Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => Straight, Inc. and Derivatives => Topic started by: Kathy on January 18, 2002, 09:21:00 PM
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I've been reading up on these boarding schools, and boot camps and I am just amazed at what these kids have to endure. Straight was nothing in comparison. But the connection is that these camps and schools operate on all the same principles as Straight, they have just taken them to an incredible extreme. These places still endure a rather "low-profile" and this is crap. Some of them have been operating for as long as 30 years. It's time to expose them for what they really are.
This is the purpose for the new forum that has been set up Under Fornits Forums/ called Troubled Teen Industry.
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It's about time somebody started looking into this area. You're a good person for it too, Kathy. Programs like Straight and abusive wilderness programs offer two types of abuse, and while some wilderness programs have been tied to physical abuses that make Straight seem like a cakewalk in comparison, the psychological tortures of thestraights is right up there with them all--in my opinion. Wes
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Wes, Straight was not easy!! I hope no one misinterprets my earlier post. Straight was extremely ABUSIVE... both physically AND psychologically!!!! I was only trying to convey just how bad today's boot camps and schools are. Since this board is specifically geared toward Straight Survivors, I'm sure they already know Straight was abusive and therefore, will be outraged when hearing that it appears that these other programs make Straight look like a day in the park. This is not to say Straight wasn't all that bad... because... it was pure HELL! (hope that conveys what I'm trying to say, a little better.)
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ok, let me retract my statement about being "a cakewalk".... after sleeping on it and digesting all of this information... I have concluded that there are (as Wes said..) 2 types of teen torture.... the West Coast type and the East Coast type. The are different and yet the same.... And finally, they are equally damaging, they just vary slightly on some of the techniques, yet there are many similarities in their techniques. I bet that makes everything clear as mud. :smile:
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I was in jail several times for a few months each time before I was a client at Straight. Before y'all whine about getting yelled at in a rehab, I suggest spending a few months is a county jail that is over 100 years old and has abusive CO's and lovely fellow "clients".
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Nobody is whining about "being yelled at in rehab" -- but I guarantee that these kids in the boot camps today, are tortured far beyond anything you experienced in the county jail. Read some of the boot camp stories before you start whining about your county jail experiences.
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You need to jsut be quiet, have you ever been in jail while someone on your cell block is murdered? You sanctimonious ass.
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"You guarantee"!!!. On what basis are you so sure?. And if you would end your practice of cranial rectal insertion, you would realize people go to boot camps to AVOID the jails I am referring to. Yes, they would willingly put up with the "horrors" of boot camp to avoid jail. They obviously have friends who have done the boot camp routine, and friends who have done jail time. Then they make a CHOICE to go to the boot camps. The judge offers you the boot camp as an option to jail. Come on Einstein, even you should realize they definitely don't want jail time, hence they take the lesser of two evils. Your logic is tre' faulty, watch some old Star Trek reruns and pay attention to Mr. Spock and your logic skills may improve. We will test you again next semester.
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Many vicious homicides have occured in these current day boot camps. Of course each death is usually preceded by several days/weeks/months of torture.
Sure, many have chosen a boot camp or a rehab over prison or perhaps even over the evil county jail with the misconception that treatment would be much easier than jail.... However, there are many stories of those who had been in jail, who choose various types of "treatment over incarceration" when the opportunity arose, only to find themselves doing anything they could... to get back to jail.
I guess everyone's perceptions are different. I'm sorry your time in the county jail was so bad. Not everyone believes jail is worse than being "helped." Obviously you did and that's ok. I'm not going to continue to debate who has had it worse.
I'd just like to get the word out to parents or professionals that when they are reaching out to help their troubled teen, sometimes they are sentencing them to death instead; and usually without any due process.
