Anonymous, people who post here have reason to. I don't think anyone here is proposing that any of us are typical. We could not possibly say that.
We are, however, people who have been on the inside of CEDU. I was a therapist - not an employee of CEDU, but an outsider who rented office space there on ground and saw CEDU kids. I was horrified at what I saw - how they were treating the kids.
The worst of it is that they paraded parents around me saying that they worked "closely" with me. This was a sham - team leaders specifically told their floor staff to ignore my instructions. I know this because some of the floor staff told me - and because I could SEE that they were not following my direction!
I saw kids "diagnosed" by ignorant team leaders, and I saw team leaders earn fake bachelor's degrees from a non-accredited, distance college, California Coast College.
I left as soon as I could - and now, years later, I came into these boards for some reassurance that "my" kids were okay. I was hoping to find some of them - and I did find a couple.
When Ottawa came, she stated that she was trying to learn about these schools and how CEDU helped kids, stating that she was a psychology graduate student and planned to open her own place. She stated that her son had successfully been helped at RMA. Soon, unhappy people here began attacking her. There are many wounded persons on these boards.
She responded with an intellectual swagger and flatly refused - by ignoring - to answer many pointed questions presented to her. Worse, her adolescent daughter joined. I feel this is on Ottawa - she should never have gotted her daughter involved. People attacked the daughter, but she was a kid - said she was a "teen" and I felt that was inappropriate.
Ottawa showed some signs of paranoia - trying to figure out who was whom by analyzing writing styles. She accused some members of being in some kind of relationship with others that included an agreement to post in some particular way. This happened to me - it was untrue. She made veiled threats that caused me to remove many of my posts. Shame. However, we live in a litigious age, and she said that she knew attorneys and people at CEDU and had printed out all our posts, claiming she would be showing them to those persons.
As for people here who have been wounded, she stomped around on them with a kind of superior intellectualism that was subtle. It left some people confused - they did not recognize the subtle and insidious type of damage she was doing. Often, people who are psychologically wounded from a place like CEDU, they learn to question their own feelings and intuition. Ottawa activated these feelings of self-doubt in others. Her style was so much like some of the CEDU tactics I saw.
I actually heard at CEDU that the goal was to "tear down" a kid psychologically and then "rebuild" him. This analogy is absurd - and dangerous. We're not talking about houses here! To badger, humiliate, and shame a kid who has been having problems is inexcusable and harmful. Many of these former CEDU residents have depression and anxiety related to their experience - as well as intrusive thoughts and unpleasant dreams. But the most insidious problem is self-doubt, and this is where Ottawa did her worst. She played into it, compounding the psychological trauma while she was at it. It was subtle, and she sounded oh-so-reasonable. That's what's insidious about it. What she was actually doing was inflicting more psychological damage in these persons. This was all couched in her reasonable tone - very deceptive! She was compounding the pain here.
One thing she did was crow about working on her dissertation - and said that her advisor founs it perfectly normal - what she was posting here. I suggested that she take ALL of her posts - that she print them ALL out and present them to the advisor. She ignored this request. I asked more than once and was flatly ignored by her. She claimed that she hardly ever spent time in these discussion groups - that was truly bizarre. She spent HOURS in them!
My reason for asking that she show all of her posts to her advisor is that SHE brought him up. She said that he found her posts perfectly reasonable. I can tell you that the only way he would is if he is mentally ill - or has an inappropriate relationship with her. I am a dissertation advisor - I'm a faculty member at a major state school. If a student brought in to me the thousands of words she wrote about her views here, I would send that student for a psych eval. There clearly was something wrong with this woman - and she hurt people in these boards.
This is why so many hate her. She invited it, she was psychologically abusive to these people, and she taunted them.
I did post that she read like someone with a personality disorder. She jumped on that with claws and teeth, claiming that I had "diagnosed" her and crowing about ethics. However, I did not ever diagnose her. I stated that her posts read like those of someone with a personality disorder. I stand by that. For the interested, they read like someone with narcissistic personality disorder, and perhaps a dash of borderline. That's how they read. Others picked up on this and agreed.
If you want to understand why so many despise her, read all the posts that she was involved in. What I mean by this is that you want to read the ENTIRE board that she is posting in - not just her notes. You would have to really want to do this! It will take a LOT of time! But read the entire thread and see how she is responding to people and how they are responding to her. She clearly taunted them in her subtle, intellectual way. I only can hope that she was lying about being a graduate psychology student and that she will never be released into the world of helping people. She's too destructive and too off-balance. Worse, she appears incapable of understanding others' reactions to her - she completely lacks emotional intelligence.
I hope this helps clarify the Ottawa issue. I'm just glad she's gone.
