Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => CEDU / Brown Schools and derivatives / clones => Topic started by: sabro on July 30, 2005, 11:58:00 AM
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I stayed up until 2 am reading threads.
Even though CEDU is closed, I would suggest letting all that anger and hurt do something positive. Get the word out about these programs that just keep cropping up. Get the word out about individual staff, and confront them about the reality of the therapy. Lots of them- especially the Wassermanites- are still out there working with kids. (Like Patrick Stambusky who changed his name and now runs Monarch.)
Someone was making a documentary- what happened with that. Is there another way of contacting the media- getting the word out?
Contact all the ex-staff and students you know and get their stories.
California is a madatory reporting state. Any adult involved in the care, education, or treatment of children needs to report any abuse that they know of or suspect. Penalties for not reporting range from loss of certification and licenses to fines and jail time. Report, report, report. I know I have to do this again- just to make sure. I told everything I know of firsthand to the DA way back in '92. It was nothing like what I read on these threads, though.
Report the staff. All of us. Anything you know specifically or firsthand, and any of the staff that knew also. Child protective services or the local DA will know about statutes of limitations and can sort out what's what.
I'm the last person that should give you guys advice, but if you want to accomplish something positive you "survivors" need to stop barking at each other. The accusing, cussing, threatening stuff...every other thread descends into after three posts doesn't seem all that constructive. I've got no problem with angry people expressing anger on a forum that is perfectly designed for that, but choose your targets.
Unless you are Tom Cruise and "know the history of psychology," there is nothing wrong with getting real, professional help. One reason to sue the Brown School Carcass and the ex-Staff is to get them to pay for this.
Someone should write a book. If none of you want to do it, I am willing to look for an author to collect all of your stories and print them up. (I don't know how successful this would be since I have never done this before.) Someone must know an author (and a publisher.)
How do we repair the damage? How do we keep other parents from sending their kids and money to these fraudulent travesties? You guys probably have better ideas than I do. I don't know what kind of resources are out there- survivors networks, support groups, but there has to be some people like you guys that would be willing to let their anger be constructive.
All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race - before it had learned the obligations to speak the truth. Not one of them makes it the duty of its God to be truthful and understandable in his communications.
--Freidrich Nietzsche, German philosopher
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Wow Sabro, you changed your tune. At first you were like where are all my good buddies? You listed Guy, Russ, Donna, etc. Then you backed off from that when the responses were a little heated. Now you want to ease everyone's pain and sue. Sue who? and for what? If CEDU was a beast, and many agree on this site that it was, it is indeed DEAD! Don't hold a wake. Don't go to the funeral. Just bury the damn thing and move on with your life.
If you worked at CEDU in like the early nineties why did it take you ten years to finally want to check in?
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Flaming, in general, even to release pent-up anger, is pointless. I was once in a completely separate topic newsgroup, and know firsthand how a "Flamewar" just feeds on itself, and hurts the real reason this webpage is here.
I don't doubt that the anonymous poster above has VERY valid issues to make about what he resents in Sabro, but perhaps this group, or specifically this very important thread isn't the right venue...?
And about this topic. I've been asking myself this question for years. Can't someone DO something about these sorts of schools. (Of course, my self-venting usually descends into rants about how few civil rights children have, and how they are little more than their parent's property, but that's for another time.)
ARE there -good- schools? Where kids are treated with respect & fairness, properly diagnosed & given supportive options for working out their issues? I guess, but what about all the ones that AREN'T?
Reporting is the most logical, and vital action. (if one can reach someone to report any abuse, and get that someone to believe a "trouble kid".)
Get the media involved? Tougher than you think. I worked in "the Media" once (ok, financial news ain't exactly the hight of investigative journalism.) but I know that the popular media, like everyone else, is only in it for the money. If it ain't attention grabbing, with LOTS of scandal, lots of visuals & sound bites, and comes from a credible source, forget it. Hell, more than one famous TV person sent their own kids to CEDU/RMA, you think they want to bring THAT up? And why risk the potential slander lawsuits, and/or loss of sponsors, just to help a couple dozen kids? Maybe "A Current Affair"...
Was someone making a documentary? That would be great, but expensive. Good luck with backers. (Maybe Michale Moore's looking for a new target.)