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What? Boot camps are worse than doing time? Can't get back to jail? You are either the dumbest person on the planet or are just flat out lying to further your misguided viewpoint. Where does your perfect rehab exist? Any rehab for minors is too restrictive and bound to be cruel and abusive. If you want to see an adult rehab you will see that 99% of them are there for pure profit and they make no bones about their motives. They could give a damn if anyone got clean or not, they've got their money and that is all they care about. Rehabilitation is a nice word for politicians to toss around for the vapid masses to suck up on their sound bites. The vast majority of people in rehabs are trying to avoid incarceration, same for boot camps. I guess you are naive enough to focus on the few whining malcontents who tell their sob stories to the media talking heads. The "statistics" tossed about for drugs/alcohol and related treatment are simply lies. If you know anything about statistics delve into sample size, r-squared, cross correlation, etc. Here is the fact of life, if you want to play you have got to pay. You don't think anyone should take responsibility for their actions at all. And christ, if you could not get through Straight in about 12 months without too much confrontation then you were just seeking attention or plain stupid. Yes, I know all kinds of bullshit went on there, I worked there for a year on staff. I disliked hated alot of my fellow staff/counselors, a demented high schoolish clique of power tripping, self-absorbed assholes. Why don't your found your own subtance abuse/behavioral modification/criminal rehabilitation chain of facilities that solves all of the US's problems and show us how it's done. I have no pity for someone who carjacks a woman and bashes her head in then gets sent to a harsh boot camp where he catches some major shit. Now he'll whine and say he's being abused. You want to be a thug and act tough, then you're gonna pay. If you don't have a drug problem then you won't keep getting busted for drugs (by police or your parents if you are a minor) and won't get placed in a situation like Straight, et al. That's about the long and short of it. Lights out.
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Look you freakin Cry baby idiot, If you were Really in Jail, doing "Hardtime", I don't think You would be Bragging about it, sounds to me like you were one of the sissy boys doing alll the bitch crying, and "PUNKING" if you were Really in Jail I am Sure you know what that is Really well, i am sure you had to do it girlyboy!!!! So quite your freaking Whining. PUSS
On 2002-01-20 19:44:00, Anonymous wrote:
You need to jsut be quiet, have you ever been in jail while someone on your cell block is murdered? You sanctimonious ass.
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Wow thats a session full of rage if I ever heard it. Shit I have not heard that much emotional outpouring since group in "89". That is some welcome back after 4 weeks in Bermuda. Well now anon. there were some people in Straight who were court ordered who stayed and some who went back to jail. I guess it is a matter of opinion and sorry but physical and personality strength. If you could hog the phone and steal everyones cigs in jail I guess you went back if you got beat up and punked in jail I guess you stayed and if ya didn't know its 50 50 because the fear of the unknown and staff tellin ya you'd be killed can be pretty powerful. Either way it is a toss up. Me I'd take County Jail Time hey you have visits a phone cigs and a set time to get out, better then straight inc but that is my opinion. OPINION... something else you can have in jail but not straight :smile: missed ya!
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I knew a guy who chose Raiford over Straight. He was a big guy, too. A linebacker type with a Sergent type father. I don't think it was so much what was done to him in the Program but what the Program expected him to do to others in order to advance. Of course, I don't know the whole story cuz I was just another mushroom in group. I only know the outcome. And he's not the only one.
Most people sent to these bootcamps are not convicted of any crime. There's no due process, no trial, no chance for appeal. For some damned reason, the suicide rate among Program clients is roughly 100 times the national average. I'd be interested to see a comparison to suicide rates among former inmates, I bet it's pretty close.
The salient point here, though, is really not whether prison is worse or better than forced thought reform. As far as DFAF is concerned, the two go hand in hand. Having a prison sentence hanging over one's head is, in their opinion, a necessary element of 'therapy'. Check their propaganda on the right to treatment initiatives and you'll see what I'm saying is true. Don't hold any illusion that the right to (coerced) treatment inits will make things any better. All they'll do is dramatically expand both the amount of funding and bodies herded into the system.
What terrible problem is it that you think the government must somehow solve? "Why, the drug problem" you say? What is that? Before prohibition, there was no black market, no crime, little overdose and little long term medical problems associated with drug use/abuse/addiction. There was no significant corruption, we weren't commiting acts of war (embargo, sanctions, aerial spraying, etc.) against other nations in relation to drug trade. It was all above board business with very little impact on the greater scheme of things, but a great source of propaganda for the temperence movement.
I don't know what you may or may not have done to land yourself in the county tank, but no one should land there simply for choosing to smoke a joint instead of swollow Prozac or for rollin' at a rave instead of dutifully taking their Ritalin from the school nurse. Jail should be reserved for people we're afraid of, not people we're mad at. That these sadistic bastards publicly advocate using the threat of prison to coerce people into adopting their fanatical religious view of (certain unpatentable) drugs is chilling.
Virtually all of the problems now identified as "The Drug Problem" are a direct result of prohibition. If you want to solve these problems, help end prohibition.
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P.S.
Hi Mike! :smile:
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P.S.
Hi Mike!
Hello!
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I wasn't in Straight, I was Kids of El Paso. I was also in jail once but just for a few days.
In retrospect, if given the choice, I would've gladly spent 11 months in jail instead of in Kids. In jail, the biggest enemy is boredom. But at least you have mail, phones, and as many cigarettes as you can smoke. Most importantly, you know when you're getting out.
There were several "clients" in Kids of El Paso, that made the choice eschew jail and go with the rehab thing. All of them regretted it deeply.
I would suggest that anyone who claims that taking troubled teens and subjecting them to brainwashing techniques invented by Pavlov and practiced by the Chinese Communists is a good thing ought to have their heads examined by a real professional therapist.
What these individuals fail to understand is that what Straight and Kids did is ILLEGAL by any standard, and proven to be dangerous.
Yes, languishing in a cell block for almost a year is NOTHING compared to what Kids was. And I still don't think these bootcamps are anywhere near the level of mindfucking that Kids attained in the 80's.
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Speaking of Boot Camps. Everytime I see Sally Jesse I want to smack the shit out of her, talk about road rage I have talk show rage!!! This bitch seems like she completely gets HIGH off sending teens to boot camp. I think she is a sadistic nasty clueless braindead moron. She looks so damn gleeful when those kids start getting screamed at I think I would be arrested if I ever went to a live taping. Who does she think she is? She makes her ratings by abusing children on national T.V. and I am guilty for helping her because I end up glued to the T.V. like I am watching a train wreck therefore uping the ratings more. I have not seen Sally in a while probably before 9/11 has the show been pulled or has it been my inabilty to find anytime to watch T.V.? I hope it has been canceled. She is a cruel woman and should be yanked from the airwaves!
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Yeah I hear ya,
Sometimes it makes me wonder what (if any) good it would do to email Miss Sally and ask hear when she plans on re-naming her show "The Bootcamp Channel". Her "educated" producers however seem to claim that they can distinguish that it's not OK for cults to use mind control such as Scientology, http://www.lisatrust.net/Media/us-sjr.htm (http://www.lisatrust.net/Media/us-sjr.htm) but it's OK to use cult style brainwashing methods on teens at bootcamps, go figure.
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It is especially apparent when you know that some of the boot camps that have been featured on talk shows were the same ones that had fatalities and were shut down.
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Citizens Commission on Human Rights is listed in the transcript as a $ci front. So... this transcript is from `91. I've never been a Sally fan. Daytime talk always sort of made me retch because it reminded me of Group. When did Sally become the primary spokes yenta for boot-camps? Do ya'll suppose the clams have dead agented her by induction?
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These boot camps are the last choice for minors who don't wanna do hard time or ??
Why not them them go see if they've got it to "make" it? It bumps self esteem, maybe even garner a sense of unit integrity and the sense of being part of a team. Then, again, there will always be an abusive (to someone) aspect of the game. Bleedin' hearts worry; feed them in. Beats prison or Straight, easy.
