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Anonymous:
Keeping 'Cult' Out of the Case
How do you convince a jury that your client was a victim of a cult?

New Jersey Law Journal/July 7, 2003
By Tim O'Brien
For Philip Elberg, you don't present expert witnesses and you don't utter the word. Through witnesses and records, you let the story tell itself.

For the past three weeks, the partner in Newark's Medvin & Elberg has been presenting evidence to a Hudson County jury about why his client should be compensated for the 13 years she spent in a rehabilitation center.

Lulu Corter of Wanaque was signed into Kids of North Jersey Inc. in Hackensack by her parents on Oct. 27, 1984, when she was a 13-year-old with learning problems. In August 1997, she bolted from what dozens of teenagers have described as a living hell.

Like many participants in the program, Corter had no drug or alcohol problem. Today, those who ran Kids of North Jersey cannot say why she was admitted because her records have disappeared. They say only that she had behavior problems, though they cannot recall the specifics.

Elberg, who won a $4.5 million settlement for another Kids of North Jersey patient in 1999, did give the jury a road map in his opening on June 12 before Superior Court Judge Maurice Gallipoli.

"This [program] is not about tough love. It's about destroying families as they existed, and creating a new family with [V.] Miller Newton as the father and Ruth Ann Newton as the mother," Elberg told the eight-member jury hearing Corter v. Kids of North Jersey, L-3578-00.

The suit is seeking compensatory but not punitive damages because Newton is in bankruptcy in Florida. It alleges that Newton violated Corter's civil rights, provided treatment that deviated from the standard care, and caused emotional, physical and psychological damage.

Newton is the 63-year-old rehabilitation guru who ran Kids of North Jersey from 1984 to the early 1990s, then moved the operation to Secaucus after stiffing the landlord for $400,000. State authorities finally cut off his Medicaid payments in 1998 and sued him in 1999 for $1 million in Medicaid overbillings. Kids of North Jersey closed in 1999.

Newton's operation was also shut down by state officials in California, Florida and Utah, where a prosecutor called the program "a sort of private jail, using techniques such as torture and punishment."

Newton's wife, Ruth Ann, served as a clinical director and second in command. Both are defendants, along with their organization, under several names, and four psychiatrists. Elberg and his partner and co-counsel in the case, Alan Medvin, previously gained settlements from carriers on behalf of three of the psychiatrists. The fourth, now dead, was dropped as a defendant.

Though Elberg has assiduously avoided the "cult" word, three witnesses testified to being brainwashed. He says that even an expert for the defense said in a report that Lulu was brainwashed.

Testimony was elicited that Miller would routinely require patients to shun their families, or parents to shun their children who left the program before graduating. For example, Lulu Corter testified that Newton discouraged her and her mother from attending her older sister's wedding because that sister had left the program prematurely.

Last Thursday, one of the questions from a juror to another psychiatric expert for Newton asked about whether teenagers could be conditioned to think a certain way.

And there seems little doubt that the three weeks of testimony -- which includes tales of escapes, kidnappings, beatings, and physical and mental punishment -- have had an impact on Gallipoli.

Last Thursday, shortly before lunch break during Newton's cross-examination, Gallipoli began a series of sharp questions for the witness. Noting that Lulu was in Kids of North Jersey for years for an eating disorder and compulsive behavior, Gallipoli asked Newton whether such disorders and compulsive behaviors could be treated on an outpatient basis.

Newton said they could.

When the jury was ushered out, defense attorney John O'Farrell objected to the judge's queries, saying they were "too skeptical."

Gallipoli responded, "They are skeptical." When O'Farrell, of Morristown's Francis & O'Farrell, pressed his objection, the exasperated judge snapped, "We're just about walking through a fantasy land, and there comes a time when the court just can't sit there and accept this like a bump on a log."

Asked by a reporter whether he thought the judge went too far in expressing his opinion, O'Farrell said only, "What do you think?" adding that he had high regard for Gallipoli.

The exchange followed 90 minutes of cross-examination by Elberg that included a rundown of Newton's qualifications, including a Ph.D. in 1981 from The Union Institute in Cincinnati in public administration and urban anthropology. The school bills itself as an "alternative learner-directed" organization without classes or the need to show up anywhere.

