It takes a thousand voices to tell just one story. That's an old No American aphorism. I wonder if European native tribes or Eastern cultures have a corollary?
If you want to understand Elan, even if you were there, even if you were administrative staff and think you know all there is to know, take it in the context in which it exists. Look around at the rest of the industry and see if anything looks familiar.
Lot of ppl don't like to advertise the fact that they were in one of these programs. But a few folks actually were there when this guy was and know that he was there. So it's not too surprising that this guy deny's having been an Elan student. You should see some of the frantic email I sometimes get when people find their names mentioned in some of these forums.
And there's another common thread. Part of the mindfuck is that the detainees believe that there's no escape but certain sorrow and even death. So when someone does get away, the Program devout (usually staff) make up all kinds of shit talk about them. When I left, I went back to my home town, rented a room from an old family friend, got a job and just went on w/ my life. Married 20 years coming up this summer, three kids. Not much more than the usual difficulties and youthful errors.
But if you asked my mom or any of the program ppl she talked to? Holy fuck! If I didn't know where it was coming from, I would probably have been devistated. But as it is, I laughed hard when I finally started looking up old friends from Sarasota. It seems that, in my mom's over active and unkind imagination, I had almost instantly become a heroin addicted street walking on Ft. Lauderdale strip!
And there are just SO many people I've heard of coming to this or that undignified end, only to find out they're just fine, plugging along despite having had their late adolescence and early adulthood severely monkeywrenched.
So I'd take it that Mr. Frey probably was in Elan, but probably didn't die a horrible death as a result of escaping w/o the Elan certification of acceptance and that Elan employs the same o'le, same o'le shit tlkin' machine for the same ol'e lame ass reasons as the rest of the LGA industry. Just as any other cult does, of necessity.
See? You can learn something from anybody.
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
--Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist
