I've noticed that many abusive programs focus on sex in one way or another. Is that just another manifestation of the tactic types of thought reform?
It's a common program practice to find an exploitable weakness in a kid. Richard Bradbury was pressured to reveal his sexual dirt (which he didn't have) while in STRAIGHT, and the relentless wearing away went on until Bradbury admitted to being abused by several local firemen. He thought that was what they wanted to hear, but this exposed Bradbury's Achilles heel, and the STRAIGHT inquisitors went to work on him, telling him he must have wanted the abuse to happen, and they started calling him gay and much worse..
Girls who have been raped are told it was their fault. Kat from CAFETY's story of a counselor standing behind her and recounting the details of her sexual assault while playing the song that was playing during her attack is an example of sadistic torture, not therapy. I remember reading Kat's account of that incident and feeling numb at first, then enraged.
Kids without drug problems will be assigned one. A young lady at Peninsula Village told me she was there for nothing more than extreme depression following the death of her mother. She fought the lockdown level and was restrained continuously, in straitjackets bed nets,and chemical restraints. A bed net fastens you to a bed, completely immobile, and if this young lady started to fall asleep, a staffer would kick the bed and say "this isn't rest time, you need to stay up and consider your actions" The staff continuously administered Thorazine, Klonopine, and Halperidol to her. During the mandatory AA meetings, this young lady said she wasn't into drugs or alcohol, her problem was the strain of losing her mom. The staff said she was addicted to tranquilizers - the very tranquilizers they were giving her, drugs she had no experience with before the program.
My step-daughter had no real experience with drugs - she had drank beer once (which her biological father provided to her, her brother, and a friend of her brother. Her brother and his friend ended up violently ill from the cheap brew, and since my stepdaughter only had three or four beers, she played nursemaid to the drunk-sick lads, cleaning up their vomit .) She tried pot once (with her brother, again). Other than her biological father providing alcohol to very young minors, such activity is normative adolescent behavior.
My stepdaughter had been prescribed Adderall for ADD a couple of years before being locked into PV, and the PV staff accused her of being addicted to the prescription, since they needed some dependency to force our girl to attend AA meetings.
The one-size-fits-all treatment requires finding (or creating) an addiction, or turning a rape victim's ordeal into something the victim encouraged and wanted. That's the "break 'em down and build them up" policy. The counselors need something, a weakness they can exploit, to wear-away the adolescents' self worth and esteem until they "break down" and admit anything, true or not.
Given the questionable educational backgrounds of many Peninsula Village staff, I wonder if they have the skills to "break (teens) down and build 'em back up". I have no doubt that some of the counselors possess the sadistic natures necessary to restrain, abuse, and isolate young patients until they're broken, but who's really trained to build them up? Some kids are far more clever than the staff, and they manipulate the counselors into believing they're progressing, and they get bumped up to cabins.
I talked with a young man in California on St. Patrick's day, a former PV patient who said he was celebrating Saint Patrick, even though St. Patrick wasn't Irish at all, but Greek. I immediately liked him for his humor, intelligence, confidence, and his taste in good Punk and DC Core (The young man is a fan of my favorites, Dead Boys/Bad Brains, etc. We had a bond established when we realized we both held GG Allin and the Scumfucks in high regard) The young man was taking time out from a party at his place to have some beers and talk to me about what could have been a downer for his festivities. It didn't bring him down at all, he should be a motivational speaker to program survivors. He said he stayed sane knowing his real "family" of nomadic "bridge kids" who were extremely loyal to him would rush to PV and break him out if they knew he was being kept there. It gave him hope, and PV 's behavior modification can't work unless all hope is excised.
This young man left lockdown and entered a Clan reserved for the real "trouble boys", the ones who were extremely tough and difficult to reach.. He took pride in being a part of this clan, and told me that years before he arrived, it was this defiant Clan who built the cabins. He hopes that when PV is finally exposed and sued out of existence, the cabins the Hawk Clan built will be left standing.
After leaving PV, the young man said he felt like a survivor, not a victim, because he easily manipulated the staff into believing he had no addiction and attended no AA meetings (although he did have a drug problem at the time) and they never managed to break him, despite restraints and consequences.
Now the young man has a successful business in L.A., a nice apartment, a bubbly, funny girlfriend, and he's turned PV's abuses into a positive, although PV wouldn't consider him a success story: He has no fond memories of PV other than his Clan, and outsmarting the staff and clinicians by manipulating them. After what he suffered at PV, he says he "fears no man now," It pleases him to know he has everything the PV staff said he would never have in life...He turned a situation where he could easily have buckled and left PV feeling like a "victim", into walking out feeling like a survivor. His self worth and inner strength are not the result of Peninsula Village's manipulative program, they were honed and developed within himself to cripple Peninsula Village's efforts to "break" his spirit.
Believe your kids when they describe abuse, or at least demand a full explanation (discounting "manipulation of parental emotions") from the staff. If the program isn't forthcoming, get a guardian ad litem for your child to represent his interests. The stories I hear coming out of PV all recount the same abuses, and these are young men and women who do not know each other and often attended at different times. If you discount mass hallucination, there's a pattern of abuse going on there that PV tries to discount as "manipulation".
