Author Topic: Dr. George Ross  (Read 12995 times)

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Offline Kathy

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Re: Dr. George Ross
« Reply #15 on: August 23, 2009, 11:34:29 AM »
Isn't it interesting, how he never mentions his work with Straight, Inc.  I couldn't find it anywhere on his CV.. unless I missed it.
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Kathy
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."    ~Plato

Offline seamus

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Re: Dr. George Ross
« Reply #16 on: August 23, 2009, 11:37:49 AM »
yes it is kinda odd.
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It\'d be sad if it wernt so funny,It\'d be funny if it wernt so sad

Offline Ursus

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Re: Dr. George Ross
« Reply #17 on: August 23, 2009, 11:40:24 AM »
Similar to Newton Miller, George Ross has also become an ordained minister.

Website: http://www.georgerross.com/

For the 3-page CV pdf download, click on page title below:

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CURRICULUM VITAE
 
George Raymond Ross
 
Place of Birth: Williamsport, Pennsylvania
Date of Birth: May 30, 1949
Marital Status: Married
 
Address:       60 Summertree Court
                     Nicholasville, KY  40356
 
Phone  (859) 223-5126 home (859) 223-5126 office E-mail  [email protected]  
 
EDUCATION                            Major                      Date Completed
B.A. Allegheny College                           History          1970
M.A. Allegheny College                           Education        1973
Ph.D. University of South Florida               Education        1978
M.Div. Asbury Theological Seminary           Master Divinity            2001

CERTIFICATIONS , LICENSURES AND ADVANCED TRAINING
 
Two (2) week training seminar with noted psychiatrist and educator, William Glasser
(Summer, 1972).  
 
Certified Rational Behavior therapist (1978) having completed training under Maxie C. Maultsby, Jr., M.D., University of Kentucky, College of Medicine, Lexington, Kentucky.
 
Post-doctoral internship, Rational Behavioral Therapy Center, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington Kentucky (9/82-6/83).  
 
Completion of Couples Communication Training Seminar (January, 1979, 1996)  
 
Certified by the State of Florida Department of Education in Guidance and Counseling, at rank (1) doctoral level (1979)  

Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor - Kentucky CCDC (1982)  
 
Licensed Psychologist, State of Kentucky  (1983)
 
APA Certificate of Proficiency in the Treatment of Alcohol and Other Psychoactive Substance Use Disorders (1996)  
 
Ordained minister (April 2002)  
 
Ongoing continuing education credit in a variety of counseling skills and techniques (1979-2008)

WRITINGS

Reducing irrational personality traits, trait anxiety, and intra-interpersonal needs in high school students:  A six-month follow-up Evaluation Report II, Project SELF, ESEA Title II-IV-C, Operational Grant #977, Pinellas County, Florida, July 1976. (A shortened version of this report was presented at the 1977 AERA Convention held in New York City. This report has also appeared in the Journal of Measurement and Evaluation in Guidance, April, 1978).
 
Validation of student needs questionnaire, a paper presented to the Twentieth Annual Conference of Florida Educational Research Association (January 31, 1976, Orlando, Florida).
 
An examination of variables affecting teachers' estimation of  elementary school pupils' projected level of educational attainment, a paper presented to the Twentieth Annual Conference of Florida Educational Research Association (January 31, 1976, Orlando, Florida).
 
The application of an anthropological-sociological technique to program evaluation, a paper presented to the Twentieth Annual Conference of Florida Educational Research Association (January 31, 1976, Orlando, Florida).
 
Current Status and perceptions of Florida vocational evaluators, a paper presented to the Twentieth Annual Conference of Florida Educational Research Association (January 31, 1976, Orlando, Florida).
 
The development and validation of a scale of dysfunctional self-regard, Dissertation Abstracts, Vol. 39, No. 11, 1979.
 
Recognizing and treating the chemically dependent offender, The Advocate, December 1990
 
Cognitive-behavioral intervention for adolescent substance abuse, In A.J. Finch, et. al., Cognitive-behavioral procedures with children and adolescents: A practical guide, Allyn & Bacon, Needham, Ma., 1993.
 
Treating adolescent substance abuse: Understanding the fundamental elements, Allyn & Bacon, Needham, Ma., 1994.
 
WORK EXPERIENCE:
 
1980 – 1981  Founding Director of L.I.F.E., INC., Drug Abuse Center, Sarasota, Florida
 
1981  Founding Director of KIDS HELPING KIDS, Drug Abuse Center, Hebron, Kentucky    

1983 - 1992  Founding Director of POSSIBILITIES UNLIMITED INC., Drug Abuse Center, Lexington, Kentucky
 
1992  Adjunct professor, University of Kentucky, College of Education
 
1994-1995  Adjunct professor, Eastern Kentucky University. College of Education
 
1994-2008 Adjunct professor, Asbury Theological Seminary, Department of Pastoral Ministry.
 
1992-2008 Psychologist in private practice
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Offline Ursus

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Re: Dr. George Ross
« Reply #18 on: August 23, 2009, 11:49:57 AM »
Meet Dr. George R. Ross:

A persuasive speaker and trainer, Dr. George Ross is the founding director of three nationally recognized substance abuse programs for teenagers. He has conducted numerous workshops for professionals, business groups, civic clubs and churches. Dr. Ross has developed the "Treating Adolescent Substance Abuse" training program from his twenty five years of experience in treating over 1,000 chemically dependent youth and their families.

An experienced educator and counselor, Dr. Ross has taught at both high school and college level. He is a licensed psychologist, a certified chemical dependency expert, an experienced relationship counselor and an ordained minister. Dr. Ross has completed training in reality therapy with Dr. William Glasser, and rational behavioral therapy with Dr. Maxie C. Maultsby, JR and is a board certified christian counselor. In addition he has completed a masters in divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary and currently serves an adjunct professor in their counseling program. As a member of Toastmasters, Dr. Ross has achieved the level of Competent Toastmaster and has completed Leadership Lexington, a professional program sponsored by the Lexington Chamber of Commerce. Dr. Ross currently operates a private practice and consulting business in Lexington, Kentucky.

Dr. Ross is nationally recognized as a leader in the field of teenage substance abuse. Since 1978, he has conducted several workshops on this topic, as well as appeared on the national radio program, Focus on the Family, with noted psychologist, Dr. James c. Dobson. He was an invited participant at the White House Conference For a Drug Free America. He is the founding director of LIFE, Inc., KIDS HELPING KIDS, Inc.and POSSIBILITIES UNLIMITED, Inc.; all substance abuse programs for teenagers. He is also the author of Treating Adolescent Substance Abuse: Understanding the Fundamental Elements, upon which this training program is based.
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Offline Kathy

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Re: Dr. George Ross
« Reply #19 on: August 23, 2009, 11:55:34 AM »
Interesting observation.... what is it with these reverend-doctors?  I'm surprised he didn't change his name too! lol
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Kathy
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."    ~Plato

Offline Ursus

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Re: Dr. George Ross
« Reply #20 on: August 23, 2009, 12:30:06 PM »
Quote from: "Kathy"
Interesting observation.... what is it with these reverend-doctors?  I'm surprised he didn't change his name too! lol
The degree to which these people took to the waters of Straight, Inc., suggests that it was an ideology -- or a theology, you could say -- for them even back then.
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Offline Anonymous

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Re: Dr. George Ross
« Reply #21 on: August 23, 2009, 01:25:00 PM »
This is a SPLENDID thread!!  :cheers: to all involved here... awesome! He looks like someone who you'd see in the movies, washing brains, doing experiments on kids, etc... yep...

I find this sentence:

"The application of an anthropological-sociological technique to program evaluation, a paper presented to the Twentieth Annual Conference of Florida Educational Research Association (January 31, 1976, Orlando, Florida)."

to be quite intriguing, considering all the anthropological education of former straight inc directors/cohorts. How would someone gain access to such a paper? And, does Ross know that these programs are closed? No more checks!! He was directly involved in KHK admissions as recently as 1997 and Miller Newton as recently as 2004, so where do they go from here? The program cat is out of the bag, so to speak, so will they just quit or start something else?

What relationship is Penny Walker to Ross? They look similar in age, and is that her "real" name?


RG
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Offline Ursus

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Re: Dr. George Ross
« Reply #22 on: August 23, 2009, 03:09:36 PM »
Quote from: "RG"
I find this sentence:

"The application of an anthropological-sociological technique to program evaluation, a paper presented to the Twentieth Annual Conference of Florida Educational Research Association (January 31, 1976, Orlando, Florida)."

to be quite intriguing, considering all the anthropological education of former straight inc directors/cohorts. How would someone gain access to such a paper?

Damned if I know. That's over 33 years ago. Ya could try contacting the Florida Educational Research Association; it's possible they might have old conference material archived somewhere, but I kinda have my doubts. It's more likely that George Ross might have it.

Chances are, though, that he's just gonna tell you to buy his book Treating Adolescent Substance Abuse: Understanding the Fundamental Elements (hardcover edition ©1993 Allyn & Bacon; paperback edition ©2002 Resource Publications [OR]). You could probably pick up a used copy for under 5 bucks plus shipping.

Btw, this book has a Foreword by Dr. Robert Dupont. And, according to the index, "host homes" are detailed on pages 180-181.
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Offline Ursus

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Re: Dr. George Ross
« Reply #23 on: August 23, 2009, 03:51:32 PM »
Quote from: "RG"
What relationship is Penny Walker to Ross? They look similar in age, and is that her "real" name?
Although this doesn't quite answer your question, I happened to stumble across the following potentially relevant reference. An interesting perspective is presented by PathwayTruth *. The wording intimates that these Pathway parents think -- or would like you to believe -- that the philosophical underpinnings of Dr. George Ross's program expertise and that of Straight, Inc. are completely unrelated to one another  :D  :

    Is the Pathway Family Center program based on the Straight treatment model?
    What is Pathway’s relationship to the Straight program?


      A group of graduate families of the Michigan Straight program founded Pathway Family Center after Straight closed in 1993. They took a program model developed by Dr. George Ross, a noted leader in the field of teenage substance abuse, a licensed psychologist and certified chemical dependency counselor, and the positive elements of the Straight Program to develop a "next generation" treatment model based on the most current knowledge and research of adolescent substance abuse experts. We did not duplicate the Straight Program, but we did retain program elements that were proven to help teenage clients. We eliminated the use of corporal punishment, reduced the ratio of peer counselors to professional staff, and identified clear requirements for teens admission to the program to ensure those who were not appropriate for our program were placed in a less restrictive level of care.
    [/list]
      What is the relationship between Kids Helping Kids and Pathway?

        In 2006, Pathway Family Center acquired Kids Helping Kids and began the process of integrating best practices of the two agencies.
      [/list][/color]

      * "This website is a private collaboration by several graduate parents of Pathway Family Center and is in no way initiated, funded, authorized, or otherwise supported by Pathway Family Center.  Content on this site has been compiled through personal experience and observations of the Pathway treatment program, interviews with graduate parents and clients, former staff and current staff of Pathway, and through extensive research and review of information in the public domain.  The objective for presentation of this material is to provide truth to the much-distorted and false information found online about Pathway and its life-saving treatment.

      James Meyers, graduate parent
      William Reynolds, graduate parent"
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      Offline Ursus

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      Suffering Together
      « Reply #24 on: August 24, 2009, 10:33:44 AM »
      Dr. George Ross is mentioned a number of times in this article on the program Growing Together, which was started in 1987 by two of Ross's top assistants from the LIFE program. Absent, however, is any explicit reference to Ross's endeavors with the Kentucky branch of KIDS HELPING KIDS.

      The article has a number of good pics, but since this publication is owned by the Village Voice, I am hesitant to post them (they yank them religiously).

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      New Times BROWARD-PALM BEACH
      Suffering Together
      In Lake Worth's Growing Together, kids don't kick drugs. They're beaten and humiliated.


      By Trevor Aaronson
      Published on December 09, 2004


      He was 16 and scared. Jason was a newcomer at Growing Together, a boot camp-style drug treatment center for adolescents in downtown Lake Worth. During the day, he attended group therapy at the program's two-story, banana-yellow building, which is equipped with security gates and barred windows. At night, he'd sleep at a private home endorsed by the facility.

      In February 1997, during one of Jason's first days in the program, George Johnson (not his real name) arrived to pick up five boys who were to stay at his place in Palm Beach Gardens that night. Among them were his son, George Jr., and four others, including Jason.

      On the ride home, the boys began to discuss what they would do to Jason that night. "The Naked Crusader was going to appear," Jason later remembered one of them saying. It frightened him; he pretended not to hear.

      That night at 10 o'clock, after doing chores and eating dinner, all five boys went to the bedroom where they were to sleep. They wore only underwear. The rest of their clothing was kept in a different room. Three of them lay down on mattresses on the floor. Jason and another boy wriggled into sleeping bags.

      Several hours later, Jason suddenly noticed some noise. The other four boys were masturbating. "The Naked Crusader is coming," one of them said.

      Then George Jr., naked, suddenly jumped on Jason's back, according to a statement Jason gave to police. Another boy held down his legs. Two others slapped Jason in the face with their erect penises.

      "Stop!" he pleaded.

      They did. But the boys weren't finished. They returned to their beds and masturbated again. A few minutes later, they assaulted Jason once more. Again, two boys slapped Jason with their penises. One of them tried to put his penis in Jason's mouth. Jason clenched his jaw shut. Then he felt warm liquid on his back. One boy had climaxed. Another ejaculated in his hand and rubbed the semen in Jason's hair.

      Finally, they were finished.

      If he ever told anyone about the incident, the boys warned, they'd do it again. And worse. But three months later, Jason could no longer stay silent. He told his father what had happened. Together, they filed a report with the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department on June 18, 1997.

      During the one-month investigation that followed, two of the boys told the detectives that they too had been victims of "The Naked Crusader" soon after entering the drug treatment facility. The Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office filed misdemeanor battery and indecent exposure charges against the four boys but later dropped them. The records have since been purged, so there's no more explanation.

      Growing Together's 17-year-old, nonprofit facility treats 25 to 40 children at a time. It rakes in roughly $1 million annually from donations and fees paid by parents of drug-addicted kids, some of whom are ordered by judges to attend. It has powerful friends and donors, including West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel, banker Warren W. Blanchard, attorney Jack Scarola, and Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley.

      Yet physical and sexual abuse appears to be common there, according to a New Times investigation that included reviews of state records, police reports, and interviews with about two dozen former patients and parents. Kids rioted at the facility in April 1997, and last year, state investigators found that Growing Together was too quick to use physical restraint on children. Moreover, police have written more than 800 reports related to the program since 1995.

