WP, I really wish you would take the kids' pics and surnames down.
[/color]
Yes, particularly since the site's "Terms of Service" gives the site that right to remove the content at issue, it almost becomes an obligation, no? At this point, Fornits is clearly participating in this event; they're no longer a pure publisher / distributor.
....
My point is: I don't think you're bad guys. I think you have a point. I also think you are in a bind, since the rules you operate under have allowed someone to expose you to significant liability. And, rest assured, if you don't demonstrate your rejection of this behavior with some alacrity, you will be held accountable. Since I'm (relatively) neutral here, and would just like to see this resolved in an equitable fashion, perhaps you'll take some advice from a stranger: Take the stuff down, then argue about whether to put it back up. Doing it the way you're doing it now guarantees a negative outcome.
Thanks for starting a fire under my arse. I really should have updated that eons ago.
Not too sure about your legal advice, however, as this question has played out again and again, twice actually making it to the point of litigation. So long as we don't tamper with the content except for spam, hacking/flooding, at the request of the poster or in response to a legally binding demand we are not obliged to tamper with the content for any other reason. But I do appreciate your taking the time to write all that out.
And it's important! At least to some of us. As admin, it is absolutely impossible for me to determine whether a statement is fiction, delusion, exaggeration or some other species of bullshit or if it is, in fact, fact. Look around a little bit and you'll see what I mean. Would you believe that in the early days of Elan the staff led the kids in water boarding a girl and then burying her alive? That story first emerged when the Michale Skakel trial was in the headlines. Within about 10 minutes I was receiving demands to delete said defamatory information along with legal threats and all kinds of other harassment. Turns out it wasn't precisely true. The truth is that the staff (or somebody) quickly unburied the girl as soon as soon as they had sent the other kids inside. But these poor folks had lived out 20 odd years of their adult lives believing that they had been forced by a Mafia connected cult leader to take part in a murder. Some of them were very much relieved to have the other side of the story. More than that, maybe, to see demonstrated that we can, indeed, stand up to these sadistic lunatics and not be struck by lightening or sent to sleep with the fishes.
My point is that the area of interest for which I initially set up this forum is so bizarre, so brutal at times there is just no way to discuss it in any meaningful depth without getting pretty damned ugly. In my view, the primary reason that this American gulag archipelago has been able to continue in operation unchecked is because of the secretive nature of cults and high demand groups. When a kid is held incommunicado they can't tell. When they get out, no one will believe them (I actually think that is less true today than it was 10 years ago when I first jumped on Rich Bradburry's, Wes Fager's and Arnold Trebach's train and got involved in this issue). The only other people who "know" what's going on are program staff and operators. And, generally speaking, they are a clannish group who keep themselves somewhat socially insulated from anyone who does not share their views. For the most part, they believe just as steadfastly in the rightness of what they do as any Muslim who ever stoned a woman to death or father who daily beat his son bloody with a belt. One way to get these folks to re-examine their beliefs is to piss them off enough so that they come out and have this conversation out in the more commonly accepted reality outside the walls of their cloistered programs.
I try to operate this server in such a way as to facilitate a broader dialog on topics relating to the troubled parent industry specifically and thought reform, undue influence, mind control generally for as long as we can keep it going. But if, in the end, there be a crushing, stinking pile of liability fallin' down on my head, so be it. I owe for my own involvement when I was a kid and for walking away and not looking back for damned near 20 years. They can only take money from me. These kids, hell their whole families, have suffered far greater loss due, in part, to my sin of silence than any amount of money I could possibly lose.
This is the internet. If it is taken down here, it will pop up somewhere else. Guarantee it. Posts like this remind me how valuable and brave our administrators are.
Thanks, that's sweet!
