Hurrikayne: Where have you protested?

Tony: Kids Helping Kids, Milford Ohio*

(editor’s note: also known as Pathway Family Center)

When?

Friday November 30th, 2007

What was your personal reason for this protest?

At age 14, I was falsely imprisoned in Kids Helping Kids (now a Pathway Family Center), where I spent 21 months in the program. This organization abused, tortured and brainwashed me and has caused severe psychological problems that haunt me to this day.

Six months ago I finally got up the courage to look up some old friends from the program. It had been almost 20 years and the overwhelming shame and guilt had kept me from attempting anything that would remind me of the horrible experience. I proceeded to search online and what I found next was terrible. I found a vast array of information about how my family and I had been lied to and that there were numerous programs associated with almost identical methods of brainwashing. I was in shock for almost a month. I knew instantly that I had to do something. The protest is just one of the many things I have done since.

Were you able to educate anyone about the facility and its mode of operation?

I hope so, I am not finished with this campaign; this protest was only one small step on the long road ahead. Eventually people won’t be able to look away anymore, but this will take time and patience. I hope I am part of the snowball effect in getting people interested.

Do you have additional comments you would like included?

I am happy with what we are doing and will continue to search for better ways to defeat these deceptive programs. I commend everyone else out there who are fighting alongside in spirit. Intelligent, planned protests are needed, along with letters to anyone in positions of authority, to let them know we are out here and not going away. Any actions that are detrimental to this cause may be made out of good intentions but may indirectly be of benefit to the programs.

My advice: Don’t be a detriment by going off half cocked, acting like an idiot and giving the public the appearance that we are a bunch of fanatics. This is a serious issue and should be treated with much forethought. We haven’t gained enough ground to afford any setbacks. I will never give up on this and I encourage everyone else to dig in and prepare for a long fight. I think it is important to recognize those who have been fighting for years without support who have managed to hold things together and lay the groundwork that enables us to do what we are doing.

Hurrikayne:  I have additional questions about your experience in Kids Helping Kids that I’d like you to explain for those who are unfamiliar with the terminology used.  In Part III you stated, “Penny Walker would instruct us to act differently than we would normally in front of the reporter and crew.  We weren’t allowed to ‘motivate’ in front of them, instead we would raise our hands.”  Can you tell us what it means to “motivate”?

Survivor B:  To Motivate is when program clients are required by staff and program rules to flap their arms up and down in a fast motion in order to get called on to talk or relate to other clients in groups sessions. It also is used to gain the respect and trust of the other group members as well as the staff, as a way to move up in the program. If you do not get ‘motivated’ you will not advance to the next level. If you are on a higher level and do not get ‘motivated’ in this way, you will be stood up in ‘group’ by staff and questioned about not being honest, scrutinized about your thinking and motives not only by the staff, but by the whole group and then set back to a lower phase of the program, and often all the way back to first phase, day one. It is called being “started over”.

 

You have mentioned to me in our many discussions about this topic, that you have arthritis as a result of this practice of ‘motivating’, are there any other lasting physical problems that you are still suffering from?

Yes, I developed arthritis as a young adult in my elbows, as well as my wrists as a direct result of ‘motivating’ when I was a client of Kids Helping Kids. I also have had neck and back problems for years from ‘motivating’ as well; the sheer strain of ‘motivating’ so hard to impress staff and other clients, thrusting my whole body to ‘motivate’ as hard as I could, contributed. The staff at KHK made it like a symbol of status to see who could ‘motivate’ the hardest and the longest and would at times force us to have ‘motivating’ contests.

 

Very early on in our discussions, you mentioned Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; do you currently suffer any effects as a result of your time in KHK?

Yes, I have suffered from devastating effects as a result from my time in KHK. I have Post traumatic Stress disorder and also Panic disorder. The very organization of their treatment modality is abusive in and of itself in the fact that it causes a child to not self identify anymore (meaning the child loses their self identity within the confines of “the program”). This happened to me because I was put in there right at the stage of development when I was supposed to be finding out who I was and developing my self identity.

 

The KHK treatment modality does not give the child any room to be ones self because the program requires the child to conform to the programs every whim and abusively strict program rules, even at the foster home, with no relief. The child is threatened to conform by the program in extremely abusive ways, such as being threatened with homelessness, death, insanity, or jail. This particular tactic scared the life out of me, as it did with most others; it is a very harmful tactic because it induces panic and forces one to conform to ideals against their will, under threat to self and personal safety. This type of environment is what causes things like Panic Disorder.  

 

For people unfamiliar with what Panic Disorder is, the symptoms are as follows: Trouble breathing, chest pains - including tightening of the chest, sweating profusely, dizziness, a sense of feeling not in reality, extreme fear, fight or flight response impaired, fear of crowded places, tingling sensations in random body parts. The effects of Panic Disorder, especially before the person has a name for what is happening to him/her, can be extremely frightening, simply devastating them socially. Untreated Panic Disorder can lead to Agoraphobia, which is the fear of leaving ones home because the person afflicted with Panic Disorder starts associating the panic with every place they go, and therefore eventually concludes that it is just best to stay home out of fear. Obviously this type of panic reaction can have devastating effects on ones life such as job loss, social isolation, extreme stress, relationship troubles etc…

Now to address my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I would say it is very similar to Panic Disorder as far as the fear, but it differs in the fact that with PTSD I have awful flashbacks like I am actually re-living the traumas all over again. I’ve had to work very hard to fight those flashbacks and fight to stay in real time since leaving Kids Helping Kids.

 

Being physically restrained against your will and being forced into lying about your past traumatizes you, especially when you are still a developing child, as I was at the time. Witnessing other children being hurt, restrained, laughed at, ridiculed and scrutinized on a daily basis traumatizes you as well. It further traumatizes you when staff tell you to look forward, away from the incident, and all you can hear is crying and screams for help from behind you, knowing the whole time you can do nothing because you will be the one crying and screaming next if you try to intervene.

 

Then there is the guilt that I and others associate with not being able to do a thing to help another child. I live with that guilt everyday, even though I know that there was nothing I could have done. I still wish it had never happened to anyone at all. It created a self loathing in me for a long time, and I suspect in others as well.

 

Suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has permanently altered my perception of certain things to a degree where it has cost me relationships, jobs and friends. Although I am stable now, I still suffer from a lot of trust issues as well as residuals. My symptoms are fewer now than say, ten years ago, but periodically they flare up. I fight them with courage because I am determined not to ever let the program or those demons win.

The program may have stolen two years of my life, and my self identity for a time, but I took back what was, and is mine inherently, through hard psychotherapy work, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy and a lot of support from family members and friends to recover.

 

Is there anything good that you were able to take away from your experience in Kids Helping Kids?

 No, it was the worst experience of my life.

 

Did your parents struggle financially in order for you to attend KHK?

Yes, at that time the program cost them $20,000 USD. They bought a house 5 minutes from KHK, uprooted our whole lives. They also incurred further expenses by fostering program kids in our home (as required by the program) on things such as food and water, electric, laundry.

 

How was your relationship with your immediate family affected by your experiences in KHK?

The program lied to me, telling me if I would confess what drugs I had done with my brother, and they interviewed him and if he was honest and said the same, then they would let me see him. I told them, and he was honest with them, and they didn’t let me see my brother for a year and a half. It hurt our relationship immensely. We grew apart and we were best friends before that. We didn’t even know each other anymore.

The program stressed my relationship between me and my mother to where we did not talk for awhile. I didn’t feel comfortable letting her know that she had made a mistake by putting me in there for a long time because I knew in my heart that she did not know what had gone on behind closed doors. I waited to talk with her about it when I had decided the appropriate time, place and action to take with her about it.My father and I had never had a good relationship and the program only made it worse. My father was an alcoholic and abusive towards my brother and I before the program, and the strain and pressure of the program just made our relationship worse. We still do not talk to this day. In fact we had an abusive altercation since I have been an adult that landed him in jail and a restraining order in my hand.

How do your parents feel about what has happened to you as a direct result of your time in KHK?

My mother, after years of disagreements, hang up phone calls, and lots of talking hashing things out, me explaining what I witnessed along with things that had happened to me in there, started realizing a little bit of what had terrorized me.  Through lengthy discussions with her, she further started to understand and see how the place had affected me in a negative way in different areas within my life. She also now knows and understands why and how I was brainwashed and also admits that they had her fooled and brainwashed for awhile, as well. She supports and remains interested with my protest efforts against KHK. She supports me speaking out and educating the public about Kids Helping Kids.

My father, however, the last time we did speak, blamed my mother for that place even though he went along with putting me in there, as well.

 

Are there any other relationships that have been affected by your experience? 

I have chosen to be the loving caring parent to two wonderful children; as I had planned on being when I decided I wanted to be a mom at age 6. I chose to raise my children a bit differently, mainly because there were certain things about how I was raised that needed to change. I do not sweep things under the rug with my children or over shelter them. I also am a big advocate of, and encourage their dreams and right to freedom of artistic expression, as well as their freedom of speech. That has always been my attitude towards life in general, but it has definitely been magnified as a direct result of the process of trying to heal from my time at the program.

I was assaulted by a boss and she had trapped me in her office, blocking the door so I could not leave.  I had a flashback of being locked in the time out room at KHK.  I froze and could not accurately defend myself in all of the ways that I should have at the time, because I panicked inside and froze up.

It takes years to undo brainwashing, especially if it happens to you in childhood like it did to me.  While I was still stepping down and unreeling from the brainwashing I had several romantic relationships, separately but in between the reels.  Three of those people were from the same program and I worked parts of “my program” on all three of them, and they worked theirs on me as well.  By this I mean playing serious mind games just like in the program, but in a different playing field because we were out of the program and trying to re-adjust to reality. Mind games with romantic partners don’t work in the real world if you desire to obtain levels of true intimacy with the one you love. 

 

Adjusting to regular life after surviving the program is a big ordeal, and tends to leave you feeling relieved to be out, but also very lonely and isolated, with a sense of abandonment.  For me and many others, recovering from the program and attempting to do damage control after being brainwashed is a full time job every day for a period of many years. Any romantic relationship I had immediately following my time at KHK failed miserably because I still needed so much healing to take place within myself, and so did those I was involved with.

 

It is a common occurrence amongst Kids Helping Kids and behavior modification school survivors to re-learn how to successfully interact with others again because the abuse of the program steals spirits inside children. The abuses calculated with my recovery and healing process from the program, have definitely affected my relations with people in general and caused me to fight an uphill battle with those issues for the rest of my life little by little every day.

 

 

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Warning!!!

This is not a support group. This is not a safe place for you to divulge your secrets.

This is an open, unmoderated, uncensored wild place dedicated to discussion and inquiry into the troubled parent industry. Here we discus things like rape and torture from first-hand experience like other people talk about high school pranks and drama. It’s fucking ugly. If that ehff word bothers you, don’t even attempt to come here. Frankly, there are not words ugly enough to adequately describe what we’re talking about, but we do the best we can.

 

This is a very public place! Not only is this whole site accessible to anybody on the planet with a library card or friend with net access, but our actual readership includes the following; the psychotic, despondent, vengeful, hurt, sardonic, sociopathic, clueless, militant, sanctimonious, sadistic, guilty as well as the innocent. And those are just the program affiliated people. Our regular readership also includes the media, lawyers, law enforcement people, creepy brown shirts from alphabet soup named agencies and private contractors tasked with keeping an eye on us as possible terrorists and outlaws. And then, of course, there are the rubber neckers and trolls; the general public who are only looking because some friend or colegue told them they’d have to see it to believe it.

 

Trouble is, everybody thinks they’re the injured, innocent victim, heroically taking the beating for their sacred cause. And so you can see where things might get a little ugly, eh? If you choose to enter here, understand that I have a grudge. It’s simple and pure as anything ever to survive Occam’s Razor; honesty.

 

Honesty, the first and most impotent rule. Honesty has gotten every christ, profit and true hero from before the time of the Judeo/Christian Christ on through Tom Paine and Jack Kehoe publicly and painfully executed. The rule seems to be that Honesty is almost always the simplest, kindest, bravest and most sensible way to go, with the unfortunate cosequence that it will likely get you killed or, at the very least, make you wonder if you might be better off at rest sometimes. (no, this is not a suicide threat or plea for rescue. Anyone who’s experiencing a knee jerk paternalistic response or a sudden and overwhelming attack of altruism, pound sand. I’m acting in my own interest as well as those I love wherever those intersect. Please don’t help me, I’ve had all the help I can stand, thanks very much, good day, buh buy, pound sand!)

 

I was only 5 or 6 years old when this cult took my family and future from me. I thank the Fates these days that I was too innocent and idealistic to understand that fully at the time or I never would have had the courage to try anything. They demanded honesty, but defined the word a little differently than I had been taught. It was a double bind. Honesty, by program definition, meant confessing to and actually believing things that never happened. In order to make the next tiny incremental step toward the door, one would have to manufacture the appropriate set of feelings and attitudes to go along with the fiction.

