Statistically, it is important to know who the posts come from on this Teen Help forum.
Ginger Warbis, owner and moderator of this board, has flatly stated that, from her technical viewpoint, being able to see ISP's, etc., PURE is not sending all the anti-WWASPS postings.
Checking the most recent archive at voy forum, only one of many other venues for kids to vent about WWASPS experiences, archive #4 being only a small portion of the large volume that forum has, shows 12 survivor-students at WWASPS schools, all of them claiming what society normally considers abuse. Two other ex-students consider themselves pro-WWASP, although they also claim abuses in WWASPS, the difference being that somehow they think this was OK.
There are currently only about 2000 families on Planet Earth whose kids are in WWASPS programs (perhaps even fewer, as families pull their children as they read negative PR in recent months). Working backwards, when enrollments were much smaller, it works out that somewhere around 6500 or so kids have been a part of the WWASPS program (not including Provo Canyon or Straight, etc., which were not WWASPS but used the same formula). Ken Kay has vaguely claimed about 15,000 kids, but he sways in his truthful statements to newspapers according to which phase the moon was in the day he made the statement, and so his numbers don't mean much without corroboration.
Several hundred families have joined a class action lawsuit in the making against WWASPS. This is a large number, considering they must be able by affidavit to prove personal abuse or fraud in court before being approved as plaintiffs, they must know about the suit being planned (i.e., following some sort of Internet source of communication because the suit has not yet hit the newspapers), and be incensed enough to participate, given the fact that the WWASPS experience is so ugly for most families that they try to forget it and move on.
From recent resurrected emails comes some names of pro-WWASPers, including Donna H.[ammill]. Mrs. Hammill has been all over the Internet for at least a year, sometimes openly and sometimes secretly posting about the benefits of her daughter's 26 months in WWASPS. Perhaps she is one of the Anons posting here. There is a small core group of devoted WWASPS parents, including families who submit stories each and every month to the house magazine, The Source, who are involved in arguing the benefits of their chosen method of child rearing.
PURE is a very small company (I have heard only 3 employees) with a website and a small number of referral clients for behavior modification facilities. The company is agressive in its small-scale marketing, but really is, again, a very small group of people. Because of its anti-WWASPS philosophy, it is viewed as a threat to many supporters of WWASPS...and also to the WWASPS corporation, who deems PURE dangerous enough to actually file a defamation suit instead of the usual harassment the legal department uses.
Bottom Line: There's a lot of us out here who have a real beef with WWASPS. While wasting time attacking PURE as The Real Enemy, the Rest of Us can have a nice go at the flank and rotten underbelly. Beware: there are more enemies than you can count, and you're wasting your time going after just this one.
