The smoking gun - do survivors lie?

[psy]

I am still curious Whooter. Where exactly have you found a lie. It seems a little ridiculous that you start a thread about survivors lying, and of all the posts you have made have not identified one single lie. Even the post I made, the only post in this entire thread that cited a real example, still could be my perspective over someone elses, there were about three hundred kids there that day. In addition, that really wasn't about abuse, it was about a dog.

And more than likely the dog became a puppy not out of malice, but out of a simple miscommunication as a result of the "telephone game".  Nobody mentioned a machete either until you, and if the intent was to shock, that certainly would have been included.  Personally I find your first hand version of the events just as disturbing.

[psy]

Why don't you mention that to your program buddies. It's cheap to tape everything now, so why don't they do it. Cops do it to protect themselves from lawsuits. Maybe the programs should as well. You would think, since they are doing nothing wrong and all these accusations are lies, that they would be happy to do so. If not to appease the doubters out there, they should do it to save their own asses. Real easy to prove that these kids (who you still have not identified or quoted one single instance of a lie) are liars. Programs are still operating, still "escorting" kids, why not prove to the courts that are breathing down their necks as we speak, that all of this is legal and these accusations are lies?

Video tapes tend to disappear at the few programs that do that. EG: Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton MA.  It's very difficult for survivors to prove abuse in large part because so much of the proof is in the hands of the program.  They're called liars and there isn't much they can do.  Most people believe those in "authority" who are just there to "help the children" over "troubled" teens, despite the lack of due process and often no diagnosis either.

[Gonzotherapy]

Whooter,
Your thread was a joke. I was the only one who cited a specific instance of a survivor lie, and all it was was an embellishment on the truth. Over and over again I have stated that I have seen no complete fabrications of abuse, only embellishments, and even those are incredibly rare compared to the truths I have seen. And to be honest I completely understand as someone who went through it, why someone would embellish to get a point across. Your entire point, if I can even thread through your bullshit and truth dodging to find it, was that the claims of kidnapping were lies. What do we call it when we are forcibly removed against our will? You find a better word to describe it, great, more power to you, still won't change the fact that kidnapping is the best word to describe it. The fact remains that you have several times called me a liar, where do you prove that? I think the thread is gone because you are a joke, and so was the thread. And I love the fact that you dismiss the hundreds of people in that lawsuit as being liars. You know what the sick thing is, your vehemenent opposal and attempts to discredit people with no proof whatsoever makes me think that you must be well aware of what goes on and are actively working to cover up the truth. I won't feel sorry for you when this web of lies comes crashing down on you.

[Gonzotherapy]

I am still curious Whooter. Where exactly have you found a lie. It seems a little ridiculous that you start a thread about survivors lying, and of all the posts you have made have not identified one single lie. Even the post I made, the only post in this entire thread that cited a real example, still could be my perspective over someone elses, there were about three hundred kids there that day. In addition, that really wasn't about abuse, it was about a dog.

And more than likely the dog became a puppy not out of malice, but out of a simple miscommunication as a result of the "telephone game".  Nobody mentioned a machete either until you, and if the intent was to shock, that certainly would have been included.  Personally I find your first hand version of the events just as disturbing.

I agree with that 100%. The thread I saw that on seemed to be more "what I heard" than "what I saw". Far more disturbing than anything they did to the dog was the things they did to Frederickson. I think they treated that dog better than they treated him.

[Whooter]

I have submitted several examples of kids claiming that they were kidnapped and ended up at a program.  There has never been any evidence of kidnapping reports that I have seen here.

A recent survivor, gonzotherapy, was frustrated with our discussion when the link he provided of a lawsuit against WWASP programs turned out to have no reference to kidnapping that I could find.   He starts to write lies that I called all the people in the lawsuit liars as is evident in the post below.

And I love the fact that you dismiss the hundreds of people in that lawsuit as being liars.

Link

So we have established that survivors do lie. I am not saying all of them do but posters like Gonzotherapy may become frustrated with the fact that the programs remain open and their stories are falling on deaf ears so they decide to fabricate some stories to up the ante like he did with me.  Trying to discredit me by saying I called all those people liars and trying to make readers believe I get paid by the industry to write here on fornits.  If he can so easily lie about me who he has known for one day imagine the motivation he has to lie about WWASP programs which are still in operation.

Just something to think about.

The lies may be justified and understood to be okay by many here.  But my point is that the lies discredit the rest of your story.  Why take the risk of having people just not believe you if you truly have something important to communicate?  Integrity is crucial when you are accusing someone of wrong doing.



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[none-ya]

I will try one more time with this. If you found yourself being abducted from your home in the middle of the night,by armed goons threatenng you to leave with them. If you could get to a phone, what would you say? HELP I'M BEING TRANSPORTED???