Newton has described the degree on resumes as being in "medical anthropology" and then "clinical anthropology." Newton says those titles describe what he studied. He also says he is a "board certified ... medical psychotherapist." When pressed, he says it is a "peer certification."

Setting Up The 'Doctor'
Before the cross examination of Newton, with backers on one side of the courtroom and angry former patients and staffers on the other, the jury heard from five former patients who say they were victims of Kids of North Jersey. Elberg says he was able to call those witnesses by invoking a rule of evidence allowing him to rebut testimony he contends is not true.

When Ruth Ann Newton was on the stand, Elberg pressed her about comments by former patients in the past two decades in court, on television shows and to reporters.

Specifically, he asked four questions: Could patients leave when they turned 18? Did Kids of North Jersey routinely try to get parents to sign in siblings once one child was admitted? Did the program encourage kidnappings of those who escaped from the program? And was it common for patients to offer false or exaggerated confessions about how bad they use to be so they could advance through the program's phases and ultimately graduate?

Ruth Ann Newton said no to each query, at which point Elberg put on his rebuttal witnesses. "If she had admitted those things, I could not have brought those victims on," Elberg said in an interview.

The five told their horror tales, which included sitting in chairs, ramrod, for 12 hours of group therapy each weekday. Those in the first phase of treatment could not speak, and most could not write letters, read, make telephone calls, talk to each other or make eye contact.

There was no privacy. "Old-timers" or "peer counselors," those who had graduated but were coerced to stay on as staff, accompanied newcomers to the bathroom, where there were no doors on the stalls.

The tiniest infraction, such as eating a cookie, could send patients back to the first phase. This, the victims testified, was the ultimate hammer, causing many to lie in the hope of getting out.

Jeffrey Stallings, for years the No. 3 official at the facility, testified that he quit to avoid breaking the law. He had testified in an earlier case that Newton altered records in anticipation of visits by regulators and withheld some records.

Two weeks before Elberg filed his complaint in the current case in 1999, he filed a show cause order, ex parte, with Gallipoli, asking that Kids of North Jersey's records be seized to prevent the disappearance of more files. The judge signed the order, and the state's Office of Insurance Fraud Prosecutor seized the records from a warehouse in Glen Rock.

Stallings said he stayed for years and remained loyal. "Looking back, I realize I was brainwashed."

Janna Holmgren-Richards testified that she made up stories while "relating" during group therapy because when she told the truth she was told to sit down, thus harming her chances of advancing. "Lulu admitted she ate sugar, but she didn't, and I said I pushed my poop out because I was there for anorexia, but I lied." Lulu, in fact, made up stories of having sex with a dog and being molested by her uncle so she could move up, she testified.

Stallings testified that many patients had only three options: sit tight and try to go along; rebel; or lie to move through the phases.

As to why so many patients went along with such abuse, many have said that if they told their parents, their parents would go to Newton and he would convince them that their child was lying.

"I never told my dad," testified Jessica Calderone, a former patient. "He would question it, and call up the Newtons, and I'd be accused of manipulating and would be put back to phase one."

As for why so many patients would stay on as trainee staffers and later as paid peer counselors, many say Newton coerced them by telling them they had to "give back [and] carry the message" as is done in Alcoholics Anonymous.

"He guilted you," Erica Goodman, a former patient, staffer and program nurse, said in an interview at the courthouse. Just out of nursing school and lacking experience, Goodman ran the laboratory and developed the eating disorder protocol after speaking with seven patients who allegedly had eating disorders, she says.

Newton and his operation have been sued many times, and his carriers have paid out more than $5.8 million. He's been investigated criminally in Florida and New Jersey, but never prosecuted. But one by one, agencies have cut off the payment of claims, sometimes after exposes by the television shows "60 Minutes," "20/20" and "West 57th Street."

As for Lulu, the real tragedy is that she was the victim of sexual abuse by her older brother before she entered the program, and the program knew that, according to documents and testimony. Yet, she was not diagnosed as an incest victim until 1990, six years after being at Kids of North Jersey.

