Blueprints

[Anonymous]

Keeping 'Cult' Out of the Case
How do you convince a jury that your client was a victim of a cult?

New Jersey Law Journal/July 7, 2003
By Tim O'Brien
For Philip Elberg, you don't present expert witnesses and you don't utter the word. Through witnesses and records, you let the story tell itself.

For the past three weeks, the partner in Newark's Medvin & Elberg has been presenting evidence to a Hudson County jury about why his client should be compensated for the 13 years she spent in a rehabilitation center.

Lulu Corter of Wanaque was signed into Kids of North Jersey Inc. in Hackensack by her parents on Oct. 27, 1984, when she was a 13-year-old with learning problems. In August 1997, she bolted from what dozens of teenagers have described as a living hell.

Like many participants in the program, Corter had no drug or alcohol problem. Today, those who ran Kids of North Jersey cannot say why she was admitted because her records have disappeared. They say only that she had behavior problems, though they cannot recall the specifics.

Elberg, who won a $4.5 million settlement for another Kids of North Jersey patient in 1999, did give the jury a road map in his opening on June 12 before Superior Court Judge Maurice Gallipoli.

"This [program] is not about tough love. It's about destroying families as they existed, and creating a new family with [V.] Miller Newton as the father and Ruth Ann Newton as the mother," Elberg told the eight-member jury hearing Corter v. Kids of North Jersey, L-3578-00.

The suit is seeking compensatory but not punitive damages because Newton is in bankruptcy in Florida. It alleges that Newton violated Corter's civil rights, provided treatment that deviated from the standard care, and caused emotional, physical and psychological damage.

Newton is the 63-year-old rehabilitation guru who ran Kids of North Jersey from 1984 to the early 1990s, then moved the operation to Secaucus after stiffing the landlord for $400,000. State authorities finally cut off his Medicaid payments in 1998 and sued him in 1999 for $1 million in Medicaid overbillings. Kids of North Jersey closed in 1999.

Newton's operation was also shut down by state officials in California, Florida and Utah, where a prosecutor called the program "a sort of private jail, using techniques such as torture and punishment."

Newton's wife, Ruth Ann, served as a clinical director and second in command. Both are defendants, along with their organization, under several names, and four psychiatrists. Elberg and his partner and co-counsel in the case, Alan Medvin, previously gained settlements from carriers on behalf of three of the psychiatrists. The fourth, now dead, was dropped as a defendant.

Though Elberg has assiduously avoided the "cult" word, three witnesses testified to being brainwashed. He says that even an expert for the defense said in a report that Lulu was brainwashed.

Testimony was elicited that Miller would routinely require patients to shun their families, or parents to shun their children who left the program before graduating. For example, Lulu Corter testified that Newton discouraged her and her mother from attending her older sister's wedding because that sister had left the program prematurely.

Last Thursday, one of the questions from a juror to another psychiatric expert for Newton asked about whether teenagers could be conditioned to think a certain way.

And there seems little doubt that the three weeks of testimony -- which includes tales of escapes, kidnappings, beatings, and physical and mental punishment -- have had an impact on Gallipoli.

Last Thursday, shortly before lunch break during Newton's cross-examination, Gallipoli began a series of sharp questions for the witness. Noting that Lulu was in Kids of North Jersey for years for an eating disorder and compulsive behavior, Gallipoli asked Newton whether such disorders and compulsive behaviors could be treated on an outpatient basis.

Newton said they could.

When the jury was ushered out, defense attorney John O'Farrell objected to the judge's queries, saying they were "too skeptical."

Gallipoli responded, "They are skeptical." When O'Farrell, of Morristown's Francis & O'Farrell, pressed his objection, the exasperated judge snapped, "We're just about walking through a fantasy land, and there comes a time when the court just can't sit there and accept this like a bump on a log."

Asked by a reporter whether he thought the judge went too far in expressing his opinion, O'Farrell said only, "What do you think?" adding that he had high regard for Gallipoli.

The exchange followed 90 minutes of cross-examination by Elberg that included a rundown of Newton's qualifications, including a Ph.D. in 1981 from The Union Institute in Cincinnati in public administration and urban anthropology. The school bills itself as an "alternative learner-directed" organization without classes or the need to show up anywhere.

Newton has described the degree on resumes as being in "medical anthropology" and then "clinical anthropology." Newton says those titles describe what he studied. He also says he is a "board certified ... medical psychotherapist." When pressed, he says it is a "peer certification."

Setting Up The 'Doctor'
Before the cross examination of Newton, with backers on one side of the courtroom and angry former patients and staffers on the other, the jury heard from five former patients who say they were victims of Kids of North Jersey. Elberg says he was able to call those witnesses by invoking a rule of evidence allowing him to rebut testimony he contends is not true.

When Ruth Ann Newton was on the stand, Elberg pressed her about comments by former patients in the past two decades in court, on television shows and to reporters.

Specifically, he asked four questions: Could patients leave when they turned 18? Did Kids of North Jersey routinely try to get parents to sign in siblings once one child was admitted? Did the program encourage kidnappings of those who escaped from the program? And was it common for patients to offer false or exaggerated confessions about how bad they use to be so they could advance through the program's phases and ultimately graduate?

Ruth Ann Newton said no to each query, at which point Elberg put on his rebuttal witnesses. "If she had admitted those things, I could not have brought those victims on," Elberg said in an interview.

The five told their horror tales, which included sitting in chairs, ramrod, for 12 hours of group therapy each weekday. Those in the first phase of treatment could not speak, and most could not write letters, read, make telephone calls, talk to each other or make eye contact.

There was no privacy. "Old-timers" or "peer counselors," those who had graduated but were coerced to stay on as staff, accompanied newcomers to the bathroom, where there were no doors on the stalls.

The tiniest infraction, such as eating a cookie, could send patients back to the first phase. This, the victims testified, was the ultimate hammer, causing many to lie in the hope of getting out.

Jeffrey Stallings, for years the No. 3 official at the facility, testified that he quit to avoid breaking the law. He had testified in an earlier case that Newton altered records in anticipation of visits by regulators and withheld some records.

Two weeks before Elberg filed his complaint in the current case in 1999, he filed a show cause order, ex parte, with Gallipoli, asking that Kids of North Jersey's records be seized to prevent the disappearance of more files. The judge signed the order, and the state's Office of Insurance Fraud Prosecutor seized the records from a warehouse in Glen Rock.

Stallings said he stayed for years and remained loyal. "Looking back, I realize I was brainwashed."

Janna Holmgren-Richards testified that she made up stories while "relating" during group therapy because when she told the truth she was told to sit down, thus harming her chances of advancing. "Lulu admitted she ate sugar, but she didn't, and I said I pushed my poop out because I was there for anorexia, but I lied." Lulu, in fact, made up stories of having sex with a dog and being molested by her uncle so she could move up, she testified.

Stallings testified that many patients had only three options: sit tight and try to go along; rebel; or lie to move through the phases.

As to why so many patients went along with such abuse, many have said that if they told their parents, their parents would go to Newton and he would convince them that their child was lying.

"I never told my dad," testified Jessica Calderone, a former patient. "He would question it, and call up the Newtons, and I'd be accused of manipulating and would be put back to phase one."

As for why so many patients would stay on as trainee staffers and later as paid peer counselors, many say Newton coerced them by telling them they had to "give back [and] carry the message" as is done in Alcoholics Anonymous.

"He guilted you," Erica Goodman, a former patient, staffer and program nurse, said in an interview at the courthouse. Just out of nursing school and lacking experience, Goodman ran the laboratory and developed the eating disorder protocol after speaking with seven patients who allegedly had eating disorders, she says.

Newton and his operation have been sued many times, and his carriers have paid out more than $5.8 million. He's been investigated criminally in Florida and New Jersey, but never prosecuted. But one by one, agencies have cut off the payment of claims, sometimes after exposes by the television shows "60 Minutes," "20/20" and "West 57th Street."

As for Lulu, the real tragedy is that she was the victim of sexual abuse by her older brother before she entered the program, and the program knew that, according to documents and testimony. Yet, she was not diagnosed as an incest victim until 1990, six years after being at Kids of North Jersey.

Newton testified it is often difficult to determine whether a young girl is just experimenting or participating in sexual play.

Throughout Kids of North Jersey's stint in New Jersey, the staff psychiatrists, according to their own depositions, rarely saw patients, let alone treated them. In his complaint, Elberg accuses Newton of "renting licenses," with the peer counselors using rubber-stamps to sign the psychiatrists' names to reports to collect private and Medicaid insurance.

"I never saw a psychiatrist once," says Christine Johnston, a former patient and staffer who traveled from San Diego to watch the trial.

Newton admitted on the stand that his program routinely does not talk to a potential patient's teachers or doctors before making a diagnosis, saying it is not that important and takes too much time.

The jury in the case has been active, taking notes and asking hundreds of questions through the judge -- dozens of Newton alone. Based on those questions, they appear skeptical.

Elberg did call Newton a cult-like leader in court papers in the case that led to the $4.5 million settlement in 1999, Ehrlich v. Kids of North Jersey, HUD-L-4592-95. And he had a cult expert ready for both cases.

"But I decided not to call him or use the term 'cult' because that could have turned the trial into one about the meaning of a cult, rather than about this girl who was yanked out of school and forced to go through what she went through."

[Anonymous]

Ex-patient: I was prisoner at treatment center
The Jersey Journal/January 23, 2007
By Ali Winston
A former patient is suing the former directors of KIDS of North Jersey, a now-defunct drug treatment center in Secaucus, claiming that he was held there against his will for five years.

It's the latest in a long history of complaints filed against Dr. Virgil Miller Newton III, the former director of KIDS of North Jersey as well as a number of other centers across the country. He and his wife, Ruth Ann Newton - who was the center's assistant director - are being sued by ex-patient Antonio Carrera, 26, of Clifton.

The trial began Thursday in front of Superior Court Judge Maurice Gallipoli in Jersey City.

Carrera, whose family immigrated to New York City in 1993, was admitted to KIDS of North Jersey in July 1994 at the age of 14. He said he was brought to the center by his parents after he was arrested in connection with a groping incident at his high school in Queens.

Although his parents said they saw no signs of drug use in a preliminary interview with Ruth Ann Newton - and even though Carrera twice tested negative for drugs - he was diagnosed with marijuana and alcohol addictions and was admitted to the program with the consent of his parents, said his attorney, Phil Elberg.

In his opening statement, Elberg accused the Newtons of fabricating Carrera's "addictions" to marijuana and alcohol as cause for admitting him to the program, where he remained until 1998, when he turned 18 and became a legal adult. For all four years, Elberg said, Carrera stayed with a foster family in New Jersey and did not attend school.

"More than 41/2 years of his life were stolen because he was in treatment for problems he did not have," Elberg said.

But defense attorney Stephen Ryan described Carrera as a "failing student" with truancy issues and an arrest record who was admitted to the center by an accredited doctor.

He warned jurors that "this will be a tough case to sort out where truth ends and fantasy begins."

According to Ruth Ann Newton, Carrera would alternate between denying and admitting to a drug and alcohol addiction, and that he never advanced beyond the "second phase" of treatment. There are five phases in the Newtons' drug treatment plan.

Carrera also claimed he was frequently restrained by other patients, often being pinned to the floor by as many as four other teens, until he agreed to participate in drug treatment sessions.

Allegations of false imprisonment, physical abuse, and insurance fraud have dogged Virgil Miller Newton III.

He holds a doctorate in public administration from Union Institute & University in Cincinnati, calls himself "Father Cassian" after being ordained as a priest by the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America and has made unsuccessful bids for political office in Florida.

In 2003, Gallipoli presided over a 2003 suit by Lulu Corter, a former KIDS patient who also claimed she did not have alcohol or drug problems and was falsely held. Corter, who was also represented by Elberg, settled for $6.5 million.

[Anonymous]

Rehab Program A Family Affair
Volunteer Drug Counsel Group Puts Kinfolk At Center Stage

Note: Growing Together was founded by former Straight training director, Dr. George Ross
Sun-Sentinel, December 28, 1995
By Dorey Scott
During a recent Crime Watch Community Night at Lake Worth High School, a middle-aged man from Delray Beach boldly told strangers about his family's darkest days.

His daughter tried to commit suicide even before he knew she had a drug problem, he said.

"We knew there was a problem," said the father, whose name is being withheld to protect his daughter's identity. "But we didn't know it was drugs until there was a crisis."

A nonprofit, therapeutic drug rehabilitation program that runs a counseling center in Lake Worth helped his family get through that crisis.

Today, his daughter is off drugs, he said, and his family is "growing together" - the name of the program.

To help the program that helped them, the man, his wife and daughter recently agreed to become a host family.

His family will get a stipend from Growing Together to pay for food and other expenses it incurs while helping care for a child in crisis. But since the stipend is only $5 a day, his family essentially will be volunteering their efforts.

Growing Together runs mostly on volunteerism - people offering time, money, or both.

A group of local parents and professionals founded Growing Together in 1987. Today, the program runs a counseling center in Lake Worth, where children spend their days; and a network of host families, who take the children in at night.

During the Crime Watch Community Night, the middle-aged man sat at a table and answered questions about the program. He knew what most parents were thinking: "There's nothing wrong with our kids."

But there's a word for that kind of reaction. It's called "denial," he said - the refusal to admit there's a problem.

The first thing that Growing Together does is help a family in crisis recognize and deal with the specific problem it's facing, said Mickey Blanchard, program director.

During a crisis, children spend their days at the center, their nights with a host family. Their parents pay for the care.

"This is not a place where parents can leave their children to be fixed. We have to have 100 percent commitment from the parents [because) the whole family is involved on a daily basis," Blanchard said. "That's the critical difference" between Growing Together and other local therapeutic programs, she said. Another difference is the use of host families, Blanchard said. That keeps the cost of care down.

During the daytime, children talk regularly to peer-group counselors at rap sessions. They also meet and talk with their parents at least twice a week.

The meetings are always confidential and often emotional, Blanchard said.

"The anger comes out," she said. "That's part of recovery."

And that's why the center's rap room is equipped with heavy, wooden benches fashioned from church pews, Blanchard said. So a child who "acts out" can't lift and throw them.

Other rooms are similarly furnished and equipped with makeshift materials. But that soon may change.

Growing Together just received a $10,000 grant from the Barker Welfare Foundation, administrators said.

The center will use the money to buy medical equipment and create an in-house infirmary.

Meanwhile, the center still needs money to build an outdoor recreation and activity area.

"It'd be great to fence in the lot and have a basketball court," Blanchard said.

[Anonymous]

Lingering Torment From Rough Therapy
Note: Growing Together was founded by former Straight training director, Dr. George Ross
The Bergen Record, April 9, 2000
By Leslie Brody
It has been almost seven years since Rebecca Ehrlich walked out of KIDS of North Jersey, a drug treatment center no longer operating. On her bad days, though, it feels as if she was there just yesterday.

Ehrlich says she still has nightmares about being trapped in a virtual prison, first in Hackensack, then Secaucus, that barred her from going to school, reading books, getting mail, or making phone calls for most of her six years there. She was allowed to see her parents only twice a week across a crowded room.

When Ehrlich finally got out of KIDS at age 21, she sued for medical malpractice, charging that the unqualified staff never recognized her mental illness and that the program actually made her worse. In December, she won a settlement of $4.5 million.

"I'm happy about the money, but if I could give it all away not to be sick I would," said Ehrlich, a 27-year-old from Wayne who has been hospitalized for bipolar disorder 17 times since leaving KIDS. "I was tortured emotionally and mentally there."

Ehrlich is one of the many KIDS survivors who say they still have deep scars from a round-the-clock behavior modification program that instilled fear and self-loathing in its troubled clients. Hundreds of North Jersey teenagers spent months or years there until it closed under fire from state regulators in late 1998.

Critics today and throughout KIDS' existence condemned it as a cult-like boot camp headed by a charismatic leader named Miller Newton. Now 62 and living in Florida, he has worked as a psychologist and is easing into retirement. Newton, who declined to talk for this article, still has ardent supporters who credit him with rescuing out-of-control delinquents from the streets.

In a 1987 letter to The Record, Newton explained that his program took "walking disaster area kids . . . and turns them into winners." His boosters contended that bogus allegations of abuse came from "druggies" who couldn't handle the discipline necessary for sobriety.

Despite the official demise of KIDS, the program remains a powerful force in the lives of its former clients. It left broken spirits and broken families in its wake. To this day, some families remain divided into two camps, a side that has faith in Newton and a side that is horrified by him.

Bob Moss of Ridgewood knows how deeply some families have been split. His grown son won't talk to him.

Moss was an administrator at KIDS but quit in 1993 when he became skeptical of Newton's tough-love approach. After that, Moss says his son, a former KIDS client who is believed to be loyal to Newton, rejected his pleas for contact for seven years. (Moss' son could not be reached for comment.)

"Miller and his people told my son I was a bad person, and that his involvement with me would lead to his returning to drug use," Moss said with evident pain. "I understand I have two grandchildren I've never seen."

7 Other parents face similar estrangement. One Bergen couple, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says their daughter hasn't talked to them in three years.

Like many KIDS parents, the couple believed in the program at first but were dismayed to find that it grew more coercive. They enrolled their daughter in 1984 and, like many patients, she eventually joined the staff. She is still devoted to Newton, her father and others who know her say, and she runs a "graduate society" from her Bergen County apartment, where Newton followers meet daily and practice the techniques they learned.

She turned against her parents when they asked for an independent psychiatric evaluation of her condition, the couple said. "She does not want us to talk to her because we are the enemy," said her father, a former school psychologist. "I am absolutely desperate to see her."

His daughter did not return calls for comment.

Newton's supporters call KIDS a treatment of last resort that used peer pressure to straighten out teenagers who didn't respond to traditional therapies. At times more than 100 teenagers were enrolled, sent by parents desperate for help.

"The program was good for many kids," said Zisalo Wancier, who worked with the program four hours a week and was one of four Bergen County psychiatrists named as co-defendants in Ehrlich's lawsuit. "Many of these kids were doing better. They were all sober. . . . So the public was being protected."

Newton "saved my daughter's life," said a Bergen County man who asked not to be named. Like six other people said to be Newton admirers who were contacted for this story, he would not discuss KIDS in detail, and he said the biased media always criticized it unfairly.

Some graduates say KIDS began with good intentions but that Newton became far too controlling. "I'm sober and I give KIDS credit," said 31-year-old Scott Harding, who lived in Montclair and now lives in Bethlehem, Pa. He enrolled in 1984, joined the staff, and quit volunteering for it two years ago. "It took me off the streets so I wouldn't get high," he said, "but I wasn't allowed to move on."

Meanwhile, state regulators still want money back from Newton. The New Jersey Department of Human Services is suing him to recoup more than $1 million in Medicaid payments he collected.

According to a stinging report last September by Administrative Law Judge Daniel McKeown, who denied Newton's appeal to be eligible for Medicaid funds, KIDS was never approved to provide the full-time care it dispensed. The report said it lacked qualified staff. It violated clients' rights by using them to restrain each other physically. And it blocked them from communicating with their parents.

Court papers and people who attended KIDS described it as a warehouse where "newcomers" would sit on blue chairs in a large group for 12 hours a day, confessing their mistakes and chanting about honesty, sexual abstinence, and kicking drugs. Newcomers were not trusted to be alone or talk to their parents privately. More experienced "oldcomers" followed them everywhere, holding on to their belt loops. They were even watched in the bathroom and the shower.

Former KIDS clients say one of the techniques used on teens who acted up was the "five-point restraint" -- five peers would sit on a client's arms and legs and hold his head still. Sometimes that punishment lasted for hours.

Although teenagers spent the nights in "host homes" run by other clients' parents, they were also watched constantly there and many said they felt they had no escape. They said staff members convinced them that if they left they would overdose or their parents would send them back.

Moreover, clients talked of psychological manipulation. They said Newton convinced their parents that teenagers who quit would be lost to the gutters.

"A lot of parents just didn't know what to do, and they wound up in effect civilly committing these children without the due process of law," said Barbara Waugh, a deputy attorney general who is arguing the state's Medicaid suit against Newton. "Once you got in there, you couldn't get out."

Newton, a former Methodist minister, has long faced media scrutiny and opposition from state regulators. In 1984, for example, "60 Minutes" aired an expose on a similar drug program he ran in St. Petersburg, Fla.

In 1987, Larry McClure, the Bergen County prosecutor at the time, led a nine-month investigation of KIDS. He found no evidence of criminal activity, but he urged state authorities to monitor it. In a raid in 1990, McClure marched into the Hackensack center and announced that he would escort out anyone who wanted to go. Twelve teenagers left on the spot.

One was named Jeff. Riddled by self-doubt, he returned to KIDS the next day because he was terrified that the staff's prediction would come true: that without their guidance, he would commit suicide. "I went back because I was in complete fear," he said. Eventually Jeff left for good. Now he's a mortgage broker.

Jeff and some other former KIDS clients who are cobbling their lives back together have become an informal support group.

Six of them met for a hamburger dinner one night at a Hackensack diner. All are in therapy for post-traumatic stress or other problems. All are drug-free, too. They thank Alcoholics Anonymous and other rehabilitation programs, not Newton. Since KIDS' 24-hour supervision kept teenagers out of high school, they had to get general equivalency diplomas. Some went to college.

One 31-year-old, now a health professional in Bergen County, said that when she finally left KIDS she was furious with her parents for sending her there and had to work hard to reconcile with them. "We fought and cried," she said. "My parents felt very guilty. They said they didn't know what was going on there.

"I feel very angry that nobody saved us," she said. "I have dreams that I'm going to work or school and I'm looking over my shoulder, and the program is coming to kidnap me."

"I have to take medication because I think I'm always lying," added a 32-year-old social worker from Teaneck. "At KIDS, if you said, 'I feel hurt,' they said, 'Are you really hurt?' I'm still asking myself these questions, and not believing myself."

While they are heartened by Rebecca Ehrlich's legal victory against KIDS, some of the revelations that came out because of the litigation reopened old wounds for survivors.

Tammy Auerbach, a blond and gregarious 31-year-old office manager from Clifton, said she "freaked out" when she learned later that Newton was not a licensed psychologist when he began to treat her.

He always went by the name "Dr. Newton," but his first Ph.D. was in anthropology from the Union Institute in Cincinnati, an alternative distance-learning program. He got a doctorate in neuropsychology from that school in 1993. According to the state Division of Consumer Affairs, he got a New Jersey psychologist's license in 1995, 11 years after he opened KIDS of North Jersey (originally called KIDS of Bergen County).

"After reading Rebecca's court papers, I learned somebody without a license diagnosed me," Auerbach said. "So was I really an alcoholic and drug addict, or was that just put in my head? . . . I have 15 years of sobriety. I function in the world. I have a good boyfriend and drive a fancy car. But inside I'm empty and falling apart, and nobody knows it."


Why did families keep their children in such an environment?
"Kids never had the opportunity to tell their parents what was really going on there," said Harryet Ehrlich, Rebecca's mother. "We were all brainwashed. We believed in Miller Newton, and we were so desperate for help we thought this was the solution."

Ehrlich's lawyer, Philip Elberg, said news of her success has spurred at least a dozen other former clients to call him to see if they can sue, too. For most, it's too late. He is still considering cases, however, if they fall within the statute of limitations. A plaintiff must file suit within two years of the offense or, in the case of an underage victim, by age 20.

The future may hold some bright spots for Rebecca Ehrlich. She hopes improved medications and good doctors will help stabilize her mental illness. The settlement will pay for an apartment where she can live on her own when she's doing well, and provide an annuity to support her.

These days she is taking one course at a time to get an associate's degree at Bergen Community College, but she has no idea what kind of job she wants.

"I have my good days and my bad days," she said as she leaned back on a couch in her parents' house, with her Shih Tzu, Mazel, at her feet. "I'm doing better than when I first got out of KIDS. . . . It makes me angry that I went through all that. I feel sad it took that many years of my life away."

[Anonymous]

Clients Offer Mixed Views On Programs
The Tampa Tribune, July 7, 1993
By Annmarie Sarsfield
ST. PETERSBURG - Barbara Segraves had a demanding job, a father on his death bed, and a 38-year-old brother whose drug and alcohol abuse led him to an early grave.

She was a single mom who worried when she caught her 15-year-old son, Jay, sneaking out of the house at night. Jay hung out with a rough crowd, and she suspected he might be involved with drugs.

Segraves, like hundreds of other parents over the past 17 years, turned to Straight Inc., an adolescent drug treatment program.

Following a brief evaluation at the St. Petersburg treatment center, Straight employees convinced Segraves her son was a drug abuser. She placed him in treatment in November 1989.

Today, Segraves, 39, believes she was duped and that all Straight wanted was her money. What she and Jay really needed was some family counseling, she said.

"I'm totally amazed I fell for this," Segraves said. "It's a ploy on single parents."

Straight played on her vulnerabilities, she said. When she wanted to take her son out of the program, Segraves said she was told, "You don't want him to die like your brother, do you?"

For a time, she said, she wasn't allowed to see her son.

"They were abusing him so badly they were afraid that he'd tell me," she said, recounting how he was poked and prodded until he was bruised, spit at and physically restrained. "There is no way on God's earth this is treatment."

Segraves took him out of the program in May 1990.

"It took us two years to get to a normal relationship," she said. "He had always trusted me. For a while he was violent, uncontrollable."

After spending nine months in a Sarasota program, today, Jay is fine, she said.

But the bitterness remains for her and her son.

"I feel so stupid for being fooled by these people," she said.

Stories similar to the Segraveses abound. But there also are many like Mike Mahoney's.

"I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for Straight," said Mahoney, 26, of Largo.

When he was 16 he smoked pot, drank and was in trouble with the law. In 1983, his father put him into the program, where he spent two years. He was about three-fourths of the way through it when he turned 18 and took off.

"They couldn't keep me there," he said.

Mahoney chose to return to the program a year later after committing a dozen felonies and becoming a cocaine addict.

Straight "probably did some things that maybe they shouldn't have," Mahoney said, referring to allegations of abuse. But he said the program needed to be tough on drug abusers who didn't want to cooperate.

"Back in '83 it was real rough - but the people [clients] were real rough," he said.

Looking back, Mahoney said it was just the program he needed.

"That by far is the best treatment center I've ever seen or heard about," he said. "It's kids helping kids."

Roberta Yancey was involved with Straight off and on from 1982 to 1991.

She started as a host parent when her 15-year-old son, Scott, was in the program. Scott never graduated from the program and left after spending 15 months at the St. Petersburg center and nine months at the Marietta, Ga., facility.

But Yancey credits Straight with introducing him to a course of recovery.

"They started it," she said. "It was like a springboard."

As a host parent, Yancey, 53, housed 27 different teen-agers in her St. Petersburg home. Today, 24 of them are still drug free, she said.

She went to work at Straight, first as a receptionist, and later helped the center come into compliance with state regulations.

Helping her son and other teens through recovery "has completely changed my life," she said. "It's been a joy."

Yancey went back to school and got a master's degree in counseling. Today, she works with adolescents who are substance abusers.

Scott, now 26, has been clean for four years.

"It's incredible. It's unbelievable ... I believed it."

Richard Bradbury, 27, of Tampa, speaks in disbelief as he recounted his years with Straight.

Bradbury took nine months to "admit" he was a drug abuser - even though he says he'd only tried drugs experimentally before his parents put him in the program. His sister preceded him at Straight and Bradbury believes employees convinced his parents that he was at risk, too.

Physically mistreated by peers and counselors for denying his dependence on drugs, Bradbury finally "admitted" to using narcotics.

After graduating from the program in 1984, Bradbury worked at Straight, conducting aftercare rap sessions and group therapy sessions.

Bradbury said in talking to an old friend about the program, the questions he was asked opened his eyes.

The program is too much like a cult, he said.

"The treatment model is sick."

[Anonymous]

Drug War Casualties
Fox News Channel/May 23, 2002
By Radley Balko
Samantha Monroe was 12 years old in 1981 when her parents enrolled her in the Sarasota, Fla., branch of Straight Inc., an aggressive drub rehab center for teens.

Barely a teen, Samantha also had no history of drug abuse. But she spent the next three years of her life surviving Straight.

She was beaten, starved and denied toilet privileges for days on end. She describes her "humble pants," a punishment that forced her to wear the same pants for six weeks at a time. Because she was allowed just one shower a week, the pants often filled with feces, urine and menstrual blood. Often she was confined to her closet for days. She gnawed through her jaw during those "timeout" sessions, hoping she'd bleed to death.

She says that after she was raped by a male counselor, "the wonderful state of Florida paid for and forced me to have an abortion."

There are hundreds of Straight stories like Samantha's. Wes Fager enrolled his son in a Springfield, Va., chapter of Straight on the advice of a high school guidance counselor. Fager didn't see his son again until three months later - after he'd escaped and developed severe mental illness.

Since then, Fager's set out to clear the air on Straight. He has accumulated stories like Samantha's and his son's on a clearinghouse Web site. They are stories of suicides and attempted suicides, rapes, forced abortions, molestations, physical abuse, lawsuits, court testimonies, and extensive documentation of profound psychological abuse at Straight chapters all over the country.

Yet, the Straight model of drug treatment is thriving, with the trend toward "boot camp" style rehab centers growing more and more en vogue and Straight's founders, high-powered Republican boosters Mel and Betty Sembler, wielding enormous influence over U.S. drug policy.

Mel Sembler is currently serving as President Bush's ambassador to Italy, and the Semblers serve on the boards of almost every major domestic anti-drug program. They are longtime close associates of the Bush family, and are behind efforts to defeat medicinal marijuana initiatives all over the country. Despite the horrors that have surfaced about Straight's history, they are proud and unrepentant about the program.

With more and more U.S. states turning to mandatory treatment instead of incarceration for minor drug offenses - with Mel and Betty Sembler continuing to flex political muscle in the power corridors of the drug war - the story of Straight is one worth hearing.

Straight was spun off of a Synanon, Fla., based rehab program called The Seed. Established in 1972, the program lost its funding after a congressional investigation turned up evidence of brainwashing and cult-like mind control tactics. But a Florida congressman named Bill Young persisted. He found advocates in the Semblers and persuaded them to start a similar rehab center in St. Petersburg, which they called "Straight Incorporated."

Despite allegations of abuse from escaped members and pending lawsuits, over the next 15 years Straight won laudatory praise in Republican circles. Luminaries from Nancy Reagan to Princess Diana visited Straight branches and touted their successes (though by most estimates only about 25 percent of Straight "clients" ever completed the program).

But Straight's tactics soon caught up to it in the courts. A college student won a false imprisonment claim of $220,000 in 1983, and another claim cost Straight $721,000 in 1990. A Straight spin-off called Kids of North Jersey lost a $4.5 million claim in 2000. Straight chapters across the country began to shut down, culminating with the last branch in Atlanta closing in 1993.

But the Straight philosophy was far from finished. Many chapters and directors reopened new clinics that employed the same tactics under different names - such as KIDS, Growing Together and SAFE. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush visited and praised SAFE, despite the fact that an Orlando television station reported widespread Straight-like abuse at the facility in a 2000 expose.

Amidst mounting lawsuit losses and bad publicity throughout the 1990's, the umbrella organization Straight Inc. changed its name in 1996 to the Drug Free America Foundation. DFAF thrives today with $400,000 in annual federal subsidies.

"It amazes me that despite the pattern of complaints and abuse allegations, Straight chapters can simply change their names and continue to operate," says Rick Ross, a cult expert and intervention specialist. Ross says there's an unfortunate market for "rehab" centers that take burdensome children off the hands of troubled parents.

Most troubling, however, is the considerable and continuing political clout of Straight Inc.'s founders. Former President Bush once shot a television commercial for DFAF, and designated the Semblers' program as one of his "thousand points of light."

Long a presence in Florida Republican circles, Mel Sembler was tapped as ambassador to Australia in 1989. Today he serves the younger Bush as ambassador to Italy, and he served on the board of the 2000 Republican National Convention.

Betty Sembler co-chaired Jeb Bush's campaign committee. In return, the governor declared Aug. 8, 2000, "Betty Sembler Day" in Florida - due, he said, to her work "protecting children from the dangers of drugs."

She also serves on the board of DARE, the largely failed anti-drug program for elementary school students.

DFAF also worked with then-governor Bush on anti-drug programs in Texas, and today claims to have his ear on national drug policy as well. Indeed, Arizona prosecutor and Sembler favorite Rick Romley was on Bush's short list for drug czar. Though Romley wasn't nominated, Bush did tap staunch drug warrior John Walters. The nomination caused Betty Sembler to remark, ".... we have lacked the leadership and support of the White House ... until now."

"It's really shocking that the Semblers are still lauded and honored after all that's come out about their organization," says cult expert Ross, a self-described Republican.

Last year, a reporter from the Canadian e-zine Cannabis News asked Betty Sembler in person about the horror stories he'd read from Straight survivors. "They should get a life," Sembler replied. "I am proud of everything we have done. There's nothing to apologize for. The legalizers are the ones who should be apologizing."

That's the attitude of the drug war's power duo, who can be unrepentant about the lives their program destroyed because they believe a win-at-all-costs approach is the only way to remove the scourge of drugs from society. Shattered lives, suicides, forced abortions, fractured psyches - all necessary casualties of the drug war, and nothing to apologize for.

[Rachael]

Thank You!!!!

Currently doing research.

[Anonymous]

Getting Tough on Private Prisons for Teens
 
Residential programs for troubled teenagers tell parents they'll cure kids' behavior problems. But Congress may be cracking down after allegations of abuse and a GAO report that at least 10 teens have died in these facilities.  
 
Maia Szalavitz | October 16, 2007 | web only  
 
 
 
Members of Congress heard jarring testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last week about people who were denied medical care, starved, beaten, and "forced to eat vomit, lie in urine and feces, forced to use toothbrushes to clean toilets and then on their teeth."
A latecomer to the proceedings might "think we were talking about human-rights abuses in Third World countries," said Rep. George Miller of California, who convened the hearing. In fact, Congress was for the first time discussing abuses in "tough love" residential programs for teenagers.

These programs -- variously known as "boot camps," "emotional growth schools," "wilderness programs," and "therapeutic boarding schools" -- sell themselves to parents as a way of fighting teen drug use, behavioral problems, and various mental illnesses like depression, attention deficit disorder (ADD), even bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depression). Some programs are public and are part of the juvenile justice system, others are run by private, for-profit organizations. Some are part of large networks of affiliates; others are independent. All lock up teens without contact from the outside world.

At Miller's request, the GAO recently investigated 10 deaths in such facilities, and found thousands of other allegations of abuse. Miller had called for the investigation after reading media accounts of abuses and discovering that not only are the private prisons for teenagers unregulated, but no one even knows how many there are or how many teenagers are held incommunicado in them without any civil-rights protections. It is time, Miller says, for federal regulation of these programs.

The ranking Republican on the committee, Howard P. McKeon of California, said the testimony of three parents whose children had been killed "boggled the mind." He noted that while he usually doesn't support broadening federal oversight, "there are some times when it has to happen."

But successfully regulating this billion-dollar industry will be an enormous challenge. The GAO investigation showed that when many abusive programs are exposed, they simply change names and/or move to different states, with staff avoiding accountability. And the programs often have powerful political allies, allowing them to skillfully dodge regulatory frameworks such as those that cover psychiatric hospitals or prisons.

To understand just how daunting it will be to implement federal oversight, one need only to hear the story of Straight Inc. and its offspring. The Florida-based anti-drug program is the granddaddy of the teen "tough love" industry. It was shuttered in 1993 following reports of serious abuses, but several programs derived from it remain open, state-licensed in addiction treatment, and, in many cases, accredited by respected organizations like the Council on Accreditation.

Straight was founded in 1976 by Republican heavyweight Mel Sembler-- who chaired the finance committee for the party during the 2000 elections and heads the Scooter Libby defense fund. Straight was based on a federally funded experiment in the 1970s called The Seed that had been denounced by a congressional investigation as "similar to the highly refined brainwashing techniques employed by the North Koreans."

Nonetheless, Straight spent the 1980s as Nancy Reagan's favorite drug treatment program and won wide praise from Democrats as well. By the early 1990s, it had nine facilities in seven states, and it claims to have "treated" 50,000 teens. It only went from media darling to media devil when reports of its regime of psychological and physical abuse became too ubiquitous (and civil lawsuits too expensive) to ignore. Terminal attrition followed the bad press, lawsuits, and state investigations, ultimately causing Straight to shut itself down.

After Straight finally closed its doors in 1993, The St. Petersburg Times wrote an editorial headlined, "A Persistent, Foul Odor." It covered a state investigation that suggested influence from Sembler and other politicians had contributed to Straight's ability to stay open despite documented abuse.

However, just as The Seed produced Straight, Straight spawned as well. At least six programs using identical "therapeutic" language and the same model still operate today in the U.S. and Canada. They are all run by former Straight participants or former employees of programs copied directly from Straight.

The largest remaining Straight-descendant program, the Pathway Family Center, has sites in three states and support from major companies like Emmis Communications and the professional basketball team, the Indiana Pacers.

Founded by Terri Nissley, whose expertise lies in the fact that she had an addicted daughter and her family participated in Straight, Pathway opened in Detroit in 1993. In fact, according to The Tampa Tribune, the facility was simply Straight's Detroit affiliate, reincorporated under a new name.

Pathway has continued to expand, swallowing up another former Straight facility and opening several new ones. In 2006, Pathway took over Kids Helping Kids, an Ohio program which evolved out of Straight-Cincinnati. The program also has centers in Southfield, Michigan, and in Indianapolis and Chesterton, Indiana. The Chesterton location opened just this year, despite efforts from survivors of the Straight model to warn the community that the program was outdated and harmful.

What makes these "tough love" programs uniquely dangerous is that they are led by amateurs who believe they are experts. No qualifications are needed to own, operate, or work with kids at such programs -- although they often employ some professionals, their influence is subsumed by the organizations' strict rules and regimes. And while they claim to treat serious mental illnesses and addictions, many of their tactics conflict with proven therapies for these conditions and they often don't even have the expertise to diagnose them properly.

The programs also tend to endorse an outdated view of teen problems in which confronting, humiliating, and degrading adolescents is seen as beneficial -- while kindness is stigmatized as "codependence" or "enabling." As leading addictions-outcomes researcher William Miller, Ph.D. put it in a recent paper, "Four decades of research have failed to yield a single clinical trial showing efficacy of confrontational counseling, whereas a number have documented harmful effects, particularly for more vulnerable populations."

The programs descended from Straight are especially problematic because they house kids from one often-dysfunctional family in the home of another. To regulators, this appears to be "outpatient" treatment, but kids are not free to leave. In these programs, new teens are held in the houses of families of teens who have been at the program longer ("oldcomers"). Newcomers spend their first nights in bedrooms with specially set alarms and where, teens say, the "oldcomers" frequently keep their beds against the door -- a fire hazard that's meant to prevent escape attempts.

At night, these "oldcomer" teens -- many of whom were admitted to the program due to anti-social behavior -- have absolute power over "newcomers." According to former program participants I interviewed, they can restrain them if they try to run, deny them the right to go to the bathroom, and impose other punishments. Every program that has used this Lord of the Flies system has, not surprisingly, run into serious problems.

Some of the more egregious physical practices at Pathway centers and other Straight descendants appear to have been dropped. They no longer make kids flap their arms wildly instead of raising their hands to get attention, or deny newcomers freedom of movement by having oldcomers push them around by their belt loops, whenever they aren't seated.

But according to teens, parents, and a former employee, the amateurish and confrontational core of the program remains.

Holly Guernsey's 15-year-old daughter -- I'll call her "Blair" -- had been caught stealing a pint of Schnapps from a store. She had previously been diagnosed with depression and ADD and had also been cutting herself. After the shoplifting incident, Blair's grandmother found Pathway in a Michigan phone book, and in January 2007, Blair was brought in for an evaluation. "We were concerned, but we didn't think she was an alcoholic," says Guernsey. "We thought the pot and alcohol were just symptoms. We were told [Pathway] would deal with the underlying problems," Guernsey told me.

But Blair soon found herself in a program where drugs were the focus. She says she was repeatedly told that she was lying about the amount of drugs she'd taken, and she quickly became severely depressed.

She spent her nights in a host home, with an alarm on the locked bedroom windows and a doorbell and alarm on the door. To go to the bathroom, she'd have to wake her "oldcomer" to ring the bell, wake the parents to silence the alarm, and then be escorted to the bathroom. At this "phase" of the program, kids are not allowed to read, watch TV, hear music, go to school, or even talk without permission. For most of the 10 to 12 hour days they spent at the center, teens say they have to sit still and straight with their feet flat on the ground.