      "I still can't get the screams out of my head from hearing kids dragged down the hall by the hair on their heads," says a former graduate of the program who asked to remain anonymous. "The crimes that were committed there have never been told in public. Nobody has ever put these people on trial."

      Rik Pavlescak, a former investigator with the Department of Children and Families (DCF), wrote reports on the program in the early '90s that detailed beatings, restraint, imprisonment, and systematic humiliation. He alleges that influential outsiders have undermined investigations of the group.

      Growing Together Executive Director Pat Allard denied a request to tour the facility, citing laws that protect confidentiality of patients. In three phone interviews in November, she maintained that children are not abused and claimed not to be aware of any of the evidence uncovered by New Times. "We would never beat any child," Allard said.

      ------------------------

      Every Friday evening, 50 to 100 adults and children, most ages 13 to 17, gather inside Growing Together's facility at 1000 Lake Ave. The open house begins the same way every week. Parents sit in chairs at one end of a large room. Their children, who are enrolled in the program, sit at the opposite end. At first, an accordion divider separates the two groups.

      Then the session begins. The partition is pulled back. The music starts. The children sing:

        I am a promise, I am a possibility
        I am a promise with a capital P
        I am a great big bundle of potentiality
        And I am learning to hear God's voice
        And I am trying to make the right choice.
        I am a promise to be anything that God wants me to be.
      [/i]

      Vicky Butler, a Jupiter woman who enrolled her troubled, 16-year-old son, John, in Growing Together in the fall of 1999, remembers these sessions well. "The songs they made these kids sing -- and they were teenagers -- were songs intended for 4- and 5-year-olds," she says. "It was degrading. You just had to look at the kids. Behind their eyes, they would be saying, 'This sucks.' "

      Butler says she began to wonder, when she attended her first open house, whether she'd made a mistake. "My son was no angel," she admits, "but no one deserves the treatment these kids receive." During the session, Butler remembers, staff passed around a microphone to parents, who would tell everyone in attendance about their children's misdeeds. There were drugs, illicit sex, violence, theft. The microphone would then move to the other side of the room. Assuming a child had behaved well during the week and earned the "privilege" to speak, he or she would then confess.

      During one session in October 1999, Butler's son became agitated before she spoke. He stood up and flailed his arms. "He was totally flipping out," Butler remembers. John began to walk off. An alarmed Butler started toward her son. As she did, a large behavioral therapist parents referred to as "The Enforcer" also headed for John. Suddenly, the accordion divider rolled across the room and blocked Butler.

      "All of a sudden, I heard my son screaming," she recalls. Butler panicked and confronted Growing Together staff. "That's my kid behind that curtain, and I don't know what's going on," she told them. They assured her that John was fine and that he would see a psychiatrist soon. Butler returned to her suburban home in Jupiter, convinced that John was in a safe place.

      Meanwhile, she continued hosting other Growing Together children at night. She had modified her $169,292 home following directions from the program's staff. All pictures and mirrors were removed from walls. Knives were hidden. The bathroom was stripped, leaving only the sink, toilet, and bathtub. The windows and doors of the bedroom where five kids slept were rigged to an alarm system. Once they went to bed at 10 p.m., they could not leave the room until the next morning. "If any of them had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, they would have been in trouble," Butler admits. "It was like a prison."

      Before bed, the children would write in their journals about what they had learned that day. Often, their entries involved confessions they had made during therapy. Growing Together refers to these journal entries as "moral inventories." To advance through the phases of the program, children must confess to illicit behavior or abuse they suffered, then describe the incidents' effects on their lives.

      Butler recalls asking the kids about their entries. They told her that they made up most of their confessions because Growing Together required such admissions before graduation. Accounts that included sexual abuse or underage sex were particularly encouraged by staff, the kids allegedly told Butler.

      The children also claimed staff had beaten and physically restrained them, Butler says. She even met one young girl who claimed a therapist had broken her arm. Other kids asserted that the building was always filthy. Growing Together administrators admitted to Butler (and later in court documents) that the facility had rats and that several urinals had been backed up for days at a time.

      In March 2000, Butler and her ex-husband, Stephen, who shared custody, removed John from the program. Stephen Butler was moving to Arkansas and wanted to take the boy. Once free, John told his mother that he had suffered a sprained wrist at Growing Together when a therapist slammed him down on a table. Mickey Bowman, then the executive director of Growing Together, showed little concern for the injury. In a letter to Vicky Butler dated June 20, 2000, Bowman wrote: "Regarding the 'purported injury' to your son's wrist, he was laughing at the issue immediately following."

      Soon after, a private psychiatrist examined John and determined that his problem wasn't drugs. He was bipolar. "You would think that, being in the program, someone would have said, 'Oh, by the way, your child is bipolar,'" Vicky Butler says. "Nobody picked up on that because no psychiatrist or psychologist ever saw him."

