After a lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union, Beth Haroules, concluded her statement yesterday condemning the use of electric shocks in schools, an angry, exasperated mother followed her out of the meeting room and into the hall.

The mother, Linda Doherty of Long Island, wanted to know why the NYCLU was trying to convince the New York State Education Department to ban aversive behavioral therapy, the only type of treatment that had worked on her severely autistic, violently selfdestructive son.

It has been just more than a year and a half since Ms. Doherty’s son had enrolled in the Judge Rotenberg Education Center, a school in Canton, Mass., for psychiatrically troubled children and adults that administers electric shocks and other forms of corporal punishment to about half of its student body.

According to Ms. Doherty, the Rotenberg Center — the only school in the country that uses electric shocks as a behavior-shaping tool — accepted her son when almost 40 others rejected him. Its disciplinary methods, she said, have made him stop biting himself and attacking others.

As Ms. Haroules made her way to the elevator, several people — some parents, some activists — joined Ms. Doherty in crowding around her to listen to the argument and contribute. There was a lot of yelling, and it was hard to tell who was talking.

“It’s torture,” someone said. “The other programs have failed you, but that doesn’t mean we should use corporal punishment.”

“So these kids should die?” Ms. Doherty shot back. “My son should die?”

The argument continued after Ms. Haroules left. It was chaotic and aggressive — nothing like the quiet, orderly testimonials that were being delivered inside the adjacent meeting room before the officials from the Education Department.

Held at the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building in Harlem, yesterday’s public hearing attracted opponents of aversive behavioral therapy as well as defenders, including parents like Ms. Doherty, students, and the Rotenberg Center’s founding director, Matthew Israel.

The crowd of about 100 had gathered to discuss emergency regulations the state passed in June that placed strict restrictions on the Rotenberg Center. Those regulations, which prohibit the Rotenberg staff from using the shock devices unless students appear to be placing themselves or others in physical danger, require the Rotenberg Center to obtain the approval of a three-person panel before starting a student on a regiment of aversive therapy.They could be made permanent when the Board of Regents votes on the issue next month.

According to Mr. Israel, two-thirds of the school’s approximately 150 New York students have “regressed very badly” in the weeks since the emergency regulations were passed.

“Some of them disrobe in class and masturbate in front of everyone,” Mr. Israel said. Others scream, refuse to do work, or otherwise disrupt class, he said. Previously, staff could administer a two-second shock to these students; now they have to wait until they become violent, which Mr. Israel said is often too late.

None of the people who attended yesterday’s public hearing seemed happy with the current state of affairs. About half the people who spoke demanded a total ban on aversive therapy (one person likened it to Abu Ghraib, and several referred to it as state-sanctioned torture), while the other half, mostly parents of students from the Rotenberg Center, begged the Education Department to lift the restrictions and allow the school to continue treating their children with aversives.

“It hurts, I’m not going to lie to you,” Ms. Doherty said of the electric shock treatment. In an interview, she said she had asked staffers from Rotenberg to zap her with the shock device when she visited the school two years ago to see what it’s like. The pain is worth it to her, she said, because before her son enrolled at Rotenberg he was essentially nonfunctional. When he was 17, she said, he critically injured a 20-year-old female staff member from another institution when he picked her up by her pony-tail and threw her against a wall.

“If the school is forced to close,” she said, “where is my son going to go?”