Write a book/edit together a compilation? Easy enough to do, (if tricky to make an interesting read.) but again, who will publish it?
sorry about the negativity I put after each suggestion, but that's my nature. I would of course support ANY initiative to find, investigate & expose any abusive program out there, but how to insure that does not turn into a witch hunt, torching the good with the bad? I don't know, maybe it can't. But the horror stories told here, and the stories CEDU staff told of Provo & Secret Harbor to frighten us into behaving "back in the day" just make me so angry. And helpless to do anything.
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Never said anywhere in my post that I resented him. Those are your words. Just had a few questions as to why he changed his tune so suddenly and why it took him so long to check in...you get resentful from that? Guess you're reading between some lines I don't see.
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On 2005-07-30 17:51:00, GeoffSprague wrote:
ARE there -good- schools? Where kids are treated with respect & fairness, properly diagnosed & given supportive options for working out their issues? I guess, but what about all the ones that AREN'T?
Yes, I'm certain of it. Back when this project started, the folks over at ISAC had a really good base idea. They started out w/ a list of red flags to help prospective suckers recognize when they're being suckered.
Here it is:
http://isaccorp.org/warningsigns.html (http://isaccorp.org/warningsigns.html)
Still a fairly good list after all this time. But I would add this.
* You don't have to lie to your kid to get them into a good program. "Denial is the first symptom" is nothing but some marketing bullshit. Kids, just like adults, who are in trouble or in need of a change know it. If you and your kid disagree, at the moment, on that point, be the grown up, have patience and be ready to lend a hand when they're ready to ask for it (which may be never, they may just pull it out of the drain w/o your overt help or decide, after all, that you're wrong. You could be wrong, ya' know.)
And I'd remove the first item about licensing. Plenty of perfectly horrible programs are licensed. They never got to the heart of me because they assumed from the beginning they knew me.
To each her own, Anonymous
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Sorry, I've only grazed the surface of this website, but saw some very angry posts from (I believe) an anonymous post, and mistakenly assumed you were the same poster. My apologies, No offence intended.
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None taken. People just seem to get all hot and bothered so quickly here, I've learned to let it go. But thanks for the apology.
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I only found this site after Geoff posted on the other site.
I really don't think about the school much- unless someone brings it up- which is the case here. Twelve years ago, I left the place- Another disgruntled staff member had called the DA and gave him my name- I didn't even think to do that at that time.I haven't spent much time or energy on it at all. (I've worked at several schools...)
I am a firm believer in doing the right thing, and trying to make thins as right as they can get. (I'm thinking that might be impractical here.)
I don't hold any grudges. I run into those people- that's all I said. I don't date them, see them socially, hang out and talk old times...nothing like that. We live in a community of a few thousand. I see ex-cedu people around. That's all.
I noticed how evrey thread on this site degenerates into name calling and threats- there's a heck of a lot of anger here. I thought it should be directed in some kind of productive way.
This has definietly changed the way I view the school.
This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!
Adolph Hitler
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I agree with Sabro--have noticed that most every thread here does end up in name-calling and threats---usually if anyone has a disagreement with somebody view of a school as 100% horrible
Sabro says that's because there's a lot of anger--maybe
But maybe it also means most of those who post here and hate CEDU so much tend to have certain personal characteristics---for one example, not being able to easily let go of a negative experience (which they saw the schools as) and move on
For comparison--people I know who wemt to a CEDU school and don't hate CEDU don't talk about it all the time.
They don't take so personally if somebody else hated the schools, they just say "Whatever" and move on with their lives (which seem to be going pretty well as far as I can see). They sure wouldn't come here and post--they have other things to do---they also not interested in arguing about it
Maybe there are pro-CEDU grads who talk about it a lot---who are brain-washed like some people here say---I'm just saying I've never met any but I also only know a handful of grads personally
So I wonder---did these schools tend to work better with kids with certain traits and/or conditions? Did the schools try to accept certain types of kids--is this recorded anywhere
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It also seems to be the same people over and over again. Maybe Anon above is correct about personality traits. People with certain traits tend to blame everyone but themselves for their situation.
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You're being too narrow in defining what separates the posters here from people who do well after CEDU
The cEDU-failures likely have more wrong with them than a vast ability to hold grudges: I really think from watching their antics here that CEDU made a huge mistake in some of the ones they let in.