[Froderik]

I will try one more time with this. If you found yourself being abducted from your home in the middle of the night,by armed goons threatenng you to leave with them. If you could get to a phone, what would you say? HELP I'M BEING TRANSPORTED???

 :rofl:  :tup:

[Gonzotherapy]

I have submitted several examples of kids claiming that they were kidnapped and ended up at a program.  There has never been any evidence of kidnapping reports that I have seen here.

A recent survivor, gonzotherapy, was frustrated with our discussion when the link he provided of a lawsuit against WWASP programs turned out to have no reference to kidnapping that I could find.   He starts to write lies that I called all the people in the lawsuit liars as is evident in the post below.

Just something to think about.

The lies may be justified and understood to be okay by many here.  But my point is that the lies discredit the rest of your story.  Why take the risk of having people just not believe you if you truly have something important to communicate?  Integrity is crucial when you are accusing someone of wrong doing.



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Are you for real? One- I left the program almost 13 years ago. I guess that could be recent. 2- You over and over call me a liar. Proof?

I said that you called all those people liars because you clearly said that the abuse suffered is a lie. Since you make no specific cases, I went ahead and made the generalization for you. The only one who is a liar here is you. And no surprise that you were not intelligent enough to get away with it, because you got caught and admitted it.

You are far from a formidable adversary. Your retort to everything I say is - Liar, your a liar, liar, no you lie, liar, c'mon. Is that the best you can do, are you going to even attempt not to look like a left out schoolgirl?
Integrity is crucial when you are accusing someone of wrong doing? Do you even know what integrity means? Obviously you don't know what the word kidnapping means. Taken against your will. Therefore if someone is taken to a program they don't want to be at, they have been kidnapped. I'm sorry, do you need me to use smaller words?

[Gonzotherapy]

It has been established throughout the Troubled Teen industry that the graduates and non graduates who did not do well have a need to embellish or lie about their time spent at one or more of the programs.  


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This is a great one. Who doesnt do well and graduates the program? Oh, the people who say anything bad about the program, even if they graduated, they must not have done well. So, they must be liars. People who didn't "do well" did not graduate my program. That is what you call an oxymoron. I generalized that you called the hundreds of people in the lawsuits liars because the way you refer to anyone who didn't do well lies about the program. If that's not what you meant, my bad. You need to just chill on calling me a liar, pot calling the kettle black.

[Gonzotherapy]

I
So we have established that survivors do lie.



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We have? Does anyone else agree with this? Just curious.

[Whooter]

Gonzo you did lie about me a couple of times in this thread.  When you posted the lawsuit I stated I did not see any reference to kidnapping and you stated that I called them liars.

And I love the fact that you dismiss the hundreds of people in that lawsuit as being liars.

Link

Then another time you were frustrated with our conversation you tried to make the readers believe that I was being paid by the industry to post here, thereby discrediting my opinions.  You have been here for about a day and know nothing about me yet you make up lies about me?

They wouldn't try to discredit the accusers by hiring somebody to sit and babysit forums twisting words and making incredibly broad unfounded allegations of lies. I think I should call them up and let them know they are over-paying you. You are a miserable failure at discrediting anything.

Link

Most of us lie at one time or another, but I am curious as to why you need to lie about me here on the forum.  If you would do this to someone you hardly know about then what are we to believe about your stories of your time in a program?  Could it be that you are equally frustrated with the programs still being open and want to hurt them too?  Discredit them? Would this lead you to lie like you did about me?




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[Shadyacres]

Whooter, you think you are clever but deliberate stupidity is not cleverness.  You are obviously some kind of program shill, a child could see that from your posts.  Either you are financially dependent on this industry and have taken it upon yourself to run damage control here, or you have simply been hired by elements of this industry.  I am glad the moderators have not banned you because your posts are possibly more powerful proof of the prevailing attitudes at these programs than any of our stories.  You obviously have no compassion for these kids, and no respect for what they went through.  Gonzotherapy got your number after one day, summed you up beautifully.  So keep it up, your tactics speak for themselves.

[Whooter]

I think that we've established that those are all statements of opinion, and very reasonable ones at that. I can cite case law (search for "evaluative opinion") if you really really want. Where is a false statement of fact (i.e. a lie), Whooter?

An evaluative opinion involves a value judgment based on true information disclosed to or known by the public. Evaluative opinions convey the publisher's judgment as to the quality of another's behavior and, as such, it is not a statement of fact. “Under the Restatement (Second) virtually all ‘evaluative only’ opinions would be nonactionable, since they are by definition based on disclosed facts.... The statement that ‘Jane Doe did not deserve the Oscar for her movie role because it was a shallow, two-bit, hack performance’ is not actionable even in the face of ironclad proof that every other living being who has ever seen the movie loved the performance.”*625 Rodney A. Smolla, Law of Defamation § 6.05 [2], page 6-20 (1988) (citations omitted). The divergent evaluative opinions expressed in the case now before us are subject to debate. Neither is “right” or “wrong.”

