.
Controversy over shocking people with autism, behavioral disorders - CBS News
How is this still going on?
The Rotenberg Center's Controversial Behavior-Modification Program -- New York Magazine

 

[AsheSkyler]

Hrm... Shock therapy. Very "Planet of the Apes". Perhaps that's where they got inspiration? Or maybe from old manuscripts detailing how to get witch confessions so as to rid a village of witch craft?

Controlling through punishment is a sound theory and applied in various ways throughout society, such as time outs, going to jail, making hubby sleep on the couch, etc., and electricity has found its way with shock collars for chatty dogs, fences for cattle, and tasers. Although most sane people will agree leaving burn marks on somebody for wearing clothes is a bit cuckoo. Obviously these people did not get a permit to wield the shock remote in the same manner police officers earn the right to wield mace and tasers. Perhaps we can also have them diagnosed as clinically insane and shock them back to normalcy as well?

 

[Harrison]

You'd have thought that they would have learnt that torture is pointless. People will say whatever you want them to say.

But there are some evil sick f**** in charge of our world who delight in hurting anyone they can.

 

[Persevero]

If there was a march protesting the Rotenberg Center I'd definitely take part. I can't believe that stuff still exists in this day and age.

I also am quite skeptical about the USA actually being sanctioned by the UN, even though they deserve it.

 

[Kari Suttle]

I have one question for you then, if you hate us for that...how else should we get information out of terrorists? They're muslim terrorists willing to die for their cause, we can't just grill them for information and expect them to talk. What i've heard on the news that we did was mostly waterboarding, sleep deprivation, confinement, slammed into walls, that sort of thing. Honestly, how is that so evil when they will literally torture our soldiers if they capture them? Set off bombs in public places in the name of an extremist version of their religion? I am just as against torture as any normal person is but how else do you expect to get information out of somebody that would willingly blow themselves up for their cause. You can't just sit them down in a room and interrogate them like a cop would and expect to get anywhere.

Yes i agree that torture leading to a detainees death is wrong and going too far, but nonlethal torture I am fine with because its war not a playground or a political rally. In that situation, in that time when the torture went on, 9/11 had just happened. War propaganda aside, at the end of the day, its either torture this terrorist we have in our hands with nonlethal measures to get information out to try and hopefully stop whatever plot they have scheming next...or gently interrogate him and probably get nothing. In the moment, that's what I would imagine the general idea was. Its either this or - for all you know - they could be plotting something big, something this guy knows about, and your failure to get the information out of him cost other people in another country their lives. Let me emphasize that this is all in theory. I won't even get into the 9/11 aspect of it all because i have heard about the conspiracy theories regarding it, i refuse to mention it as a motivator for that reason. Torture is controversial enough lets keep it on one controversial subject at a time.

Do you people in England hear about ISIS? About honor killings? About how horribly their culture treats women? How they - the extremists - will either kill you or force you to convert to their religion when they attack? They kill in the name of their god and willingly blow themselves up in the name of their god. Chances are, sitting them down for a chat won't work.

 

[King_Oni]

Could we keep the comparisons to torture in relation to the middle east and the "war on terror" to a minimum.

Comparing them to what happens at the JRC seems of a totally different nature. The way the term "torture" is used here, is, while by definition it would fit, a form of treatment, unlike torture in relation to (armed) conflict where it's often used for interogation or to set an example and to spread fear.

Now, whether it's a justified form of treatment and actually proven effective, that might be a different matter though.

Thank you

 

[Kari Suttle]

Could we keep the comparisons to torture in relation to the middle east and the "war on terror" to a minimum.

Comparing them to what happens at the JRC seems of a totally different nature. The way the term "torture" is used here, is, while by definition it would fit, a form of treatment, unlike torture in relation to (armed) conflict where it's often used for interogation or to set an example and to spread fear.

Now, whether it's a justified form of treatment and actually proven effective, that might be a different matter though.