One night, Blair broke a glass candleholder and slit her wrists. "There was blood everywhere," she says, explaining that she was made to stay up all night in the bathroom, apparently so that she could be monitored and so that she would not leave bloodstains where they couldn't easily be rinsed away. She says she was not seen by an internist or psychiatrist -- nor did Pathway inform her mother of the suicide attempt, which left scars.

Months later, Blair "earned" the right to go home. "As soon as we got alone with her, she would just sob," Guernsey says. But Blair didn't tell her mother what had happened.

Parents and teens who have been through Pathway told me that if an adolescent says anything at all negative about the program to her parents or anyone else, Pathway considers it "manipulation," and if it's reported, the teen will become a "newcomer" again, forced to return to a host home. Other teens get in similar trouble if they overhear such "manipulation" but do not inform program staff.

Guernsey only learned of her daughter's suicide attempt because two girls who were living with Blair decided to break this rule. One had been living with her in the host home where she'd slit her wrists. The girls told Guernsey that Blair needed professional help and begged her not to report them.

Soon, Guernsey discovered that another family had had a similar experience. I spoke to them as well. A woman -- I'll call her "Ada" here because she wishes to remain anonymous -- told me that her daughter had been admitted to Pathway for being suicidal. Yet Ada says she wasn't told when, while at a Pathway host home, the girl swallowed dish detergent and jumped off a 7-foot-high balcony. Again, both mother and daughter say the teen wasn't seen by a doctor.

A woman who attended the now-Pathway-affiliated Kids Helping Kids in 2003 reported similar abuses, including teens being made to restrain and even beat other teens who did not comply with the program.

Pathway's Executive Director Terri Nissley says every one of these negative allegations is "not true." In an e-mail, she wrote, "Pathway Family Center provides a professional and effective therapeutic community evidenced by our quarterly Parent and Client Satisfaction surveys, Exit Interviews with all families upon discharge, and countless testimonials from parents and clients. Our accreditation with CARF [the Commission on the Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities] is a testament to our commitment to person-centered, quality services. The agency was given an exemplary rating for our host home component... The adolescents are always treated with respect and dignity."

She also wrote, "A recent allegation was investigated by Pathway, CARF and the State of Michigan and was determined to be unfounded."

However, a knowledgeable state official who did not want to be named said that recent complaints regarding the host homes have not been resolved.

For reasons unrelated to the allegations, Pathway says it recently switched accreditation agencies from the Council on Accreditation (COA) to CARF, but a COA staffer said that Pathway had been put on probation due to complaints and had not resolved the situation before it switched agencies.

The Florida Straight descendant, Growing Together, finally folded last year after a 2004 exposé detailed bizarre sexual molestation of teens in host homes going back to 1997. And the reports out of Canada's Alberta Adolescent Recovery Center, which also uses the Straight host-home model, are just as horrifying.

These problems are clearly not just the result of a few "bad apples" taking charge. Allegations of abuse have rapidly arisen against any program using this treatment model. Consequently, careful regulation is desperately needed to ensure that adolescents with mental illnesses and behavior disorders are not subjected to it or to similar forms of quackery and to see to it that they actually get appropriate treatment. Straight and its descendants prove conclusively that troubled teens are too vulnerable to be left under the care of amateurs -- especially amateurs who are under less oversight than mental health professionals.

Rep. Miller is writing legislation intended to remedy the situation, which he plans to introduce early next year. The support from his committee's ranking Republican is enormously promising. However, the details here are truly devilish: bad regulation might further legitimize the industry, rather than successfully rein it in.

For example, if lax regulation is imposed, parents might be led to believe that these programs are being closely overseen by authorities. Straight was state-regulated as an addiction treatment center, as is Pathway, despite official complaints from families. Federal regulation without strict enforcement could allow programs to claim that there is oversight, even if it is toothless.

Effective regulation would at minimum ban the use of "host homes," ban corporal punishment in residential facilities (including punitive use of isolation and restraint), and require that mental illnesses and addictions be evaluated and treated only by professionals. By requiring independent evaluation before placement and on an ongoing basis, such legislation could restrict lockdown institutional care for teens to short periods of professionalized, empathetic inpatient care necessary for safety. It should also outlaw coerced placement in "wilderness programs" and the marketing of any unlicensed, locked facility for teens as treatment for psychological disorders or drug problems. (In fact, just this week, Rep. Miller asked the FTC to look into the industry's deceptive marketing practices.)

To have the strongest impact, regulation should also ban employees found to have engaged in corroborated abuse from further work in the industry and should prevent organizations found to be abusive from simply renaming themselves or moving to another state. It would have to be funded to provide for strict enforcement and ideally, would also have to fund evidence-based, outpatient alternatives to help desperate families.

Tough love cannot be made safe when carried out by lock-down institutions; since it doesn't offer any therapeutic advantage and carries serious risks, there is no need for an "alternative" system of unregulated private jails to impose it on teenagers. Regulation should provide for care that actually works. Four decades of Straight and its offspring is more than enough

[Anonymous]

Pulling back from the abyss
A private program in Calgary specializes in drug-addicted teens who reject the idea of treatment

Gerry Bellett
Vancouver Sun

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Though a psychiatric nurse, Valerie Goodale could not find help in B.C. for her drug-addicted son.
CREDIT: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun
Though a psychiatric nurse, Valerie Goodale could not find help in B.C. for her drug-addicted son.

CALGARY - When he talks about it today, Lawren Hyde just calls it a knife even though it was really a sharpened machete carried up his sleeve, a symbol of where he was at 17-- drug dealer, addict, violent, dangerous and on the brink of permanent insanity.

The machete was an accessory that came with the paranoia.

And the paranoia arrived when he was 16 and binging on cocaine, ecstacy, crystal meth and PCP -- horse tranquilizers -- in Downtown Eastside after hours clubs often for four days at a time without sleep.

"Shadows frightened me. My friends frightened me. I was convinced people were trying to kill me," said Hyde, now 23.

His widowed mother Valerie was at her wits end. He'd been uncontrollable since the age of 13 and on drugs since nine when his father died.

He'd been kicked out of four schools for dealing drugs, arrested for robbery, and was now raving around their North Vancouver neighbourhood with his machete, slashing at phantoms he believed were gathering to kill him.

Of all the torment his mother felt, the one that burned deepest was her inability to find him help.

If anyone should have been able to do this for him it was her -- after all, she was a psychiatric nurse working for North Shore Addictions and Mental Health Services with all the resources of the province open to her.

But despite the $1 billion a year the B.C. government spends on mental health and substance abuse programs, and all the youth addiction treatment beds throughout the province, none was of any use to Lawren who was going insane from an insatiable appetite for drugs.

"I tried everything to get help. I mean this is my profession and I should know where to get it, but in B.C. there was nothing for him. He needed to be forced into treatment but we don't do that here," she said.

"Treatment in B.C. is voluntary. Kids have to be compliant. There's no recognition that children like Lawren who aren't compliant need a secure environment where they can be treated. We give all the rights to kids and none to parents. So under the guise of human rights, parents can't get their children the help they need.

"Lawren only went for outpatient treatment because he was court ordered. But it never did any good. He needed more than that," she said.

Some therapists were so frightened by him they refused treatment.

SON COULD DIE, DOCTOR SAID

The last time she tried getting help in B.C. was from a Lower Mainland physician specializing in addiction. She told him she was afraid her son would die before he became an adult.

"He said to me 'yes that's quite possible.' That's all the help I could get -- him telling me my son might die. I can't tell you how I felt. I'd already lost my husband, if I lost my son I know I would have died too," she said.

In May 2001 she discovered the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC), a private program in Calgary which treats adolescents in the final stages of addiction when they are facing death or permanent insanity. Unlike programs in B.C., AARC won't reject youths like Lawren who fight treatment.

Most of the kids treated in AARC have been court ordered or placed in treatment by the Alberta Child Welfare Services, and virtually none of them choose to be treated, says AARC executive director Dr. Dean Vause.

"This is not the case with adults who will voluntarily enter treatment. Adolescents won't. None of them want to be here," he said.

Other kids are brought in by parents -- a few kicking and screaming. The Alberta government has secure care legislation that allows minors to be held for five days if deemed to be a danger to themselves or in danger of being exploited for prostitution.

B.C. considered enacting similar legislation in 2000 but the government was frightened off by the anticipated expense and the lack of facilities for holding them.

AARC requires every youth to sign a consent to treatment before being admitted in addition to a consent being granted by the government department or parent responsible.

Valerie was told that if she could get her son to AARC they would do an assessment to see if he qualified for treatment. She knew she would have to trick him into going as he was too violent and unstable to voluntarily enter the centre.

By now his paranoia was so bad that he'd gone into an RCMP detachment believing it the only safe place to make a phone call. His behaviour was so bizarre the officers sent him to hospital where a psychiatrist diagnosed drug-induced psychosis and found he was close to permanent insanity. When he was released from the psychiatric ward his mother convinced him to fly to Winnipeg and stay with an uncle.

Then she lied and said his return ticket would only take him as far as Calgary and offered to meet him there so they could spend the week shopping before returning home.

In Calgary she fashioned a heavy parcel using phone books and told him she had to deliver it.

When she pulled up outside AARC, a nondescript low building in an industrial area on the outskirts of the city, Lawren -- blissfully unaware of what AARC was -- volunteered to carry it in.

"I was trying to be nice," he said.

Inside he was told to go downstairs and in the basement he was surrounded by "eight guys all bigger than me who said I was getting a drug assessment."

Stunned, he was taken into a room where two young, fit, and large males stayed with him. At the time he was over six feet tall and a martial arts devotee and weighed about 160 pounds.

CONSENT FORM SIGNED

Vause remembers the admission.

"Lawren was a really sick kid and he didn't want to be here but we talked to him and he did sign the consent for assessment and treatment," said Vause.

"Sometimes you have to step in front of a kid that sick, although the risks for us as an organization are great because we don't want to leave ourselves open to accusations of unlawful confinement. That's why we require them to sign a consent."

Lawren remembers that if he had had a weapon that afternoon he would likely have used it.

"I didn't have my knife and I was dealing with guys a lot bigger than me.

"They took away my money, my jewelry, told me to take a shower to get deloused, took away all my fancy clothes and gave me the plain clothes my mother had brought in," he said.

He was escorted upstairs and placed with a group of other youths undergoing treatment. He spent the night at an AARC host home operated by the parents of a client nearing the end of treatment.

For company he was assigned the same husky youths that he believed he'd have to fight if he attempted to escape.

"I thought about it but I was in a strange city, the house was locked and secure I had no money, would have to fight my way out and even if I did I'd have to rob someone and then try to get back home," he said.

He decided to sit tight and see what happened. It took two weeks before he realized he was being helped.

"I guess I began listening to Dr. Vause I liked the way he held himself."

Meanwhile, his mother had flown back to North Vancouver, arranged a leave of absence, closed up the family home and moved to Calgary with his sister as the program requires parents to live near the centre.

Ten months later Lawren emerged from treatment and has been clean and sober since.

"AARC saved him as it saved me and his sister," says his mother. "We'd lived our lives around his addiction. My love didn't stand a chance next to the hold drugs had on him. He loved me, I know that, but he loved his addiction more -- much, much more -- they all do."

DRUG BLITZ PLANNED

Last November Valerie was back in Calgary, part of a handpicked group contemplating an ambitious addiction intervention campaign for British Columbia. Addiction and medical experts -- with observers from the B.C. government and a number of aboriginal bands -- were gathered here to plan a community-wide blitz on drug abuse that will be directed at oil-and-gas-rich Fort St. John and the aboriginal communities surrounding it.

At first sight it appeared unusual that 75 people -- among them business and community leaders of this wealthy Alberta city -- would give up four days of their valuable time planning to save children in northeast B.C. from drug and alcohol addiction.

But the initiative is being driven by Allan Markin, the chairman of Canadian Natural Resources.

Markin -- one of the owners of the Calgary Flames and an unabashed philanthropist -- has offered to put $3 million into the project.

Markin's company is the second largest gas and oil producer in Canada. The Fort St. John area accounts for a large part of his company's holdings and hundreds of local people are directly employed by Canadian Natural Resources or work under contract. Therefore it's no surprise that when Markin looked at the map of British Columbia for an area to help he stuck a pin in the north east.

Markin wants to help communities deal with addiction "so that in 10 years from now they will be better places" and asked AARC to become involved because of the centre's effectiveness.

He has held talks with the B.C. government and believes he has a promise from Victoria that his money would be matched.

"They've promised that and I believe they'll do as they've said," Markin said.

That might be a bit hopeful as the B.C. government has yet to commit a penny. Whether the government's involved or not, the participants in the meeting set themselves the ambitious goal of blanketing the Fort St. John region -- schools, churches, industry, police, the courts, service clubs, aboriginal governments, municipal governments -- with the message that addiction is a disease of the brain and communities need to do more than just rely on the old 'just say no' campaign as this has never worked anywhere with adolescents.

"Addiction's a complex illness and there are no quick fixes. But we believe community intervention can be effective in keeping kids healthy," said Vause.

"Prevention is a million times better than treatment and we'll be glad to be involved in an intervention program in B.C. because no one wants to see kids come here for treatment," he said.

Vause said AARC would likely open an office in Fort St. John either with permanent staff or with personnel rotated in on two-week stints to organize the community prevention part of the campaign.

But there won't be any treatment in Fort St. John although some of the most severely addicted children could be offered treatment in Calgary.

This will cost about $100,000 per family, the money being split between treatment fees and living expenses as at least one parent will have to move to Calgary and set up home in order the meet the demands of the program.

Markin is prepared to finance five B.C. families a year for five years. If the B.C. government matches his contribution, 10 B.C. families a year could be helped.

In recent years the B.C. government has sent deputy ministers and politicians to this non-profit centre to gather intelligence. The government appears fascinated by the centre's results, which are impressive, but skittish of its methods which are abstinence based, hard-nosed and nothing like the voluntary programs available in B.C.

The interest in AARC began with the former B.C. New Democrat Party government which promised $1 million to start an AARC program in the Lower Mainland, but nothing came of it.

Now the B.C. Liberals are sizing up AARC to see if the program could be brought into the province as part of the Aboriginal Health Plan which calls for an increase in addiction treatment.

Treatment is based on the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. ARRC was founded by Vause in 1992.

A 2005 survey by U.S.-based evaluator Dr. Michael Quinn Patton tracked the condition of 100 consecutive AARC graduates who had been treated between January 1998 and January 2002 and found 85 per cent of them sober and drug-free at the time of interview.

Some reported a relapse after treatment but had regained sobriety after returning to the centre for further counselling. However, 48 per cent had never used alcohol or drugs after leaving AARC.

During this four-year period, 15 youths had quit the program or were terminated by AARC staff or referred to another institution, a drop-out rate of about four a year.

Since 1992 the centre has graduated 332 youths, a significant number from B.C.

GOVERNMENT INTERESTED

Health Minister George Abbott admitted the government was interested in the AARC program.

"We have not formed conclusions on that program yet. I think it has enough positive results that it's important we look at it and see whether on a pilot project basis we ought to look at something like it," Abbott said.

"We spend over a billion dollars now on mental health and addictions programs. We frequently hear we should be doing more, and different and better. But while everyone agrees there should be progress not everyone agrees there should be change," he said.

"We will look carefully at that program and look carefully at other programs out of Alberta as well. There are also programs in Quebec and Ontario," said the minister.

He admitted there was no treatment centre in B.C. that would admit adolescents [such as Lawren] who were violently opposed to being treated.

The issue of whether severely addicted youth in the final stages of illness should be forced into treatment was something that still needed to be confronted, he says.

"That's an important issue and that's something that as a society and government we will have to grapple with -- whether one can treat those who are resistant to treatment?"

Asked if the government was planning to bring in any type of secure care legislation that might allow it to happen, he says it might be something for the future.

"I recall the debate when the NDP was looking at it. The Secure Care Act was controversial at the time particularly among those in the human rights area. It remains an important issue but it's not one that's going to be a part of legislative agenda in an immediate sense," he said.

Demands for treatment at AARC from parents in other parts of Canada and Alberta has been so intense that a new $6-million addition to the facility, allowing it to treat up to 60 children.

[email protected]
? The Vancouver Sun 2007

[Anonymous]

Suffering Together
By Trevor Aaronson [email protected]
New Times Broward-Palm Beach, December 9, 2004


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Lake Worth's Growing Together, kids don't kick drugs. They're beaten and humiliated.

 
"If they had to go to the bathroom in the middle of night, it was trouble. It was like a prison."
 

He was 16 and scared. Jason was a newcomer at Growing Together, a boot camp-style drug treatment center for adolescents in downtown Lake Worth. During the day, he attended group therapy at the program's two-story, banana-yellow building, which is equipped with security gates and barred windows. At night, he'd sleep at a private home endorsed by the facility. In February 1997, during one of Jason's first days in the program, George Johnson (not his real name) arrived to pick up five boys who were to stay at his place in Palm Beach Gardens that night. Among them were his son, George Jr., and four others, including Jason.

On the ride home, the boys began to discuss what they would do to Jason that night. "The Naked Crusader was going to appear," Jason later remembered one of them saying. It frightened him; he pretended not to hear.

That night at 10 o'clock, after doing chores and eating dinner, all five boys went to the bedroom where they were to sleep. They wore only underwear. The rest of their clothing was kept in a different room. Three of them lay down on mattresses on the floor. Jason and another boy wriggled into sleeping bags.

Several hours later, Jason suddenly noticed some noise. The other four boys were masturbating. "The Naked Crusader is coming," one of them said.

Then George Jr., naked, suddenly jumped on Jason's back, according to a statement Jason gave to police. Another boy held down his legs. Two others slapped Jason in the face with their erect penises.

"Stop!" he pleaded.

They did. But the boys weren't finished. They returned to their beds and masturbated again. A few minutes later, they assaulted Jason once more. Again, two boys slapped Jason with their penises. One of them tried to put his penis in Jason's mouth. Jason clenched his jaw shut. Then he felt warm liquid on his back. One boy had climaxed. Another ejaculated in his hand and rubbed the semen in Jason's hair.

Finally, they were finished.

If he ever told anyone about the incident, the boys warned, they'd do it again. And worse. But three months later, Jason could no longer stay silent. He told his father what had happened. Together, they filed a report with the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department on June 18, 1997.

During the one-month investigation that followed, two of the boys told the detectives that they too had been victims of "The Naked Crusader" soon after entering the drug treatment facility. The Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office filed misdemeanor battery and indecent exposure charges against the four boys but later dropped them. The records have since been purged, so there's no more explanation.

Growing Together's 17-year-old, nonprofit facility treats 25 to 40 children at a time. It rakes in roughly $1 million annually from donations and fees paid by parents of drug-addicted kids, some of whom are ordered by judges to attend. It has powerful friends and donors, including West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel, banker Warren W. Blanchard, attorney Jack Scarola, and Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley.

Yet physical and sexual abuse appears to be common there, according to a New Times investigation that included reviews of state records, police reports, and interviews with about two dozen former patients and parents. Kids rioted at the facility in April 1997, and last year, state investigators found that Growing Together was too quick to use physical restraint on children. Moreover, police have written more than 800 reports related to the program since 1995.

"I still can't get the screams out of my head from hearing kids dragged down the hall by the hair on their heads," says a former graduate of the program who asked to remain anonymous. "The crimes that were committed there have never been told in public. Nobody has ever put these people on trial."

Rik Pavlescak, a former investigator with the Department of Children and Families (DCF), wrote reports on the program in the early '90s that detailed beatings, restraint, imprisonment, and systematic humiliation. He alleges that influential outsiders have undermined investigations of the group.

Growing Together Executive Director Pat Allard denied a request to tour the facility, citing laws that protect confidentiality of patients. In three phone interviews in November, she maintained that children are not abused and claimed not to be aware of any of the evidence uncovered by New Times. "We would never beat any child," Allard said.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every Friday evening, 50 to 100 adults and children, most ages 13 to 17, gather inside Growing Together's facility at 1000 Lake Ave. The open house begins the same way every week. Parents sit in chairs at one end of a large room. Their children, who are enrolled in the program, sit at the opposite end. At first, an accordion divider separates the two groups.


 
One parent described Growing Together as a "concentration camp."
 

Then the session begins. The partition is pulled back. The music starts. The children sing: I am a promise, I am a possibility

I am a promise with a capital P

I am a great big bundle of potentiality

And I am learning to hear God's voice

And I am trying to make the right choice.

I am a promise to be anything that God wants me to be.

Vicky Butler, a Jupiter woman who enrolled her troubled, 16-year-old son, John, in Growing Together in the fall of 1999, remembers these sessions well. "The songs they made these kids sing -- and they were teenagers -- were songs intended for 4- and 5-year-olds," she says. "It was degrading. You just had to look at the kids. Behind their eyes, they would be saying, 'This sucks. '"

Butler says she began to wonder, when she attended her first open house, whether she'd made a mistake. "My son was no angel," she admits, "but no one deserves the treatment these kids receive." During the session, Butler remembers, staff passed around a microphone to parents, who would tell everyone in attendance about their children's misdeeds. There were drugs, illicit sex, violence, theft. The microphone would then move to the other side of the room. Assuming a child had behaved well during the week and earned the "privilege" to speak, he or she would then confess.

During one session in October 1999, Butler's son became agitated before she spoke. He stood up and flailed his arms. "He was totally flipping out," Butler remembers. John began to walk off. An alarmed Butler started toward her son. As she did, a large behavioral therapist parents referred to as "The Enforcer" also headed for John. Suddenly, the accordion divider rolled across the room and blocked Butler.

"All of a sudden, I heard my son screaming," she recalls. Butler panicked and confronted Growing Together staff. "That's my kid behind that curtain, and I don't know what's going on," she told them. They assured her that John was fine and that he would see a psychiatrist soon. Butler returned to her suburban home in Jupiter, convinced that John was in a safe place.

Meanwhile, she continued hosting other Growing Together children at night. She had modified her $169,292 home following directions from the program's staff. All pictures and mirrors were removed from walls. Knives were hidden. The bathroom was stripped, leaving only the sink, toilet, and bathtub. The windows and doors of the bedroom where five kids slept were rigged to an alarm system. Once they went to bed at 10 p.m., they could not leave the room until the next morning. "If any of them had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, they would have been in trouble," Butler admits. "It was like a prison."

Before bed, the children would write in their journals about what they had learned that day. Often, their entries involved confessions they had made during therapy. Growing Together refers to these journal entries as "moral inventories." To advance through the phases of the program, children must confess to illicit behavior or abuse they suffered, then describe the incidents' effects on their lives.

Butler recalls asking the kids about their entries. They told her that they made up most of their confessions because Growing Together required such admissions before graduation. Accounts that included sexual abuse or underage sex were particularly encouraged by staff, the kids allegedly told Butler.

The children also claimed staff had beaten and physically restrained them, Butler says. She even met one young girl who claimed a therapist had broken her arm. Other kids asserted that the building was always filthy. Growing Together administrators admitted to Butler (and later in court documents) that the facility had rats and that several urinals had been backed up for days at a time.

In March 2000, Butler and her ex-husband, Stephen, who shared custody, removed John from the program. Stephen Butler was moving to Arkansas and wanted to take the boy. Once free, John told his mother that he had suffered a sprained wrist at Growing Together when a therapist slammed him down on a table. Mickey Bowman, then the executive director of Growing Together, showed little concern for the injury. In a letter to Vicky Butler dated June 20, 2000, Bowman wrote: "Regarding the 'purported injury' to your son's wrist, he was laughing at the issue immediately following."

Soon after, a private psychiatrist examined John and determined that his problem wasn't drugs. He was bipolar. "You would think that, being in the program, someone would have said, 'Oh, by the way, your child is bipolar,'" Vicky Butler says. "Nobody picked up on that because no psychiatrist or psychologist ever saw him."

Butler later refused to pay Growing Together the roughly $5,000 she owed for John's treatment. She claimed the facility had billed her for clinical exams that never occurred. "Kids got more messed up in there than they were when they went in," she says. The facility sued and turned the debt over to a bill collector. Butler eventually forked over a reduced amount.


 
“Dr. Ross left Straight because he didn’t like some of the shenanigans.â€

[hanzomon4]

Father Doctor Virgil Miller Newton
at Straight and at KIDS of North Jersey
(formerly  KIDS of Bergen County)

by Wes Fager
Especially, do not listen to anything he says.   The demon is a liar.  He will lie to confuse us;  but he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us.  The attack is psychological,  Damien.  And powerful.  Do not listen.  Remember that.  Do not listen.   From The Exorcist.  

Kids of North Jersey, Secaucus, N.J. Reverend Doctor V. Miller Newton, Ph.D., Ph.D. is the director of Kids of North Jersey (KNJ) in Secaucus, New Jersey. His wife Ruth Ann Newton is the associate director. KNJ is a Straight follow-on program with a reputation of abusing teenagers. Miller Newton was a Straight official from 1980 to 1983 and was Straight's national clinical director beginning in 1982.(1) (Ruth Ann was formerly associate director of Straight-St Pete.) He and his wife left Straight in 1983 when the Straights (and sometimes he personally) came under a deluge of civil suits for falsely imprisoning and for intentionally abusing children. Also there were criminal investigations in 1983 of two Straight facilities in Florida. Under these circumstances, Dr. Newton moved to Hackensack, New Jersey and set up his own Straight-like program. But almost immediately there were similar allegations of child abuse at the Hackensack program. By 1990 Bergen County prosecutors had accumulated a considerable case load of complaints against Newton's program when Newton changed the program's name and moved to Hudson County, New Jersey where he continues to operate today in spite of mounting charges of child abuse--including criminal convictions of three of his counselors.

Miller Newton and the Straight Legacy, 1980 - 1983. The following alleged events preceded the departures of Miller Newton and his wife Ruth Ann Newton from Straight in 1983. In front of hundreds of other kids, Miller Newton grabbed 15 year-old Leah Bright by her hair, threw her on the floor, said 'I want this girl the fuck out of my group,' and sentenced her to no sleep from Saturday afternoon to Monday night--80 hours.(2) When Ms Bright told her oldcomer in private that she felt suicidal, she says she was made to wear a sweat shirt with the word PSYCHOTIC on it!(3) In 1990 Karen Norton was awarded $721,000 for being abused at Straight. She testified that Newton had thrown her against a wall.(4) Marcie Sizemore was in Straight between 80-82. She says she was beaten and thrown against a wall.(5) In Feb 82 Straight-Atlanta settled with 3 kids represented by the ACLU who claimed they were suffering "inhumane treatment".(6) The Florida state agency responsible for overseeing drug rehabilitation programs was Health and Human Services (HRS). An HRS report in April 1981 found that teenage clients at Straight had been threatened by administrative staff members with being either court ordered into Straight or being committed to a mental institution unless they voluntarily entered Straight. Several former clients reported to the Saint Petersburg Times in 1981 that they had been treated similarly by Straight staffers.(7) On July 17, 1980 Michael Calabrese went to Straight to visit his brother. He claims he was detained for 9 hours by Straight staffers who threatened to retain him for two years with a court order unless he voluntarily signed himself in. He says he got into a shouting match with Miller Newton (Newton was Straight's Administrative Director in July 1981) during this intake.( Acting on a complaint on September 30, 1980 Florida state health officials (HRS) interviewed a male juvenile client at Straight-St Pete whom they found being held against his will for treatment for a drug problem he did not have. Straight released this minor. An investigation by HRS responding to a complaint by an Orlando woman on March 4, 1981 found that her son was being held against his will at Straight. (She had previously filed a Writ of Habeas Corpus to get her other son out.) On March 16, 1981 state officials Terrell Harper and Marshall met with Miller Newton and two female clients who had recently escaped from Straight-St Pete but had been returned. In the presence of the state officials Newton threatened the two girls that they could be "sent to a mental institution," and then told one of the girls he was considering advising her parents to take her to a treatment program in Georgia where she could be "locked-up for 6 months" on just her parents signature. HRS removed one of the girls the next day. The other child was removed three days later by her mother at the recommenda-tion of a court appointed guardian ad litem. State investigators found that the locks to the bedroom doors where these girls sleep--a Ms. M's home--had been reversed to lock from the outside.(9)

Arletha Schauteet attended a sibling interview on Oct 23, 1981 in order to see her brother. She was held against her will until April 21, 1982. At one point she had escaped only to be kidnaped, in a violent 30 minute struggle, by her mother, two adult males, and a woman and taken back to Straight. At one point she says Miller Newton told her that if she persisted in saying she was held against her will, "the state of Florida would take over and put my mother in jail for kidnaping." Detective Brown from the Sanford, Fl Police Department secured her release. [Judge C. Vernon Mize signed a preemptory Writ of Habeas Corpus in the interest of Ms. Schauteet, the date is smeared, but appears to be 1982.] On Jan 19, 1983, an 18 year-old student intern in the Seminole County's sheriff's office named Hope Hyrons (photo top next page) attended a sibling interview so she could visit her brother. They tried to make her sign herself into Straight. She resisted, and she was made to walk and hitch hike back to Longwood, Fl--a 2 hour drive away. A month later she was kidnapped by her mother and father and two strange men and carried to Straight. She fought to get out of the intake room and was restrained. When she told her captors her legal rights were being violated, she says Rev. Miller Newton walked in and said, ""Well, I don't give a damn about your legal rights." Two days later a social services official secured her release. Newton and Straight settled out-of-court with her in 1983.(10) On June 19,  1982, Fred Collins, Jr, a B level engineering student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, (Fred now has a Ph.D. in mathematics) attended a Straight sibling interview in order to visit his brother. Fred was detained in a room with guards at the door for 7 - 10 hours, refused permission to go to the bathroom by a group of kids who related to him their stories of perverted sexual activities and drug addiction, trying to persuade him to admit to same. He finally consented to sign in for a 14 day observation period. [Thirteen years later, Marilyn Kearns' intake at Kids of North Jersey sounds remarkably similar to the experience of Fred Collins, Arletha Schauteet, and Hope Hyrons. Ms. Kearns alleges that when she was 23 years old, she attended a sibling interview at Kids, preliminary to visiting her sister. She says she was held in an intake room for hours until she agreed to sign up for treatment herself! [from author interview] ] Four and a half months later, 20 - 25 pounds lighter, Fred escaped from Straight. In a 1983 trial in which Miller Newton testified, Fred was awarded $220,000 for false imprisonment.(11)