In the present case, everyone involved has seen the “movie”; and all the facts upon which opinions were based were “disclosed” in the videotape itself. Those who were of the opinion that Berosini was being abusive to the animals were making an evaluative judgment based on the facts portrayed in the video. All viewers of that video are free to express their opinion on the question of whether they think Berosini was being cruel to those animals, and no one can be successfully sued for expressing such an evaluative opinion-even if it is “wrong.” There is no such thing as a false idea or a wrong opinion. See **1276 Nevada Ind. Broadcasting Corp. v. Allen, 99 Nev. 404, 410, 664 P.2d 337, 341-42 (1983).

In other words, the known facts here are that kids are transported to programs by Escort Services.  When the word "kidnapping" is applied to these known facts it becomes qualitative...  It becomes opinion, even if it might otherwise be legally "false" (however in this case there is a good argument that what escort services do is also legally kidnapping.  Even if "kidnapping" were not evaluative opinion in this context, it could very well be a true statement of fact.

I see what you are trying to say, psy, But I don’t agree that kidnapping can just be a matter of opinion.  If we accepted this then how would we standardize and understand description from survivors here?  They could just as easily say making their bed in the morning was abuse and torture or that being forced to go to school was brainwashing.  They could justify their words by saying it felt like torture or abuse or brainwashing.

None of these events would be classified as true in the legal sense of the words and would be thrown out of court.  



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[Whooter]

Whooter, you think you are clever but deliberate stupidity is not cleverness.  You are obviously some kind of program shill, a child could see that from your posts.  Either you are financially dependent on this industry and have taken it upon yourself to run damage control here, or you have simply been hired by elements of this industry.  I am glad the moderators have not banned you because your posts are possibly more powerful proof of the prevailing attitudes at these programs than any of our stories.  You obviously have no compassion for these kids, and no respect for what they went through.  Gonzotherapy got your number after one day, summed you up beautifully.  So keep it up, your tactics speak for themselves.

Shady, you cant see beyond your own nose on this subject.  I am not the one disrespecting survivors and having a lack of compassion for them, you are and those like you.  There are kids who went to programs who were seriously abused and some of them died at the hands of program staff who are still working in the industry as we speak.  How are these kids (and those like them) going to be able to find people to listen to them and find their story credible when we have people like yourself running around claiming to have been kidnapped and carried off to Gulags and tortured.  Its not only disrespectful to those who were actually abused in these places but it is disrespectful to kids who were kidnapped, held for Ransom and/or killed.  Have some guts tell the readers you were taken by "Oneway escort service" and were forced to do such and such at xyz Program".  Be honest!

If I was shot in a hunting accident I could tell everyone that I was so scared that it felt like someone was trying to kill me.  But it would be a lie to tell everyone that I was attacked by terrorists.

The kids who were taken by escort may have been frightened, it may have felt like kidnapping to them and it is a service that I don’t think I would use partly because of this.  But the child would have full knowledge that they were not being taken by kidnappers after a very short period of time so why would they lie about it?

Why do you accept this disrespect towards other survivors, Shady?  You water down and desensitize the whole experience with this vocabulary to the point that you cannot distinguish between those people who were abused and those who just had a rough time.

I am not the enemy here, shady, you are.  I am just pointing it out to you.  You can continue to say you were kidnapped and dragged to a gulag where you were tortured and brainwashed.  But I don’t think it is fair to other survivors to embellish, lie or make up stories.



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[Shadyacres]

If programs are truly abusive and posters here on fornits believe that then why lie? Why not just write that you were abused in a program and explain what happened and by whom? Why make up stories of being kidnapped and held in a prison, placed in isolation in a Gulag and brainwashed? It is really easy to check the credibility of this. I don’t think one amber alert resulted in the capture of a teenager being located at a program nor a link to a report of a child being kidnapped. Yet we read on fornits that this occurs everyday.

So why the lies? Just curious.

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When did you read on fornits that there are amber alerts for program victims every day?  There are no amber alerts for these kids because their parents have been persuaded to hire kidnappers themselves to take their child away to be "re-programmed" in a place that is, to them and to most of us here, a re-education Gulag.  You claiming that this opinion is not valid is reminiscent of the philosophy of the program I was in.  Our opinions meant nothing, the Staff TOLD us how to think and feel.  That is what you appear to be trying to do to us here.  We, unlike you, have had an opportunity to discover first hand what these places are like for the kids that are locked inside them.  What gives you the right to ignore this?