I just cut some excerpts out of this article. I would like to know if any Straight child prisoner on first phase at any location EVER had the right to private phone calls or mail. EVER.
Then see Suzanne Byrd Hardman deny that children were regularly at the time of this article and continuing for years to be restrained illegally.
You MAY NOT falsely represent to the State, Consumers and the Media the practices of a program that is in loco parentis, that is, legally the guardians of all children enrolled.
The Washington Post
October 16, 1986, Thursday, Final Edition
The Many Sides of Straight;
Hard-Edged Drug Therapy: a Triumph or a Torture?
BYLINE: Myra MacPherson, Washington Post Staff Writer
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE C1
...Suzanne Byrd Hardman, the Greater Washington Straight director, says the organization changed some procedures after one celebrated case.
Fred Collins III, a Virginia resident, won $ 220,000 in damages after a jury found he had been detained against his will in the Florida Straight facility for more than four months four years ago. Straight appealed, but the award was upheld last year. Those over 18 can now leave the program immediately if they wish. Minors can also -- if parents consent.
Three former clients testified at Collins' trial -- including Jeffrey James McQuillen, who said he was tied up in a car with nylon ropes at one point at the Virginia facility but escaped. Says Hardman: "I have never seen a client in any way artificially restrained." ...
...Virginia's Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation licenses rehabilitation programs such as Straight. The program has been asked to comply with regulations designed to assure client rights. One rule seems to go against the basic philosophy of Straight, particularly its restrictive first phase. It says the client shall have the right to communicate "in confidence with any person by mail or telephone."
Hardman says she is confident a satisfactory compromise can be met. "We believe we are in compliance with the intent of their rules, and individual situations would always be taken into account."...