Kids who are as messed up as some of these poster were way beyond just being in need of structure and emotional growth and life lessions. They needed some kind of lock up facility with very intense psychological help for things like personality disorders, homicidal tendencies and delusional thought patterns Maybe some of them just can't be helped---this is simply the way they are
A structured boarding school would be no help to this type of student
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Wouldn't it be cedu's duty to identify those kids who wouldn't benefit from their treatment and shephard them into the appropriate placement or at least inform the parents that their kid isn't suited for cedu?
cedu wasn't in the business of treating mental illness, yet promised many of our parents that they could do just that.
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That's what I think too---obviously sometimes it wouldn't be possible to tell ahead of time exactly what was wrong with a kid. I mean when I kid is using certain street drug (meth for example) he's often going to be not himself psychologically (depressed, anxious) for quite a while even after it's out of his system
And mild depression that's about a situation is going to take different treatment that severe depression combined with say a personality disorder, so all these factors make it difficult to know what is exactly going on in a kid and how it should be treated at least initially
But within weeks or months the program people likely would know if this was the right place of a given kid---I'd be interested in knowing how often they had to tell parents that the kid needed a different type of facility
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On 2005-08-01 10:11:00, Anonymous wrote:
But within weeks or months the program people likely would know if this was the right place of a given kid---I'd be interested in knowing how often they had to tell parents that the kid needed a different type of facility"
That's easy, the answer is NEVER. Cedu's biggest failure is the fact that they priorized
profits over the well beings of the kid left in their charge.
Remember that most cedu staff didn't even have degrees. Cedu staff weren't even qualified to fill the students academic needs! And they certainly weren't qualified to deal with kids emotional needs. But none of this ever mattered to Cedu, so long as the tuition checks kept coming.
When you really think about it: Every kid at Cedu needed to be in a Different Type of Facility.
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interesting discussion...
As to the previous poster who stated that CEDU "never" advised parents that the child needed a different type of facility is wrong. It happened to me, so I can speak with experience. I know personally of several families who were told that their child needed more than CEDU could offer their child. Those children all went to other programs.
I'm not saying that the CEDu programs were perfect by any means. I would agree that the raps are abusive and that the workshops are abusive to an extent as well. My "student" did fairly well, has mixed feelings about his/her experience, and has moved on in life.
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A lost of kids went to other programs while I was there. I think CEDU hung on to them a little bit longer than necessary in some cases when they clearly did not belong. Was it giving the kids a chance before sending them to a hospital or a lock down or getting more money out of the parents. I don't know.
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In what time frame did cedu start sending kids out to other programs? When I was there, in the early 90's, the only kids sent out were those who actually tried killing themselves. Then they were sent to a private or public hospital and shortly returned to cedu (after stabilization). Otherwise, kids were frequently sent to ascent (72 day wilderness trek). However, this was also when cedu was only starting to venture into taking kids who were on meds with true psych problems. So maybe after I left they started to recognize the need to send kids out. Wish they had recognized the need to send me out. oh well.
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I was also at Cedu in the early 90's: the only kids Cedu turned away are kids who ran out of money and couldn't pay tuition anymore, those kids certainly dissapeared real fast!
I did in fact know plenty of kids who really didn't belong at Cedu. I'm not just talking about kids on meds either (and there were
a few of them).
I specifically remember a student at Cedu middleschool who had severe turrets. Also I often heard about a mentally retarded kid who left right before I got there. There was no chance in hell either one of these kids could ever get something out of the Cedu program!
Clearly Cedu accepted many kids they couldn't help, but as long as any kid's family could pay, Cedu was "the best place for them."
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In 1984 RMA had 3 or 4 bulimic, one severely mental disturbed child, several kids who simply had trouble with dealing with schoolwork, and 2 (gasp!) Gay People (...hope they were "cured") mixed in with all sorts of others who probably didn't belong. But I am not a psychiatrist, so I can't speak more on that.
Of course, in 1984, there WERE no psychiatrists on the staff that interacted with the kids, so how could they have been properly diagnosed anyway.
(It was commenly belived (by the students) that the mother of that severely mental disturbed child simply needed a baby-sitter, and RMA was happy to take the job for what she paid.)
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wow, that is amazing. I guess you were there in 84... how are you doing now? Hope you are doing well.
