Wednesday, September 11, 1985
By Jean Dietz,Globe Staff

New revelations about past controversies involving a Rhode Island-based center for autistic children have prompted Massachusetts officials to speed up their probe of the facility, where the state currently places 18 severely disturbed clients. Officials of the Massachusetts agencies recently learned that the Behavior Research Institute has had problems elsewhere. Among them:

- A branch near Los Angeles has been operating on a court-ordered conditional license since 1982, following investigation of the death of a 12- year-old boy being held in four-point restraints. Since then the center has been under special monitoring by the state's social service agency, said Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Brandt of California.

- A team from the New York Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities that toured the Rhode Island center in 1979 described its visit as "the most depressing experience" they had ever had in inspecting human services providers. Their report concluded the institute's programs "deny children opportunity to grow . . . opportunity to demonstrate anything other than a few pre-selected responses."

- Although Rhode Island continues to license the institute to care for clients from other states, the state removed 11 autistic Rhode Island clients from the center in 1976 and has not placed clients in Israel's program in recent years. The Massachusetts investigation began after the July 24 death of a New York City man at a Seekonk, Mass., group home operated by Behavior Research Institute. His death is also under investigation by the Rhode Island medical examiner and New York authorities.

The institute was founded in 1971 by Dr. Matthew Israel to implement his theory that punishments as well as rewards can teach brain-damaged children to control unacceptable behavior. Israel did not respond to phone calls this week. Nancy Kaufman, assistant secretary of Human Services, said state officials decided to step up their inquiry because of new information and concerns about the adequacy of past state reviews of the institute's controversial programs. "It's become apparent to me that top representatives of the three agencies which contract for care of Massachusetts clients at the Behavior Research Institute have never been there," said Kaufman. "We're going down there this week without waiting for the (Rhode Island) coroner's report."

The autistic youth who died at the Seekonk home in July had recently suffered a series of epileptic seizures, Massachusetts investigators have said. He died while undergoing a procedure designed to stop him from making ''inappropriate" sounds, in which his hands were cuffed behind his back and his head and eyes covered with a helmet emitting static-like "white noise." The procedure is a form of "aversive therapy" practiced at the center.

Jack H. Backman (D-Brookline), Senate chairman of the Massachusetts Legislature's Human Services Committee and a critic of Israel's program, said he has kept a dossier on the institute since the death there of Robert Cooper, 25, of Lowell on Oct. 20, 1980. That death was later ruled to have occurred from natural causes. "My written complaints to a series of successive mental health and human services officials were ignored," Backman charged. "Six weeks after the death of Robert Cooper, no one from the Department of Mental Health had visited the institute or made an attempt to look into the circumstances of his death. The records clearly show that (the institute's) basic method of treatment is to punish children for their disabilities."

In California, there have been a series of reported abuses to children at the institute's branch since the death of the 12-year-old boy, said Brandt, the assistant attorney general. In a telephone interview, she said the state began efforts to remove the institute's license . . . in January 1982, contending that their use of aversive therapy constitutes corporal punishment in violation of state law. Just as the case went to trial, however, a judge's decision to permit television in the courtroom led Israel to settle the case, resulting in the present restrictions on the license of the California facility, Brandt said.

Another complaint centered on the treatment of a deaf, autistic 10-year-old boy who was squirted with water and punished in other ways for failure to follow verbal commands he could not hear. The state's investigation of other complaints, said Brandt, uncovered use of pinching, hitting and slapping sufficient to cause bruises, though the center did not use these forms of treatment in weeks before scheduled visits by parents. Brandt said that one form of treatment involved "behavior rehearsal lessons" where a child was forced to do something he rarely did, such as breaking a lamp, followed by punishing the child for the misbehavior. Despite repeated objections by the state social service agency, Brandt added, the institute was continuing to use handcuffs and restraints as substitutes for effective treatment. No criminal responsibility was established in any of the California cases, said Brandt, but the state has barred the center for using various forms of physical punishment.

The New York report led to an order by the State Education Department in Albany that use of "white noise helmets," pinching, spanking and water sprays be stopped, except where a child's behavior was "dangerous to himself or others," according to a New York Times report in December 1978. In a newspaper interview at the time, however, Israel rejected the state's demand to cease physical punishment. Dr. Joseph Cocozza, executive director of the New York State Council on Children and Families, said that as a result of a 1981 investigation, "white noise was banned for use on (New York) children under 21 by the Department of Education. But Vincent was over 21." "We were concerned when we learned of Vincent's death. We have other clients there. . .," Cocozza said. "We set up an interagency group 10 days ago to study the problem. We are now waiting for the medical examiner's report."

In Boston, Kaufman said she is adamant that Massachusetts take further action. "Some of our agencies feel that the aggressive condition of the clients justifies the methods used," said the human services official. "There have been reports of some good results. Nevertheless, we plan to consult with national experts on autism and with state agencies that use other methods."