Author Topic: How about some damn ANSWERS.  (Read 51330 times)

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Offline Perrigaud

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How about some damn ANSWERS.
« Reply #60 on: December 29, 2004, 05:01:00 AM »
For once I agree with N. Why don't you get specific. If it was truly traumatizing to you. No one can truly sympathize. They can only empathize. What you took out of it is different then what someone else did. Go ahead and be specific and clear.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #61 on: December 29, 2004, 08:05:00 AM »
I don't really need to go into why i think she was unstable, because i agree with a few posts back, that she was not ready to open up and address her shit, which everyone does have a little of, She was intimidated by the leader and thus shut down more. They are most likely very conservative people and most likley have that middle of amereica attitude which has our evil tyrant running our country. No one is going to tell this ladie that she might have a few problems to deal with and yes she also seemed to feel she was there more for her child than for herself. She took offense to someone trying to get through to her and her husband. Do you have at least one more article like this? I don;t think so. This is the only time that anything close to this was written.One person out of thousands, oh i'm sorry 2, her husband also.
I took a boy from one program to another and he had been in the program 7 months and had just screwed and now was being transfered,I had also been his escort the 7months before and he was one of the kids i was able to bond with. so i knew we were going to have a good time and probbably the best 20 hours he has had in 7 months, because yes it is a very strict at these programs. Well he told me that sure it was hard, but there were allot of poeple there who cared and yea he said there were some that he felt did not care, mostly the new staff that was hired.
Anyway his favorite part of the program was the seminars and he felt that they helped him more thatn anything else in the program. I only hope he really does it now and gets his but home as soon as possible. But again, you won't believe me because i am not proof. The one that cares
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #62 on: December 29, 2004, 10:17:00 AM »
Quote
On 2004-12-29 05:05:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I don't really need to go into why i think she was unstable,

Of COURSE not.  That would mean that you would actually have to come up with some ANSWERS. :roll: I can just make a blanket statement and everyone will just have to accept it because I don't have to explain what I mean. :roll:

 
Quote
because i agree with a few posts back, that she was not ready to open up and address her shit, which everyone does have a little of,

Please respond with something other than cultspeak.

 
Quote
She was intimidated by the leader and thus shut down more.

and you see this as being HER fault.  NOT the fault of the big guy who was getting in her face and telling her that he could "take her womanhood".

 
Quote
She took offense to someone trying to get through to her and her husband.

She took offense at the WAY they were trying to "get through to her".

 
Quote
Do you have at least one more article like this?


This wasn't an article.  This was a personal testimony of one family's experience.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #63 on: December 29, 2004, 10:34:00 AM »
THIS is an article.  Written by a professional journalist.  See the difference?????



Program to Help Youths Has Troubles of Its Own
New York Times/September 6, 2003
By Tim Weiner

Thompson Falls, Mont. -- Spring Creek Lodge Academy, home to thousands of wayward children since 1996, calls itself "a safe haven for change." Many parents swear with near-religious devotion that the program, one of the nation's largest, has saved their sons and daughters. Others have come to curse it.

The program is affiliated with the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, or Wwasps, a multimillion-dollar business in the industry of "tough love" programs and "specialty boarding schools" that have flourished, often unregulated, for two decades.

Wwasps affiliates in Mexico, Costa Rica, Western Samoa and the Czech Republic have closed under accusations of cruelty since 1996. The affiliate in Costa Rica, in fact, collapsed in May when students revolted.

A review of seven of the company's largest affiliates in the United States, where it remains the fastest-growing program of its kind, found accusations of misconduct or wrongdoing at four of them.

In Utah and South Carolina, state officials have cited the programs and their staff members for violations including child abuse and overcrowding, and have challenged their right to operate.

Here at the company's largest affiliate, Spring Creek Lodge, the program and its staff have been accused of sexual abuse, physical violence and psychological duress.

Wwasps, whose programs house about 2,400 youths in all, some as young as 10, has fought and denied all charges.

The founder, Robert B. Lichfield, 49, called the accusations part of a difficult business. "When you have troubled kids and troubled parents - any school or program that works with troubled kids has complaints," Mr. Lichfield said in a telephone interview. "We're no different."

He attributed the growth of Wwasps to "the breakdown of the family," saying, "When the family is not functioning, society suffers."

Wwasps has flourished and profited by tapping a deep well of woe in American families, interviews and correspondence with more than 200 parents, children, staff members and program officials made clear.

Parents say they turned to the programs in exasperation, or exhaustion, seeking salvation, or in some cases exile, for their sons and daughters. Many say Wwasps was their only alternative after schools, public health systems, counseling and the courts failed them.

Spring Creek Lodge's associate director, Chaffin Pullan, 32, said, "We're crazy enough to say, 'Hey, we'll take your child, and we'll work on their values.' "

But at Spring Creek Lodge, as at several other affiliates, some of that work takes place under conditions and circumstances that some children and parents call physically and psychologically brutal.

Where state regulators have challenged affiliates, government officials often spend years trying to control or sanction the programs' defiance of licensing rules.

South Carolina officials, for example, after four years of fighting, have barred Narvin Lichfield, the brother of the Wwasps' founder, from Carolina Springs Academy, the program that Narvin Lichfield owns in the tiny town of Due West.

In Utah, officials are wrestling with Majestic Ranch, which takes children as young as 10, and where a program director was recently charged with child abuse, as well as with a new program at the flagship affiliate, Cross Creek, for clients over age 18. Neither program has obtained the required operating license, state officials said.

Robert Lichfield, who once said he believed only Satan stood in the way of the programs' goals, said state authorities were merely reacting to pressure from parents or reporters, adding, "If I was in their position, I would be doing the same thing."

Federal authorities are also taking a look at Wwasps. On July 10, Representative George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee, asked the Treasury Department to see whether Wwasps received unusual "tax deductions, tax credits or any special tax treatment."

Affiliates gross perhaps $70 million a year, an estimate based on their enrollment, tuition and fees. A company spokesman, James Wall, said it had always filed its federal income taxes properly. But Mr. Wall said Wwasps, which calls itself a nonprofit corporation in Utah, had never applied for nonprofit, tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service.

The company says it does not directly own or control any of its affiliates, and claims no responsibility for their programs. But Spring Creek Lodge employees, for instance, say the program sends about 40 percent of its revenues to Wwasps.

Amberly Knight, a former director of Dundee Ranch, the affiliate in Costa Rica that collapsed last spring, said in a sworn statement that the company took 75 percent of Dundee Ranch's income, leaving little money to care for its 200 children. The statement also said company officials maintained "offshore bank accounts," in part to "evade U.S. income taxes."

Here in Montana, where 50 other programs for troubled teenagers have opened in addition to Spring Creek Lodge, the state does not regulate private schools, state officials say.

"We have a tremendous number - an inordinate amount - of these programs in western Montana," said Paul Clark, a Montana state legislator who represents the Thompson Falls area and also runs a program for about a dozen wayward teenagers. But the state lacks the capacity or the expertise to regulate them, Mr. Clark said, adding, "We'll get action after there's a crisis."

Many children from the affiliate that collapsed in Costa Rica wound up at Spring Creek Lodge, where the enrollment has doubled to about 500 in two years, and whose parents pay roughly $40,000 a year and up.

That growth has created an unfilled demand for trained teachers and counselors, staff members say. The program is the largest employer in this corner of Montana, where jobs are scarce and wages low.

As the school has grown, so have accusations of abuse.

A log cabin with tiny isolation rooms, called the Hobbit, sits on the edge of Spring Creek Lodge's compound in the woods. Some teenagers, like Alex Ziperovich, 16, say they have spent months in the Hobbit, eating meals of beans and bananas.

"He came out 35 pounds lighter, acting like a zombie," said his mother, Michele Ziperovich, a Seattle lawyer. "When he came back, he was worse, far worse."

In March, the county prosecutor charged a 20-year-old staff member with sexually assaulting two boys in the Hobbit, one 14 and the other 17. He denies the charges.

In June, a girl was beaten by students with a shower-curtain rod; in September 2002 a student bent on escape beat a guard with a vacuum-cleaner pipe and shattered his cheekbone, said Mr. Pullan, Spring Creek Lodge's the associate director, and several staff members.

The September assault followed a similar attack three weeks earlier; Thompson Falls residents say escape attempts are rising.

Mr. Pullan said the academy was curtailing use of the isolation rooms. He called the recent violence against staff members unusual and "horrific." But he is said he was convinced that the academy was helping the vast majority of its children.

He acknowledged that it had been hard to hire and retain skilled local staff members.

One former staff member, Mark Runkle, who worked for two and a half years at the academy, said he became skeptical of some practices, like taking children into the woods at night for psychological tests of will.

"They take kids down to the Vermillion Bridge at night, blindfold them, and push them off into the river; they take them off into the woods, and they come back hurt," Mr. Runkle said. "They claim it's a mind-increaser. I think it breaks the kids down - breaks their will down. Mentally, they do damage. Emotionally, too."

Despite such accounts, parents continue to turn to such programs. The reasons that the parents, children, staff members and program officials cite are the crises common to American family life: fractured marriages, failing schools, frantic two-job couples with no time to devote to children.

The accelerating pace of adolescence and a "zero-tolerance" culture leave teenagers no margin for mistakes, experts say.

Managed care has cut insurance coverage for residential treatment. Reduced federal and state support have hobbled community-based counseling. A new White House study calls state and federal mental health programs a shambles.

Some parents of children damaged by drugs, drinking, depression or divorce say Wwasps programs were their sole alternative.

"We refer to it, my husband and I, as the program of last resort," Debbie Wood said. She and her husband moved from Seattle to Thompson Falls in March to be near their son, Sam, now 17, at Spring Creek Lodge. "I don't know of another program that would fill our needs the way Wwasps has," Mrs. Wood said.

Other parents, too, are satisfied. Deb Granneman, of Saline, Mich., said: "With my son it worked; it's not going to work for every kid. When you send your kid there, you're giving them the last chance to turn their lives around."

Mr. Pullan, along with 37 parents, children and staff members interviewed personally, by phone, or through e-mail, say few Spring Creek Lodge children are delinquents.

Perhaps one-quarter are drug users or drinkers, Mr. Pullan said, while "about 70 percent are not hard core - they cannot communicate at home." Many children say they were sent here after a parent died or departed, or a new stepmother or stepfather rejected them.

A crucial part of the company's effort to shape its success is a requisite series of emotional-growth seminars for parents. "The seminars are the most important thing we have experienced as a family," said Rosemary Hinch, a teacher in Phoenix.

"It was painful; it was hard," Ms. Hinch said. "They teach you to take a really good look at yourself."

But the seminars persuaded Michele Ziperovich to pull her son Alex out. "It was 300 adults screaming and beating on chairs, three days of no sleep, and after that, you'll buy into whatever they say," Ms. Ziperovich said. "They berate you, they scream at you, exhaust you. It's basically mind control."

The question of control also arises among staff members and children who say many teenagers at Spring Creek Lodge are sedated, night and day. "There are girls on so many antidepressants given out by the program that they can't move," said Lauren Meksraitis, 18, of Tampa, Fla., a former Spring Creek client. "They can't get out of bed. They are like dead animals."

A company spokesman said a visiting psychiatrist prescribed the drugs, which are dispensed by a nurse or "other staff members."

But Ms. Meksraitis said: "The Spring Creek staff members responsible for family contacts don't tell your parents the truth. They lie to parents and tell them their kids are going to get fixed."

Her father, Michael Meksraitis, a lawyer, agreed, saying: "They misrepresent the program. They take advantage of parents in a very vulnerable position, who don't know what to do with their kids, who are at the end of their rope."

Robert Lichfield, who dropped out of college and became director of residential programs at a Utah institution for teenagers that was subsequently closed by the state for cruelty to children, says he has learned some lessons from a quarter-century of experience in the business.

"Kids think they ought to be able to do whatever they want," he said. "And if they can't, that's abuse."
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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How about some damn ANSWERS.
« Reply #64 on: December 29, 2004, 10:39:00 AM »
Hey......you asked for more articles.


Boot Camps for Wayward Youths Offer Hope, Help, Hell
 
Rehab: Teen Help oversees seven strict, spartan residential programs that some call lifesavers. Others say they use abuse and brainwashing to mold 'Stepford children.'


The Associated Press/June 13, 1999
By Michelle Ray Ortiz

Ensenada, Mexico -- The 130 residents of the converted beach-side motel are mostly teenage and mostly American, but you wouldn't know it by listening: No shouts, no stereos. Just the rhythmic crash of surf.
Under strict order, the youths at Casa by the Sea go about their day's routine of quiet exercise, study, chores and, when approved, group discussion.

Not long ago, before their arrival, their days were spent in a dark, defiant cycle of drug abuse and other self-destructive behavior, many of the teenagers say.

Those who have been in the program long enough to be allowed to speak to outsiders claim a commitment to turning their lives around, to positive and constructive action. Their families often express joy and relief.

But the methods used to achieve that conversion are criticized by some former participants in the program and by some families who say it involves coercion, brainwashing and, in some cases, physical abuse.


Youth Says Casa Worked for Him
A high wall separates Casa from the coastal highway, and a cliff separates it from the Pacific Ocean. Justin Bell stands atop the cliff and looks out. In nine days, the slender, clean-cut 18-year-old will go home to Midland, Texas, the place where he once struggled with depression.
Many residents are barred from speaking with outsiders, but school officials are allowing Justin to tell his story.

One evening last year, he says, he went out of control in his backyard, ranting and waving a metal pipe at anyone who approached. Psychiatric treatment had failed to prevent the breakdown.

His parents, at wits' end, decided on a drastic alternative. Four days after the episode, strangers walked into Justin's bedroom, woke him and whisked him off into the night.

Hired by his parents, the "escorts" drove Justin to an airport and took him to Jamaica, to a school called Tranquillity Bay, a sister school to Casa by the Sea.

Eight months of living under a strict code of behavior, and in spartan conditions, taught him a lot, Justin says: to value himself and his family, to take control of his future. In three additional months at Casa, he has prepared to return home, go to college and join the everyday world.

He credits the program not just with turning his life around, but with saving it.

"If I hadn't gone into the program I'd be dead right now, because I would have killed myself," Justin says. "To anybody who says the program is inhumane or doesn't work, I say, 'Hey, I'm alive.' That's all I care about."

"Desperate situations need desperate solutions," he adds.

Drastic Approach Used
That could be the motto for the World Wide Assn. of Specialty Schools, a nonprofit group in LaVerkin, Utah, also known as Teen Help. It oversees seven rehabilitation programs, including Casa and Tranquillity Bay, with a total enrollment of 950 youths ages 12 to 18. Their families pay between $1,990 and $3,490 a month.
The program employs a kind of boot-camp method of "behavior modification" that includes spare living conditions, a strict code of conduct and swift punishment for violating that code. The drastic approach has not been accepted by everyone.

Two associated schools, in Cancun, Mexico, and in the Czech Republic, have been shut down by authorities amid allegations of abuse. Some parents, believing their children were treated too harshly and subjected to unsafe and unhealthy living conditions, are denouncing the program.

In May 1996, Mexican authorities conducting an inspection of the Cancun school, called Sunrise Beach, found 41 girls who lacked proper immigration papers. Most were American.

They also found a 3-by-5 1/2-foot isolation room where girls said they were held for rule violations.

Investigators accused the school's directors, Steve and Glenda Roach, of illegal deprivation of liberty and operating a youth shelter without proper permits. The St. George, Utah, couple was ordered to report regularly to authorities. Instead, they fled Mexico.

Czech police found the Roaches last November at Morava Academy, a Teen Help school where employees reported that children were harshly treated--isolated, tied up and kept from using the toilet.

The Roaches were charged in the Czech Republic with cruelty to people in their custody and curtailing students' freedom of movement. They face up to eight years in prison if convicted.

Glenda Roach left the country under a medical waiver. Czech officials say her husband apparently skipped bail and could face an international warrant.

The Roaches could not be located for comment. Karr Farnsworth, president of the World Wide Assn. of Specialty Schools, said the Roaches no longer work with the program.

Farnsworth denied any wrongdoing at either school, saying authorities "overreacted" and chose to listen to children who were trying to "manipulate" their way home rather than to those who were happy.

"We have nothing to hide," he said. "Parents are . . . very much in support."

A Mother Is Shocked by Conditions
Some parents, however, have strong criticism for the program. Donna Burke, a Houston real estate agent, said her two teenage sons were mistreated at Tranquillity Bay's $30,000-a-year program and turned into "Stepford children."
Burke's ex-husband had their 13-year-old son, Scott, taken away because he was smoking marijuana and sneaking out at night in her car, she said. Later, Scott's elder brother, David, also was sent to Tranquillity Bay.

Burke said the Teen Help videotape showed tropical scenery and happy teens. She recalled thinking: "This looks like Club Med."

When a letter from Scott arrived, complaining of harsh treatment and poor living conditions, Burke called Teen Help officials and was told to ignore it. It was common for defiant children to try to manipulate their parents' feelings, they told her.

But Burke eventually went to investigate, and was shocked by her boys' appearance. They were thin, and there was "terror in their faces," she said.

"Somehow the vegetation and the water can camouflage that it's really a prison," she said. "There was a 10-foot fence around. The kids were washing their clothes in a bucket. There were more than 100 kids, and it was totally silent."

She said her sons displayed ringworm scars and chemical burns suffered while mixing cleaning solutions for their janitorial chores. They showed her plywood beds where they slept on soiled mattresses, and they had no soap, no toilet paper, no fans, no hot water.

She fought to have them returned home, and they finally were, in late 1998. Burke's boys have been reluctant to speak about their experience. They are, however, perfectly behaved.

"There's no lip, no back talk, no arguing," she said. "All of those things are nice, but I want normal kids. I don't want my kids doing drugs, but I don't want robots. I got back two strangers."

Burke's ex-husband, Stoney Burke, said he didn't want to discuss his sons' experience.

High-Pressure Sales Tactics
Dace Goulding, Casa by the Sea's director, says Teen Help combines a strict code of behavior and social structure with group sessions where young people learn to look at how they behaved in the past and to plan a different approach for the future.
New arrivals find every minute structured. They wear uniforms and cannot speak out of turn. They earn liberties by improving behavior and attitude, spending on average one year to climb the program's six levels.

Escorting a visiting journalist, Goulding passes down a hallway where girls in green sweatsuits wait for lunch, lined up with their foreheads pressed to the walls. They are lower-level students, so they cannot make eye contact with the opposite sex, he explains.

Minor violations can result in a "self-correction form" where students come up with a way to avoid such mistakes in the future. Serious trouble, such as smoking, running away or a self-inflicted injury, can cause a student to drop a level, pay a fine from parents' weekly allowance or be tested on assigned motivational or educational tapes.

Sometimes kids are sent to "time-out" rooms, where they do nothing, said Farnsworth, the association president. The length of the time-out typically is short--part of a day. But there have been teens who spend a week, with breaks for meals and sleeping, he said.

In the group seminars, teenagers work on issues such as "trust, choices, responsibility, anger and especially self-esteem," according to program literature. Details of the seminars are confidential.

Karen Lile of Clayton, Calif., pulled her daughter out of Tranquillity Bay after attending part of a weekend seminar that Teen Help holds for parents. She was disturbed that the speaker bullied the parents to divulge their "deepest, darkest secret" to strangers, she said.

"They used intimidation, humiliation, verbal abuse, peer pressure and psychologically dangerous techniques to persuade us to accept something we did not want to accept," Lile said.

She also felt she had been pushed to sell the program to other parents, with a credit of one month's tuition for every teen she recruited. "It was about the most heavy-handed, high-pressure sales tactic I've been through," she said. She recruited three teens.

Methods used in the Teen Help seminars are based on those of the "human potential movement" that was widely popular in the 1960s and '70s, said Janice Haaken, a psychology professor at Portland State University. She said they also are similar to those used by the military, mental hospitals and other institutions "aimed at bringing people's behavior under control."

New participants are put in a strict environment under the leadership of an authority figure who "appears to have total control," she said. Rewarded for cooperation, "eventually you begin to concede that control."

For a teen in emotional crisis, such leaders can become very attractive, she said.

But there can be "a high risk of abuse of power," Haaken said, because the program operates with only minimal regulation. The seminars are run by facilitators who are not required to be trained therapists and by teens in the programs' upper levels.

Haaken said the program's reliance on strong authority may not give adolescents enough opportunity to test their own judgment for the real world. Burke, the Houston mother, agreed.

"What does this do to them, to be snatched from their homes at midnight, put in handcuffs as their parents watch, then to have their letters ignored?" she said. "I don't know if my children will ever trust any professional, if they will ever trust me or their dad."

Farnsworth stands by Teen Help. He points to an association survey of families who completed the program between 1996 and 1998, which he says found 95% of parents pleased with the seminars and 84% happy with their child's progress.

No independent studies are available. As critics note, no agency regulates the schools because they do not receive public money and can operate without medical or educational licensing. Casa, like most other Teen Help programs, has no licensed therapists on staff.

Farnsworth said licensed therapists are not used because the seminars are not intended as "therapeutic therapy sessions."

When asked about Casa by the Sea, Mexican educational and health regulators for Baja California state had never heard of it, but the program is educationally accredited in the United States.

Tom Burton, a California lawyer who has filed three lawsuits against Teen Help, said the schools are profiting off parents and deceiving them into thinking they are paying for top-quality therapy. "For that kind of money you could have disciples of Freud," he said.

Farnsworth said the cost is comparable to other teen programs and cheaper than traditional boarding schools.

Colette Netwig, a 17-year-old from Chicago, will be leaving Casa in nine days. The energetic blond gets testy when asked about criticism of the program. She shows off photos of what she once looked like: a dark-haired wannabe gangster smoking pot and drinking every day.

"Man, you can point out everything negative about anything," she says. "But talk to me, and I've changed my life. Talk to me, and I've got a relationship with my parents. I'm headed somewhere in my life."

The program can be rough, she says, but "when you come to the program a little punk, a little smarty know-it-all, you need someone to smack you in the face and say: 'The world does not revolve around you.'

"Other kids sharing lunch with Casa director Goulding nod in agreement. (Other teens in the program were not made available for interviews, and Goulding limited access to Casa's facilities, saying he didn't want to disrupt activities.)

Lile said the program's strict, one-size-fits-all approach can hurt teens who may be less emotionally stable. For her daughter, now 17, it has been "very difficult for her to deal with the fact that we sent her."

"The thing that galls me the most is I sent my child to this program and paid for this to happen," she said. "There are other parents who say: 'Well, if that's what it took to turn my kid around, I don't care.' But that's not how we feel."
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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How about some damn ANSWERS.
« Reply #65 on: December 29, 2004, 10:53:00 AM »
Head Shrinker
Ben Winters gets lost and found again in the world of transformation training.

NewCity Chicago/1999
By Ben Winters
''Know thyself'' - Socrates, circa 400 B.C.

''All I know is that I don't know / All I know is that I don't know nothin' '' - Operation Ivy, 1991

My name is Ben, and I'm a cynic.

I'm skeptical, dismissive and stubbornly rational. As both a Gen X-er and journalist, I've got two strikes against me in the old faith-and-trust department, and I've played my part to the hilt: scoffing at self-actualization, mocking mysticism, pooh-poohing the paranormal, rolling my eyes at the mere mention of souls, spirits, saints and deities.

Thus it was with a rush of devilish glee that I read a bright orange pamphlet, lettered in bold black, from The Humanus Institute [a Lifespring offshoot], a Highland Park-based not-for-profit organization. The pamphlet touted a three-day seminar called the Discovery Course, price tag $395. Listed among the ''promises'' of the Discovery Course are some vague but heady ideas, stuff like ''discover[ing] what is of vital importance... so that the choices in your life are truly aligned with your purposes,'' and ''experience[ing] a profound shift in relating to yourself and others, thus allowing you to pursue your heartfelt commitments with joy and passion.''

Visions of misaligned chakras and inner children danced in my head. My little journalistic imp rubbed his hands together, preparing to wade into a weekend of self-help jargon and touchy-feely schmaltz and do some serious mocking. But in the weeks approaching the course, as I read again the literature suggesting that I'd be soon be able to ''act on my true commitments'' and ''make my life... more successful, loving, vital and fulfilling,'' another voice developed inside me, plaintive and insistent.

''My God,'' this new voice was saying. ''What if it works?''

At 10 am on a Friday, I am among twenty-four untutored aspirants to personal growth being stewarded into a modestly appointed seminar room at the Blackstone, a Michigan Avenue hotel with cranky elevators and Greco-Roman statuary in the lobby. Inside the second floor Blackstone Room, we sit in rows on stiff plastic chairs, listening to loud New Age music, nervously greeting one another and perusing inspirational quotes - posted on easels around the room - from the likes of George Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein.

We are a disparate group, black and white, ranging from twenty-somethings to 50 and beyond. There are school teachers, medical professionals, business people, graduate students and college professors. Roughly a third are from out of town and staying at the Blackstone. There are couples, and those who have come on the recommendation of their husbands or wives; nearly all have been urged to take the course by someone close, a lover or family member or friend. And they're all incredibly regular - no New Age groupies or alien worshippers here. They're like anyone you might see at the grocery store, out for coffee or in church. A few of the attendees have taken the course, or ones like it, before; these are the people who are into it from the beginning, who nod and smile at every word, acolytes to actualization, teacher's pets.

Our teacher is a professional-looking woman in conservative business attire, seated on a high stool at the front of the room, a lavaliere microphone pinned to her chest. Like all of us, she wears a name tag; hers reads ''Marlene,'' and she is our trainer. Behind us, sitting quietly with beatific smiles, is a row of six staff members, volunteers and Discovery Course graduates, who will give us microphones when we want to share and Kleenex when we're ready to cry - and provide Marlene with throat drops and the mugs of boiling hot water she drinks ceaselessly. This is Marlene's ball game, her universe. It is Marlene who will take us, for some forty hours over the next few days, into the world of ''transformational training.''

It is, first and foremost, a world of confrontation: I had expected touchy-feely, but on day one I was spending time with the least touchy, least feely woman I'd ever met. As we stand up to explain what's fucked up in our lives, Marlene tears in, telling us one by one and over and over that our failings are our responsibility, that it's time to stop blaming the world, stop blaming friends and family, stop blaming circumstances. If someone says their father is distant or uncaring, Marlene will say, ''That's your opinion.'' If someone says they're shy, she says that shyness is nothing but a ''racket'' we use to stifle ourselves. When one participant, a college professor who's come in from out of town for this, explains that he's about to be divorced, Marlene says, ''No wonder. You're impossible to be around.''

Later, when the same man explains the trouble he's been having getting the approval of his coworkers, Marlene blasts him for his need for approval. ''But I need their approval to get grant money,'' he says. Marlene rolls her eyes, looks at the rest of us with disbelief, tells him there's a difference between approval and what he thinks of as approval, and that his need for grant money is nothing but a racket that keeps him from getting the job done. Finally the man sits down, baffled, no closer to knowing how to finance his research.

Later in the weekend, a younger woman tells the group that she is deeply in debt, and it's created a stressful situation. After Marlene wheedles the woman into telling us exactly how much is owed, she contends brashly that if she really wanted to pay back the money, she would do it. ''I've already paid back some, though.'' ''God! You are so defensive. Do you know that? Can you all see that? Hello? Hello?'' ''The good news is, we've found the problem,'' Marlene announces to us more than once. ''The bad news is, the problem is you.'' We need to learn to live in the moment, give up all that baggage, stop letting ourselves be weighed down by a lifetime of ''stories,'' all the meanings we've decided to assign to the things that have happened around us. This is the lesson Marlene is determined to make us see, and every time we don't we're interrupted, told to stop being resistant, told to drop the B.S. and just ''get off it.''

I take the microphone after one exercise - in which staff members holler in our faces like New Age drill sergeants, demanding we tell them honestly what we want from life - and complained about being badgered. ''No,'' Marlene explains. ''They were talking, and you were listening. The rest you made up.''

Slowly but surely, as the hours go by, I become immersed in the atmosphere, all the bombardment and intense passion of it, and my guts begin to churn. I feel moved to take the microphone several times. I tell Marlene and everyone present about my occasional struggle with depression, and I'm pushed to find its roots in my childhood. Marlene pinpoints the move my family made when I was four. ''Did you have friends there?'' she asks.

''I don't remember. I was four.''

''You had to give a lot up. It was traumatizing.'' Somehow it makes perfect sense, with Marlene staring unwaveringly back at me, with all those new friends looking up expectantly and excitedly. It rang with truth. I'm not a stranger to my inner self. I've thought about my sadness and fears before, I've sought professional help, I've read philosophy and psychology and religion. There are things I've reconciled myself to living with as part of who I am, but now Marlene was telling me that all I need to do is ''get off it,'' choose to move forward. It seemed like such a marvelous and obvious idea. With this background, it's somewhere in day two I ''realize'' that my constant joking around with people is nothing but a racket, what I use to keep from revealing my true self. My instinct to help other people, to do them favors, is nothing but another racket, and it's sabotaging my relationships.

I stand there choking on tears of realization, the microphone dangling limply in my hand while Marlene explains to the group: ''See? There's energy there.'' She is never wrong. She does not brook discussion: Her insights are truth. If people challenge one of her observations about their personalities - which, remember, she's only known for a day - they are told they're being resistant, not allowing themselves to change. As part of my ''homework'' on Friday night, I call an ex-girlfriend and assure her that I take 100 percent responsibility for what happened between us. She has no idea what I'm talking about and probably thinks I'm drunk. And I'm still up in the wee hours of Saturday morning, completing my homework, listing people I use my rackets on, considering how I ''let my effectiveness break down in the areas of greatest importance.''

My cynical journalistic imp has taken a powder.

The program protocol is brutal, painful and awkward, but it is also transfixing: Marlene's bluntness is fascinating, even intoxicating. By stepping on our emotional toes, she proves herself confident and charismatic, a woman unafraid to step outside the bounds of the acceptable, showing us how honest a life can really be. It's almost as if we come to love her. Those hugs I'd been anticipating materialize with fervor on the end of day two. Sometime on day three, one course member stands to praise Marlene: ''I think you're incredible. I'm ready to pack my bags and follow you around like Jesus.'' ''You're right,'' says Marlene. ''I am great.''

''I was whole and complete as I was, and now I could accept the whole truth about myself... I found enlightenment, truth and true self all at once.'' - Werner Erhard

It is hard to explain what happened to me in there; impossible to describe something I don't think I'll ever totally understand. It was a combination of influences, a perfect mixture of charismatic leader, waves of intense peer pressure and what amounted to three-day isolation from the world outside the group. Marlene told us that there are miracles every day, and this was hers: a magic act, alchemy, transformation. I disappeared, I folded, I became as susceptible as I've ever been, and Marlene and Humanus were there, for thirty-five hours they were there, ready to fill in the newly-created gaping holes in my understanding of self and world with their vision, their ideology.

This process is known as ''transformational training'' or ''large group awareness training,'' a concept that dates back to 1971, when Werner Erhard led the first Erhard Seminar Training (aka est) event in San Francisco, kick-starting the ''human potential movement.'' Erhard (a former used-car salesman who left behind a family - and the name John Rosenberg - in Philadelphia when he headed west for guru-dom) was influenced by everything from Zen Buddhism to Sigmund Freud to the Scientologists, who, he once claimed, tried to kill him.

Like Humanus now, est then promised clients that their limitations and problems were all in their minds, and a psychological rewiring, for a nominal fee, was all that was required to be set free. Since its seventies heyday, est has gone through several transformations of its own. In the early eighties, it was reorganized into a company called Landmark, and some of the more notorious aspects of the program (est had been criticized for not allowing participants to communicate or go to the bathroom) were eliminated. In 1991, under a cloud of fraud allegations, and after a messy public divorce, Erhard left the country, but not before selling Landmark Education Corporation to a consortium of employees, including his brother, Harry Rosenberg.

According to a 1992 London Times article, there are now three main tributaries of est's mighty transformational river: The Landmark Forum, running what's been described as a ''kinder, gentler'' version of est; Transformational Technologies, Inc., which specializes in corporate seminars; and ''a clutch of non-profit-making humanitarian agencies - formally independent but based on Erhard's theories.''

Executive Director James Lynch contends that Humanus ''has no affiliation with any other seminar company,'' despite the similarities in content and delivery. He also points out what makes Humanus unique: They stress ''experiential'' work over straight lecturing, and, he says, ''our commitment is to creating leadership in community service.'' Humanus grads, Lynch explains, are encouraged to sign up for a variety of public service projects, ranging from litter clean-ups to making sandwiches for the homeless.

Another distinguishing mark is that Humanus is a registered non-profit; however, their schedule of fees is similar to that of Landmark, a for-profit company that pulls in upwards of $45 million a year. Lynch was reluctant to provide specific numbers, but says their earnings are spent on his own salary and that of two other staffers (one establishing a branch office in Florida), various administrative costs, and the costs of the seminars, such as renting space and paying the trainers.

All this history I discover later, after the weekend is over, when, reeling from the emotional tides of it all, I sit down to figure out what the hell went on in there: I've narrowed it down to either a beautiful, powerful but disturbing experience, or a total mindfuck. Either way, I'm a wreck: I'm disjointed, upset, excited, confused, angry, teetering on the verge of tears. I have a vague sense of something momentous but nonspecific having occurred in my psyche somewhere, an elusive epiphany that won't reveal itself and feels untrustworthy. Magnets tug at my moral compass; I feel the rug of a lifetime of rational consideration pulled out from under me.

Reading other accounts of weekends like this, led by other ''transformational training'' companies - including Landmark Forum - I begin to find startling similarities. All the drill sergeanting, the unceasing intensity (during our one meal break each day, we were divided into small groups, with a ''team leader'' assigned to make sure we talked about the course), the ''homework'' we were given after each day's twelve-hour class to keep our minds on the task at hand. One description of a Landmark Forum course paralleled my experience down to the clothes the trainer was wearing and the small bowl of flowers placed on the front table.

Some of the reports are disturbing, indeed. A 1992 news item from the Washington Post tells of Stephanie Ney, a woman from Silver Spring, Maryland, who sued Landmark in 1992 after suffering a nervous breakdown in her seminar. And the London Times writes about ''senior managers [who] have lost their jobs, experienced nervous breakdowns or been unable to continue with personal relationships after taking the course.'' I check into Internet chat rooms where the enthusiastically transformed get into it with skeptics. ''I said I love you to my mother for the first time in years,'' says one Forum enthusiast. Decriers say it's a bunch of brainwashing, a money-making scam, ''more of a pastiche of ideas than an actual system.'' There's also a damning 1986 report from the American Psychiatric Association, and a snippet from The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, asserting that the claims of huge success made by transformational programs can be correlated not to the effectiveness of the programs, but to the type of people who would choose to go into them in the first place. I encounter the concept of ''loaded language'' - like Humanus' phrases ''speak yourself'' and ''get off it'' - common sense ideas that, simply rephrased and obsessively repeated, take on an irresistible, shamanistic quality. My skeptical imp, lifeless upon my shoulder, begins to stir.

Underlying it all - est, the Forum, and now Humanus, Chicago's homegrown offshoot of the transformational training movement - is a basic philosophical notion, which dates back not to Werner Erhard but to Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre. Reality is not reality, the line goes, but a construct. Absolute freedom is available, but only if you assume total freedom over your life, admit that all meaning is meaning that you invent and then choose to make happy meanings. It is a seductive idea, and one that is made tremendously easy to accept by the whole atmosphere of the Discovery Course. Lifted out of context, separated from any discussion of its philosophical evolution and influences, presented not scientifically but religiously, as a revealed truth, and in that intensely charged emotional atmosphere - it is, after all, much easier to have a ''breakthrough'' when you're surrounded by other people who are very openly and obviously having ''breakthroughs'' - this very specific, historically-evolved bit of ideology takes on the appearance of absolute truth: Not a, but the, way to achieve your potential. ''This is not The Truth, not The Way,'' Marlene tells us, trying to hammer in the idea that we need - like Nietzsche - to get beyond right and wrong, but the implication of the whole thing is clear. If you know what's good for you, you'll take this advice to heart. You'll ''get off it.''

Dr. Robert Lipgar, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago who specializes in group therapy, characterizes transformational training as ''an exploitative caricature of depth psychology, a bringing together of some of the techniques that have been used responsibly elsewhere.'' Lipgar won't say that transformational training doesn't work, only that people should think carefully, and get as much information as they can, before entering. ''When consumers do something like that, they ought to exercise as much thought as possible. I'm shy and conservative about offering opinions on what people should spend their money on, but it's very much buyer beware.

''I'm deeply concerned that it does amount to a kind of pyramid scheme that exploits vulnerability,'' Lipgar says. It's buyer beware because, like psychology or any other form of ''coursework'' involving one's inner life, transformational training can bring up some painful stuff: In fact, it's supposed to. But unlike psychology - or psychiatry, or dentistry for that matter - training courses are entirely unregulated by any system of licensing or peer review. Lipgar says that for forty years transformational groups have been resistant to doing any sort of empirical studies of their graduates. I ask Lynch if he's aware of any studies of participants in courses like these, proving their efficacy. ''I don't have the source,'' he says, ''But one of the transformational groups conducted a study, five years [after their program] - 88 percent of the people said it was one of the top three life events, right up there with marriage and having children. I know another transformational company did it. I don't know who did the research for them.''

On Monday night, after twenty-four hours back in the real world, the Discovery Course participants are reassembled at the hotel for our Advanced Living Interviews. Sitting one on one with Humanus volunteers, we discuss the commitments to authentic living we've made over the last few days and we share with our interlocutor how our first day as a new person went down. Last, but certainly not least, we are firmly encouraged to sign up for the next level of the Humanus Curriculum, the five-day Advanced Living Seminar that begins in ten days. We've been warned that if we don't continue with the program, all might be for naught.

''We've opened up a hole for you, through which you can see a real life for yourself. But you know what happens when a cut opens on your body? It closes back up again,'' Marlene says. Of course, there are plenty of openings that never close, but speaking of opened windows, drawn curtains, or holes punched in walls wouldn't go too far towards getting our $200 down-payment for Humanus' level two.

I explain to my interviewer that I will be out of town that weekend, visiting friends in Los Angeles. I've made plans. ''Change them,'' comes the answer. All around me my fellow Discovery students are shuffling plans, reorganizing lives and getting out checkbooks. The Advanced Living Seminar costs $995 - although if we sign up right now, it's $100 off. This discount, Marlene had explained to us, has to do with postage costs and so forth. I don't sign up for Advanced Living, though most of my fellow participants do, and I skip out on the remaining parts of Discovery: I don't get up at 6:20 the next morning, as I had promised, and make the first of three scheduled phone calls to my Team Leader to discuss my commitments. I don't return on Tuesday night with my friends and family, where they would - I am told later by fellow participants - have been separated from me, gotten a taste of the Humanus program, and been encouraged to sign up for the Discovery Course.

