I think I was a whole lot more washed than most.
I remember a single moment of clarity that was so overwhelming that I very nearly fainted. A boy named Bobby, who at least one of you knew personally, was being marathoned, beaten up and trotted out in front of group from time to time for confrontation. I heard the bumps and scuffle and the screams and yelling and I thought "I wonder when that dumb son of a bitch going to quit fighting and just go along?" Not that I wanted him to really "make a change" in the privacy of his own mind. Just that I didn't understand that that's what was going on in me and around me.
The last time they brough him out in front of group, here's what I "saw":
Bobby was still being defiant. He wouldn't even go down the stairs and stand in front of group willingly. Instead, the oldcomers had to drag him down the stairs and accross the room and then hold him up in a standing position to face Group. Otherwise, it looked like he would have just collapes down on the floor like a baby throwing a tantrum. And he refused to look at the person talking to him, instead, just staring off at a point somewhere far behind the top of the back wall over the entrances to the bathrooms.
The group was in a frenzy of self rightious anger and scorn, flapping like manic seaguls on acid. One after another of us took our turns to stand up and holler at him about how pathetic and stupid he was acting, how much we loved him and wanted him to get straight and assuring him that we wouldn't give up until he decided to work his program. Finally, staff called on his little sister, Cathy. She stood up and started along the same script with a pretty convincing delivery. And she had an effect on Bobby different from all the rest. Bobby sort of lit up a little bit.
I watched as this boy came out of his stupor just a little bit and started searching the room with his eyes for the source of his sister's voice. Cathy couldn't continue. Her voice failed as she sat down and sobbed into her hands. And Bobby kept trying to find her with his eyes, but he couldn't find her.
For about an eternity or 30 seconds, it's hard for me to tell, I realized what I had just taken part in and that this sort of thing happened all the time and that I always saw it the way I described above. Then Bobby was hauled off somewhere; maybe back to the timeout room up above staff offices or maybe out front. I don't know. Staff was talking and so I was 'paying attention to the person talking' and not looking where I wasn't supposed to look.
Then there was a round of motivation followed by some songs and I turned my mind back to the weary task of coming up with something to say in case I got called on next and trying hard to hang onto, but not give any sign of, what I really thought.
I was so washed by the time I split that, when asked by HRS investigators and others, I couldn't recall the details of all of the horrible things that happened right in front of my eyes. Even if I could remember in my own mind, there was this simultanious track running, reminding me what Group would say and what I would be expected to say about any of it if called on by staff.
The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest possible limits. ... and [when] the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.
-- St. George Tucker, Judge of the Virginia Supreme Court 1803