Thank you

I don't even know what the JRC or whatever it is, well, is. I kind of assumed from glancing through the post that that's what they were talking about, the U.S. torture 'scandal' (idk what else to call it) going on. Cause that's all i've been hearing about in the news, not about this other thing you mentioned. This is the first i've heard of it.

Edit: Wait a sec i'm not the first one to mention the United States! Ste11aeres did in her original post! Your post implies that its a comparison but there's others above me mentioning the U.S. too. How's it a comparison if the OP brought it up and that's what some of the replying people were talking about? I wasn't even comparing the U.S.'s thing to this JRC thing, i don't know what that is. I'll be blunt but i feel singled out cause you only posted that after I posted my rant on it when i'm not the first one to mention it. I'm not trying to be mean or argue i'm literally just trying to understand the reason behind your post. That's all. I've been working on school stuff all day so my mind's a bit muddled, to put it lightly.

 

[King_Oni]

I don't even know what the JRC or whatever it is, well, is. I kind of assumed from glancing through the post that that's what they were talking about, the U.S. torture 'scandal' (idk what else to call it) going on. Cause that's all i've been hearing about in the news, not about this other thing you mentioned. This is the first i've heard of it.

The JRC (Judge Rothenberg Centre) still uses shock treatment for autism, that's what the opening post is referring to in relation to the scandal on torture. It's the fact that the UN wants prosecution for one type of torture, while another form of torture, under the guise of "treatment" seems totally justified.

That's also why this topic has been kept around and hasn't been closed; there's a link to autism here.

 

[Kari Suttle]

The JRC (Judge Rothenberg Centre) still uses shock treatment for autism, that's what the opening post is referring to in relation to the scandal on torture. It's the fact that the UN wants prosecution for one type of torture, while another form of torture, under the guise of "treatment" seems totally justified.

That's also why this topic has been kept around and hasn't been closed; there's a link to autism here.

Oh okay. That makes sense. Thanks.

 

[Nadador]

Interesting. Note how the 1975 U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines "torture":

Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

What's happening at JRC certainly seems to apply, and should put the U.S. out of compliance with Article 5 of the 1948 U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

 

[Kari Suttle]

So they're using electric shocks as punishment/treatment?! I only read the last article Ste11aeres originally linked and what King Oni said but still...how has this been allowed to go on?! How are they validating this? How are they even okay doing this? I'd quit my job on the spot if i worked in a center such as that and was asked to do that!

If they're using it as treatment as Oni said...that sounds like electric shock therapy. I learned it in psychology class in highschool, it was a fad therapy and supposedly loads of people were doing it at the time - for some reason i want to say in the 70's but i honestly have no clue when they were doing it. Eventually it was either banned or fell out of practice i don't remember which to be honest. I hope now that its been brought to light they'll fix it and stop doing that. Media attention does wonders for bad practices by individual companies and organizations. I know there's an example of this somewhere but i can't think of it now. Watch i'll remember it after i got to bed tonight.

I'm still very interested in how the hell they rationalized this...both on a corporate level to employees and as individuals to themselves. Oooh nevermind there was an experiment i learned about in psychology class that explains that too. Nevermind me i'm rambling i've gone insane studying all day! To anyone interested, i don't remember the researcher but it was an experiment where participants were told they were taking part in an experiment/test related to learning and education. They were put in a room with an entry door and a door to another room, the room that the learner was in. the participant was the 'tutor' and the 'learner' was, well the learner. the catch was this: there was no student being tutored, it was all audio being played over the loudspeaker into their room...but they didn't know that. They thought there really was a student in the other room that they could listen to via the loudspeaker. They were asked to shock 'the student' for every question they got wrong, going up in the level of shock each time to the point it was supposedly lethal. The experiment was supposed to test conformity under stress with an authority figure standing right beside you telling you what to do. If I remember right, in the experiment, most participants obeyed even when they thought they were actually shocking someone (which they all did no one knew the truth until afterwards).

