Numerous times over there years, courts, child welfare agencies, journalists and occasionally even law enforcement agencies investigated Straight, Inc. The response was alwasy quite the same as what WWASP is doing now. First they lie, deny everything and smear the critics as liars, drug addicts and neurotics.
Whatever's left standing after that, why they just make a few concessions, but claim it was never intentional and promise to do better. So, for awhile, they'll change a few of the worst complaints. If physical restraint is getting a lot of attention, fine, no more of that for awhile.
Instead they'll go a little heavier on the sleep deprivation, emotional abuse or whatever. For a short time, while the program is under close scrutiny, it won't 'work' as well. Some kids will be able to maintain their sanity and resist the watered down brainwashing. Some parents will see through it.
More than usual will escape the draw of it all and not become entheusiastic protectors and recruiters. And the bad PR will tank their recruiting anyway. If the scrutiny is extremely high and enduring, they may have to go so far as to change a corporate name or two, shuffle their staff around, maybe even pick out a sacrificial lamb and throw him or her to the wolves.
But they'll keep on doing what they're doing unless and until there is no longer a market for it.
Our major problem has more to do with criminalizing and medicalizing normal human behavior and less to do with the snake oil salesmen who show up to get rich by promising to meet that imaginary need.
That's what I like to focus on. It's not the sort of thing that one person or even an identifialble group can demonstrably accomplish and then celebrate. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
I'd love to see some of these turkeys sent down the river for decades long sentences, maybe under the RICO laws or how about just straight child abuse and conspiracy? It's not so much that I want to expand the suffering to them, though I must admit that it wouldn't spoil my day either. It's that, when we, as a community, start actually holding these sadistic lunatics accountable for their crimes, I'll take it as a sign that maybe we're returning to sanity from the myth of the super-criminal child.
BTW, anyone know what kind of sentence Charles Long II got? Everything I can find leaves off with that he was convicted and would soon be sentenced. I'll be pissed if he got some sort of judicial slap on the wrist, I swear to God.
Necessity never made a good bargain
--Benjamin Franklin Apr. 1734