 

Though money is as big a part of this story as it is of any other, it’s not really what drives the most dedicated proponants. It is guilt and shame, anger and regret and a desperate, desperate need to maintain those illusions that excuse their crimes against themselves, their own children and unwitting suckers who they recruit into their belief systems. These people do monsterous things because they are convinced that what they’re doing is heroic.

 

My object here is as it has been from the beginning; I’m just complying with the first and most impotent rule, Honesty. They want Honesty? Ok, I’ll give them honesty, all day long. Honestly, their illusions are crushing innocent others. As uncomfortable as it may be for them, they’ll have to either give them up or keep close society only with those who voluntarily share them. We’re intent, as ones fighting for survival, on blowing their cover among the general public. I expect them to act just as ugly and cruel in this venue as they do in those cloistered environments they create. Why would you expect anything else?

- Ginger McNulty 

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Well. Those who have been looking for SueScheffTruth are in bad luck for the moment. The site was apparantly hacked soon before I headed off on my Benchmark Raid. That’s one of the things i’ll be fixing during the holidays. In the mean time, you might want to take a look at this latest clip I’ve released from my Benchmark project (Benchmark Young Adult School):

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Well, it’s that time of year again, folks! Time to get lost in legend and lore, catch up with old friends and family, stuff ourselves silly, and dance naked in the snow if the spirit so moves you. It just so happens that today is the traditional date of the Roman Saturnalia festival. There is a theory that Christians in the fourth century assigned December 25 (the Winter Solstice on the Julian calendar) as Christ’s birthday (and thus Christmas) because pagans already observed this day as a holiday. This theory is much disputed, as the dates of Saturnalia are not coincident with Christmas. A more refined is that Christmas was set on the feast of Sol Invictus, which was on December 25, and which had supplanted Saturnalia.

The ancient lands of Lapland and northern Siberia are thought to be the homelands of much of the modern Rudolph myth. Far within the Arctic Circle, the Koryak shaman of a Siberian reindeer tribe enter dwellings each midwinter via the smoke hole in their tents to dispense gifts of the aforementioned fly-agaric mushrooms before their hallucinating tribal companions saw them climb out and depart on their “flying” reindeer. The Sami reindeer herders of Lapland traditionally dress like the legendary elves in red suits, long felt hats and reindeer pelt shoes that curl up at the toe, while the ancient story of Jultomten, a jolly Scandinavian elf who delivered gifts each winter solstice in a sleigh drawn by goats, has obvious resonance.

So I just thought I’d drop ya’ll a note of well wishes and trivia for this most festive season. Now, if you’re already feeling anxious over the assault to commonly held and much cherished myths, you probably don’t want to subscribe to our newsletter. If you’re tittering and making a mental note to yourself to get busy with those FMS Winter Solstice cards let us know, maybe we’ll get around to doing a newsletter. Meanwhile, I think we’ll just blog here once in awhile and see what grows up out of it.

Check out Kathy Moya, raid on Benchmark and the formation of the Raid On Benchmark and Youth Liberation Foundation. What else is going on in forum land or in the real world relating to the toughlove hate group? Post a comment, please.

Behind the scenes, we’re getting ready to move again. No really! This time, though, we’re not waiting for a crisis. We’ll be able to do a few more things like live streaming video/audio and to publish more of just the kind of legally defensible material that scares the living daylights out of regular commercial hosting providers. We’ll be needing a rack mounted server and some paid tech time to augment the stellar tech talent that we’ve got on a volunteer basis. To that end, we’ll be improving the look and feel and functionality of the forum, building this blog into something worth advertising on and seeking out those advertisers brave hearted enough to brand themselves with Fornits. More on that effort at Care & Feeding of Fornits

as things develop.

“This is gonna be fun!” –Racne Fornit’s last words

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11/12/07 UPDATE!

Here we go again:

Oct 10th, 2007, Our upstream hosting provider, The Planet, recieved This letter from Gabrielle C. Bozza of Broad & Cassell lawfirm in Florida essentially defaming sueschefftruth.com, careybock.com and fornits.com as “serv[ing] only to disparage and defame Ms. Scheff” and threatening litigation against The Planet if they don’t delete our sites. I think it’s interesting that Ms Bozza refers to her client as “it” in the final paragraph. Freudian slip? I don’t know why The Planet took so long to let Sean know what was up. But we got word of it on the 12th.

