we,the ppl in straight,knew it was abuse.....the media and others saw it as revolutionary......etc........when i was in the time out room for 2 days,i knew it was bullshit,you knew it was bullshit,but the overall image was tough love crap and that was percieved as ok by the media.....like i said,if Miller had shown Nancy Reagan someone with body carvings all over themselves,instead of removing them from group,do you think the media and the such would've gave Straight such a favorable outlook and image?...no i don't think so......shit man,they snooked a lot of very smart ppl......my dad was a US Army Col.! i saw lawyers,police chiefs,{my friends dad was chief of police of falls church.......he recently told me if he had known,he would've shut the place down}>they were brainwashed way worse than us......and they were told we'd all die w/o thier "great" help........after i was huuued by straight,they{the director Jim Murray} got me a job at a mental health hospital......in my first 2 weeks there,i had to go through some kind of "training"......my last day there i saw electro shock "therapy"......because of my background in straight,they made sure i saw this.....when i was asked what i thought of it,i said "i'd rather be taken out back and shot in the head.....".....that,of course is not what the doctor in command of that place wanted to hear,and i was not employed there very long.......they were trying to brainwash me into accepting that as therapy........i didn't buy it......i got fired not long after that......i believe this is what they did to many of the ppl that were vying for spots on executive staff......i saw alot of ppl that were there to become executive staff,that never made it.......some got scratched out immediatly,some later and some bought it lock,stock and barrel.....mel was one of them.....think about it.....didn't you notice that only a few of the parents decided to put thier kids in there...most of the ppl that came in to check out straight in open meeting for thier kids didn't put them in? i did..........a cult always tricks its victims....shows them only enough to keep them there......then,when they're in too deep,they're in.......no,i'm not saying Mel was a victim like we were,what happened to us was unvoluntary.....what happened to our parents was voluntary by using thier fears as a way to get ppl in there.....what happened to Mel{who never had kids in there} was voluntary by deception.......he was told "look at our sucess rate" "if we don't know what we're doing,then explain our sucess"....he was never shown a kid being exersised to death,or sat on,or beaten up....places like straight don't show everything all at once,but a little at a time....look at our parents,thier kid came back home with newcomers>some watched thier kids treat the newcomers like shit and didn't think WTF is this? they got sucked in...Mel got sucked in.......my mom told me that after a while he wasn't buying it anymore and wanted to change it around.....the ppl higher up didn't .....he got in a fight,and i mean fist fight, with one of them and resigned/quit.........until i see him,i want to believe this because he did get in a fight and did resign.......i want to talk to him and get the truth.......for a good while,i thought like you did,until my mom told me that story of how he quit........we'll see soon........that fucking place ruined a lot of ppl....i'm not trying to change your mind,its just that when this was presented to me the way it was,i had to look at it objectivly....if our own parents were tricked>and they {for the most part} loved us,then why isn't it hard to see that this shit happened to others the same way? a cult is a cult.....trickery is thier trade and they need credible ppl to make it work...........hippie
