Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry
Pani Issues Report Amid Chaos at Dundee Ranch
Anonymous:
Do you have someone with these problems and addictions in your home???
Carey:
Angry Sister,
It sounds like you buy into the WWASP teaching "there is no right or wrong, there is only what works and what doesn't work." That is the lesson that my boys learned at Dundee. However, they now realize that is terrile message to be instilling in the kids in the "programs."
I am sorry that your brother has problems, and I admit I don't have all the answers, but I do know right from wrong and no matter how you slice it abuse is wrong.
First, you can't say that your brother would be dead if he were not in the program. You can not tell what the future holds. Second, your brother would recieve more services that would be of value to him if he were in juvinile detention than from what he has recieved at Dundee. Even Litchfield stated "all we guarantee is supervision."
Have you been there, to Dundee? I have. It is not what you think it is. Dundee is closing because of what I have seen and what the officials investigating it have seen. Does that not tell you something?
I am sorry if you are angry, but you need to be angry with Narvin Litchfield, he is the one who has decieved you and your parents and many others like you.
Carey
Anonymous:
Carey,
No I have never seen the facility at Dundee Ranch. My brother wasnt taken there in the middle of the night but actually just the contrary. MY father took him there willingly and he chose to stay. Every inch of the facility was checked out while he was there. He knew he wasnt checking him into the Ritz Carlton. It is policy to hold an investigation if a complaint is made. The same way there are investigated in our military and schools each day.
You are correct, I do not know what the future holds. What I do know is that Im a college student at a University with 44,000 students and Ive seen plently of people including friends go down the path with drugs. When I mean dead, It applies to everything in life. People like that become dead to the world. They have no abition for anything but drugs or a concern for their future. OF course there are programs that work or dont work. How do you figure that there is an inbetween. Either they abandon the lifesyle they had or they continue it. I dont know who you are kidding by saying that our juvinelle system has more to benefit troubled kids. Our government provides minimal services for rehabilitation. If juvinelle detention was successful there wouldnt be so many habitual offenders in our society.
The sister
Antigen:
Dear Angry Sister,
Let me give you a little insight from two points of view that I don't think you have to draw on.
First, I'm a mother. I have a 19yo daughter who scared the living hell out of us while she was going through her throws growing up. Out of respect for her and because you'd probably take it the wrong way, I won't go into a lot of detail here. Suffice it to say that, when Officer Friendly came to my door and told me that the only way he could 'help' her was if I filed criminal charges against her, I finally understood--really, completely, emotionally--why my parents had done what they had done to me and my older brothers and sister all those years ago. It was no longer just an accademic question, I didn't just accept and agree to let it go. I was able to truely forgive my dad.
But I knew better than to make the same mistake because I had been on the receiving end of that kind of 'benevolence' myself. And I know in my heart that Dad was looking on from wherever it is that affectionate ghosts hang out and breathing a sigh of relief.
The biggest difference between a kid who might be making self destructive decisions and one in a WWASP program is that the first kid can walk away and change their ways the minute they decide they're not having fun any more. If you think your little brother's odds of survival, or even of living out his life in better mental and emotional shape than a Viet Nam veteran, are better with than without WWASP, you're mistaken. Sorry, you just are.
Again, I understand your impulse to try anything at all to help a kid who's scaring the hell out of you. I know. I used to think it was very much like watching my toddler cheerfully playing on a six lane highway and running, usually right into the worst trouble, every time I tried to reach out and pull her in.
But you must, if you really love your brother, consider the first precept of the Hypocratic Oath; First, do no harm. No matter how bad you may think it is to do nothing but keep your door and your heart open to him, WWASP is worse. Kids die there. Kids commit suicide there. Most of those who make it out alive are not at all OK; not for a very long time if ever.
Oh, if you're wondering how my daughter's doing, she's a whole lot better off than I was at her age after 2 years of 'help' from another Synanon based TOUGHLOVE outfit. Unlike me 20 years ago, she knows better and is lucid and sane enough NOT to get pregnant and try to marry the first psycho who comes along. Unlike me, she doesn't have panic attacks and night terrors--so I'm sure it's easier for her to hold a job.
Like me, I'm sure she'll figure out the rest all in good time. And she's got family who she can trust should she ever decide she she needs or wants to come for an extended vacation and take a load off for awhile, no strings attached.
People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.
Anonymity Anonymous
Anonymous:
Dear Sister...you are obviously young, fresh with the absolute authority that what you say is absolutely right. Give it a little time (years) and you may come to realize that what you "know" may not be right. You cannot know your brother would die if not in Dundee. You cannot know that he will learn that drugs are dangerous and to be avoided, even if he needs to forget the awful experiences at Dundee after he is released. You cannot know that this was his last resort, that no other alternative except this humiliating lifestyle would save him.
I have a relative in another WWASP facility. This person was not in the dire straights you seem to think your brother was in. In fact, the "problems" I, as an older/wiser/experienced parent and adult saw were more a fact of being a teen and experimenting with independence. Smoking pot a few times, smart-mouthing a parent, and failing algebra is no excuse for removing a person from society, all personal contact with friends, extended family, even fellow inmates, newspapers, schooling, physical outdoor activity, food necessary for growing bodies, clothes that help identify the emerging adult personality, the dignity of being allowed to have an independent thought, or having the love of a parent who can talk to you as you try to sort out what you eventually want to be. You think this Last Resort is great for your brother, who went off the deep end? Well, Dear Sister, is it also there to warehouse and demoralize your average teen whose parents have more money than brains and wouldn't recognize a correct parenting technique if it smacked them in the head?
The majority of children in these facilities are like that, but are suffering the severe treatment that you feel is the Last Resort measures saving your brother. NOBODY deserves this. WWASP has a slogan banner they put up in seminars: "Nothing Can Change When You're Comfortable". Well, that's 100% wrong. Change doesn't happen then; discomfort only makes the problem dive deeper. Watch out for when it surfaces!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version