Newton testified it is often difficult to determine whether a young girl is just experimenting or participating in sexual play.

Throughout Kids of North Jersey's stint in New Jersey, the staff psychiatrists, according to their own depositions, rarely saw patients, let alone treated them. In his complaint, Elberg accuses Newton of "renting licenses," with the peer counselors using rubber-stamps to sign the psychiatrists' names to reports to collect private and Medicaid insurance.

"I never saw a psychiatrist once," says Christine Johnston, a former patient and staffer who traveled from San Diego to watch the trial.

Newton admitted on the stand that his program routinely does not talk to a potential patient's teachers or doctors before making a diagnosis, saying it is not that important and takes too much time.

The jury in the case has been active, taking notes and asking hundreds of questions through the judge -- dozens of Newton alone. Based on those questions, they appear skeptical.

Elberg did call Newton a cult-like leader in court papers in the case that led to the $4.5 million settlement in 1999, Ehrlich v. Kids of North Jersey, HUD-L-4592-95. And he had a cult expert ready for both cases.

"But I decided not to call him or use the term 'cult' because that could have turned the trial into one about the meaning of a cult, rather than about this girl who was yanked out of school and forced to go through what she went through."

Anonymous:
Ex-patient: I was prisoner at treatment center
The Jersey Journal/January 23, 2007
By Ali Winston
A former patient is suing the former directors of KIDS of North Jersey, a now-defunct drug treatment center in Secaucus, claiming that he was held there against his will for five years.

It's the latest in a long history of complaints filed against Dr. Virgil Miller Newton III, the former director of KIDS of North Jersey as well as a number of other centers across the country. He and his wife, Ruth Ann Newton - who was the center's assistant director - are being sued by ex-patient Antonio Carrera, 26, of Clifton.

The trial began Thursday in front of Superior Court Judge Maurice Gallipoli in Jersey City.

Carrera, whose family immigrated to New York City in 1993, was admitted to KIDS of North Jersey in July 1994 at the age of 14. He said he was brought to the center by his parents after he was arrested in connection with a groping incident at his high school in Queens.

Although his parents said they saw no signs of drug use in a preliminary interview with Ruth Ann Newton - and even though Carrera twice tested negative for drugs - he was diagnosed with marijuana and alcohol addictions and was admitted to the program with the consent of his parents, said his attorney, Phil Elberg.

In his opening statement, Elberg accused the Newtons of fabricating Carrera's "addictions" to marijuana and alcohol as cause for admitting him to the program, where he remained until 1998, when he turned 18 and became a legal adult. For all four years, Elberg said, Carrera stayed with a foster family in New Jersey and did not attend school.

"More than 41/2 years of his life were stolen because he was in treatment for problems he did not have," Elberg said.

But defense attorney Stephen Ryan described Carrera as a "failing student" with truancy issues and an arrest record who was admitted to the center by an accredited doctor.

He warned jurors that "this will be a tough case to sort out where truth ends and fantasy begins."

According to Ruth Ann Newton, Carrera would alternate between denying and admitting to a drug and alcohol addiction, and that he never advanced beyond the "second phase" of treatment. There are five phases in the Newtons' drug treatment plan.

Carrera also claimed he was frequently restrained by other patients, often being pinned to the floor by as many as four other teens, until he agreed to participate in drug treatment sessions.

Allegations of false imprisonment, physical abuse, and insurance fraud have dogged Virgil Miller Newton III.

He holds a doctorate in public administration from Union Institute & University in Cincinnati, calls himself "Father Cassian" after being ordained as a priest by the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America and has made unsuccessful bids for political office in Florida.

In 2003, Gallipoli presided over a 2003 suit by Lulu Corter, a former KIDS patient who also claimed she did not have alcohol or drug problems and was falsely held. Corter, who was also represented by Elberg, settled for $6.5 million.

Anonymous:
Rehab Program A Family Affair
Volunteer Drug Counsel Group Puts Kinfolk At Center Stage

Note: Growing Together was founded by former Straight training director, Dr. George Ross
Sun-Sentinel, December 28, 1995
By Dorey Scott
During a recent Crime Watch Community Night at Lake Worth High School, a middle-aged man from Delray Beach boldly told strangers about his family's darkest days.