The following 1983 civil suits/criminal investigations immediately preceded Newton's resignation: May--Michael Daniels sued Straight-St Pete for driving him insane; Aug--Newton and Straight-St Pete settled separate suits with Arletha Schauteet and Hope Hyrons.(12) Aug--Martin Brashears, an adult, sued Straight-Atlanta for false imprisonment.(13) Sept--Larry Williams sued Straight-Sarasota. Sept--Benson Williams sued Straight-Sarasota for beatings, pulling him by hair, hanging him by his underpants to a bedpost, and for torture.(14) Sept--Florida state's  attorney office for Sarasota County released a damning 600 page criminal investigation of Straight-Sarasota including statements from current/former counselors of kidnapings, false imprisonments, threats of being court ordered unless client voluntarily enrolls, enrolling clients who were not drug dependent, hair pulling, neck grabbing, throwing against walls.(15) Straight-Sarasota voluntarily closed so state dropped its investigation. Principal investigator, assistant state attorney David Levin (photo right), would later say ". . . it was child abuse and torture--was directed by Miller Newton".(16) On Sept 3 a boy named Charles was brought to Straight. Charles had been kidnaped in Albuquerque, New Mexico by two private detectives hired by his mother, and placed in leg irons. A Florida judge later ruled his release because proper commitment procedures had not been followed, and because the judge found no evidence of drug addiction or abuse.(17) In Oct--Michael Keen sued Straight-St Pete for false imprisonment(18) and Jacqueline A. Stallings sued Straight-St Pete for physical assaults and false imprisonment. She eventually won case #83012161C1 for Straight committing a "malicious act" against her.(19) On Nov 15, 1983 Newton and wife resigned from Straight.(20)

Miller Newton and Kids of Bergen County, 1984 - 1990. In May 1984 Newton opened Kids of Bergen County (KBC) in Hackensack, N.J. as a Straight-like program. He also started the Straight-like franchise Kids Center of America with affiliates in El Paso, Salt Lake City and Yorbi Linda, Ca. By 1985 county prosecutors were receiving complaints of abuse. Between 1987 and 1988 Texas officials found kids being hit, pushed, assaulted, deprived of sleep, soiling their pants, and denied bathroom privileges at Kids of El Paso. At the California franchise, authorities found that kids were being denied bathroom privileges. In Dec 1988 Bergen County Superior Court dismissed charges against Miller Newton for criminal restraint and involuntary servitude.(21) In April 1989 Bergen County prosecutor's office found black eyes, strip searches, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, and denial of right to leave when some clients reached the age of 18. A third of clients at KBC were Canadians.(22) Newton withdrew his application for a license days before a public hearing in 1989 saying he intends to move to new location in Bergen County.

Jennifer Woolston alleges in sworn court deposition that she escaped from Kids of Salt Lake City in Aug 1989 [when she was an adult], but was later kidnaped by her mother, father, a male parent, and a police officer who told her she was under arrest for a felony. They took her to the male parent's home, had her stripped searched and locked into a room. Later she again tried to escape by climbing from a window,  fell and broke bones in her feet and arms, dislocated her shoulder, and damaged cartilage and/or ligament in booth knees. She says she was denied medical treatment for an hour until program counselors arrived to take her to a hospital. The program released her only after receiving a Writ of Habeas Corpus on Sept 21, 1989.(23) [Ms. Woolston is not the first to be injured during an escape attempt from a Straight-like program. In 1978 a 13 year-old girl named Misereck jumped/fell 4 stories in an escape attempt from a Straight-St Pete foster home requiring her to have metal bars surgically placed in her back. Straight settled with her in 1981 while Miller Newton was there. Several people have alleged that KIDS' client Carlos Cenado broke his leg after a scuffle or fall during an escape attempt occurring at a Kids of  North Jersey foster home. Several allege that he was sent to a hospital but not allowed to eat hospital food, rather food was brought in from KIDS. (Kids of North Jersey is the follow-on program to KBC.) ] Newton's franchises started closing under state investigations. After Kids of Southern California closed in 1989, Straight of Southern California started operating out of the same facility.

Twice Bergen County prosecutors escorted clients out of KBC. In 1989 CBS's West 57th Street aired a damaging segment on KBC. Former staff member Christy Johnston (photo right) said Newton told a staff member, "Bring her in her and scare her and if she hits you, hit her back." She says they wound up rolling on the ground with Newton saying, "I'll turn my back." Tony Mitchele's  hospital records show he was bleeding from the scalp and having blurred vision after being dropped on  his head during a rap. When  he became an adult Tony left KBC, but later staff member Tony Kozakiewicz was arrested for trying to kidnap Tony back into the program. According to former staff member Christy Johnston, charges were dropped after KIDS promised Tony Mitchele that it would never take him back if he promised not to press charges. In 1988 Larry Clay(photo left), a legal adult in his home state of Texas, was led out of KBC by an FBI agent with a subpoena.(24) In August 1990 (after the West 57th Street report on KBC) 20 county officials descended upon Kids of Bergen County questioning kids about abuse.(25)
Miller Newton and Kids of North Jersey, 1990 - present. Shortly after Bergen County prosecutors moved on KBC in August 1990, Newton moved his operations to Hudson County, New Jersey, changing the program's name to Kids of North Jersey (KNJ), but retaining the old IRS #. Former KBC staff member Alexis Zdanow (photo left) recalls an  incident back at KBC c. 1988 where two rebellious clients who were brothers were taken into an intake room where he and others "threw 'em around, flung 'em around, but I was told by the higher staff, 'You have to do that, you know, Doc Newton says it has to be done. . .'"(26) Later, in 1993, at KNJ three counselors--Carlos Lugo, Michael O'Connor, and George Clemence--were convicted of beating 17 year old Channery Soto. Michael  O'Connor, who admitted to beating Soto, said that beatings were routine at KNJ and that he had even been beaten himself. Judge Emil DelBaglivo--the Secaucus trial judge--publicly remarked that it was "almost unbelievable" that the director of the program, a man with "supposedly " strong credentials, would allow and condone the use of violence. "We find the institution highly questionable and someone should look into it," he said. "We think there's something radically wrong."(27) Newton stayed, Judge DelBaglivo was transferred to another township.

In January 1998 KIDS counselor Patricia Logan was convicted (apparently of simple assault) for an assault against client Celena Moore (daughter of Ethyl Moore).(28) Her case stemmed from one of many criminal complaints brought against KIDS counselors in 1996. One 1996 charge is against counselor George Clemence, who has already been convicted for the 1993 Soto beating, for assaulting Michael Siculietano. Secaucus prosecutors dropped charges without Siculietano's knowledge.(29) Another 1996 charge was made by Marilyn Kearns (age 23) who claims she was kidnaped and held against her will at KNJ. She names Miller Newton in her complaint of being held against her will.(30) Also in 1996 KNJ graduate and program counselor Heather Strachey filed counter charges against Marilyn Kearns, but later sent a letter dropping the charges. Other, apparently outstanding, criminal charges involving KNJ filed in Secaucus in 1996 include Ethyl Moore against Erin Moss and Jenny Logan (she's already won a conviction against Patricia Logan, apparently Jenny's sister). [ Jennifer Logan is listed as one of the defendants in Jennifer Woolston's civil suit against KIDS of Salt Lake City in 1989, previously  discussed.]. Other 1996 charges include: Andrea Jones against Erin Moss; Sharon Tyler against Miller Newton; and Chrysis Johnson against Miller Newton. In 1996 Juvenile Judge Thomas Zampino in neighboring Essex County secured the release of John Shaw from KNJ after a private interview with him.(31) In 1996 two local TV stations broadcast damaging exposés on KNJ. There is an outstanding civil case against Newton and KNJ by Rebecca Ehrlich for causing psychological damage to her daughter.(32)  Bill Goldberg, a licensed therapist in Tenafly New Jersey, has treated several former KNJ clients.(33)

INSURANCE FRAUD. In Sep 1996--KNJ agreed to pay $45,000 to THE federal government to settle charges of 254 fraudulent insurance claims. Psychiatrist Raymond Edelman says KNJ used his rubber stamp after he left program for fraudulent claims.(34),(35) In December 1996 KNJ apparently lost or settled a 1996 civil case with Roger Rossano for fraudulent insurance charges. KNJ's 1994 tax returns shows Miller Newton earning $106,712 and Ruth Ann Newton, his wife and assistant director at KNJ, making $54,520.  The phone book lists a PO box. Mysteriously, if you are a parent with a kid in trouble and call them, they will not tell you where they are located!

[Anonymous]

I don't understand if AARC has been doing this for 17 or so years why there aren't more than a handful of people speaking up about the suffering?

The other Straight and Kids programs has hundreds speaking up.

It would be easier for us and more believable by the courts if more people could testify that this is a bad place like the ones in the United States.

[Anonymous]

Both Kids and Straight operated for over fifteen years.  AARC is much more streamlined.  Kids and Straight were obligated to appear to meet oversight from various government bodies in order to continue operation.    
  There is no government body to oversee AARC, because AARC's treatment centre has no license.  It's not licensed as a detention facility, so the Ministry of Justice does not oversee it, it is not licensed as a health treatment facility, so Health and Wellness does not oversee it.  It is not a residential youth facility, so it is not overseen by the Ministry of Children's Services.  AARC operates with no regulation and no oversight.  
  Kids took Medicaid money and money from private insurers, so it had to ostensibly meet certain operating standards.  AARC receives it's money in slush piles from AADAC, from the client families, and from charities.  The Society doles out the cash to the centre, so AARC rules itself.  
  The end result is quizzes administered by former clients to determine a child's drug dependence, unregulated amateur jails set up in the host homes, children in crisis being placed in charge of other children in crisis, a self-described spiritual, non-medical treatment modality, and the perpetuation of a scam that has gone on for over fifteen years.

[ajax13]

Never, ever let it be forgotten that the Wiz came directly from Kids, with no qualifications other than his time as a phys ed teacher and guidance counsellor, opened AARC after he couldn't open Kids of the Canadian West, and several years later got his mail-order PhD from the Union Institute.
I've always wondered what possessed the man to believe that he knew how to treat adolescent drug dependence.

[Anonymous]

Well, this seems to have struck a nerve with AJAX for sure!! and all the anti-AARC crowd and Ajax continues to avoid answering any questions. how reliable a crowd they are . . . . .

Although it is like herding cats to keep Ajax on point, I'll ask again:

1. what kind of education/training do you have  ajax . . ..  or have not ,what ever the case may be?

2. have you ever spoken with DVause in order to determine he is a "sociopath"?