But this puts our friends at lulzhost.com in the unenviable position of having to choose between staying in business and standing by their friends and ethics. Sean (Janus Zeal, the admin at lulzhost.com) pulled our shabby asses out of the fire in August when NetFirms got the demand letter (see below). He’s worked hard to help us out for very little money, mostly out of solidarity and proper respect for the First Amendment. I don’t know if we’ll be able to continue doing business with him or not for his sake. I know he’s in need of about $175 to get back reliable net access and will need to replace our business should we have to step off of his server. So please consider sending him a donation via PayPal (that donations link will go live again tomorrow, mean time, use PayPal to januszeal@lulzhost.com).

But it may not come to that. Here is Atty Tom McGowan’s response to Gabrielle Bozza of Broad and Cassel. And here is
Carey Bock’s Brief for those interested in delving into the background. More news and updates as developments unfold at http://CareyBock.com/ and http://SueScheffTruth.com.

In the event that we have to move to another server again, we will need some financial help. We’re considering an arrangement with a friendly hosting provider but we’d have to come up with a rack mounted server, which would cost somewhere in the range of $1500 to $2k. Ongoing server fees would run about $60/mo. But it would give us technical and legal security well beyond what we now enjoy. Mean time, we may well have to come up with legal fees and other expenses. So if you’re inclined to support the fornits in that way, please feel free to

Drama, drama everywhere and nary the chance to think!

8/24/07 UPDATE!

[addendum to ^^^: We’ve been back up for awhile. How slack of me to leave out the all important links to

WWF.Fornits.com ~ SueScheffTruth.com ~ DCHFans.org

I’ll write an update on the bum’s rush from NetFirms as soon as I can, I promise! Also I’ll have the product and keyword ads in place very soon. Also…. oh, dear lord, who am I kidding! What I mean to say is that I shall try my very best to get all of these things done as soon as possible. Meanwhile, lame as this is, if anyone would care to

we very much appreciate it.

8/14/07 UPDATE!

Well, here we go again! NetFirms booted us off and won’t even tell us who complained or the nature of the complaint, citing privacy concerns of the complainer. How
very, very Orwellian! We’ll have more info later after our hard workin crew settle the tech issues.

Meanwhile, we here at fornits would like to thank Susan Scheff for giving us the impetus to seek out a
hosting provider with whom we share a great deal of common ground with regard to philisophy and ethics.

And here are some links that might be of interest to Fornits readers.

• SueScheffTruth.com
• Lawsuit Hits Romney Money Man
• Ripoff Report.com
• NowPublic.com
• Hugg
• CoRank.com

8/05/07 UPDATE!

Due to pervasive corruption in US tort law, the Fornits have been forced to seek refuge on a server in a free country.

Here’s the story as it came to me. Kelly, Fornits’ tech admin, recieved This forwarded email from our hosting
provider, essentially demanding that she edit some posts that Sue Scheff complained about. The letter was 90% bullshit and we’re working on a point by point rebuttal of
it. But with the state of things in the Corporate States of America, a company like Godaddy just can’t afford the legal fees to mount a defense every time some idiot con
woman threatens a slapp suit. And so we were offline for a short time and had to scramble a bit to get fornits.com back online. The forum is up and running, but We have a
lot of work to do to get the rest of the site back in order.

It is my sincere belief that Sue Scheff is not the least bit frightened by the content that she cites in her complaint. She knows as well as any of us that these guys
are just making fun of her and not actually any real threat to her personal safety at all. Rather, the other content and communication that takes place every day on
Fornits.com is an ongoing threat to her livelihood. The trouble is that she can’t do anything legally to address that very real problem of hers because all people are
doing is telling the truth about what she does. She can’t make money off of people in her chosen vocation if they can easily find out the truth. But you can’t sue someone
for telling the truth, hence the falacious, possibly slanderous complaints, threats and law suits (and there are MANY!).

This was a close call! We are fortunate to have been rescued by some talented and dedicated volunteers; some of the finest people in all of Cyberia.

I want to thank :

• Kelly Matthews, WebDiva extraordinaire, for her tireless effort to rescue the
  Fornits since the last server disaster and stunning wit and panache to boot.

• Psybourge, who’s not only devastatingly cute and charming, but also technically
  skilled and more adept at diplomacy and organization than anyone I know. (Psst! My daughter’s still ssingle!)

• Rachel for answering the call to find and thoroughly research our new server.
• Others who shall be nameless for their generous financial and moral support.

I’m verklempt… Discuss

Or go right to the main forum page. Please let us know how you like the new server.

Gratefully,
Ginger
Drug War POW `80 - `82

P.S.: I think Sue Scheff is a diabolical sociopath, but that’s just my opinion.

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