His daughter tried to commit suicide even before he knew she had a drug problem, he said.

"We knew there was a problem," said the father, whose name is being withheld to protect his daughter's identity. "But we didn't know it was drugs until there was a crisis."

A nonprofit, therapeutic drug rehabilitation program that runs a counseling center in Lake Worth helped his family get through that crisis.

Today, his daughter is off drugs, he said, and his family is "growing together" - the name of the program.

To help the program that helped them, the man, his wife and daughter recently agreed to become a host family.

His family will get a stipend from Growing Together to pay for food and other expenses it incurs while helping care for a child in crisis. But since the stipend is only $5 a day, his family essentially will be volunteering their efforts.

Growing Together runs mostly on volunteerism - people offering time, money, or both.

A group of local parents and professionals founded Growing Together in 1987. Today, the program runs a counseling center in Lake Worth, where children spend their days; and a network of host families, who take the children in at night.

During the Crime Watch Community Night, the middle-aged man sat at a table and answered questions about the program. He knew what most parents were thinking: "There's nothing wrong with our kids."

But there's a word for that kind of reaction. It's called "denial," he said - the refusal to admit there's a problem.

The first thing that Growing Together does is help a family in crisis recognize and deal with the specific problem it's facing, said Mickey Blanchard, program director.

During a crisis, children spend their days at the center, their nights with a host family. Their parents pay for the care.

"This is not a place where parents can leave their children to be fixed. We have to have 100 percent commitment from the parents [because) the whole family is involved on a daily basis," Blanchard said. "That's the critical difference" between Growing Together and other local therapeutic programs, she said. Another difference is the use of host families, Blanchard said. That keeps the cost of care down.

During the daytime, children talk regularly to peer-group counselors at rap sessions. They also meet and talk with their parents at least twice a week.

The meetings are always confidential and often emotional, Blanchard said.

"The anger comes out," she said. "That's part of recovery."

And that's why the center's rap room is equipped with heavy, wooden benches fashioned from church pews, Blanchard said. So a child who "acts out" can't lift and throw them.

Other rooms are similarly furnished and equipped with makeshift materials. But that soon may change.

Growing Together just received a $10,000 grant from the Barker Welfare Foundation, administrators said.

The center will use the money to buy medical equipment and create an in-house infirmary.

Meanwhile, the center still needs money to build an outdoor recreation and activity area.

"It'd be great to fence in the lot and have a basketball court," Blanchard said.

Anonymous:
Lingering Torment From Rough Therapy
Note: Growing Together was founded by former Straight training director, Dr. George Ross
The Bergen Record, April 9, 2000
By Leslie Brody
It has been almost seven years since Rebecca Ehrlich walked out of KIDS of North Jersey, a drug treatment center no longer operating. On her bad days, though, it feels as if she was there just yesterday.

Ehrlich says she still has nightmares about being trapped in a virtual prison, first in Hackensack, then Secaucus, that barred her from going to school, reading books, getting mail, or making phone calls for most of her six years there. She was allowed to see her parents only twice a week across a crowded room.

When Ehrlich finally got out of KIDS at age 21, she sued for medical malpractice, charging that the unqualified staff never recognized her mental illness and that the program actually made her worse. In December, she won a settlement of $4.5 million.

"I'm happy about the money, but if I could give it all away not to be sick I would," said Ehrlich, a 27-year-old from Wayne who has been hospitalized for bipolar disorder 17 times since leaving KIDS. "I was tortured emotionally and mentally there."

Ehrlich is one of the many KIDS survivors who say they still have deep scars from a round-the-clock behavior modification program that instilled fear and self-loathing in its troubled clients. Hundreds of North Jersey teenagers spent months or years there until it closed under fire from state regulators in late 1998.

Critics today and throughout KIDS' existence condemned it as a cult-like boot camp headed by a charismatic leader named Miller Newton. Now 62 and living in Florida, he has worked as a psychologist and is easing into retirement. Newton, who declined to talk for this article, still has ardent supporters who credit him with rescuing out-of-control delinquents from the streets.

