VOLTAGE: A DIRTY WORD?

In the course of researching ECT (electroconvulsive treatment), I naturally come across many articles concerning electrical torture and the abuse of electro-shock-producing devices on humans, including children. ECT is not in the same category as these latter abuses: as a procedure aimed at the destruction of the most important part of the body, the brain, it deserves rather to be placed alongside electrocution and those who use it against the will of their victims, whether these be mental patients or prisoners, classed with murderers. But simple electrical torture, even if it does no permanent physical damage, is not something to be taken lightly. Its routine infliction basis can leave lasting psychological scars, and I believe it should be subject to criminal prosecution, if lesser penalties than the use of ECT. As I have found a pattern of official, professional and corporate deception in this area which is similar to what one finds in connection with ECT, I thought it was worth taking the time to write a piece about it.

In contrast to ECT, which can only be administered under the direction of psychiatrists, electrical torture is most closely associated with psychologists. In the early seventies, I was greatly alarmed by the popularity of psychologist B.F. Skinner's radical behaviorism. Although Skinner himself advocated using positive reinforcement whenever possible, I was afraid that his methods of behavior modification would lead to a resurgence of emphasis upon negative reinforcement, or to put it in layman's terms, punishment. Well do I recall that article in Psychology Today entitled, "Let's Take Another Look at Punishment". Muttering to myself, "Yeah, let's take another look at Hitler while we're at it," I cancelled my subscription to that magazine. And now I find that my fears have proven all too well-founded. The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Massachusetts routinely uses what its director, a Skinnerian psychologist named Mathew Israel, calls "aversive therapy" on students. The original rationale for its use was the tendency of some autistic children to engage in irrational, extremely violent and destructive behaviors against themselves or others. An electric shock was said to stop these children from activities such as chewing off a piece of their tongue or banging their head repeatedly on a wall to the point that they developed bruises. Why such children should react to an electric shock when they have no hesitation about inflicting such pain on themselves, I don't know, but if the shock works for that purpose, it seems reasonable to use it. The problem is, since its founding in 1971, the Rotenberg Center has taken in an increasing number of children who do not have such severe behavior problems and there are numerous reports of electric shock being used on them excessively or for such trivial misconduct as yelling or cursing. Recently, responding to a prankster who was posing as an administrator, school officials at the center awakened two students in the middle of the night, one of them 16 and the other 19, and gave them respectively 77 and 22 shocks. Although the school later admitted its error, one has to wonder about people who would obey a command even from a bonafide superior to do such a thing.

Mike Adams of Natural News has, I think correctly, associated this with the abuse of political prisoners in the so-called "War on Terror". In his article "Gitmo for Children," he says, "I suppose it's not surprising to learn that a nation now engaged in the routine torture of war prisoners-- in direct violation of the very U.N. treaties which our veterans fought so hard to defend-- would also invoke electric shocks on mentally retarded children. There is no longer any respect for the value of a human being by our nation's leaders, and it appears that some institutions disappointingly agree with that assessment." (http://www.naturalnews.com/z023494.html) And it is not only institutions. There is evidence that many parents are following Rotenberg's example on their own initiative. In August of 2007, a Chicago judge ruled that it is illegal for a group home to use electric shocks from a cattle prod on a 48-year-old autistic man (it had been using them for years previously with official approval). The ruling angered his parents, who maintain that the shocks are the only thing which can keep him from doing serious damage to himself. But it's not only serious damage that's at issue. In Montcalm County, Michigan, Oliver Braman and his wife were found dead in an apparent suicide after being charged with the routine use of a cattle prod on their two teenage sons, who ran away from home and reported the abuse to the police. The prod was used when they did not finish their chores. Braman at first used a belt, but stopped when the sons threatened to go to the authorities. Like those who use it on political prisoners, Braman found in electricity the perfect way to inflict pain without leaving tell-tale marks. (http://blog/mlive.com/grprss/2007/10/report_braman_said_cattle_prod.html)