Bottom line, Humanus wanted me to get out of my head, but I like my head: It's where I keep all my stuff. Sure, it's cluttered with received ideas and emotional wiring, the dictates of society and my own fears, but also my ideas, my opinions, my judgments and wariness. You can say that a guy who was emotionally abused or abandoned by his parents, and suffers as a result, is simply ''making up a story,'' being a ''meaning-making machine,'' but what happened is still true. Just as it's true that my parents, thank the Lord, are upstanding, moral people who taught me to think, to develop my opinions and stick by them, and, yes, even to be skeptical, skeptical of easy answers and quick fixes - and anyone that asks you for money when you're crying. As much as I'd love to be self-actualized, fulfilled, complete, free - or whatever you want to call it - as much I'd love to discover my ''humanness,'' I'm not continuing with the Humanus Program. I won't be paying $995 for the Advanced Living Seminar nor moving on the Leading Edge and the Leadership Initiative. I'm just going to muddle along with my slightly battered sense of what's real and what isn't, keep feeding my skeptical imp, and try to find happiness the hard way.
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #66 on: December 29, 2004, 10:54:00 AM »
You missunderstood me , i meant more negative stuff on the seminars that you call brainwashing and has seemed to help so many people including perigaud who is living testimony that something they are doing works and she sounds like a very intelligent person, not someone brianwashed.So where are more aticles about the bad horrible seminars. I've read all the articles you have posted in the past, no need to take up your time with putting them here again.Oh and by the way june 13 1999, that is new?? sept.2003, that is new?So this is a written testimony about the seminars that was written, but it is still the only thing i have seen. The one that cares.
Keep trying though maybe you will find an interesting article from the 70's or 80's.
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« Reply #67 on: December 29, 2004, 11:06:00 AM »
Your reply really means nothing as you didn't even have enough time to READ the articles.  They were just posted.

If you DID read them, you would see that they ARE negative.  2003 you consider to be old??  OK, guess we're going to have to disagree there too.

how 'bout this?:

Quote
The men behind Teen Help
Teen Help was started by Lichfield, 45, a southern Utah businessman who lives on an estate in the spectacular canyon country near St. George. The estate features private trout ponds and a gymnasium.

Lichfield got his start in behavior modification two decades ago when he worked at Provo Canyon School in Provo, Utah. Provo Canyon is a strict punishment-and-rewards program for kids having problems getting along with their parents.

In the late 1980s, Lichfield attended encounter-group sessions organized by David Gilcrease. Gilcrease had been a trainer from 1974 to 1981 for LifeSpring, a company that perfected a form of encounter sessions called "large group awareness training."


TIMEOUT ROOMS
Girls at Cross Creek Manor who don't cooperate spend time in these
isolation rooms. Cross Creek is licensed by the state as a residential
treatment center and has therapists on staff.
_________________________________________________________

 
Some psychologists call it "coercive persuasion." In December 1990, Lichfield incorporated a residential treatment center called Cross Creek Manor in La Verkin. He obtained a Utah state license to run it.

In 1993 Lichfield contracted to run Brightway Adolescent Hospital in nearby St. George. It became the receiving center for youths entering the Teen Help network.

About the same time, Lichfield developed the idea of placing teens in a compound in Western Samoa.

Teen Help's first foreign venture was Paradise Cove in the Pacific island nation. Kids would be taken from their homes by an escort service, sometimes by one run by Lichfield's brother, Narvin.


TEEN HELP HEADQUARTERS
The World Wide Association of Specialty Programs, a Teen Help umbrella
group, is headquartered in this modest building in La Verkin, Utah.
_________________________________________________________

 
The teens would be sent to Brightway for a quick psychological assessment, then put on a plane to the South Pacific.

Lichfield hired Gilcrease to create the behavior modification programs needed to all but guarantee parents changes in their defiant teens.

Gilcrease crafted a series of seminars called TASKS (Teen Accountability, Self-esteem, Keys to Success). He also created companion seminars for parents.

Some participants say they include all-powerful "facilitators" who use peer pressure, confessions, sleep deprivation, fear, anger, loneliness and self-criticism as tools to modify behavior. Other participants say the sessions were greatly revealing.

Lichfield, Gilcrease and Facer acknowledge that they have little use for formal psychology.

"We don't deal with emotional disorders," Gilcrease said. "We are not psychologists. We do not deal in that realm. I don't need to detect emotional disorders when I'm talking about the value of keeping your word."

"I think I'm talented working with youth, but I don't have a college degree in that area," Lichfield told Dateline NBC. "... I personally don't believe it's necessary."

Facer said training in adolescent psychology isn't necessary.

"Automakers learned a long time ago that if the right system is engineered, everyone who works on the assembly line is not required to be an engineer themselves," he said. "These (Teen Help) programs have been carefully engineered by many professionals in the field, who not only have extensive educational backgrounds but also have scores of years of experience." ... The programs are continually monitored on a daily basis to insure that the designed outline is being followed."

Teen Help's corporate structure changed in 1997 when the organization formed a series of limited liability companies and limited partnerships. Kay earlier this year said that Lichfield remains the controlling power. But Lichfield said, "I no longer own, control or direct any of the programs."

Facer said he and Lichfield "only consult with the directors of the programs at their request."

and this:

Quote
Emotional nightmare
Video of sobbing son prompts dad to yank
him from Montana youth camp

By Lou Kilzer
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer


There's no doubt Eric Stone had a problem. Grades. "I was doing very crappy in school," concedes Eric, 16, who spent 41/2 months in Teen Help, the Utah-based network of behavior modification camps for teens.

His father, Craig Stone, said he wasn't all that concerned. Eric, who lived with his father north of Seattle, didn't drink, do drugs or run with outlaws. The poor grades were just a phase, Craig Stone thought.


 
That's one side of the story. But as in many other cases involving Teen Help, Eric's other parent saw things differently.

Vickie, Craig Stone's ex-wife, declined to discuss her son's case in detail with the Denver Rocky Mountain News. But her actions indicate that she was concerned about her son and arranged to send him to Teen Help. Craig Stone says that Eric often visited his mother on weekends. So when Eric did not return home one Sunday night in September after a visit with Vickie, Craig Stone says he was not overly concerned. Eric would be home the next morning.

But by Monday afternoon, Craig Stone said he "kind of felt something was up."

Soon Craig Stone's brother called. Vickie, the brother said, had just told him she had sent Eric to a boarding school.

"It was devastating for me," Craig Stone said. "I tried calling her. She wouldn't take my calls. She just sent me a letter stating that Eric's in a new school and she would tell me where he was if I agreed to sign a contract and leave him there."

Craig Stone wouldn't agree. But he said he "played it like a sucker and got as much information as I could."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig Stone's sister hit the Internet trying to piece together what might have happened.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Craig Stone's sister hit the Internet trying to piece together what might have happened. After three months of detective work, they thought the most likely spot that Vickie had taken Eric was a place called Spring Creek Lodge near Thompson Falls, Mont. If so, it would mean that Eric was in the care of Teen Help.

"The information we were digging up was scaring us because we were afraid of them transferring Eric to Samoa or Jamaica," Craig Stone said.

"So I kept quiet until I was absolutely sure."

Finally, he called Spring Creek director Cameron Pullan. Yes, Pullan said, Eric was there. He said he thought that Craig Stone had known it all along.

Because Craig Stone had joint custody with Vickie, Pullan said, Craig Stone must sign the contract authorizing Eric's stay at Spring Creek Lodge. Craig Stone said no.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DAY 1


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Desperate measures
'It saved his life'

Emotional nightmare

The series

Share your thoughts


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
A court hearing to resolve the parents' dispute over Teen Help was set. Then two things happened to make Craig Stone decide to take charge.

In an effort to convince Craig Stone that Spring Creek Lodge was right for Eric, the Teen Help staff there videotaped the interview with Eric included in this article.

The video shocked Craig Stone. It showed a sobbing, distraught Eric saying how much he missed his home and how much he knew he must remain in Montana. Craig Stone became even more alarmed when he called Spring Creek and learned that Eric was on suicide watch.

He gathered his brother, sister and a friend who is a former pro football lineman. The four headed to Thompson Falls.

Craig Stone went to the sheriff's office and showed a deputy the custody papers. The deputy called the compound.

"If Eric wants to come home, you let him go," Craig Stone said the deputy warned Pullan. The four adults drove to Spring Creek Lodge, where Pullan met them.

"All of a sudden, Eric comes running out of nowhere, crying his head off," Craig Stone said.

Eric flew into his arms. "He was overwhelmed," his father said. "He couldn't believe it was happening."

Many kids report positive experiences in Teen Help, but Eric isn't one of them. He didn't like it from the day he arrived, and he said it only got worse.

When he started out on Level 1 -- the lowest rung on the Teen Help ladder -- he said a "buddy came everywhere with me. Took showers with me. Came with me when I had to go to the bathroom."

The only way to shake the buddy was to take and pass Teen Help's rugged group encounter seminars. To Eric, the sessions were worse than staying on Level 1, although they lasted only three days each.

"They just rip you with feedback," he said. "They tell you you're crap. They try to bring you up in more of their beliefs. ... They try to get you to be like a kid that doesn't talk back, that doesn't question authority, that just goes along with whatever happens."

Eric said he faked his way through the first two seminars but lacked the emotional defenses to withstand the third seminar, called "Accountability."

"It's known to make you programmed," he said. " ... You totally will into the program. You don't see anything wrong with it. You don't have anything against it." An hour into Accountability, Eric said he refused to go on. He said that's when the staff and other students turned on him.

"Everybody was getting down on me because I chose out of the third seminar," Eric recalls. "I knew it wasn't for me."

Soon, Craig Stone said he was told, his son was on suicide watch.

Unknown to Eric, Craig Stone was trying behind the scenes to get him out.

Now living again with his father, Eric is readjusting to life, but it's a struggle.

"In school, he's doing great," his father says, but then he hesitates. "It's up and down," Craig Stone says.

"He's angry. Still angry. Sparks fly between us occasionally. "There's a lot of resentment and hard, unanswered feelings. We both need to get some counseling to get over this whole thing."

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« Reply #69 on: December 29, 2004, 11:17:00 AM »
Quote
"I think I'm talented working with youth, but I don't have a college degree in that area," Lichfield told Dateline NBC. "... I personally don't believe it's necessary."

Facer said training in adolescent psychology isn't necessary.

"Automakers learned a long time ago that if the right system is engineered, everyone who works on the assembly line is not required to be an engineer themselves," he said. "These (Teen Help) programs have been carefully engineered by many professionals in the field, who not only have extensive educational backgrounds but also have scores of years of experience." ... The programs are continually monitored on a daily basis to insure that the designed outline is being followed."


Does anyone else find it a bit disturbing to have this guy compare working with troubled teens to an auto assembly line?????

Formal education to work with troubled kids???  Why???   :roll:  :roll:
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« Reply #70 on: December 29, 2004, 12:10:00 PM »
Quote
On 2004-12-29 08:17:00, Anonymous wrote:

"
Quote
"I think I'm talented working with youth, but I don't have a college degree in that area," Lichfield told Dateline NBC. "... I personally don't believe it's necessary."



Facer said training in adolescent psychology isn't necessary.



"Automakers learned a long time ago that if the right system is engineered, everyone who works on the assembly line is not required to be an engineer themselves," he said. "These (Teen Help) programs have been carefully engineered by many professionals in the field, who not only have extensive educational backgrounds but also have scores of years of experience." ... The programs are continually monitored on a daily basis to insure that the designed outline is being followed."



Does anyone else find it a bit disturbing to have this guy compare working with troubled teens to an auto assembly line?????



Formal education to work with troubled kids???  Why???   :roll:  :roll:

"


Lichfield compares it to working in a factory because that is what the program does, in a way. If the program was really about helping, you'd hear a lot more about getting to know the kid, finding out what that one specific child REALLY needs, etc. But that is NOT what WWASP does. WWASP creates a product. Like in a factory, kids go through a "production line" every day, until they are designed (or re-wired, as Jay Kay prefers to call it) into the Final Product: an obedient, Program-worshipping, cult-speaking, zombie.
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« Reply #71 on: December 29, 2004, 12:49:00 PM »
http://www.askquestions.org/details.php?id=209

...The National Mental Health Association (NMHA) strongly condemns teen ?boot camp? drug rehabilitation and coercive behavior modification programs citing research showing that interventions of this kind do not work and are not cost effective. The NMHA fact sheet is online.

And yet a parent seeking help for a troubled teenager may run across dozens of for-profit organizations offering exactly this kind of treatment regimen at costs ranging from $2,000 to $8,000 per month. Using aggressive and sometimes deceptive sales practices, these therapeutic boarding schools (TBS), wilderness programs, and residential treatment centers (RTC) are a booming industry. One site, NoSpank.net, collects news articles about the ?teen treatment industry? chronicling years of problems within these facilities.

Two specific programs have been the target of many complaints, and both of them are run by prominent political contributors. The Worldwide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) is an affiliated group of private residental treatment centers and schools for kids with behavior problems. The Drug Free American Foundation (DFAF) has different financial and operational affiliations with several private drug treatment centers including Teen Challenge, Growing Together, and Kids Helping Kids. Families have filed lawsuits against both DFAF and WWASPS alleging abuse of various kinds. Both use a religious "tough love" approach to treatment. Government agencies in Costa Rica, Mexico and the Czech Republic have shut down WWASPS programs, and in 2003, Congressman George Miller of California asked the Department of Justice to investigate a growing number of allegations against WWASPS. So far, the DOJ has taken no action...
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Offline Antigen

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« Reply #72 on: December 29, 2004, 01:37:00 PM »
Quote
On 2004-12-29 05:05:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I don't really need to go into why i think she was unstable, because i agree with a few posts back, that she was not ready to open up and address her shit, which everyone does have a little of,

In other words, she rejected the philosophy and methods, therefore she must be crazy.

Quote
She was intimidated by the leader and thus shut down more.

Was the leader acting in an intimidating fashion? Based on her description, I'd say so. It's normal, healthy and sane to not allow strangers to intimidate you.

Quote
They are most likely very conservative people and most likley have that middle of amereica attitude which has our evil tyrant running our country.

Wow! Now that's a stretch! Especially in light of all the hefty political contributions made by WWASP principals to the Rebugnacan party.

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No one is going to tell this ladie that she might have a few problems to deal with and yes she also seemed to feel she was there more for her child than for herself.

No shit, shirlock! She was, after all, attending a seminar required by an organization who she had paid to provide therapy to HER DAUGHTER! What else was she supposed to think? I don't take too kindly to strangers speculating on what they think might be my problems either. In fact, I don't tolerate it.

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She took offense to someone trying to get through to her and her husband. Do you have at least one more article like this? I don;t think so. This is the only time that anything close to this was written.

No it's not. There are plenty of similar comments by parents and others in these forums and others. And there are plenty of published news articles along the same lines. None so detailed as this, though. And please note that WWASP did, indeed, sue to try to have this material removed from the public. Shit, they even tried to sue a journalist for publishing critical news about them. That's why you don't see a lot of this stuff.

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One person out of thousands, oh i'm sorry 2, her husband also.

I took a boy from one program to another and he had been in the program 7 months and had just screwed and now was being transfered,I had also been his escort the 7months before and he was one of the kids i was able to bond with. so i knew we were going to have a good time and probbably the best 20 hours he has had in 7 months, because yes it is a very strict at these programs. Well he told me that sure it was hard, but there were allot of poeple there who cared and yea he said there were some that he felt did not care, mostly the new staff that was hired.

Sure, he's a kid and he couldn't escape. It's no secret that large group influence techniques are effective. Both CIA and FBI have published studies showing exactly how it works. But is it beneficial to the subject? Not usually. And, in many cases, it can be extremely harmful.

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Anyway his favorite part of the program was the seminars and he felt that they helped him more thatn anything else in the program. I only hope he really does it now and gets his but home as soon as possible. But again, you won't believe me because i am not proof. The one that cares"


No, you are proof! And, btw, thanks for posting here. You have no idea how hard it is to try and explain this stuff to people. You have been very helpful by providing a living example of what we're talking about.

See, the lady who wrote that article was an adult and well centered enough to take control and get herself out of that situation when she felt threatened. When I was a kid, just like so many kids in programs today, I couldn't do that. I just had to suck it up for two long years.