In a 1987 letter to The Record, Newton explained that his program took "walking disaster area kids . . . and turns them into winners." His boosters contended that bogus allegations of abuse came from "druggies" who couldn't handle the discipline necessary for sobriety.

Despite the official demise of KIDS, the program remains a powerful force in the lives of its former clients. It left broken spirits and broken families in its wake. To this day, some families remain divided into two camps, a side that has faith in Newton and a side that is horrified by him.

Bob Moss of Ridgewood knows how deeply some families have been split. His grown son won't talk to him.

Moss was an administrator at KIDS but quit in 1993 when he became skeptical of Newton's tough-love approach. After that, Moss says his son, a former KIDS client who is believed to be loyal to Newton, rejected his pleas for contact for seven years. (Moss' son could not be reached for comment.)

"Miller and his people told my son I was a bad person, and that his involvement with me would lead to his returning to drug use," Moss said with evident pain. "I understand I have two grandchildren I've never seen."

7 Other parents face similar estrangement. One Bergen couple, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says their daughter hasn't talked to them in three years.

Like many KIDS parents, the couple believed in the program at first but were dismayed to find that it grew more coercive. They enrolled their daughter in 1984 and, like many patients, she eventually joined the staff. She is still devoted to Newton, her father and others who know her say, and she runs a "graduate society" from her Bergen County apartment, where Newton followers meet daily and practice the techniques they learned.

She turned against her parents when they asked for an independent psychiatric evaluation of her condition, the couple said. "She does not want us to talk to her because we are the enemy," said her father, a former school psychologist. "I am absolutely desperate to see her."

His daughter did not return calls for comment.

Newton's supporters call KIDS a treatment of last resort that used peer pressure to straighten out teenagers who didn't respond to traditional therapies. At times more than 100 teenagers were enrolled, sent by parents desperate for help.

"The program was good for many kids," said Zisalo Wancier, who worked with the program four hours a week and was one of four Bergen County psychiatrists named as co-defendants in Ehrlich's lawsuit. "Many of these kids were doing better. They were all sober. . . . So the public was being protected."

Newton "saved my daughter's life," said a Bergen County man who asked not to be named. Like six other people said to be Newton admirers who were contacted for this story, he would not discuss KIDS in detail, and he said the biased media always criticized it unfairly.

Some graduates say KIDS began with good intentions but that Newton became far too controlling. "I'm sober and I give KIDS credit," said 31-year-old Scott Harding, who lived in Montclair and now lives in Bethlehem, Pa. He enrolled in 1984, joined the staff, and quit volunteering for it two years ago. "It took me off the streets so I wouldn't get high," he said, "but I wasn't allowed to move on."

Meanwhile, state regulators still want money back from Newton. The New Jersey Department of Human Services is suing him to recoup more than $1 million in Medicaid payments he collected.

According to a stinging report last September by Administrative Law Judge Daniel McKeown, who denied Newton's appeal to be eligible for Medicaid funds, KIDS was never approved to provide the full-time care it dispensed. The report said it lacked qualified staff. It violated clients' rights by using them to restrain each other physically. And it blocked them from communicating with their parents.

Court papers and people who attended KIDS described it as a warehouse where "newcomers" would sit on blue chairs in a large group for 12 hours a day, confessing their mistakes and chanting about honesty, sexual abstinence, and kicking drugs. Newcomers were not trusted to be alone or talk to their parents privately. More experienced "oldcomers" followed them everywhere, holding on to their belt loops. They were even watched in the bathroom and the shower.

Former KIDS clients say one of the techniques used on teens who acted up was the "five-point restraint" -- five peers would sit on a client's arms and legs and hold his head still. Sometimes that punishment lasted for hours.

Although teenagers spent the nights in "host homes" run by other clients' parents, they were also watched constantly there and many said they felt they had no escape. They said staff members convinced them that if they left they would overdose or their parents would send them back.

Moreover, clients talked of psychological manipulation. They said Newton convinced their parents that teenagers who quit would be lost to the gutters.

"A lot of parents just didn't know what to do, and they wound up in effect civilly committing these children without the due process of law," said Barbara Waugh, a deputy attorney general who is arguing the state's Medicaid suit against Newton. "Once you got in there, you couldn't get out."

Newton, a former Methodist minister, has long faced media scrutiny and opposition from state regulators. In 1984, for example, "60 Minutes" aired an expose on a similar drug program he ran in St. Petersburg, Fla.

In 1987, Larry McClure, the Bergen County prosecutor at the time, led a nine-month investigation of KIDS. He found no evidence of criminal activity, but he urged state authorities to monitor it. In a raid in 1990, McClure marched into the Hackensack center and announced that he would escort out anyone who wanted to go. Twelve teenagers left on the spot.

One was named Jeff. Riddled by self-doubt, he returned to KIDS the next day because he was terrified that the staff's prediction would come true: that without their guidance, he would commit suicide. "I went back because I was in complete fear," he said. Eventually Jeff left for good. Now he's a mortgage broker.

Jeff and some other former KIDS clients who are cobbling their lives back together have become an informal support group.

Six of them met for a hamburger dinner one night at a Hackensack diner. All are in therapy for post-traumatic stress or other problems. All are drug-free, too. They thank Alcoholics Anonymous and other rehabilitation programs, not Newton. Since KIDS' 24-hour supervision kept teenagers out of high school, they had to get general equivalency diplomas. Some went to college.

One 31-year-old, now a health professional in Bergen County, said that when she finally left KIDS she was furious with her parents for sending her there and had to work hard to reconcile with them. "We fought and cried," she said. "My parents felt very guilty. They said they didn't know what was going on there.

"I feel very angry that nobody saved us," she said. "I have dreams that I'm going to work or school and I'm looking over my shoulder, and the program is coming to kidnap me."

"I have to take medication because I think I'm always lying," added a 32-year-old social worker from Teaneck. "At KIDS, if you said, 'I feel hurt,' they said, 'Are you really hurt?' I'm still asking myself these questions, and not believing myself."

While they are heartened by Rebecca Ehrlich's legal victory against KIDS, some of the revelations that came out because of the litigation reopened old wounds for survivors.

Tammy Auerbach, a blond and gregarious 31-year-old office manager from Clifton, said she "freaked out" when she learned later that Newton was not a licensed psychologist when he began to treat her.

He always went by the name "Dr. Newton," but his first Ph.D. was in anthropology from the Union Institute in Cincinnati, an alternative distance-learning program. He got a doctorate in neuropsychology from that school in 1993. According to the state Division of Consumer Affairs, he got a New Jersey psychologist's license in 1995, 11 years after he opened KIDS of North Jersey (originally called KIDS of Bergen County).

"After reading Rebecca's court papers, I learned somebody without a license diagnosed me," Auerbach said. "So was I really an alcoholic and drug addict, or was that just put in my head? . . . I have 15 years of sobriety. I function in the world. I have a good boyfriend and drive a fancy car. But inside I'm empty and falling apart, and nobody knows it."


Why did families keep their children in such an environment?
"Kids never had the opportunity to tell their parents what was really going on there," said Harryet Ehrlich, Rebecca's mother. "We were all brainwashed. We believed in Miller Newton, and we were so desperate for help we thought this was the solution."

Ehrlich's lawyer, Philip Elberg, said news of her success has spurred at least a dozen other former clients to call him to see if they can sue, too. For most, it's too late. He is still considering cases, however, if they fall within the statute of limitations. A plaintiff must file suit within two years of the offense or, in the case of an underage victim, by age 20.

The future may hold some bright spots for Rebecca Ehrlich. She hopes improved medications and good doctors will help stabilize her mental illness. The settlement will pay for an apartment where she can live on her own when she's doing well, and provide an annuity to support her.

These days she is taking one course at a time to get an associate's degree at Bergen Community College, but she has no idea what kind of job she wants.

"I have my good days and my bad days," she said as she leaned back on a couch in her parents' house, with her Shih Tzu, Mazel, at her feet. "I'm doing better than when I first got out of KIDS. . . . It makes me angry that I went through all that. I feel sad it took that many years of my life away."

Anonymous:
Clients Offer Mixed Views On Programs
The Tampa Tribune, July 7, 1993
By Annmarie Sarsfield
ST. PETERSBURG - Barbara Segraves had a demanding job, a father on his death bed, and a 38-year-old brother whose drug and alcohol abuse led him to an early grave.

She was a single mom who worried when she caught her 15-year-old son, Jay, sneaking out of the house at night. Jay hung out with a rough crowd, and she suspected he might be involved with drugs.

Segraves, like hundreds of other parents over the past 17 years, turned to Straight Inc., an adolescent drug treatment program.

Following a brief evaluation at the St. Petersburg treatment center, Straight employees convinced Segraves her son was a drug abuser. She placed him in treatment in November 1989.

Today, Segraves, 39, believes she was duped and that all Straight wanted was her money. What she and Jay really needed was some family counseling, she said.

"I'm totally amazed I fell for this," Segraves said. "It's a ploy on single parents."

Straight played on her vulnerabilities, she said. When she wanted to take her son out of the program, Segraves said she was told, "You don't want him to die like your brother, do you?"

For a time, she said, she wasn't allowed to see her son.

"They were abusing him so badly they were afraid that he'd tell me," she said, recounting how he was poked and prodded until he was bruised, spit at and physically restrained. "There is no way on God's earth this is treatment."

Segraves took him out of the program in May 1990.

"It took us two years to get to a normal relationship," she said. "He had always trusted me. For a while he was violent, uncontrollable."

After spending nine months in a Sarasota program, today, Jay is fine, she said.

But the bitterness remains for her and her son.

"I feel so stupid for being fooled by these people," she said.

Stories similar to the Segraveses abound. But there also are many like Mike Mahoney's.

"I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for Straight," said Mahoney, 26, of Largo.

When he was 16 he smoked pot, drank and was in trouble with the law. In 1983, his father put him into the program, where he spent two years. He was about three-fourths of the way through it when he turned 18 and took off.

"They couldn't keep me there," he said.

Mahoney chose to return to the program a year later after committing a dozen felonies and becoming a cocaine addict.

Straight "probably did some things that maybe they shouldn't have," Mahoney said, referring to allegations of abuse. But he said the program needed to be tough on drug abusers who didn't want to cooperate.

"Back in '83 it was real rough - but the people [clients] were real rough," he said.

Looking back, Mahoney said it was just the program he needed.

"That by far is the best treatment center I've ever seen or heard about," he said. "It's kids helping kids."

Roberta Yancey was involved with Straight off and on from 1982 to 1991.

She started as a host parent when her 15-year-old son, Scott, was in the program. Scott never graduated from the program and left after spending 15 months at the St. Petersburg center and nine months at the Marietta, Ga., facility.

But Yancey credits Straight with introducing him to a course of recovery.

"They started it," she said. "It was like a springboard."

As a host parent, Yancey, 53, housed 27 different teen-agers in her St. Petersburg home. Today, 24 of them are still drug free, she said.

She went to work at Straight, first as a receptionist, and later helped the center come into compliance with state regulations.

Helping her son and other teens through recovery "has completely changed my life," she said. "It's been a joy."

Yancey went back to school and got a master's degree in counseling. Today, she works with adolescents who are substance abusers.

Scott, now 26, has been clean for four years.

"It's incredible. It's unbelievable ... I believed it."

Richard Bradbury, 27, of Tampa, speaks in disbelief as he recounted his years with Straight.

Bradbury took nine months to "admit" he was a drug abuser - even though he says he'd only tried drugs experimentally before his parents put him in the program. His sister preceded him at Straight and Bradbury believes employees convinced his parents that he was at risk, too.

Physically mistreated by peers and counselors for denying his dependence on drugs, Bradbury finally "admitted" to using narcotics.

After graduating from the program in 1984, Bradbury worked at Straight, conducting aftercare rap sessions and group therapy sessions.

Bradbury said in talking to an old friend about the program, the questions he was asked opened his eyes.

The program is too much like a cult, he said.

"The treatment model is sick."

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