Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

I have to believe that most of you who are cheering the E-bay ad regarding Sembler's pump don't realize he got it because he's had prostate cancer.  If the documents published on the ISAC site are true, then the medical device was taken from his trash, and his very private medical information has been broacast on the internet.

Am I wrong that you don't know this? I haven't been paying close attention to the threads, but it seems like most are as in the dark about that as I was.

I could be happy seeing Sembler in jail, and it ticks me off royally that he's being routinely rewarded for his cruelty.  Still, having had my own dignity robbed from me by Straight, I can't celebrate when someone else's is taken from them. Even Sembler.  

Understandably, some may not be able to feel any compassion for our embassador to Italy.  Fair enough.  But do any of you really think, as the ISAC site said, that this is going to result in the story of Straight being told?  They're not going to allow Richard to tell WHY he's been stalking the Semblers. They're just going to ask him factual questions about what he's done to them.  Based on those answers, he may or may not lose the suit.  When it comes to this case, information about Straight is going to be beside the point.

This is going to do nothing to harm the Semblers, and everything to destroy the credibility of the people involved in the case.  Richard, what were you thinking?

I was a kid in Straight, but Snowhite's comments led me to post this. I feel for her, and I hope her son has forgiven her.  

My perspective on Straight is slightly different than many, because though Straight changed my life drastically and forever, I survived and got stronger. My mother never got over it.

She saw the fact that I'd done some drugs as a personal failure on her part, and it came as a real shock to her. She wasn't the perfect mother, but she cared about me a great deal, and she bought the Straight line that I'd end up dead if I left. At her most vulnerable point, the Straight staff led parent raps attacking her for various reasons, among them that she questioned whether the program was the right place for me.  They would split up my parents so Dad couldn't help her, and then go at her until she was in tears.  

The tears never quit after that.  For years, she would cry at the slightest provocation. Years after I left the program (I am still alive and prosperous, thank you) she would hide the aspirin when I came home, and panic if I was late coming back from somewhere.

I later realized she'd had a nervous breakdown back then, and we never realized what it was. My siblings agree that that's probably what happened to her.  Of course, Straight had soured both my parents on psychology, so we couldn't have gotten her help any way.

I know this may tick some of you off, and that isn't my intent. I have no doubt that many parents used Straight to get back at their kids. I really think the founders of the Seed, Straight, SAFE, etc. knowingly and deliberately engaged in thought control. But others were desparate parents trying to figure out what to do, and Straight lied to them convincingly (with the help of Nancy Reagan, George Bush, David Tilley, and others).  

I hope like hell that my mother was a rare case, but I have a feeling there were others.