The effects of shocks at group home are keenly felt

I WAS dismayed to learn of the use of electrical shocks on emotionally disturbed boys living at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center ("Staff faulted in use of shock," Page A1, Dec. 20). While the events of Aug. 26 are horrifying, my primary concern is not that staff members were tricked by a prank caller into administering shocks inappropriately. Sadly, overworked and under-trained staffers will occasionally make mistakes. The real outrage is that such a mistake was possible only because this barbaric method of punishment is standard practice at the center and apparently legal in the Commonwealth.

Electrical shocks administered to induce pain are neither a "treatment" nor a "therapy," as they were called in the Globe article. All responsible governments recognize that electrical shocks are banned under the Geneva Conventions and may not be used on prisoners of war. How can we condone their use on some of Massachusetts' most vulnerable citizens? We need to call this practice by its true, ugly name - torture - and outlaw its use on our children.

DENELL DOWNUM
Boston

IT APPEARS that mistreatment of two residents by staff working in the Judge Rotenberg facility in Stoughton resulted from a prank call that no employee questioned long enough or hard enough to validate as legitimate. Setting aside debate about the nature of the treatment used, the fact that there was no effective protocol in place for the supervision of, let alone ordering of, the administration of shocks is distressingly irresponsible.

However, that the workers followed those orders is less difficult to understand. How many of us routinely question authority? When a job feels at stake, as it did for them, or, on a bigger scale, when one's life, the lives of loved ones, or one's country or values seem at risk - in those kinds of insecure and perhaps desperate moments - might not most of us believe what we hear spoken with authority as "true," and do what we are told to do, in order to feel safe?

Our country's invasion of Iraq and our treatment of prisoners in the so-called war on terrorism are several examples that come to mind. Not using our critical faculties to make sense of situations, but succumbing to fear instead, leaves any and all of us open to being agents of abusive power.

TINA COHEN
Leverett