As most of us have never experienced a really painful electric shock (the ones I've received from, say, the wet switch to an indoor fountain have been more frightening than painful), the question is, what do these shocks feel like? After all, if they are no worse than a pinch, they may not be such a big issue (but then, why would a pinch not suffice?) The Rotenberg School claims that they are no worse than a bee sting, as do the parents of the 48-year-old autistic man. Jennifer Gonnerman, who wrote an article for Times Online about the school, tried its shock-producing device, the GED or Graduated Electronic Decelerator on herself and found that the resultant jolt was more "like a horde of wasps attacking all at once. Two seconds never felt so long." (http://www.caica.org/Shock_tactics_10-28-7.htm) SHARK, an animal-rights organization which monitors, among other things, the abusive use of electric stock prods on animals forced to perform at rodeos, quotes a radio talk show host in Las Vegas who tried a prod on himself and found it to be like "a thousand white hot needles going in and out of me." (http://www.sharkonline.org/P=0000000511) It is interesting that one manufacturer of stock prods, which in this case produce a varying strength of shock to take into account the varying sensitivities of the animals upon which it is to be used, has taken the wasp as its trademark symbol-- indeed the company calls its prod "the WASP". (http://andytek.com/Prodders.htm)

What is impossible to obtain from any source is the voltage level of these shocks, which would be the best indication of the severity of the pain. To be sure, I am not an electrician, but it is my understanding that using normal household current, the maximum safe voltage is 50. Of course an electric shock may become acutely painful long before it becomes dangerous. And one must take into account amperage as well. Voltage is the strength of the current, amperage its volume. As high amperage can kill, it goes without saying that all instruments designed to inflict pain alone without doing visible damage-- including those used in electrical torture-- use low amperage. If they did not, the torturer would risk what the notorious torture expert Dan Mitrione (the "Santore" of the film State of Siege) called "a premature death". But the amperage of a battery-operated device such as a prod can be so low that the voltage can be increased to over a thousand without doing visible damage, and household current can likewise be reduced by a current limiter to achieve a similar effect. If we had data on both the voltage and the amperage of the devices now in use we would better be able to ascertain how much pain they cause. The only article I know of which discusses the strength of the shocks administered by the Judge Rotenberg Center measures it in terms of amperage alone. Tom Benner of The Patriot Ledger not only gives the strength of the GED in milliamps but also, for comparison, that of an electric dog collar, ECT, nerve stimulation therapy, a taser pistol and a heart defibrillator. But these statistics, omitting as they do the esssential issue of voltage, tell us absolutely nothing. (http://ledger.southofboston.com/articles/2006/07/29/news/news02.txt)

To be sure, evaluating electric torture devices on the basis of voltage alone can also be a mistake. An example is Darius Rejali's "Electricity: The Global History of a Torture Technology". Rejali says falsely that torturers have chosen not to use ECT because "the machines don't deliver the necessary voltage." This is facile. For one thing, ECT machines deliver a jolt of between 109 and 135 volts. When used with the amperage available in standard household current (or more to the point, that available in hospitals and prisons) that is a very high voltage indeed. If used on any part of the body other than the brain, it would be extremely painful and under certain conditions (like say if the victim had heart problems) fatal. When used on the brain, it causes irreparable damage. Rejali's favorite torture device (meaning the one he likes to talk about the most) is the Argentine picana electica. It had a strength of between 12,000 and 16,000 volts, which would be capable of killing someone if used with the amperage available in the average household, 15-20 amps. But this is not so impressive as it seems, because the device limited the current to only one milliamp. Comparing the voltage of an ECT machine to that of a picana electrica is therefore like comparing apples and oranges.

With this in mind, I began to investigate the electric stock or cattle prod business. This is the one potential torture device which is available to the public, some for as little as sixty dollars. Although stock prods were designed for cattle and other large animals, and can be used humanely and with restraint, there is no doubt that some people have taken to using them on their children, household pets, and other helpless victims (of course, they may have been doing this all along, and we are only now finding out). The most widely used brand is Hot Shot, produced by Miller Manufacturing. I wrote a retail company which carries it, asking for the voltage, and they said that the manufacturer did not give out the voltage. So I wrote directly to Miller Manufacturing. It refused to give me the voltage ouptput of any of its stock prods but said it would be only too happy to give me the amperage if I told it what model I had-- which of course is useless information without the voltage. Then it confirmed what I had read on the webpage of another retail company which carries its products, and was taken from the warning that Miller places on them. That warning asserts that the prod should not be used on people. And then it tells the prospective customer what it would feel like if it were used on people: like a bee sting.