Now, some people, like you, just thrive on all this. They love the simplisity of living life by Program dogma. No problem at all w/ the people you hurt and cause to be hurt. You just call them liars and lunatics and feel just dandy about everything you do. But some of us are just not blessed with gift of self delusion like you are.

A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace.
http://memory.loc.gov/const/fed/fed_46.html' target='_new'>James Madison, The Federalist No. 46

« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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Offline Anonymous

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How about some damn ANSWERS.
« Reply #73 on: December 29, 2004, 01:49:00 PM »
Antigen ~
Well Put.

Poster of the articals~
I hadn't seen them before and am glad to have had the oppratunity.
Thanks.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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How about some damn ANSWERS.
« Reply #74 on: December 29, 2004, 01:54:00 PM »
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On 2004-12-29 07:54:00, Anonymous wrote:

"You missunderstood me , i meant more negative stuff on the seminars that you call brainwashing and has seemed to help so many people including perigaud who is living testimony that something they are doing works and she sounds like a very intelligent person, not someone brianwashed.So where are more aticles about the bad horrible seminars. I've read all the articles you have posted in the past, no need to take up your time with putting them here again.Oh and by the way june 13 1999, that is new?? sept.2003, that is new?So this is a written testimony about the seminars that was written, but it is still the only thing i have seen. The one that cares.

Keep trying though maybe you will find an interesting article from the 70's or 80's."


"She sounds like a very intelligent person, not someone brainwashed."

You've just demonstrated a very fundamental fallacy---thinking that someone has to be stupid to be susceptible to cult-type brainwashing, or that someone who is acting from brainwashing will *sound* stupid.

It's not actually true.

Every delusional person you'll ever meet has a variety of "brainwashing" that's happened on their brain----in their cases, they hold a particular set of irrational beliefs they've developed themselves under the influence of something not working right (for whatever reason) in their brain.  Whether someone is delusional has bupkis to do with their intelligence.  In fact, some mental illnesses that tend to be accompanied by delusions also tend to be accompanied by *high* intelligence.  And if you talk to someone delusional about things that are not related to their delusions, they may be able to talk and function quite rationally and intelligently in those other areas.  Since mentally ill people's individual delusions tend to be unique, in their specifics, to each single person, it's easier for other people to tell that the irrational belief is delusion, and not truth.

There are thousands of mutually contradictory religions all over the world.  The overwhelming majority of them, if not all of them, are just as factually inaccurate and irrational as the delusion of any psychotic you could name.  But because it's not useful to define most of the human race as crazy, we let the term "delusion" cover the unique false and irrational beliefs of mentally ill people and the term "religion" cover the false and irrational beliefs shared by large groups of psychologically normal people.

Any way you slice it, more than half the human race holds one of these large-group false and irrational beliefs (even if you postulate that *one* religion---yours for instance---is True), and if you correlate intelligence distribution with belief across the world, intelligence is no barrier to one's susceptibility.

If you look at the Heaven's Gate cult and the web development work they did for a living, intelligence did not protect the followers of the charismatic Do and Ti from falling into a set of false, irrational beliefs that killed them.

Whether it is "false" to believe that WWASPS program is safe and effective is up for debate.

Whether it is *irrational* or not is absolutely unquestionable.  It is *not* irrational to believe it is *possible* that in a statistical sense WWASPS could be a safe and effective program whose benefits on its patient population outweigh its risks---but it is *only* not irrational to believe it while one admits that there is absolutely zero reliable evidence that this is so.

It is *absolutely* irrational to believe that WWASPS *is* a safe and effective program whose benefits to its patient population outweigh its risks.  The reason it's irrational is that no *quality* scientific longitudinal studies have been done on the population treated with WWASPS programs to quantify the various outcomes' statistical likelihood and compare it to alternately-treated and untreated controls.

It is absolutely rational to be *highly* skeptical of WWASPS safety and effectiveness because of the facilities' management and owners being both inclined towards efforts to confuse the organizational structure of WWASPS, the ownership, and where the money goes *and* apparently inclined towards attempts to frustrate any attempt by researchers from academia to actually conduct rigorous scientific studies of the safety and effectiveness of its treatments.

Perigaud has an irrational faith in the safety and effectiveness of WWASPS treatment.

Now, whether or not that irrational faith is the result of brainwashing or is just one of the many irrational beliefs that psychologically normal people develop all the time----from a belief in astrology to a belief that a 41 year old merchant who suddenly wanders off into a cave and claims an angel is talking to him is *sane* when he tells you to make war on your neighbors because you're destined to take over the world to a belief that it's a good idea to draw to an inside straight----who the hell knows?

But given that the alleged brainwashing facility had physical control of Perigaud for months in a strict authoritarian environment, brainwashing is a reasonably safe bet.

The problem here is that you're expecting someone "brainwashed" to be a stupefied zombie with little red and white spinning spirals instead of an iris and pupil in her eyes, and to be mouthing badly scripted lines in a monotone with a slack, unanimated facial expression.  Or, alternately, to look like the "robot" characters as played by the actresses in the movie, "Stepford Wives."

The only difference between a genuine new convert to the rather odd new church down the road, a gambling addict, and a victim of brainwashing is that the brainwashing victim aquired *her* irrational beliefs from the deliberate, planned actions of people who had physical control of her for a period of time ranging anywhere from about three days to years or even decades, and who consciously used psychological techniques and/or psychotropic drugs to develop the irrational beliefs in the target *whether or not the people doing the techniques themselves believed the information to be irrational or not*.

Brainwashing is actually a lot more common and a lot more effective than most people believe it to be, most people are highly susceptible to it, susceptibility has nothing to do with intelligence, and it's a risk *anywhere* there is physical, authoritarian control of human beings.

Not that authoritarian control is always bad, just that anyone weilding that control has a grave responsibility to ensure that they stringently test and evaluate the rationality of any ideas they push on or towards the people in their control.  And, of course, people are wise to look *very* carefully before they leap any time they're in a position where they're going to be placing themselves in the physical control of someone else.

Brainwashing isn't rare or hollywood-dramatic.  On the contrary, it's so commonplace and effective that you probably encounter people under *some* residual effect of *somebody's* brainwashing at least half a dozen times a day.

Obviously, the more heavy-handed the manipulation of the brainwashing victim's psyche is, and the more irrational beliefs that are imparted, and the more those beliefs affect major life activities, the more risk there is of the victim suffering adverse effects and the greater the impact of any adverse effects on his or her life.

Ginger (Antigen) is actually a pretty good example of a brainwashing victim in recovery (pardon the jargon--but anything else didn't seem to fit---an please forgive me for talking about you as if you were a lab rat for a minute---I like you, but you make a really good example).  She questions *everything*---sometimes even to the point of over-skepticism.  Having had irrational beliefs foisted on her against her will and having had to fight her way free of them at extreme personal trauma and cost to her relationships, she's reluctant to believe in anything and is not only skeptical of things that would send up red flags in people without her personal experiences, she's skeptical in the face of what most scientists would rationally consider reasonable evidence---particularly on the subject of anything touching on psychology or psychiatry.  She's *understandably* very gunshy on those subjects and probably almost always will be.

Other good examples are people who have left very authoritarian religions (this is observed across a wide variety of mutually contradictory religions, so just assume we're talking about some authoritarian religion *you* believe is false) they were raised in---they're frequently permanently *far* more skeptical about anything involving anyone's religion than people are who were raised with a religion they're not too attached to by parents who weren't very religious.

My point is that someone who has been brainwashed is usually affected all their lives, based on how broad spectrum and pervasive and heavy-handed the brainwashing was, even when they're in recovery.  My other point is that you see people who have been brainwashed all the time---so often that you accept it as a commonplace and don't really think of it as brainwashing.

Notice that I'm not necessarily condemning the implanting of rational, functional beliefs---provided that the lightest hand possible is used in the doing.  Generally, the involuntary commitment standards used for adults in this country strike a nice balance on the tough ethical issues involved.  The standards used for involuntary residential commitment of minors are generally so bereft of anything even remotely resembling an ethic as to be back in the dark ages of psychology when Freud induced a phobia in a small child just to see if he could.

Timoclea
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