The salient points about All About Receiving Cash remain unchallenged by AARColytes.
For anyone interested in the AARC phenomenon, here is a brief run-down:
AARC is the product of a series of US-based socio-religous groups that operated youth substance abuse treatment centres.
The first of these, the Seed, opened in the early seventies, and employed the group confrontation methods used in AARC. Like AARC, the inmates were held against their will and separated from their families, who were also indoctrinated.
The Seed was the subject of an inquiry that led to a Senate report likening the methods used in the Seed to communist brain-washing of UN prisoners from the Korean war.
The Seed was then prohibited from taking in minors. A Seed parent, Mel Sembler, then took the Seed methods and opened Straight. Straight employed the host home model used in AARC, the peer counsellor model, the use of confinement against the prisoners will, isolation from the family until initital indoctrination is complete, and employed the confrontational group attack method still used in AARC.
One Straight parent, Miller Newton, began to work for Straight and became a Director of Straight. Straight was beset with an array of legal problems, from charges against staff for abuse of clients, to fraud, to lawsuits filed against Straight by former prisoners. All of Straight's facilities are now closed, but a number of former Straight employees simply re-opened Straight programs under new names, employing the identical methods.
Miller Newton, beset with many problems himself arising from his time at Straight opened his own Straight-based facility, called Kids.
During the era when Straight operated, Alberta parents had begun sending their offspring to Straight. There is some evidence that the Alberta Government was involved in this operation to some extent. Later, several dozen Albertans send their offspring to Kids.
AARC's Executive Director worked at Kids for approximately a year and a half. Kids attempted to open a Calgary branch called Kids of the Canadian West. Over one million dollars was raised for this project from charity sources and from the Provincial Government of Alberta.
Due to exposure of an array of abuses at Kids from fraud to unlawful confinement, Government support for Kids of the Canadia West was withdrawn. Ministers in the government insisted that some form of official regulation and oversight be in place for such a facility, but the nature of a Straight clone precluded that.
A year or so after the demise of KCW, AARC opened. The Executive Director of AARC had been employed as a Clinical Staff at Kids in the US. Additionally, a number of parents of Kids prisoners were volunteers at AARC. The representative of the Rotary Club who had originally helped arranged for Kids to get $600 000 put his step-son into AARC as one of the first dozen clients.
AARC also employed peer counsellors who were former Kids prisoners.
The host home method of isolating new prisoners was taken directly from Kids. The raps and other confronational elements of the indoctrination procedure were also taken from Kids. The use of former clients with no professional training as peer counsellors was also taken from Kids. A control technique where the new prisoner is under the control of a "trusty", an "oldcomer" who has passed the first stages of indoctrination was also taken from Kids.
Initially there were some professional licensed mental health workers employed at AARC, but over time the staff has been completely replaced with either former clients, client parents, or relatives of the Executive Director.
Several years after opening AARC, the Executive Director obtained a PhD from the Union Institute.
This US-based school will provide a candidate with a PhD without attending classes, and without examinations. A Master's degree was preferred, but not necessary to enter this PhD program.
Miller Newton had two PhDs from this school.
Union Institute faculty and former students provided testimonials for both Kids and AARC. A Union faculty member was a co-author of AARC's self-study, from 2005.
Miller Newton has been sued, successfully, for millions of dollars by former Kids prisoners for abuses suffered in Kids. In addition, he settled with Medicaid for multiple cases of fraud.
Unlawful confinement is routinely used in AARC to keep Newcomers isolated from their families. These Newcomers are not permitted to use the telephone and have contact with their families only under the supervision of AARC employees.
Newcomers are locked into bedrooms at night with their Oldcomers.
AARC charges $50 000 per day per inmate, in spite of the fact that it is located in an industrial park in facilities for which it has received millions of dollars over the years. There is no residency for clients in AARC.
AARC has never had a license for their treatment centre. A number of years ago, the facility was accredited by a non-regulatory body as a crisis nursery.
There is no psyciatrist on AARC's staff. Nor is there a licensed psychologist, nor a registered social worker.
Intake for new prisoners consists of a quiz. There is no physical drug-screen, and the intake is not performerd by a physician.
In spite of the lack of licensing and oversight by a regulatory body, various official have contributed to AARC's income and client base by providing their charges to AARC. This includes a Probation Officer whose husband was AARC staff, and a judge whose husband was a former AARC board member, and the only physician whom AARC clients could see while incarcerated in AARC.
Clients wishing to see this physician had to be accompanied by an AARC staff member.
