This is such a complicated mess. There have been kids who have successfully sued some of these programs independent of their parents.
Fred Collins is one rather famous case. He was held illegally as an adult, escaped and just had the good fortune to run into good lawyers who were willing to take his case. You can read all about that in Arnold Trebach's mid `80's book,
The Great Drug War. His telling includes some very important information about the fall out in the Collins family after the dust and the lawsuit settled.
That's one major problem w/ "just sue the bastards" or, alternately, "if the program's so abusive, why haven't they been sued out of existance?" There are many reasons.
Another problem that I've heard about from lawyers looking for a good suit is the difficulty in finding quality, highly credible wittnesses. The kids always come at it w/ two strikes against them. Even if they were model citizens prior to their parents having been recruited, they have to overcome the assumption that the parents must have had
some kind of good reason to panic. Strike two is the actual effects that coerced thought reform has on the client.
And it gets worse. Look at what has happened historically as a result of all those successful lawsuits. Most of the time, the best you can accomplish is to inconvenience the defendants. It may cost them some money, but the savvy ones already budget for that. They make be forece to toss someone to the wolves, as in the case of Charles Long II, but that's a rare case. Sometimes they have to go to the bother of declared bancrupsy, name changes, location changes and reshuffling clients and staff a la Straight, Inc., CEDU/Brown Schools, Bethel and many others.
At the end of the day I think it's almost,
almost a zero sum game or worse.
However, there's one extremely important byproduct from all the litigation, legislation and regulatory efforts. They all generate extremely credible documentation and dialogue. I still think it's up to our prodigal IVth Estate to pick up that ball and run with it. And that's starting to happen.
Maia Szalavitz, for example, rocks! :nworthy:
Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
-- ALAN BARTH, The Loyalty of Free Men, 1951.
