To some degree, guest is right. I knew a lot of kids in program who had parents who were very very rich, and just wanted to get rid of the kids and feel good about it. They wanted somebody else to "fix em". These are not the parents that are likely to be posting on ST regularly... Why? They don't give a shit at all.
On the other hand, the parents that did care, were just scared.
I don't think many, if any, parents knew of the abuse. Like exhausted said, they would be forewarned for "manipulation"... However, I'm not sure this completely absolves parents of the responsibility to investigate... But then again, programs are good at covering things up, providing a pretty facade. Parents might come and interview a few kids, program would select these kids...
They could:
- provide multiple students to interview (peer reporting)
- provide a known brainwashed student to interveiw
- let the parents ask questions of the kids in front of the staff..
Even if they did none of these things, and let a parent interview a single kid privately, or even multiple kids, a kid knows, when answering a parent's questions, that if the parent gets alarmed, and pulls his kid, there will be huge consequences. Program has ways... Program will find out, even if you can't think of how. You know this. In Program there are no secrets.
I don't blame parents for being sceptical, and even with Fornits, It's not exactly a parent friendly enviornment where questions can get asked calmly. Why? You get a parent who has been talking to staff for the past year, shows up on Fornits.... and sees his kid everywhere. Parent uses program language, this sets people off, most parents don't come back, and end up thinking Fornits is a bunch of crazies, when in reality, you could argue, we are just better informed, as we have been there.
That being said, the communication spin from program works both ways. We have never been in the position of program parents. I suppose you could say i'm lucky to have read the correspondance between my parents and program. The bullshit was plausable, believable, well written... It had holes in it, but only somebody who had been in program could point them out... That is the weakness.
From an outside perspective, most of the stuff you read on fornits sounds like alien abductions. It sounds absurd, it sounds like it could never happen. People said the same thing about concentration camps, until they started running across them, far far too late.
The weakness of programs is the commuincation buffer between parents and thier kids. It's part and parcel of every single program. Whether it is implimented by questioning the parents after the fact, monitoring the phone calls directly, through peers, through fear, or some other innovative method, the result is the same. If you can talk to parents who have kids in program, or are considering it, you can ask them questions, analyze the situation, point out likely bullshit, and suggest the "right" questions to ask their kids and/or program. Once the parents figure out they are being lied to, they start to distrust the program... They listen to their kids more... Hopefully, before too much damage is done, they figure it out and withdrawl them... perhaps informing other program parents along the way, poisoning the system from within.
I've said it before and i'll probably say it again many many times... Parents are the strength, and weakness of the industry. They hold all the cards, and if you show them they are being cheated... and their kids are being abused... Even the apathetic ones will feel obliged to do something.
