I'm not blown away, but I don't think he is alone with this. In fact, I know many who years later, are still terribly affected. (I know in fact, quite a few, who don't post here because it is too traumatic to relive it). For some of us, there is a real sense of violation at a critical time of our development.
I will say that Blown Away's account of what happened is right on the nose. In fact, all of his postings were right on target to astonishing degree. I went to a different CEDU school, at about the same time. This goes to show that the problem is systemic.
I left CEDU early, and I had no one to talk to about the epxerience so I just stuffed it. When I tried to share what happened, "civilians" looked at me like I grew another head. No one could relate. It was extremely isolating to have this bizarre, cultic trauma, and not be able to process it. When I came to this site, years and years later, it was like the cat was let out of the bag. For me, this is largely validating, positive, and necessary. I am very angry that these places continue to operate with little accountability and prey on desperate parents. I am also angry that it is so difficult to express the insidous nature of the therapeutic abuse, the lack of accreditation,and how they are able to conduct abusive, manipulative, group therapies and experentials that have NOTHING to do with ethical therapeutic practice or emotional growth. It is very unsettling to me. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to blame the "troubled teen" for manipulating parents.
As far as having a son who is affected more mildly. Well, the truth is, very, very few parents of students I know on this forum or the other fora have no idea the extent to which it affected us. Very few of us discuss it with parents, mostly because the parenst don't really wnat to know. I did for the first time recently and I am very close to my Mom. I didn't blame her at all, I just let her know what happened and she was pissed at me. She did not deny my experience. She did not accuse me of exaggerrating. After all these years, it was difficult to go down that road and feel you made another mistake in your choices as a parent. At some point, you just want to let it go and say what happened, happened. But she resented being disillusioned. This has happened with a lot of parents to different degrees; some former students just sense that their parents are holding on to the old "it saved your life" lifeline for dear life, so there is no point. So we jsut keep it to ourselves... or to Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora.