Straight destroyed me to control me. They took away the only thing that was mine at the age of 15. Me. I was a victim with no voice, a minor. It?s taken 18 years of pain and healing to recover from Straight?s damaging effect on me, and the relationships I have had since Straight.
Straight?s forced compliance partnered with it?s dictatorship/brainwash teachings of discipline and confrontation with coercion were enough to drive anyone crazy. It did drive most of us insane. We were intentionally mentally distorted, humiliated daily, and shamed for our past. What past? We were kids ranging from 12 through 17. We were scolded for being who we were and told if we didn?t do things Straight?s way, we would die or end up in jail because of drugs. Many of us, after we got out, did just that. We died or we turned to drugs, because Straight?s way was self-hating, and cruel. I was suicidal for 17 years after my experience in Straight. I was taught to hate everything about who I really was. I was humiliated and fearful my entire stay, with less humiliation only as a fifth phaser.
I would like to see the people responsible for keeping the doors of Straight open held accountable legally for child abuse, and for their "abuse for prophet" methods. I lost myself there. Do you know how hard it is to get you back once you?ve lost yourself?
I want to spread awareness about these programs, and the damage they do to children and families. I want to help people understand the long-term effects these programs take on children, and how it stunts their growth, and can and has completely destroyed them. Suicides, overdoses resulting in death, chronic depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, borderline personality disorder, and psychosis. Afflictions that take years to work through in therapy, costing some people hundreds and thousands of dollars, and many years of anguish and pain of losing yourself before finding yourself. Still, many never recover at all.
Most of all, I want parents to know this is not an option for their kids. These programs are the wrong answer to a difficult problem called, "Raising teenagers." Listening and loving, communication and/or long term therapy with patience, not confinement. Kid?s are not our clay to mold, they are extensions of ourselves, but not ours. My daughter is my responsibility to raise, not an institution?s, run buy children that went through the program that went through, that went through. Straight and Straight-like programs teach cult mentality, and force conformity over individuality, therefor destroying the young impressionable innocence which is our children?s souls, who grow up to be adults without souls. Adults without souls are lost and broken people. Torture does not heal, it destroys.
I was there. I actually saw the blood on the walls of those timeout rooms. The tallies carved into the walls by the ones who were in there, everyday, being punished with solitary confinement, starvation and beatings. The screams and cries, the restraints, being spit on, kicked, yelled at, cussed at, embarrassed and degraded day after day.
After a while, you?d have to be completely mad not to conform, even if that meant losing yourself completely.
There was a guy that did all his time in Dallas in utter silence. Just sat there, and refused to participate completely for around two years. They finally just released him because his insurance ran out. He killed himself not long after his release.
To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...
-- Richard Henry Lee, 1787
