Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Seed Discussion Forum
"if you don't, she will die"
GregFL:
Honesty?
More like damage control....
This story is so indicative of the insanity of the times.
First, the fear of the non-seedlings comes ripping thru the pages of the story. People witness a girl called out of class and dragged to the seed under force by a goon squad of seed parents. Rumors fly and it is built into "ropes and chains". Fear ruled the day if you were a teenager in St Pete.
Second, the "honesty" of staff was just so overwhelming. :wink:
They denied any knowledge it even happened, but as soon as they do get in contact with Art, he is ready with a prepared statement, and then he has the sack to say they refused to admit this girl. unreal.
Who knew of any kid that had ex-seed friends tell their parents they did everything with the kid but heroin, and then the seed say they didn't need to be there? Did this even happen one time in 73/74, when the seed was taking kids for 'attitude' and shoplifting?
Does this comport with reality as we knew it then?
This article demonstrates many things. One, that violence, whether staff wants to admit it was part of the program or not, happened. Things often got "out of hand" back then. Two, that our collective fear of violence was justified because it happened, and it happened fairly often in this almost out of control atmosphere.
Now staffers, here is a question for you. How the hell do you think this made us captives feel, to see kids dragged from cars into the seed, bruised, kicking and screaming? Or when we were poked hard in the back for the sin of letting our backs hit the chair? Or when parents were called in to smack around the kids who were misbehaving, and then we were threatened with the same? Or when kids were thrown down hard to the concrete when they tried to escape? Or when non compliant kids were sent home with the biggest most muscular kids, and then the group would laugh when it was announced? Or when we were padlocked behind rooms? Or when we were made to beg to defecate and then watched while doing so?
Do you think we believed violence wasn't part of the program, or can you see that perhaps we lived under a constant violence charged atmosphere with the thought that we could be next buzzing in the back of our heads? When a kid ran for the door and was thrown down hard and piled on, you may have thought this was isolated. To us it was everytime someone tried to escape. How do you think that made us feel?
Captive? Helpless? Powerless? Weak?
or
loved and respected? Valued?
Be honest now. Someone who was in a position of authority think this thru and give us a response. It is an important point that we have been tip-toeing around for five years now. Lets talk about it!
BTW, there is a follow up to this story coming soon.
GregFL:
BTW, Stripe...
You nailed it!
#2 was the winning guess.
:grin:
WWFSMD:
This is so strange to be reading this and see some of the peripheral connections to the Seed prior to my being put in Straight. I was 9 in 1974 and went to a private school in St. Pete. I had friends that went to St. Pete Catholic and I remember hearing about this. About a year or two later a kid in my neighborhood disappeared. Eventually we heard rumors about him being in the Seed. I remember my parents talking about it and my dad's attitude to be one of 'well, he needed a good, swift kick in the ass'. My dad worked for the SP Times, the owner of the Evening Independent (Helena, I remember that paper well too, free editions on days with no sunshine :smile: ) so he had heard all about Art and the Seed from day one. Looking back I guess its not so difficult to see how I ended up in Straight.
--- Quote ---Fear ruled the day if you were a teenager in St Pete.
--- End quote ---
Damn Greg, you aint' kidding there. First we were scared shitless of the Seed. Then Straight. When the neighbor kid that I knew got back from the Seed it was really odd in the neighborhood. Parents were freaked, kids were freaked. He didn't finish, don't know the cirumstances surrounding his exit but he was absolutely a changed person. Angry, depressed, paranoid etc. Poor guy was just a minor pothead before going in.
About a year or two before I went in Straight one of the kids I knew that disappeared in there was actually broken out by her boyfriend and a few of his friends. They waited in the parking lot and ambushed the oldcomer, grabbed Debbie and shoved her in the car that had pulled up from its hiding place around the corner and whisked her away. The things she told us after getting out gave us chills and a permanent fear of anything connected with that place. We ALL knew about Seed/Straight. We ALL either knew someone directly or knew of kids that were sent away. How many times I sat in those fucking blue chairs and thought about Mike and Carl coming to break Debbie out and dreamed someone would rescue me. These people deserve a special place in hell.
I tried for years to live according to everyone else's morality.
I tried to live like everyone else, to be like everyone else.
I said the right things even when I felt and thought quite differently.
And the result is a catastrophe.
---Albert Camus
--- End quote ---
GregFL:
hmm...175 views and only a smattering of comments.
Interesting.
GregFL:
Okay, here is the last of it. 9 days later, the St. Petersburg times followed up with the family and posted this article.
Daughter now okay after Seed incident
By Margaret Leaonard, St. Pertersburg Times Staff writer.
A Pinellas County mother who relented at the last minute and took her 16 year old daughter home from the Seed says she is not sure now that stories about her daughter's drug use were true.
In any case, the mother said Tuesday, "she's okay now."
convinced that her daughter was using drugs and "might die", the mother went with the parents of a Seedling to St. Petersburg Catholic High School to get her daughter and take her to The Seed for treatment.
The Three adults forced the girl into the car and drove her, crying and trying to escape, all the way to the Seed's warehouse building in the Tyrone Industrial Center.
"I felt sorry for her...I was upset," the mother recalled Tuesday. "But I wanted her scared. People were telling me stories about her. They were telling me so much they scared me...I want her to be a respectable, happy young lady. Drugs are not good for anybody."
In the Seed intake office, sitting at a table with her daughter and a Seed staffer, the mother recalls that she thought "I don't want this for my daughter."
"I said, 'please leave me alone and let me think,'" she related Tuesday. "he left and came back and I said, 'I want to talk it over with a priest.' They said 'If you change your mind the door's open anytime.' Then I left."
The Evening Indedendent reported that Seed director Art Barker said the Seed "refused" to admit the girl.
"they didn't refuse my daughter," the mother said.
"If they lie on this they'll lie on the other thing..I never caught my daughter (using drugs). She works. She goes to school."
Following The advice of her priest, the mother arranged counseling for her daughter. She thinks the girl is doing well now and no longer considers putting her in The Seed.
"I don't want her in there," She said Tuesday.
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