Straight was a cake walk in comparison.....

[Anonymous]

P.S.

Hi Mike!  

Hello!

[Tony]

I wasn't in Straight, I was Kids of El Paso. I was also in jail once but just for a few days.
In retrospect, if given the choice, I would've gladly spent 11 months in jail instead of in Kids. In jail, the biggest enemy is boredom. But at least you have mail, phones, and as many cigarettes as you can smoke. Most importantly, you know when you're getting out.
There were several "clients" in Kids of El Paso, that made the choice eschew jail and go with the rehab thing. All of them regretted it deeply.
I would suggest that anyone who claims that taking troubled teens and subjecting them to brainwashing techniques invented by Pavlov and practiced by the Chinese Communists is a good thing ought to have their heads examined by a real professional therapist.
What these individuals fail to understand is that what Straight and Kids did is ILLEGAL by any standard, and proven to be dangerous.
Yes, languishing in a cell block for almost a year is NOTHING compared to what Kids was. And I still don't think these bootcamps are anywhere near the level of mindfucking that Kids attained in the 80's.

[kaydeejaded]

Speaking of Boot Camps. Everytime I see Sally Jesse I want to smack the shit out of her, talk about road rage I have talk show rage!!! This bitch seems like she completely gets HIGH off sending teens to boot camp. I think she is a sadistic nasty clueless braindead moron. She looks so damn gleeful when those kids start getting screamed at I think I would be arrested if I ever went to a live taping. Who does she think she is? She makes her ratings by abusing children on national T.V. and I am guilty for helping her because I end up glued to the T.V. like I am watching a train wreck therefore uping the ratings more. I have not seen Sally in a while probably before 9/11 has the show been pulled or has it been my inabilty to find anytime to watch T.V.? I hope it has been canceled. She is a cruel woman and should be yanked from the airwaves!

[ramprato]

Yeah I hear ya,

Sometimes it makes me wonder what (if any) good it would do to email Miss Sally and ask hear when she plans on re-naming her show "The Bootcamp Channel". Her "educated" producers however seem to claim that they can distinguish that it's not OK for cults to use mind control such as Scientology, http://www.lisatrust.net/Media/us-sjr.htm but it's OK to use cult style brainwashing methods on teens at bootcamps, go figure.

[FaceKhan]

It is especially apparent when you know that some of the boot camps that have been featured on talk shows were the same ones that had fatalities and were shut down.

[Antigen]

Citizens Commission on Human Rights is listed in the transcript as a $ci front. So... this transcript is from `91. I've never been a Sally fan. Daytime talk always sort of made me retch because it reminded me of Group. When did Sally become the primary spokes yenta for boot-camps? Do ya'll suppose the clams have dead agented her by induction?

[misbehaver]

These boot camps are the last choice for minors who don't wanna do hard time or ??
Why not them them go see if they've got it to "make" it? It bumps self esteem, maybe even garner a sense of unit integrity and the sense of being part of a team. Then, again, there will always be an abusive (to someone) aspect of the game. Bleedin' hearts worry; feed them in. Beats prison or Straight, easy.
Jason (not sanctioned)

[Kathy]

There is a man named Steve A. Cartisano (a.k.a. Stephen Michaels, and a couple of other aliases that I can't think of right now) who is the owner of the TEENHELP teen therapy camps... He's along the same lines as Miller Newton.... In one article I read where he was bragging to his co-workers that he's gone big time, because he got Sally Jesse Raphael and some others to market his programs..... (I guess SAlly was a good target because if I remember correctly... I think I heard that she had a teen daughter die from something drug related, so she probably thinks shes "saving lives"  I'll get the articles and post the links in another post.

[Kathy]

Here is the link:  http://www.outsidemag.com/magazine/1095/10f_deth.html

and here is the line I was talking about:

"...Horsehair was Lance Paul Jaggar, an air force vet who served as Cartisano's field director. He and another devout Mormon, Bill Henry--an Idaho acquaintance of Larry Dean Olsen's who had been active in Scouting--supervised daily operations out of Escalante, allowing Cartisano to concentrate on marketing from his Provo-area home, a lavish residence that previously had been owned by golfer Billy Casper.

A brilliant promoter, Cartisano persuaded his "good friend" Oliver North to put in an appearance during his Iran-Contra notoriety and hired a publicist who booked him on Donahue, Sally Jesse Raphael, and Geraldo. "All the big talk shows," Cartisano boasts. "They loved me. I'd go on TV with kids who'd been through the program, these beautiful 14- to 15-year-old girls who'd talk about how they'd been out on the street stealing and doing drugs and turning tricks until Challenger changed their ways."

"The television appearances were a marketing gold mine," says a former associate of Cartisano's who declined to be identified. "The phones were ringing off the hook. Parents begged him to take their kids. An incredible amount of money started rolling in. Unfortunately, Steve didn't know how to handle it."

When Cartisano would go on the road to recruit customers, alleges the ex-associate, "Sometimes he'd spend $2,000 a week to rent a Lamborghini. He'd run up $1,000-a-night hotel bills." With such expenditures, despite all the money coming in, Challenger had trouble paying its bills. Checks bounced. The Internal Revenue Service inquired about $196,000 in unpaid corporate taxes. By early 1990 Cartisano was embroiled in numerous lawsuits filed by creditors and disgruntled clients, and the state of Utah was investigating him on several fronts...."

[Anonymous]

WWASP/Teen Help programs are owned by the Kay/Lichfield/Facer families. I'm unsure if Steve Cartisano has or had any connection with them. I understood his to be a separate operation from theirs. He is also banned from operating programs in the United States, so what he does have are all based out of the country now. Even so, he still uses a number of alias' to hide his connection to most of them.

[FaceKhan]

I think that Cartisano may have run a program in Puerto Rico or Samoa that had some connection to TeenHelp but you are certainly correct in that they are totally seperate entities.



I think that there is a misunderstanding about the nature of the boot camps we are talking about. The boot camps and wilderness programs we are talking about are privately run programs that parents send their kids to. They are not taking judicial referals or at least most of them don't. You are thinking about the state run bootcamps and private/public programs that are mostly for juvenile and young offenders who opt-in to the programs in most cases, although in some juvenile cases I believe they have been forced into it without any option at regular confinement. These programs are often troubled as well and have had a couple of fatalities, in addition to several instances of abusive guards and forced marches resulting in death or injuries.

[ This Message was edited by: FaceKhan on 2002-02-07 17:52 ]

[FaceKhan]

But you are right, those convicted of crimes can choose jail or a boot camp, then as long as both are run humanely I have no problem with it.

The issue is whether parents have the right to hire people to punish, indoctrinate torture, brainwash, abuse, rape, humiliate, beat, isolate, kidnap, or otherwise harm their kids. I think most people on this list, and quite possibly a majority of the general public would agree that parents do not have that right, that their are limits to parental power over their kids, and that the kids as human beings and citizens of the United States have fundamental rights, and among those rights is the right to be treated with dignity. I would argue that children and teens have the right to not be kidnapped, brainwashed, tortured, indoctrinated, abused, beaten, raped, or humiliated, whether it is supposed to be "for their own good" or not.

[jadenjames1]

On 2002-01-20 19:44:00, Anonymous wrote:
You need to jsut be quiet, have you ever been in jail while someone on your cell block is murdered?  You sanctimonious ass.

id rather get murdered in jail then even remember straight.

[Antigen]

Well, I can't say I'd rather be dead. But I'm really not sure hearing a murder in the next cell is any worse than being tricked into taking part in driving a perfectly sane boy over the edge.

[Anonymous]

Kathy,
You are obviously very ignorant on the Straight story! Until you have walked in my shoes, or even know my story, don't try to tell others what straight was about. You have no grounds to even judge the abuse straight has caused, cause even the internet can only tell a small part of the story. If you want to know about it, I'll talk.
[email protected]
Please understand the sensitivity of this to me, I'm not bashing yer post, I come in peace.