Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => Elan School => Topic started by: Anonymous on September 05, 2002, 08:36:00 PM
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POLAND (OH YEA LETS CALL THE STATE OF MAINE!)
State finds no abuse at Elan
By Lindsay Tice
Staff Writer
The Maine Department of Education ruled Wednesday that Elan School students are not being abused and that the school is complying with state regulations. Investigators recommended that Maine consider placing more students there.
In a five-page report released by the Department of Education, investigators found that the controversial residential school for troubled teenagers does not abuse its students and no longer forces them to fight each other as a form of punishment. They found that, in accordance with state law, Elan students are placed in wrist or ankle restraints only when a psychologist fears they may injure themselves or others.
Investigators also found that students spend more time in class than the minimum required by Maine law, but technology is very limited and there are too few hands-on activities in science class. They said there are no professional development plans for teachers, no handbook for residential staff and no written rules for students.
The Department of Education is requiring that the Elan School amend old policies on student discipline and submit new ones to the state. It wants the school to affirm that students have not been forced to fight each other since October 2000 and will not be forced to do so in the future.
According to the department, Elan officials have agreed to abide by these new requirements. In some cases they have already started to comply.
Ed MacColl, a lawyer for Elan, said the school was ?very pleased? with the Department of Education?s report.
?Hopefully, it will lead to the public and the press getting a sense of what a great job Elan does,? he said.
Elan became a focal point in the recent trial of Michael Skakel, who was convicted of killing his 15-year-old neighbor, Martha Moxley, in Greenwich, Conn., in 1975. Former Elan students testified that Skakel confessed to the murder while at the school. Skakel?s lawyer said Elan staff members taunted him and students beat him until he confessed.
A complaint by Canadian officials this winter alleged abuse was still going on at the school. Comments made by recent Elan graduates to the Sun Journal in June appeared to confirm that.
In mid-June, a School Approval Team from the Maine Department of Education began investigating the school. The goal was to ensure that the school meets state requirements today, not to scrutinize the Elan of the past, said department spokesman Yellow Light Breen said.
?We?re not trying to find out what happened in 1992 or 1982 or 1975,? said Breen. ?The school was obviously a different place 20 years ago.?
Elan, he said, is not abusing students and is not breaking health and safety rules now.
In fact, investigators recommended that Elan administrators begin talking with state judicial, corrections and human services officials about placing more Maine children in the school.
Said MacColl, ?I think that really is the strongest recommendation of confidence in the report.?
Investigators also recommended?but did not require?Elan to create a student handbook, create professional development plans for staff, make use of technology, consider improvements to the facility and work on assessing students? readiness for college. According to MacColl, the school is working on satisfying those recommendations.
The Elan School was co-founded by Joe Ricci and Gerald Davidson in 1970. Today it caters primarily to privately placed, out-of-control teens whose parents pay more than $100,000 for the 27-month average stay. The school has about 150 students.
ltice@sunjournal.com
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I guess thats it. Its over. :sad:
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just means we need to find other ways to make people see what Elan was find people who have the ability to help. someone out there has got to care?
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When Straight Boston started to go down it was like that. Restrictions and then slowly it started its death roll and continued to be investigated and finally lost its liscence. This I really think is the begining of the end for elan. I hope (fingers crossed!)
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I agree. Dallas was under investigation for most of my program and who knows how long before I went in. They made their assessments and then came back placing minimal restirctions on how we did things in order to make Straight "compliant". Case in point, we were suddenly forbidden to hold belt loops and were told to walk arm in arm instead with our newcomers. Lots of names changed for certain things, but the things themselves did not change. Writing a handbook and making teacher plans isnt going to stop the methods being used. Thats like saying that raps in straight would be up to par if the Staff had taken notes for each one. The crap still went on, it was just called something else.
This isnt going to be the end of the effort. The modality of the program at Elan will surface and show its ass over and over no matter how many handbooks they give out.
The handboook will simply serve as a guide to follow in the future as to what rules are being broken, thats all. An investigators tool.
[ This Message was edited by: Carmel on 2002-09-06 09:15 ]
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I agree they don't care (investigators )and from what i know of elan,their ability to present the image that elan wants the investigators to see has been done many times before (this is old hat for elan ).
In my opinion elan and its henchmen are experts at this form of deceit .the thing that bothers me is that alot of the staff that were there when it ,elan was a hellhole ,(my opinion again )are still there .
using restraints to protect individuals is one thing yet how do we know that they aren't being used to scare the living daylights out of kids .In my opinion when the lunatics are running the show ,who is watching the lunatics ,certainly not the state of maine . That to me is very ,very bad policy.
The old adage of letting the camel's nose in the tent ,whats there to prevent the rest of the camel from coming in ,the camels word .. yeah right !
shame on the state of maine
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why dont we all get together and make a docudrama movie about elan?i would love to play one of the corupt staff members.The movie would be like the Blair witch,you know something of that quaility.
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Yea thats a bad ass idea I can see it now
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We can call the movie ;"The Elan school project".And have some girl running through the dorms and hiding from the staff to avoid the ring.She also can have some snot dripping from her nose saying, "I am so scared right now".I'm sure we can find some strung out hooker on the streets to play Claire Woodman.We can have a female stuff the rear of her pants with 6 pillows to play Linda Roy.We can put an ad in the paper for a tall skinny junkie to play Marc.Marty would be hard to find, considering we slained most of his kind off many moons ago,but a little make up and special effects will do wonders.
We can rent some of the cabins by the lake near Elan to film this.
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What creative minds we all have here so why cant we think of a legal way to get them to pay up? :???:
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yeas we should be able to but how? any ideas out there :idea:
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I think it's pretty much a numbers game. It would seem to me that a class action would be just the thing. Trouble is, so far, no lawyer has been willing or able to put together the facts, pick an apropriate target and go with it.
I think it'll happen sooner or later. It's a matter of public perception catching up with the facts.
The facts are that behavior modification is an extremely risky, experimental psyche treatment. Sam Ervin codified that fact in his 1974 Senate report "Individual Rights and the Federal Role in Behavior Modification".
So the people who run these programs, Elan, WWASP and others, have known or should have known that they were harming clients. They have consistently neglected to mention the risks involved or the lack of any evidence whatsoever of efficacy of these methods. That's fraud.
But, for now, the public perception is that this method of treatment is harmless and often helpful. When that changes, and it is changing pretty quickly here lately, then maybe some sharp legal team will put together a class action. I'll sign onto that one, count on it! If it's successful, it will make it too risky for anyone to enter into this kind of business without full disclosure. The Program doesn't work with informed consent. You simply can't thought reform someone if they understand what's being done to them. So that would pretty likely shut down the mindrape mill industry, at least in this country, and certainly give most people a heads up so they won't get taken in by this scam for, oh, say maybe, another generation or so.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Mark Twain
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The words of wisdom from the pied piper give so much hope dont they?
What producer, or casting agent would even think of putting you idiots in a movie? The entertainment is rite HERE! who needs a movie, when one can come in here on any given day and be thouroughly entertained to no end!?, interactively even..a little prodding to get you sleeping lions up and about licking each others wounds is all it takes, and its so much fun to see the ripples turn into waves when an "applogist" or "Elan supporter" comes in and says something that goes against all the possitive energy and direction here! Should it be so simple to disrupt the flow of such determined, focused people??? Fuck, one person comes in and says "grow up" and your all on him like flies on shit. Threatened a little are we?
Back to the pied piper...Ginger wasnt in Elan, Ginger has nothing valid to say about Elan.
Elan has been there 30 years, do you think for a second your the first to boohoo about how terrible it was? Do you think for a second that your the first to "got an idea"? to go to an attorney and moan a while?
Jayzus you people are pathetic, Do you have any idea how many times some idiot has mentioned "movie"...gee if we make a movie, we will all be famous, and get money, and expose the well hidden truths of an american concentration camp--- I live among many people who could generate a big budget film about Elan, and have even mentioned it myself, eyes roll, and the subject is soon changed. NOBODY GIVES A FUCK. Get over it
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You have a person who claims to be so damaged and negatively effected by Elan who insists on "playing themselves" in a movie.
Now lets have a serious look at this for a second, how emotionally damaged and traumatized can a person really be if they are willing to relive it as close to the truth as possible?
I'm sure I am not the first to tell you your F_U_L_L O_F S_H_I_T!
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What a bunch of sorry ass losers...Anon, why waste your time here?, you have singlehandedly kicked thier asses.
If you leave, there will be TWO active members! one of them wasnt even in Elan!
Gawd! Antigen is a failing concept...due to REALITY!
I mean look at the title of this thread
Uhh....sniffy snivel "they dont"...boohoo "care" Whaaa! Oh my god, can I wipe your tears you fucking crybaby!
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I saw this in another thread...seems to fit better here....fah kin LOL!
Cry me a Poland Spring river!
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These reports are nothing new. Around '79 or '80, Illinois pulled all thier "wards" out of Elan. Joe Ricci gloated in reports of how one of them, escaped state custody, in order to return to Elan. The whole issue of restraints, WAS NOT supervised by a psychologist. Dr. Davidson wouldn't have know an acting out resident even if he bit him in his arse. The decison came from whom ever was the "top dog" at the time, even if it wasn't staff. They ran into a problem back then, they ran out of handcuffs and had to start using those nylon ties that police use for riots. PO's, or personal over-seers were instructed to keep the person in corner at all costs, which sometimes got extremely violent. I even ended up having to go to Lewiston to the ER due to injuries I received while PO'n. Another problem was, running out of corners to put all these people in. From 1980-1983, I saw the medium age of resident drop from 16-17 to 13-14, atleast that was in Elan 7. I sincerely feel the concepts they were forcing upon these younger people was futile at best. They may have worked well for adult's in recovery, but not on these "kids". We even had one young man, in 7, who was mentally retarded and did not belong there. After a few weeks, they realized this and shipped him out. For all thier "Tight Houses" and other inane attempts at behavior modification, they still lost 1 house, Elan 7, to riots...... ::bangin::
A drug is neither moral nor immoral - it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary license to act like an asshole.
--Frank Zappa
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ITS NOT OVER AT ALL ! I HAVE THE PERFECT INFORMATION CHECK OUT ELAN HIDDEN SECRETS. ITS PETE ROWE THAT IS RUNNING THE SCAM. THIS IS THE REALNESS.
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DALLAS WHO? I WAS AT ELAN IN 1992 TO 94 WHAT INCIDENT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? ARE U SPEAKING OF DALLAS RHODES? OR DAWN?
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Het Iris do I know you? I went to Elan 3 in 94?
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On 2002-12-03 05:28:00, Anonymous wrote:
"We can call the movie ;"The Elan school project".And have some girl running through the dorms and hiding from the staff to avoid the ring.She also can have some snot dripping from her nose saying, "I am so scared right now".I'm sure we can find some strung out hooker on the streets to play Claire Woodman.We can have a female stuff the rear of her pants with 6 pillows to play Linda Roy.We can put an ad in the paper for a tall skinny junkie to play Marc.Marty would be hard to find, considering we slained most of his kind off many moons ago,but a little make up and special effects will do wonders.
We can rent some of the cabins by the lake near Elan to film this."
That so cool Im in. :smokin: :smokin: :smokin: :smokin: :idea: :idea: :idea: