Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Daytop Village
DAYTOP Did Me Great Harm in the Long Run
Magnificent:
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---Sorry to butt in on your run of posts here, Magnificent, but it seems to me that SEKTO is relating his personal experiences at Daytop and his interpretation of the net effect that Daytop has had on him, and that salient fact is well communicated by the nature and tenor of his posts.
With all due respect, your posts, on the other hand, would appear to be attacking the validity and veracity of his experiences. I dunno...were you standing there by his side during each and every day of his time there? Do you have some magical mind-bonding ability by which you were able to get inside of his head and see exactly how events affected him?
I myself would be much more interested in hearing of your personal experiences and how and why you feel that Daytop, or TCs in general, have their place in dealing with various problems and societal issues.
People are affected by events and interactions with others differently. Somewhere early on in this thread, SEKTO did state that he was quite introverted. I would very much like to hear your opinion of how the TC modality affects introverts vs. extroverts, given the very nature of "groups" per se, and the inherent "discomfort" (if not terror) they elicit in some folks.
--- End quote ---
I will answer your question and psy at the same time. I will not share my experience because that isn't my point in writing here. I was at Daytop the entire time that Setko is speaking of so this is how I would know what went on. I am not saying that he did not have bad experiences or that there weren't some that took their power a bit far. I'm not sure that Leroy didn't smoke with the kids, we never heard of it and we pretty much heard most of what was going on. I personally spent a lot of time with Leroy and I have never known him to smoke pot at that time. Marcy is a lesbian but I never heard her describe herself as a diesel dyke but she was young and the programs were not as regulated. She was not let go because we gave her a going away party you don't do that when you are let go. The Joyce that he speaks of was let go from the Daytop she did not leave on her own.
What I am saying is that he is making some of this stuff up. I too can share experiences that I've had at Daytop, and some not so good, but Sekto has made statements about things he has no knowledge of and has also stated facts that just never happened. I'm not writing here to defend Daytop I'm writing here because, with the understanding that his perceptions are his reality, they are not necessarily the truth. The people who he speaks of are basically good people who were doing what they thought they had to do and not with the intention of abusing or injuring anyone. There isn't one school, hospital, institution in the country that doesn't have bad stuff going on but this guy is way out there.
There were a couple of staff there that were sent from NY to open the program when these individuals were too strong handed they were sent back to NY or let go. By the time that the program closed, which was not due to wrong doing on Daytop's part as Setko stated, there were only a couple of people who were original NY staff, maybe 2. He heard that Mike Gorman died at his daughter's house, he had no children. From my recollections Ed Cinisomo was one of the nicest guys around but the kids had little to no contact with him because he was the executive director. If Ed in fact ever made statements about the kids being statistics it would not have been done in a hateful degrading way.
There were staff who shouldn't have been working with kids and I can see how a young kid can be hurt so I am not saying that Setko shouldn't take issue with Daytop I am only saying that he needs to get his facts straight because some of his perceptions are either straight up fantasies or lies.
psy:
--- Quote from: "Magnificent" ---some of his perceptions are either straight up fantasies or lies.
--- End quote ---
Well. The specific things you mentioned were minor (such as reasons a person was let go) and it is just as plausible either he was mistaken/misinformed or you are lying (i'm not accusing anybody here... just stating a possibility).
Also, if you read back on this thread carefully, SEKTO was careful to state *how* he knew things and what were his sources. this makes everything that he says when mentioned with his sources evaluative opinion.
Such as. If I say "Daytop did the thing with the pacifier. I know this because i talked to sources A, B, and C." It's opinion, because you're stating how you know something and a reader is free to disregard your *conclusion* based on the facts and sources you provided.
I think, also, if you read carefully, SEKTO would probably concede that the staff members had the best of intentions. As you probably know well enough, however, this is not always enough. Furthermore, you're both coming at this from two very different perspectives. You were a staff member so you've seen this through "staff's" eyes, and know most had the best of intentions. Clients, on the other hand, had no way of knowing that. It's easy to perceive misguided authority as sadism when you don't know what the other side feels like.
Magnificent:
I guess it is acceptable with you for Setko to misstate or misinterpret. I don't only speak as a staff member I also speak as a client and if a kid was told to wear a pacifier I can assure you it was not with the Director's permission. It was clear to everyone who worked there that physical learning experiences were off limits. However, I will give Setko his misinterpretations what I challenge is the outright dishonesty about people he presumes to know. People he heard things about from other people and so on. I get that he's utilizing this site as a means of healing, venting or whatever his intentions are but his global statement about Daytop are off. That program has been around for over 40 years and the time that Setko was there it was so far from what he describes.
psy:
--- Quote from: "Magnificent" ---I guess it is acceptable with you for Setko to misstate or misinterpret.
--- End quote ---
I didn't state that at all. What Is said was that he stated where he got the information from and as such, you're free to accept his conclusion or come to your own.
Just FYI, there is no wrong interpretation.
[attachment=0:2tgxtvxv]Picture 496.png[/attachment:2tgxtvxv]
--- Quote ---I don't only speak as a staff member I also speak as a client and if a kid was told to wear a pacifier I can assure you it was not with the Director's permission.
--- End quote ---
I can accept that. But it seems you're now impying it could have happened. Before you stated outright it did not.
--- Quote ---It was clear to everyone who worked there that physical learning experiences were off limits. However, I will give Setko his misinterpretations what I challenge is the outright dishonesty about people he presumes to know. People he heard things about from other people and so on.
--- End quote ---
Ok. Well do you have any other examples? I see you listed a few but that was only a minority of what he spoke about. The bulk of his experience, it seems, you do not disagree with the facts of, as I see it... just his perceptions, opinions, and conclusions which naturally differ from person to person.
Ursus:
--- Quote from: "Magnificent" ---I'm not sure that Leroy didn't smoke with the kids, we never heard of it and we pretty much heard most of what was going on. I personally spent a lot of time with Leroy and I have never known him to smoke pot at that time.
--- End quote ---
Well...if I were Leroy and had half a knuckle of street-smart savvy between my ears, I sure as hell wouldn't let on to a fellow staff member or admin at a drug rehab program, that I ever smoked any pot in my lifetime. :D
--- Quote from: "Magnificent" ---...if a kid was told to wear a pacifier I can assure you it was not with the Director's permission. It was clear to everyone who worked there that physical learning experiences were off limits.
--- End quote ---
Given that many, possibly even most, of the staff working there have been clients of Daytop in the past, do you not think it quite possible that some of these staff may have utilized methods that they were subjected to during their time as clients?
Yeah, the methods supposedly became less brutal as time went on, "official" protocols changed. Perhaps you abided by these changes, and were philosophically in accord with them, but can you honestly say that all of your fellow staff felt deep down as you did?
A lot of the time, people go along with these changes in theory, but in the heat of a frustrated moment, revert back to the old methods...after all, "it worked" for them, right? These are not the kind of incidents that you -- a staff member who would surely disapprove -- would be informed about, unless a fellow staff snitched or let it slip. And given the nature of the program, the chances of a kid complaining about it are seriously reduced.
I'm not just trying to make an academic argument here; this kind of thing frequently happens in organizations that try to make major changes with a lot of the old guard or the old mindset still in place. The term "organizational incest" comes to mind, although it doesn't adequately describe all of what I am trying to say...
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