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Definitely, Cedu turned no one away who could pay, and at the time I attended, there were no psychiatrists/psychologists on staff. No one was getting proper treatment if they had some type of medical issue. And, frankly, no one was getting any kind of healthy, ethical, individualized help anyway.
I distinctly remember CEDU manipulating some parents into thinking kids needed the program when they didn't, and for many people, CEDU was just an overpriced babysitter.
The only time CEDU kicked out two boys were when they concocted an active plan to commit arson and burn down the school, and someone ratted them out. They were deemed a safety risk to the school.
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But apparently those parents wanted an overpriced baby sitter. I'm a parent now. Who would I beleive some high school graduate or GED counselor or the boundless research on child deelopment by experts. CEDU was a dumping ground for quite a few parents.
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If all these charges of abuse against indivduals like Guy Bonnano, Russ Decker, Donna Dillman and Patrick Stambusky are true,(and I have every reason to believe that they probably are.) And if all the people on this website made the claims they said they did to the authorities and followed through with it...all those hours spent in the D.A.'s office, etc. Why is Bonnano now a principal in a public school? He would need a teachers' credential and an administrative credential to pull that one off. If the appropriate authorities were notified of his past abuse...he would have had one if not both of his credentials pulled. The same with Decker... if he committed those crimes as a juvenile, his records would be sealed. However, any abuses after 18 would be considered adult...he wouldn't be able to become a therapist or whatever. Stambusky wouldnb't be able to open up another school after a background check, etc. As I said I have no doubt that these individuals were power mad and controlling, but I have reasonable doubt that all those who claimed to have right the wrongs by reporting ever did.
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I never reported anything specific about those you mentioned because I never saw or had specific knowledge about abuse. But I did file two reports and spoke to the DA about a third case- in all three, I was told that there was insufficient evidence. I never contacted the CCTC about anyone's credentials either. People with firsthand information need to do the reporting or nothing will happen.
Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.
Thomas Jefferson: Kentucky Resolutions, 1798
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Exactly, insufficient evidence. However, you did jump on the get Bonanno, Decker and Stambusky bandwagon pretty damn fast! If all the others who whine and complain and carry on who did have first hand information, maybe these people would loose their credentials or licenses or whatever, but its just so much easier to whine and complain.
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I got kicked out of CEDU middle school when I was 10 years old...lol.
Evan
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On 2005-08-06 12:33:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Exactly, insufficient evidence. However, you did jump on the get Bonanno, Decker and Stambusky bandwagon pretty damn fast! If all the others who whine and complain and carry on who did have first hand information, maybe these people would loose their credentials or licenses or whatever, but its just so much easier to whine and complain."
Well Evidence really is the key here, isn't it?
And why is there insufficient evidence? That's easy: because the kids at Cedu had no independent way to document what was happening to them, not when their whole lives consisted of a cubby hole and a few drawers underneath their bed (both were inspected by staff and other students daily).
Why did cedu require that we have our private journals reviewed by staff on a weekly basis?
Why couldn't we have tape recorders?
Why was it a priveledge to own a camera?
Why was it required that cedu staff develop all of our pictures (and charge our families for their time), rather than just sending the film home for our parents to develop?
Why did cedu staff read our letters before we mailed them? Why were our telephone conversations monitored?
Why was our communication restricted only to people cedu approved of and had direct contact with?
Why did cedu need to brief & debrief our parents
before & after every visit with us?
Why did Cedu staff routinely downplay the uses of psychology, and discourage students from sharing with the Doctors (therapists) who worked
there from time to time?
By the way, I don't recall ever seeing one of the doctors invited to a rap, why is that? I imagine it was because real doctors/therapists have ETHICS.
I could go on and on, but I've made my point.
The whole cedu environment was designed to protect their secrets from those outside of the program. Simply knowing what we saw or heard is not enough to make the authorities take serious action against those monsters. Criminal courts want proof, as in names, dates, times,places, and other specific facts. Our diminishing memories of events that for some of us happened a lifetime ago, just won't cut it. The only people who could've documented the program independently were the cedu staff themselves.
Unfortuately for all of the Victims (staff and student alike), Cedu did a splended job of burying evidence.
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[ This Message was edited by: Son Of Serbia on 2005-08-10 07:19 ]