Jason (not sanctioned)
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There is a man named Steve A. Cartisano (a.k.a. Stephen Michaels, and a couple of other aliases that I can't think of right now) who is the owner of the TEENHELP teen therapy camps... He's along the same lines as Miller Newton.... In one article I read where he was bragging to his co-workers that he's gone big time, because he got Sally Jesse Raphael and some others to market his programs..... (I guess SAlly was a good target because if I remember correctly... I think I heard that she had a teen daughter die from something drug related, so she probably thinks shes "saving lives" I'll get the articles and post the links in another post.
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Here is the link: http://www.outsidemag.com/magazine/1095/10f_deth.html (http://www.outsidemag.com/magazine/1095/10f_deth.html)
and here is the line I was talking about:
"...Horsehair was Lance Paul Jaggar, an air force vet who served as Cartisano's field director. He and another devout Mormon, Bill Henry--an Idaho acquaintance of Larry Dean Olsen's who had been active in Scouting--supervised daily operations out of Escalante, allowing Cartisano to concentrate on marketing from his Provo-area home, a lavish residence that previously had been owned by golfer Billy Casper.
A brilliant promoter, Cartisano persuaded his "good friend" Oliver North to put in an appearance during his Iran-Contra notoriety and hired a publicist who booked him on Donahue, Sally Jesse Raphael, and Geraldo. "All the big talk shows," Cartisano boasts. "They loved me. I'd go on TV with kids who'd been through the program, these beautiful 14- to 15-year-old girls who'd talk about how they'd been out on the street stealing and doing drugs and turning tricks until Challenger changed their ways."
"The television appearances were a marketing gold mine," says a former associate of Cartisano's who declined to be identified. "The phones were ringing off the hook. Parents begged him to take their kids. An incredible amount of money started rolling in. Unfortunately, Steve didn't know how to handle it."
When Cartisano would go on the road to recruit customers, alleges the ex-associate, "Sometimes he'd spend $2,000 a week to rent a Lamborghini. He'd run up $1,000-a-night hotel bills." With such expenditures, despite all the money coming in, Challenger had trouble paying its bills. Checks bounced. The Internal Revenue Service inquired about $196,000 in unpaid corporate taxes. By early 1990 Cartisano was embroiled in numerous lawsuits filed by creditors and disgruntled clients, and the state of Utah was investigating him on several fronts...."
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WWASP/Teen Help programs are owned by the Kay/Lichfield/Facer families. I'm unsure if Steve Cartisano has or had any connection with them. I understood his to be a separate operation from theirs. He is also banned from operating programs in the United States, so what he does have are all based out of the country now. Even so, he still uses a number of alias' to hide his connection to most of them.
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I think that Cartisano may have run a program in Puerto Rico or Samoa that had some connection to TeenHelp but you are certainly correct in that they are totally seperate entities.
I think that there is a misunderstanding about the nature of the boot camps we are talking about. The boot camps and wilderness programs we are talking about are privately run programs that parents send their kids to. They are not taking judicial referals or at least most of them don't. You are thinking about the state run bootcamps and private/public programs that are mostly for juvenile and young offenders who opt-in to the programs in most cases, although in some juvenile cases I believe they have been forced into it without any option at regular confinement. These programs are often troubled as well and have had a couple of fatalities, in addition to several instances of abusive guards and forced marches resulting in death or injuries.
[ This Message was edited by: FaceKhan on 2002-02-07 17:52 ]
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But you are right, those convicted of crimes can choose jail or a boot camp, then as long as both are run humanely I have no problem with it.
The issue is whether parents have the right to hire people to punish, indoctrinate torture, brainwash, abuse, rape, humiliate, beat, isolate, kidnap, or otherwise harm their kids. I think most people on this list, and quite possibly a majority of the general public would agree that parents do not have that right, that their are limits to parental power over their kids, and that the kids as human beings and citizens of the United States have fundamental rights, and among those rights is the right to be treated with dignity. I would argue that children and teens have the right to not be kidnapped, brainwashed, tortured, indoctrinated, abused, beaten, raped, or humiliated, whether it is supposed to be "for their own good" or not.
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On 2002-01-20 19:44:00, Anonymous wrote:
You need to jsut be quiet, have you ever been in jail while someone on your cell block is murdered? You sanctimonious ass.
id rather get murdered in jail then even remember straight.
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Well, I can't say I'd rather be dead. But I'm really not sure hearing a murder in the next cell is any worse than being tricked into taking part in driving a perfectly sane boy over the edge.
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Kathy,
You are obviously very ignorant on the Straight story! Until you have walked in my shoes, or even know my story, don't try to tell others what straight was about. You have no grounds to even judge the abuse straight has caused, cause even the internet can only tell a small part of the story. If you want to know about it, I'll talk.
tyler-brindley@hotmail.com
Please understand the sensitivity of this to me, I'm not bashing yer post, I come in peace.
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Hello Anonymous! You are obviously pretty ignorant yourself. What else can I say? Why don't you read all the posts before making rash judgements. Why don't you read the fine print rather than just the Headlines? Well, in case you have an aversion to reading more than just a few words, let me tell you one thing... I _WAS_ THERE _AND_ YOU PROBABLY WALKED IN _MY_ SHOES, AS I'M SURE I WAS PROBABLY THERE WHEN YOU WERE JUST A TODDLER. Take care, have fun reading. Talk to you more when you've brushed up on your research.
Kathy :smile:
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I must agree with Jadenjames, Antigen. At least our misery, troubled times and being a victim of all forms of violence would have been over at Straight Inc. and places like it.
I would rather be alive now.. but if I had a choice back then, I know that at least if I died, I wouldn't have to feel that abuse again!
FYI.. Kathi, this was not directed to what you said.
Isn't there a way to respond to a message that was already posted without creating a new one, and not having the post on these things??
[ This Message was edited by: ladyjerrico on 2002-03-09 16:40 ]
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Sad to say that history DOES repeat itself.. I suppose it will always be a vicious cycle that is a never ending process.
In a nutshell, I always felt that if the person who does have a drug problem will admit up to it and want help for themselves.. they will seek it.. they can't be forced into it.
Those who don't admit it will sooner or later perish for their mistakes.. not everyone can be saved.
As far as being put into a place where you remember and your children are suffering for it, there must be something that can be done.
I don't find the justice system helpful unless you have a bunch of money laying around to hire a lawyer.. who has that kind of income now a days?
There are always alternatives to help and hope. Sad to say there arn't enough people out there to understand or want to try to bring it out to the public view of what those alternatives are.
I'm not familiar with Elan.. but if it is anything like Straight Inc. there are other routes to take.
I know local AA meetings in churches, they do the 12 step program, sponsors are helpful.
I feel the strictist dicipline should come from the parent with an out of control teen. I'm not saying corporal punishment, that would be morally and ethically wrong..
I found all new friends when I left Straight because I didn't want to hang out with my "druggie friends" and subject myself to that environment.. that was the first step for me to take to leading a drug-free life.
From there I got moral support, and went to the movies, played some card games, things of that nature that would be totally drug-free activities.
I found out who I was and what my goals need to be in life. Nobody can teach you street smarts either.. that is something that needs to be learned from within
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Just for the story not all that is sentenced to prison go there if they dont complete the program! I am an example of that, I had a choice Straight or 5 years of hard work and labor. The chioce is simple then but once i was in straight for 6 months I ended up getting kicked out (my choice) to go ahead and do my time I then would at least know when I was getting out!!!! but lucky enough I got probation and the judge figured I was in straight 6 months I had learned something,so he let me go not everyone that is sentinced will go to prison!