Dear BBC Community member,
Thank you for contributing to a BBC community site. Unfortunately we've had to remove your
Guide Entry below because it contravenes the House Rules.
This decision has been made for legal reasons. Legal reasons could include:
*Potentially libellous comments
*Contempt of court (writing something which may influence the jury in a current or forthcoming trial)
*Breach of an injunction
*Inciting an illegal act
Please remove any such material from your message, then resubmit it.
If you would like to re-write your contribution to remove the problem, then
we'd be very happy for you to add it to the Guide again.
If you have read the House Rules carefully and are still unsure why your message was removed, please reply to this email.
Best wishes,
The BBC Moderation Team
URL of content (now removed):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A12068976
Subject:
Abuse of disabled Children: UK today . 'ABA' .
Guide Entry:
<GUIDE><BODY>Abuse of disabled Children: UK today:
DFES: ? DFES:? + MENCAP:? DFES DISABILITY RIGHTS:? DISABLED CHILDRENS RIGHTS:? NSPCC:? DFES DISABILITY LAW:? DISABILITY DISCRIMIATION:? MENCAP:? WHERE IS MENCAP:? : WHERE ARE THEY WHEN YOU NEED THEM? = 'ABA' :
Not only are charlatans and sadists brainwashing good parents into believing their children will speak (not even one such mistake is morally acceptable) and learn to be 'normal' (not possible for a genuine autist to 'be normal' thus alienating autistic people from relationships with people that already scare them) they are lying and misleading in courts of law to do so. These psychologists will diagnose anyone with autism or asperger syndrome for the right price, then of course they pass the devastated parents and children to colleagues 'consulting' on 'ABA ' (aka LOVAAS or CABAS) which is nothing short of 'make it up on the spot' dog training. They use a lot of rubbish data giving no thought about what making these children repeat over + again is doing to the child. In short they force a child to repeat an action over + over for hours, days, weeks, months, 9 years in some cases, until the child completes the task. They call it 'complaiance' - it being an 'ultimate goal' acc!
ording to one self-labelled 'supervisor' famous for her American accent, strange as when not 'supervising' speaks with a broad BRUM (Midlands UK) accent . Some children become utterly compliant. Not excactly the perfect goal for a helpless non-verbal child wide open to every type of abuse- is it? One such child has suffered 'ABA' for 9 years . He remains in nappies, unable to read/write/communicate/point or anything much at all. A helpless child that had some words + is now made to sit at a table repeating the same puzzle up to 30 times a day and being fed a sweet / candy to 'reinforce the good behaviour' or on completion of a puzzle- ABA is simple - anyone can do it. You simply reward 'wanted' behaviour + ignore 'extinguish' unwanted behaviour. The trouble is the 'ABA' cultists now purport to be experts in teaching severe learning diabled children. They are but money making machines with a psychology degree. People using ABA to teach animals are far kinder + know little !
of this criminal abuse of this type of behaviour modification for disa
bled children. This 'therapy' is not only unsound and unsafe + using unproven hypotheses + theory based on the 'recovery' of 9 of 19 children (LOVAAS '87) whom cannot possibly have been autistic *unless* you belong to the outmoded school of thought that Bettelheim ('psychiatrist' later found to have falsified his credentials + famous for his plageurism) blamed 'absent fathers + refrigerator mothers' for causing autism (Bettelheim later was discovered to be a paedophile and killed himself when discovered) - a parent in London, back in 1997 changed the law with a landmark judgement+ created what she thought was a victory for all children suffering autism + needing specialist education when she won public funding for LOVAAS home education. The same parent is now battling through courts again to prise her poor (non-verbal incontinent + helpless) child OUT of such a school + also was disgusted at at the way she was used + lied to by these misleading 'professionals' when she saw w!
hat emotional and physical torture was being perpetuated in the name of ABA/ 'recovering autistic children to normality' . Consultants enjoy their visits to London and boast about many extra marital affairs + offshore bank accounts etc - a non-practising lawyer (whom deliberately but erroneously went to High Court where the judge illegally accepted his evidence to overrule a previous refusal for this therapy at a tribunal - this fake lawyer obtains an awful lot of money to act for parents to get this 'education' for these vulnerable children- since when was a 'behavioural therapy' supposed to be paid for by The Department for Education + Skills? Surely, if it's needed AT ALL it ought be at least overseen by the NHS? The people are criminals + although there may be some justification for using ABA for 'EBD' children this is NOT any type of education or acceptable for Severe Learning Disabled people, where is MENCAP + DFES? WHY do they allow this to continue?
Taken from Michelle Dawson; and Autist, single - minded for attempting to acquire justice and correctness for some autistic individuals:
Comments
"AUTISM, ABA + MMR ::- those pro the former + anti the latter appear to be inextricably linkld? Re 'ABA' again: :
Quote Michelle Dawson (an autistic individual) :
In Canada, the new, improved ABA has resulted in children staying in ABA indefinitely (ABA is being demanded without limit for all ages). The aversives in Lovaas (1987) have been replaced by massive amounts of extrinsic reinforcers. Children may remain dependent on food reinforcers after three years in treatment. In many legal cases, it has been ruled that children in these programs get “distressed” and “out of control” quite apart from losing what they’ve “learned” when the level of reinforcement that they are dependent on is in any way diminished, even after they’ve been in ABA for many years. It has been ruled that any reduction of reinforcement constitutes “irreparable harm” of these school-aged children.
There are no peer-reviewed published adult outcome studies of any ABA program, Lovaas-type or not.
As for moving on from Lovaas (1987), recent (Eikeseth et al, 2002) and upcoming (Sallows & Graupner, in press) controlled trials continue to use The Me Book (Lovaas, 1981) as the “manual” describing the treatment for the experimental group, with the sole caveat that aversives are no longer used.
A recent Canadian study (Eaves & Ho, 2004) shows no effect of kind or amount of treatment (including ABA, which half the 40 children underwent) on outcomes in the assumed-to-be-critical 2-5yr old range. Some autistics did really well; some did poorly—but this was regardless of what kind of treatment or how much treatment was used.
This is apart from ethical issues which I’ve written about herehttp://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_aba.html and herehttp://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_vic.htmlamong other places.
Michelle Dawson"
