Hi to everyone from a former staffer.
In my former life I was Kevin Ottersten. For the past 14 I have been Kathryn.
I found this place, because as I was out driving my dad in my new car (an '85 Vette), he said, "I bet that bastard Newton Miller would have hated this car as much as he hated everything else" (my dad was a board member for two years, and resigned once he began to see what was really going on). Not sure why dad said this, he said it just popped into his head. But his comment did inspire me to look on the web for anything related to KIDS.
As it was for so many others, the place screwed me up indefinably. I was rather lucky, in that I had originally gone through Kids Helping Kids, in Hebron, KY, during the brief period when it was a relatively (still a Straight spinoff, though, so it is relative) decent place - no physical brutality, no restraints unless you ran, almost everyone graduated in a 7-10 months (1 year people were pretty rare - more than 15 months were unheard of at that time)(the place was created because a schism with Cincinatti Straight - they did not like Newton at all at KHK). Two months after my graduation, and while I was a trainee at KHK, my folks moved to Northern New Jersey. I don't know how my dad heard about Newton, but he was definitely duped by him just as so many other parents were. Pretty soon I was a staff trainee when the program was just beginning (I was there for Drew Giganti's intake day), and my sister Lauren was doing her second program because Newton said that she was at risk of going back on drugs.
Thing was, in Kentucky my being transgendered was acknowledged, supported, and left aside. Penny said that it was outside the program's reach, and that I could work to tolerate the situation for the period I was there. But Newton saw it as a religious matter, that I was a profound sinner, and I wound up with a couple of years of hell being on his staff. By the time I got away completely in 1986 I was very fucked up.
In 1989 I stuck a double-barreled shotgun in my mouth and just sat there. At that point I decided that I was not going to kill myself because it would have made Miller happy (he raged against my family after we all left and after I spoke to the Bergan County Prosecutor), but I was going to be as visible as a Queer as I could be. I got more than a few messages that this pissed him off to no end since I became an activist in NYC for a number of years and did a lot of TV and newspaper appearances.
I am like a lot of people, in that I still suffer from the place. My partner knows first hand the rage I can get into when a part of it creeps into my head, and how I just need to be alone for a while. But it does get better with time.
Thanks - feel free to email,
ottkat@yahoo.com. Hate mail is accepted - for what a lot of us staffers did at Newton's direction, hate mail is the least that we deserve.
Kathy
ps: And for anyone who may also remember my sister, Lauren - she is doing quite well. Not on the internet much; far too busy with her artwork and her new beau.
[ This Message was edited by: ottkat on 2003-02-09 23:08 ]