      Butler later refused to pay Growing Together the roughly $5,000 she owed for John's treatment. She claimed the facility had billed her for clinical exams that never occurred. "Kids got more messed up in there than they were when they went in," she says. The facility sued and turned the debt over to a bill collector. Butler eventually forked over a reduced amount.

      "My teeth grit every time I hear the words Growing Together," she says. "They used to say, 'What goes on here stays here.' Now I know why. They don't want the outside world to know what's going on."

      Growing Together Executive Director Allard says today that she has no knowledge of the "Naked Crusader" incidents or the types of child abuse alleged by Butler. "Could things like this happen in an institutional setting? Yes," Allard says. "Would it blemish the institution? Yes, it would. Would anyone condone it? Absolutely not."

      ------------------------

      The history of Growing Together begins 28 years ago and more than 200 miles from South Florida. In 1976, Mel Sembler, who made millions developing strip malls throughout the Sunshine State, opened a nonprofit juvenile drug treatment center in St. Petersburg called Straight Inc. His reasons were altruistic: The only adolescent drug treatment facility in the Tampa Bay area had shut down, and Sembler wanted to give back. One of his own sons had been rehabilitated in such a program.

      During the late '70s, Straight became a well-known and apparently effective drug treatment center. Its methods, which were designed by psychiatrists Miller Newton and George Ross, were a kind of hybrid of the common 12-step model used by Alcoholics Anonymous; but there were only six steps and a hierarchical system. Children who had been in the program for a few months graduated to higher levels and became "oldcomers." They were then put in charge of new attendees, known as "newcomers." Newcomers weren't allowed to move around the facility unless oldcomers held them by the belt in a technique known as "belt looping."

      Privacy was elusive. Newcomers were watched at all times, even in the bathroom. Boys had to keep their hair cropped close to the scalp. Girls were not allowed to shave their legs or armpits. During the day, children attended hours of group therapy. At night, they went to host homes run by parents of other children in the program.

      At its height, Straight operated three facilities in Florida and others in California, Georgia, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia, and Texas. They were based on a "tough love" philosophy that required a minimal staff because children did some of the disciplining and restraining.

      The facility's success, coupled with Sembler's wealth, helped raise the developer's political profile. In 1980, he donated $100,000 to the Republican Party and exploited his network of wealthy friends to raise millions more. Eight years later, though Sembler had no political or diplomatic experience, President George H.W. Bush named him ambassador to Australia.

      Ross, who would later write about his theories in a book titled Treating Adolescent Substance Abuse: Understanding the Fundamental Elements, left Straight in 1980 and formed two similar programs: LIFE in Osprey, near Sarasota, and Possibilities Unlimited in Lexington, Kentucky. Soon after Ross' departure from Straight, allegations of malfeasance surfaced. A state attorney's investigation shut down Straight-Sarasota in 1983 amid charges of child abuse. The organization also paid out substantial sums in settlements and judgments, according to court records and news reports. One former patient, Karen Norton, won a $720,000 jury verdict in St. Petersburg after she was strip-searched and humiliated by staff, then slammed against a wall by Newton. "Dr. Ross left Straight because he didn't like some of the shenanigans," Allard says, alluding to these abuse charges.

      One of Straight-founder Ross' new programs also had problems. In 1985, the psychiatrist, who declined to comment for this article, was charged and acquitted of falsely imprisoning teenagers in Kentucky.

      In 1987, two of Ross' top assistants from LIFE started Growing Together in Lake Worth. "In the LIFE program, there were so many people from the West Palm Beach area that were traveling across the state that they basically asked if they could start their own program on this side," Allard explains. To this day, Allard cites Ross' theories as the foundation of her program.

      Children generally attend for 18 months. Parents pay a flat $14,000 fee, and financial aid is available. Additionally, a public school teacher visits every day so children in the program can progress to the next grade level.

      Straight's militant style of drug treatment piqued the interest of Barry Lane Beyerstein, a professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Colombia. In 1992, Beyerstein penned a scathing report on Straight's methods for the Drug Policy Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates changes to U.S. drug policy. He compared them to the mind-control techniques used by communists on American POWs during the Korean War.

      "Straight tried to break down individuality," Beyerstein recalls. "That's what the Koreans succeeded beautifully in doing, making people dependent on their captors and removing any individuality and any ability to think about what they're being told. They never give any time alone. They keep them frantically busy all the time so they're always exhausted and hungry. That makes people more malleable. Straight was like a cult."

      The same year Beyerstein released his report, Richard Bradbury, a graduate of Straight-St. Petersburg who had become a staff member after spending two years in the program, started collecting evidence of child abuse. In December 1992, the insider provided his findings to the state Inspector General's Office.

      "I was brainwashed," the 39-year-old Bradbury says today. "As children, we believed it was for our own good when we were beaten or stabbed. We believed we were pieces of shit."

      In April 1993, one month before Acting Inspector General Lowell Clary was to release his report, Straight closed its Florida clinics and moved the headquarters to Atlanta.

      According to Clary's five-page account, Ambassador Sembler's political influence had kept Straight in business despite evidence that staff withheld medication and food, used excessive force, and deprived children of sleep in an effort to control them. "It appears that some [state regulators] experienced some degree of pressure to grant Straight a license," Clary wrote. That pressure included calls from Sembler and state senators, though the report does not specify which senators. Additionally, according to the Clary report, a top state official named Dr. Ivor Groves made it clear to his underling, Linda Lewis, that she should not take action against Straight. According to the report, when Lewis expressed concerns about child abuse, Groves told her, "If you do anything other than what I tell you to do on this issue, I will fire you on the spot." Groves then reportedly made the same threat to another state inspector.

      Three months later, Straight went under. But some former staffers went on to form new facilities based on the program's model. Newton, for instance, formed KIDS of North Jersey, which closed in 2003 after the psychiatrist settled a lawsuit that alleged abuse for $6.5 million.

      Growing Together is one of about a dozen facilities nationwide that continues to employ the controversial Straight model. The program's parent-patient manual and treatment method are similar to Straight's. The terms that Straight developed -- oldcomer, newcomer, and moral inventories, among others -- are used by Growing Together.

      ------------------------

      In 1989, two years after Growing Together had gone into business as an offshoot of Straight, Rik Pavlescak began to receive complaints of abuse. The state's director of substance abuse services in the West Palm Beach regional office of DCF, Pavlescak inspected the facility during two days in March 1990.

      "As a state employee, I had access to all client files, interviews with staff, and clients," the 42-year-old Pavlescak explains. "I could make unannounced visits to the program at any time and review their records for compliance with state laws."

      New Times requested all Florida records about Growing Together, but the state appears to have purged papers related to the investigation. Luckily, before leaving his job in 1990, Pavlescak made copies of records related to the program. Among his findings: A female client complained that she had severe cramping and bleeding. Staff did not refer her to a medical doctor. Only days later, when her mother became aware of the condition, did she see a physician. The girl was pregnant and miscarried.

      Another female client was forced to stand in front of a mirror and yell, "I am a whore, a slut, and a druggie."

      When asked what would happen if he reported child abuse, a 17-year-old male commented, "I'd be ignored and told to shut up." That boy said he had restrained other children at least 15 times. Once, he allegedly witnessed a staff member punch a child.

      A 16-year-old boy told Pavlescak that he regularly killed cockroaches during mealtimes and was not given privacy when showering or using the toilet. The boy said he did not want to be "brainwashed." Pavlescak wrote in his report: "He believes that is what has happened to other clients."

      An oldcomer told him: "I sleep in front of the [bedroom] door... [to keep] newcomers from escaping."

      A 15-year-old boy attempted suicide while in the program, and staff never referred him to a psychologist. "The [suicide] issue appears to have been dropped by the program staff," Pavlescak wrote. Months later, the boy said he still had suicidal thoughts.

      Children were given lessons on how to restrain other kids. (Using patients to restrain patients is a violation of state law.) "They said to kick in their knees to knock them down if you have to," one girl said.

      Following his visits in March, Pavlescak issued a probationary license that required the facility to address the state's concerns and undergo another site visit within 90 days.

      Also in March, Karen Weiss, whose teenaged daughter Dana had been committed to Growing Together, complained to Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Michael Gersten. Weiss, who then lived in Coral Springs, said Dana had been a newcomer for 15 months. Two psychiatrists who examined Dana alleged the girl had suffered severe psychological trauma.

      Stephen E. Moskowitz, a Coral Springs psychiatrist, told Gersten that Dana was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. "When discussing returning to the program," Moskowitz wrote, "she seemed quite fearful and seemed to project an image of a child whose spirit and sense of confidence had been totally crushed." Growing Together's psychological reports on Dana were "incomplete and really lacked a professional type of organization and presentation," Moskowitz stated.

      What's more, Moskowitz recommended that Judge Gersten talk to Dana privately. "One must use the analogy of people who were part of a cult and felt indoctrinated into the cult and were fearful of repercussions," Moskowitz advised.

      Gersten ordered the girl out of Growing Together, saying in court that he would refuse to send more children to the program unless its treatment improved. "Everything I see smacks of child abuse," Gersten said.

      Growing Together refused to yield to either Gersten or the DCF. In a letter dated March 30, 1990, then-Board President Warren Blanchard appealed the probationary license. Blanchard also disputed nearly all of the state's findings. The only actions Growing Together had taken, according to Blanchard's letter, were to stop giving classes to children on restraining their peers and to define more clearly when staff should use physical restraint.

      That's when Pavlescak discovered that Growing Together held sway in Tallahassee. The group's request for a review hearing went to Pavlescak's boss, program supervisor Linda J. Giesler, and then on to Pam Peterson, the state chief of alcohol and drug abuse in Tallahassee. Both of Pavlescak's superiors attended the licensing hearing with Growing Together's attorneys. That was unprecedented, he says. (Neither Giesler nor Peterson could be reached for comment.)

      "We licensed over 90 different treatment centers in the area, and this was just one," Pavlescak says. "But the entire team was never involved with any of the issues with any of the other treatment centers."

      The state ignored Pavlescak's reports and gave Growing Together full license. The buzz at the West Palm Beach DCF office was that the political push had come from the top. Gov. Bob Martinez was one year away from becoming the nation's drug czar under President George H.W. Bush.

      "It wasn't until later that I learned that Martinez had ties to the program," Pavlescak explains, "and that some strange things had happened." During his investigation of Growing Together, Pavlescak had personally reported one complaint to the state's child abuse registry. Upon inquiry, a state official later told him that no complaints existed.

      Pavlescak left state employment in April 1990 following an unrelated dispute with one of his bosses, who was later chastised for a financial conflict of interest by the Florida Commission on Ethics.

      Even after Pavlescak left public service, the state continued to document abuse at Growing Together. An August 1993 investigation by Pavlescak's successor, James Kouba, documented that "there appears to be a lack of clinical supervision" at Growing Together. Some staff members couldn't identify their supervisors, state officials learned, and the children complained about the "lack of adult supervision."

      Growing Together also failed to correct the violations Pavlescak had cited three years earlier. Among DCF's findings in 1993:

      Teenagers would restrain fellow patients by sitting on them.

      In two instances, a group of parents who called themselves the "restraining fathers" kidnapped runaway girls and returned them to Growing Together. One girl's aunt reported that several men had pulled up to her house and dragged the girl into a van.

      Kids of both sexes were forced to use a jar or pot in the bedroom if they needed to relieve themselves in the middle of the night.

      The rigorous program is also associated with a suicide. Travis Stone, a 20-year-old African-American who had successfully graduated from Growing Together and become a staff member, told peers as early as January 23, 1993, that "he was feeling helpless and overwhelmed." Those remarks were not passed on to clinical or executive staff members, Kouba alleged. Six months later, on July 27, 1993, Stone took a combination of pills and alcohol and then put a plastic bag over his head.

      Kouba blamed Growing Together, claiming that the facility did not send Stone to a psychiatrist or psychologist. "His feelings were discounted by peer staff as merely 'manipulative,'" the report stated. "Only a trained professional should be in the position of making this evaluation, which, in this case, may have been a life-and-death assessment."

      The state ordered Growing Together to stop using children to counsel other children. "They are still involved in their own early recovery process and cannot be expected to take on the role of counselor while they are clients themselves," Kouba wrote. Allard claims that today, kids have easy access to licensed mental health professionals.

      ------------------------

      In the past ten years, Growing Together has filed roughly a dozen lawsuits to collect fees that parents have refused to pay. In nearly every case, the defendants have cited Growing Together's lack of therapeutic value and abysmal treatment of children as reasons for not settling the debt.

      In two cases, parents described a prison-like facility that emphasizes revenue over kids' needs. Ellen Decter, a single mother in Jupiter, said her son was examined by a psychologist in October 1999 only after she agreed to fork out the $14,000 tuition upfront. By then, Growing Together had a financial interest in seeing her son diagnosed as suitable for treatment, she alleged. The program was "a concentration camp for clients and parents," Decter wrote in a letter submitted to the court April 3, 2002.

      Cathy Snyder of Fort Myers Beach told the Palm Beach County Circuit Court on May 21, 1997, that Growing Together misdiagnosed her son's problems. Rather than being drug-addicted, he had a chemical imbalance that an independent psychiatrist discovered after she removed the boy from the program.

      Reports from the Lake Worth Police Department, which is located across the street from Growing Together's building, seem to substantiate parents' claims. Since 1995, police have written more than 800 reports related to 1000 Lake Ave. for incidents including assault, drugs, noise complaints, and runaway juveniles.

      On April 27, 1997, at 8:30 a.m., teenaged patients rioted inside the facility, according to police reports filed that day. Three boys took chairs and shattered the second-story windows, spraying glass on construction workers and pedestrians. They then barricaded themselves inside a room. Police later barged in to regain control of the facility.

      Since 2000, police have written 28 reports related to battery and 22 to missing juveniles. In some cases, officers documented instances of abuse or violations of state law but declined to pursue charges:

      On June 1, 2001, an oldcomer beat a newcomer because he was reading a book.

      On July 6, 2001, an oldcomer slapped a newcomer after finding that the newcomer had been innocently drawing.

      On October 23, 2003, police reported that a teenaged patient was "enforcing the rules with other patients" -- the same violation Pavlescak cited in 1990.

      On January 2, 2004, police observed Growing Together's 54-year-old clinical director, Laura Hughes, restraining a teenaged girl on the ground after she "had been disrespectful and disobedient to Growing Together staff throughout the day."

      While DCF's investigations of Growing Together are less aggressive than they were ten years ago, the state agency continues to find significant problems. During the most recent inspection, on December 19, 2003, investigators discovered documents that suggested staff was too quick to use physical force and that children continued to sleep on mattresses on the floor. State law requires children to have a full bed and frame.

      Both issues are misunderstandings, Allard says. She contends her staff does everything possible before using physical force. "I think what was happening was that the staff wasn't putting down [in their paperwork] everything that happened before a child was restrained," Allard says. As a result, Allard says, Growing Together started using a form that provides additional space for the narrative. "There are times when a kid needs to be restrained if they are a threat to themselves or others," Allard explains. "If a child picked up a heavy chair and was going to throw it at another client, I can tell you that they would be restrained... Restraining is the last resort. No one wants to restrain anyone. You don't want that for the child, and you don't want that for the adult."

      Allard refuses to alter her policy on bed frames, claiming that children could use the metal to cut themselves. "We can't do that in good conscience," she says.

      On July 27, Piotr Blass, a computer-science professor at Key College in Dania Beach, sued Growing Together after his 16-year-old son, David, was court-ordered into the program. In his lawsuit, Blass alleges that Growing Together "often kidnaps children from their parents and then employs draconian, sadistic, destructive, and highly damaging psychological techniques to destroy the relationship between parent and child, all for their own benefit and financial gain."

      These types of allegations can also be found on an Internet bulletin board (http://www.fornits.com/wwf) used by former patients of Growing Together and other Straight-based clinics. Most of the messages detail physical, psychological, or sexual abuse. Allard claims the allegations are "made up" and written by "people who are still involved in the druggie scene."

      ------------------------

      It's noon on Friday, November 19, and Jessica Norris sits quietly on a bench near the fountains at the end of Clematis Street in West Palm Beach. An anxious, pretty 18-year-old with long brown hair and a disarming smile, Jessica (not her real name) considers herself a survivor. At 14, she experimented with cocaine. Her parents placed her in Growing Together, where she says she endured 18 months of physical and psychological trauma. "When I first got there, the other girls were telling me about Naked Crusader," she says. "Everyone in Growing Together knew there was abuse. But no one said anything. We were all too scared."

      Inside the facility, Jessica says she witnessed beatings and child neglect. In the "white room," where children were sent to calm down, clumps of hair lay on the floor and blood was smeared on the walls, she claims. Every day, staff interrogated the kids, making them give more and more outlandish confessions about their past. "I made up that my uncle molested me," Jessica says. "It was the only way to move up."

      Now a student at Palm Beach Community College, Jessica is still adjusting to life on the outside. During her time at Growing Together, she claims she couldn't take a shower in private. She believed she was worthless. She became accustomed to the sight of staff members throwing children to the ground. To this day, she hears the screams that rolled through the halls like thunder between buildings.

      "I've tried not to look back," Jessica says, brushing a string of hair behind her right ear. "What we went through was a terrible thing."


      © 2009 Village Voice Media
      « Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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      Offline Kathy

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      Re: Dr. George Ross
      « Reply #25 on: August 24, 2009, 11:41:17 AM »
      Very Nice!  Thanks Ursus!
      « Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
      Kathy
      "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."    ~Plato

      Offline ajax13

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      Re: Dr. George Ross
      « Reply #26 on: August 27, 2009, 02:52:37 PM »
      To the best of my knowlege Miller Newton was not a psychiatrist in 2004, nor at any other time in his storied life.  Funny that he should be described as such twice in that article.
      « Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
      "AARC will go on serving youth and families as long as it will be needed, if it keeps open to God for inspiration" Dr. F. Dean Vause Executive Director


      MR. NELSON: Mr. Speaker, AADAC has been involved with
      assistance in developing the program of the Alberta Adolescent
      Recovery Centre since its inception originally as Kids of the
      Canadian West."
      Alberta Hansard, March 24, 1992

      Offline Ursus

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      Re: Dr. George Ross
      « Reply #27 on: August 28, 2009, 07:57:00 PM »
      Quote from: "RG"
      What relationship is Penny Walker to Ross? They look similar in age, and is that her "real" name?
      Wasn't Penny Walker responsible for the day to day operations of Hebron's KIDS HELPING KIDS?
      « Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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      Offline Kathy

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      Re: Dr. George Ross
      « Reply #28 on: August 28, 2009, 09:32:37 PM »
      Umm, yeeessss!
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OfCXLdOAwk
      I'll never forget when I emailed her about her program being awfully similar to MIller Newton's Straight... and she completely denied any connections.
      « Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
      Kathy
      "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."    ~Plato

      Offline Anonymous

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      Re: Dr. George Ross
      « Reply #29 on: September 01, 2009, 05:01:18 PM »
      Ross is a fucking asshole.  He colluded with the shrink my parents were sending me to prior to straight so they would put me in the "program".  That asshole belongs in prison.
      « Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »