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On 2006-03-28 21:36:00, Anonymous wrote:
"I have tried and tried to tell you all that I am NOT a WWASP supporter. Yes, I worked there, but no I don't support, believe in or agree with what they do there. I was just being honest when I said that I hadn't seen the abuse with "my own eyes", so I couldn't testify to it happening. I never said I doubted that it happened. Why is it so hard for you people to believe that just because someone worked there they can't be trying to make things right? There are more people still working there that are trying to make a difference by staying there and doing the best to help these kids. If you go to the Spring Creekers site on Myspace and look at the topic titled "favorite staff" you'll see that even the kids have found a few staff that are working to make changes by being there for the kids.
After I started working there I started hearing rumours about this website, so I checked it out. I was trying to find answers to questions I had about things that were going on in the program. Like I said before I never saw any PHYSICAL abuse, so I concentrated on the verbal and mental abuse I saw going on. I wanted to put an end to that, but I wasn't sure how to do it. I called CPS, but all they said was they were watching the situation closely.
The part that got to me was the person that said I should be ashamed for staying on there after I knew what was going on, but you tell me a better way to watch and get evidence of what was happening. Why are you all so quick to judge my intentions when you don't even know me. I don't know any of you, but when I read your stories about the things that happened to you while in these places I didn't immediately assume you were a liar. I listened and I learned. That's exactly what I did while working there. I talked to the girls in my care and tried to be there for them when they needed me. I did try to get something done by contacting the proper authorities and will continue to do so if they need me to.
"Everyone thinks they are doing such a great deed, but you are not, do not fool yourselves."
So do I just quit what I'm doing because you think I'm fooling myself? I don't think I'm doing a great deed, but I feel like I'm trying to do "something" instead of just sitting around making posts to this website about it.
I tried to get the girls in my family to give me any little bit of info about what was happening at SCL that they could, so I could take that to CPS with proof. I didn't want to go there and then have SCL tell them I was just a disgruntled employee. I wanted something to back up what I had to say. Fortunately for the girls in my care, none of them had experienced any abuse while there. Granted, they could have been witholding information for fear of some sort of retaliation against them. I do know for a fact that that shit does happen, not only to the kids but to the staff that dare to cross managment. That, I've seen with my own eyes.
To those that suffered while there, I am so very sorry for what you went through. I don't say that to calm my own "guilt" like someone had said I was doing. I say that with sincere sadness for what happened to you. That's the reason I'm still trying to help anyway possible to get these programs shut down, but I don't know what else to do besides what I've already tried. That's why I started coming here so that I could maybe find a way to do more, but I see that you will never believe in my sincerity no matter what I say. I guess I'm back to trying it on my own again.
"
Are you kidding me? You expected abused kids to confide in *you*? One of (to them) the enemy?
Suuuuure you're "the nice guard." You're their old friend old buddy old pal who is going to blunder around in your hopeless naivete and get *their* asses beat into the ground and worse.
When *your* naivete gets somebody horribly, horribly retaliated against *it won't be you*. They know that. They know that full well.
That you have to ask them or prod them to see *if* abuse is going on tells them everything they need to know about you----that you're a naive effing fool who is going to blunder around and get *them* hurt worse and then let yourself off the hook for it (or, more likely, not even notice it happened) because of your "good intentions."
The only right thing to do is to quit being complicit in their abuse by stopping working there.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
When you work for bad people who do bad things, they *use* you---they use your well meaning, innocent naivete as a front, they make sure that people checking them out either encounter the really slick liars or you. People encountering you will feel that you're honest and well meaning and will, on the basis of meeting you, come to the completely false conclusion that it's a safe place to leave their kid.
People like you working for them is the only thing that makes it possible for them to stay in business. Without people like you in it, their whole con would fall apart.
You think people here just post on Fornits and that's all we do?
I'm an author. I pass the truth along to my readers---the truth that behavior modification facilities are terrible places to put children and are terribly unsafe---particularly for children with mental health problems like cutting, depression, bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder.
This week, I also passed the truth along to my pshrink, who has a local radio show. I gave him the name of the book _Help At Any Cost_ and went over the highlights of the red flags against these places.
A lot of people on Fornits are often surprised by my insistence that the blanket stopping of the kids' mail is horrible, dangerous, ominous, and highly unethical. For a licensed clinical psychologist or licensed psychiatrist, it's one of the biggest red flags I can say about these places, and one of the easiest to verify.
One of the first things they teach about ethics in the beginning abnormal psychology classes is that inpatient hospitals, facilities, whatever, must not and may not ethically stop patients' mail *except* when a patient's own personal doctor decides, for a very limited time, that getting or sending certain letters would hurt the patient. The usual examples are where the patient is threatening or stalking someone, or some of the patient's obnoxious relatives are sending horrible, abusive letters haranguing him, or are sending him martyred guilt trips and playing destructive head games on him.
When I tell any psychology or psychiatry professional that these places stop the patients' mail across the board, as a blanket policy, while the patient is on "level 1" or the equivalent---that is, until the patient begins to be compliant about saying what the facility wants them to say.... When I tell licensed professionals in the field about that, every red flag they have goes off immediately.
So my doctor immediately knew exactly what these places were like. Just from knowing about the mail, he could pretty much infer the rest. Messing with the patients' mail outside those very narrow and specific guidelines is such an ethics no-no.
How can I explain it so that you'll understand? Okay, put it like this. If you told me a lawyer got drunk at lunch with you and told you all the private business of one of his clients, that's all you'd have to tell me about that lawyer. If you told me a Catholic Priest went and told a husband his wife had said in confession that she was having an affair, that's all you'd have to tell me about that Priest. I'd know that lawyer and priest were shamelessly unethical SOBs.
Screwing around with an institutionalized person's mail, outside of those very narrow and specific guidelines, or stretching those guidelines a lot but saying you're still within them------that is so taboo that when you hear a place is doing it, that is absolutely all a decent professional needs to know about a place to know they're shamelessly unethical SOBs.
You're like the law clerk for the lawyer who drunkenly shares his clients' privileged information all over town. When people think ill of you for working for "that guy" if you could get another job, they're right. Whether you see it or not, they're right.
When you continue to work for someone once you know they have serious ethics problems, you taint yourself with their lack of ethics, because they're getting their money unethically, and you're feeding at that trough. Whether you get paid well or a pittance doesn't matter----your bills are getting paid off of that unethical behavior.
Exit Plan has told us many of the horrible things SCL does. Taking the tainted money they take in is how you pay your bills.
You can tell yourself it's a pittance, you can tell yourself your intentions are good, you can ask what else can you do and rationalize it all you want.
People who do horrible things *usually* manage to rationalize it away and come up with a bazillion empty "reasons" why what they're doing is only what they have to do, from the best of intentions.
So anyway, I told a psychiatrist with a mental health radio show about the "troubled teen" scam and how dangerous it is, and gave him the title of Help at Any Cost---which is a good starting place for someone first learning about this horror.
His listenership is exactly the target market for this industry. Middle-class, mostly white, middle aged parents who are worried about their teenagers.
He'll be able to do a far better job than I would at warning parents away from the scam, and drawing the distinction between the Behavior Modification Program scams versus the real, ethical, medical model, inpatient care for the few patients who are are imminently dangerous to themselves or others and are in dire need of a short term hospitalization to get stabilized.
Sending your child to a facility that routinely stops the mail for all of the incoming kids, for *any* length of time, is like sending your best friend to a divorce attorney who sleeps with his clients.
The scum you see floating on the top merely hints at the corruption underneath those waters.
When you work for viral scum, you get infected.
Julie"
You spout off like you're so intelligent, but you didn't bother to read that I NO LONGER WORK THERE you dumb ass! It must be so exciting for you to go on and on calling me a naive because I was trying to do something I thought was good. Wow, maybe I'm not a big time "author" like you Julie, but I was trying to do something to help. Maybe it was the right thing and then again maybe it wasn't, but that's not for you to decide.
As for the girls in my family not saying anything because they were afraid they'd get in trouble, some of them have actually gotten a hold of me to tell me stuff. Since I NO LONGER WORK THERE they are keeping in contact with me other ways and I've been able to get some info, with their permission, to give to CPS.
Again, if you actually bothered to read my post, you'd see that I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THAT PLACE ACTUALLY WAS UNTIL I WENT TO WORK THERE. When I realized what was happening I was going to quit immediately. I didn't need the job to "pay my bills" as you put it. I was contacted by another staff person out there who was already working with CPS and she asked me to help out. Was I wrong to stay working out there as you said I was...NO! Why is it so hard for you to understand that I was trying to help the only way I could. According to you I should have quit and started writing letters and attending protest, but don't you think that having a better insite into the workings of the place and getting as much info as possible was better?
Because the other staff person and myself stayed on longer we were able to get information for a parent that was going to file a lawsuit against SCL, so even though you think I'm an idiot and naieve for staying, it actually helped someone, so you can go to hell if you don't like the way I handled it Ms. Author.
"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
You post this quote and then you damn me for trying to do something, make up your mind! I may not be an "author" who can pass info on to a radio shrink, but I was doing the best with the info and resources I had. I was able to contact a few parents at different times and encourage them to check things out further. I had to be careful what I said because I had heard they listen in on the phones.
You try to make me out to be some evil person out to hurt the kids there because I might get them "retaliated" against. Do you actually think I would have done that on purpose? I never tried to trick them or coerce them in anyway to tell me what was going on. I just asked questions and if they wanted to tell me anything then they would. I would also not screen their mail like I was told to do, because I disagreed with the whole withholding mail shit.
Why is it that your way of handling things is the only right way to do it? What makes you so much better at it than me? Like I said I WAS TRYING TO HELP AND DO SOMETHING TO STOP WHAT I SAW. If you don't like the way I handled it then that's your problem. Maybe I'm not as well versed as you and maybe I haven't expressed myself as well, but we all can't be big time authors. Some of us are just normal people trying to help in whatever way they can.
[ This Message was edited by: Eudora on 2006-03-30 11:26 ]