 

[Judge]

A good (but long) article on this issue, bridging the concerns of political torture and medical treatment/experimentation.

8.2.1 Torture and Cruel Treatment - Punishing the Patient

"There is little doubt that psychosurgery, chemical and electrical shock treatments, and the variety of crude treatments used in earlier centuries, can all be easily construed as forms of punishment and neatly fitted into the United Nations definition of torture. If the past history of medical treatment for schizophrenia is so clearly a tale of punishment and torture can the same be said of the current forms of drug treatment?'

 

[Judge]

Seeing Russia condemn the US for torturing terrorist suspects reminded me of some of the things the former Soviet Union did to dissidents in the last years of this regime. Rather than incarcerate them in the Gulag system, they began to send them to mental institutions.

Nothing so cruel as deliberately treating a perfectly sane dissident as an insane mental patient. With an intent that in time their sanity could wane. Makes me wonder if this practice still occurs in Russia....

 

[Nadador]

The more I think about this, the more nuanced my thoughts and concerns are becoming.

What this sounds like to me is a reckless application of operant conditioning. Of course the articles in the OP are only about the punishment aspect, but looking into it further, I'm not finding evidence of positive reinforcements to balance things out, which are absolutely essential to the method, to avoid causing harm. It also seems as though the guidelines for use of the shocks are far too vague, with no fixed programme of evidence-based best practises in use.

There's also a very big problem of informed consent. Parents may well have agreed to using shocks instead of drugging their children, but conventions of informed consent require special protections for vulnerable populations, including children, and these are clearly not being observed.

Bugger the FDA. They take a decade to make determinations. The problem on their end is likely that there are indeed good uses for the "treatments" in play, here, and they are loathe to start down a road that would call the lot of them into question. That would entail a great deal of paperwork for them.

 

[Nadador]

Nothing so cruel as deliberately treating a perfectly sane dissident as an insane mental patient. With an intent that in time their sanity could wane. Makes me wonder if this practice still occurs in Russia....

You would doubt for even a minute that it does?

 

[Judge]

Perpetuating such research largely in the name of "scientific and medical progress" doesn't strike me as a way to validate the suffering of others. Reminds me of how promising the psychiatric community once viewed frontal lobotomies.

 

[Nadador]

Perpetuating such research largely in the name of "scientific and medical progress" doesn't strike me as a way to validate the suffering of others. Reminds me of how promising the psychiatric community once viewed frontal lobotomies.

I'd like to see the notes on this "research". How can a residential entity that benefits from obedience execute behavioural research without bias?

 

[Judge]

I'd like to see the notes on this "research". How can a residential entity that benefits from obedience execute behavioural research without bias?

It probably doesn't matter if or when one professionally embraces the notion that the ends justifies the means.

An ominous dynamic easily observed in politics, but not so much in a veiled pursuit of science.

 

[AsheSkyler]

I guess one thing I really want to know is if the parents and officials who support this are also people actively against any form of corporal or capital punishment. It would not cast them in a good light to say normal people and even criminals are exempt from such things, but it's okay to do to the "crazy" people.

 

[epath13]

I was wondering when somebody was going to post something about it. Here's my only response. Do I think that torture should exist - no. I also don't belive wars or any kind of abuse should exist. Will it continue existing for a few 100s or 1000s of years - quite possibly. I've seen a lot of posts all over the place about the terrible stuff CIA is doing. My only problem with all this - do people think that US is the only country that does it? And why do people appear to be so surprised? Did those people believe that US is a country of angels, did they think all this time we've been living in a magical world with pots of gold in the end of rainbows and unicorns. In my opinion there're no "saint" countries or goverments. If you disagree, show me one, I want to see it. And all those terrible people doing terrible things are simply reflections of our human nature, our choices (as human race), and possibly (hopefully) lessons that can bring us to the next level of development...