Like a bee sting. I thought, "Where have I heard this before?" And then, why do they tell you not to use it on people, and then tell you how it feels if you do? Is Miller Manufacturing, despite its disclaimers, selling Hot Shot cattle prods in full knowledge that they will be used on children and perhaps other helpless individuals as instruments of torture? Has the assertion that it "feels like a bee sting" been inserted in their warning in order to salve the consciences of people who are planning to use their prods in an inappropriate or inhumane manner? In any case, it has become clear that in our world, where electrical torture of both humans and animals is so common, "voltage" has become an unmentionable subject, like sex was to the Victorians. And I would go so far as to say that concealing the voltage of a low-amperage device, as both the Rotenberg Center and Miller Manufacturing do, is an announcement of one's intention to torture or to sell to torturers.

Is the answer to ban all electroshock devices? Not necessarily. I would suggest three rules for their use. First of all, try the device on yourself. If you cannot stand to do so, even for one second, then you have no business using it on other human beings or animals of comparable size and sensitivity. Secondly, ask yourself if the purpose is justifiable. Moving cattle may be (if all other methods fail); preventing autistic children from engaging in irrational, destructive behavior may be, but listen to the testimony of this mother, one of all too many parents who support the torture that goes on at Rotenberg: "All I have to do is show [the control] to my son and... he'll automatically comply with whatever my signal command may be, whether it is "Put on your seatbelt," or "Hand me that apple," or "Sit appropriately and eat your food." It's made him a human being, a cvilized human being." (Wikipedia article on Rotenberg) And rendered false any claim the mother might make to be a "civilized human being." If she herself has used the device on him, she should be charged with assault on a minor, as should the authorities at Rotenberg. Finally, ask yourself if there are other methods which would work just as well. To use the simplest and most basic example, as many stock breeders are now realizing, it is not justifiable to shock an animal if a tap or prod with the switched-off device would suffice. (http://www.cal.net/~pamgreen/cattle_schuman.html

Of course, none of the outrages I have dealt with in this article can compare to the horrors being perpetrated against political prisoners in the so-called "War on Terror". Fortunately, it looks as if the state of Massachusetts is taking steps to subject Judge Rotenberg Educational Center to stringent controls. Because the abuse of minors, like the abuse of mental patients and animals, takes place under public scrutiny, it can be stopped if people will only make an effort to do so. It is quite otherwise with those prisoners who are being held under conditions which remain classified. The CIA has been using electrical torture on political prisoners for decades, as in Vietnam, where it was called "The Bell Telephone Hour" (Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program, p. 85). U.S. AID official Dan Mitrione personally shocked four beggars to death in a torture demonstration for repressive Latin American police (A. J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors, 311-313). One of the critics of Rotenberg claims quite falsely that if such abuses went on at Guantánamo, there would be a public outcry. In fact, it is going on at Guantanamo. The organization Physicians for Human Rights conducted medical examinations on eleven people who had been held at Guantanamo. All reported torture, and one, identified only as Yasser, reported being subjected specifically to electric shocks (http://broken lives.info/?tag=guantanamo). A 48-year-old citizen of Australia, Mamdouh Habib, also reported torture at Guantanamo, including electric shocks. (http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4262095...) The most damning report of all is from a German-born Turk and former Guantanamo detainee, Murat Kumaz, who not only reported electrical torture but made it clear that the torture was used to elicit not information but a false confession: "They tell you 'you are from Al Qaed' and when you say 'no' they give the electric current to your feet... as you keep saying 'no' this goes on for two or three hours." During the course of this torture, he several times lost consciousness. ("Former Prisoner Tells of Torture at Guantanamo," (http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines061116-02.htm) And in contrast to the well-justified outrage over Rotenberg, in this case the majority of Americans just don't give a damn, although these inmates were never tried and indeed, were ultimately released for lack of evidence.