Posted by Wesley (207.172.11.147) on May 13, 2000 at 08:48:51:
Background. You may recall from an earlier posting by me about the Kathy Fountain Show in Tampa where Straight’s very attractive Public Relations Officer Joy Margolis had been asked by a former client in the audience whether there were things in her past from her high school days that she might not want dragged out in public and she smugly replied that she had never done anything to be ashamed of [or words to that effect].
From the LA Times, March 90, Home Edition, p1, pt. A.
In December 1987, officials of Straight’s treatment center near Dallas admitted to the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse that “Kotex pads and towels had been placed in the mouths of clients who were acting out,” according to a Commission report. Straight said the practice was stopped.
“We don’t condone gagging,” Straight’s Margolis told The Times. “One staff member I know who was guilty of this was fired.”
One of the alleged victims of abuse at the Dallas area center was Erica Clifton, who was 14 when she was a client in 1987. Clifton said that because she was strong and rebellious, “They started putting me on the guy’s side (during group meetings) and calling me ‘butch’ and ‘bad ass’. “ She said she was also held down while boys in the program painfully pulled her legs apart.
“One time I was resisting,” she recalled, “and they put a . . .Kotex pad down my throat to where I was gagging.”
“We regret things like that have happened in the past,“ Margolis said of Clifton’s allegations. “When it has been called to our attention, we have taken proper action.”
“It was complete hell,” said Gena Golden, 16, of her stay in Straight’s Dallas treatment center. Golden, who left the program early last year, said her nose was badly broken while she was being restrained, and that clients were sometimes held down and kicked.
Margolis acknowledged that Golden’s nose was broken while the girl was being held. She said it was an isolated incident. She also said that Straight does not condone kicking clients. . .
The report said that clients were tied up with rope and with an automobile towing strap to prevent escape, that clients were physically restrained for minor infractions such as “failure to sit up properly,” and that bedrooms were overcrowded and furnished with “containers to be used for urination.”
Margolis said a staff trainee used a rope to tie up a client and was fired, as was an employee who instigated the practice of putting the containers for urine in bedrooms.