Mount Bachelor Academy Shut Down

[RMA Survivor]

I find your statement that kids today are more intelligent to be false.  I generally find kids today, despite a greater access to information, don't use it.  They are not well read, in fact most do little reading whatsoever, have virtually no grasp of history, are not capable of doing actual research, and are extremely superficial and do not ask deep questions of anything.  

Further, I have been in Raps and Propheets, a few years earlier than yourself, and I can attest that they are abuse and have virtually no legitimate therapeutic value.  The authorities that investigated Mount Bachelor, interviewed the teens about what went on, and determined based on that testimony that the program was abusive, degrading and being run by people with no credentials or little if any training.  They shut it down for many reasons.  

If Hilltop saved your life, I think that is great.  I don't know what you attribute to the program as being the key to your life saving experience, but for many of us who went through these programs, we were not saved.  Our experiences were different from your own.  Being yelled at, humiliated and degraded for two straight years did nothing to make us better people.  For us, it did not save us.  Many of us felt we didn't need to be saved to begin with, that our "crimes" were not so severe that they required us being imprisoned far from our homes and families and friends and subjected to daily abuse.  

So what saved you?  Work details?  Full times?  Endless labor?  Being yelled at regularly for the most trivial of matters?  Pounding your fists in to pillows and screaming obscenities at your parents and yourself?  Condemning your friends to death in a life boat experience?  Writing your epitaph?  Perhaps it was the blaring, repetitive music?  Maybe watching girls dress up in skimpy outfits and performing lap dances for staff and students?  Did the lugs help?  

I find that most who claim they were saved or the program helped them end up really just saying they met some great friends, had some fun at the farm, or going on hikes, and don't mention anything about the actual program itself.  And when you discuss the program specifically, they can't form cohesive positions because the program was so weird and bizarre they are still a bit vague on what exactly it was all about.  

Best intentions is something I also hear repeated.  That the staff weren't intentionally trying to hurt us.  That they had the best intentions in mind.  That they weren't evil, they just didn't know.  When the authorities shut down Mount Bachelor, they weren't claiming anyone was evil.  They weren't claiming that the staff didn't have good intentions.  They simply recognized abuse and humiliation and trauma when they heard it or saw it.  It's funny that when real psychologists and therapists are brought in to access the programs, they come away horrified.  It's not too hard to spot abuse.  Just because someone says they had best intentions in mind, doesn't change the fact that what they did was wrong.  I firmly believe every staff member thought what they were doing to the kids was righteous and working.  That they were providing a real and valuable service with actual benefits.  And I firmly believe that there are kids who completed these programs and were left with the feeling that they experienced something positive and beneficial.  But what you believe is not always the truth.  But if you believed it worked for you, I can also believe it didn't.  Those kids at Mount Bachelor decided that the program abused them.  The authorities agreed with them.  Nobody claims you have to believe them.  But society places more authority in the position of the State, as opposed to individuals.  And in this case, society has decided Mount Bachelor and its program, the same program (Generally speaking) used at Hilltop, CEDU and RMA, was abuse and of no therapeutic or value as proper counseling.  Even Mount Bachelor admitted in court testimony they never provided no counseling, therapy or treatment.  Which is why when graduated I know talk about how RMA helped them, it's all about things not associated with the program itself.  The program provides nothing.  The isolation produces close friendships.  The isolation generates a setting where drugs and alcohol and partying are mostly absent.  So I contend that the isolation was what produced results, some temporary, some lasting.  Not the program.  Such as it was.

[blombrowski]

I would like to apologize to BasedonFacts for insinuating that he condones child abuse.  At the same time I completely agree with everything that RMA survivor just wrote.  As RMA & BasedonFacts have a shared frame of reference (which I don't) I would prefer to let the two of you discuss the merits of CEDU therapeutic techniques.  I'm getting the hell out of the way.

[Ursus]

For every program that is out there that violates the commons laws in place that govern these institutions, there are programs out there and people running them with the very best of intentions. To make blanket statements like this is child abuse or that I condone child abuse is flat out insane.

I don't see how intentions have anything to do with proving or disproving that child abuse went on. Moreover,

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."[/list]

[RMA Survivor]

For every program that is out there that violates the commons laws in place that govern these institutions, there are programs out there and people running them with the very best of intentions. To make blanket statements like this is child abuse or that I condone child abuse is flat out insane.

I don't see how intentions have anything to do with proving or disproving that child abuse went on. Moreover,

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."[/list]

I completely agree. Good intentions or not, proof of abuse isn't based on what someone intended.  If you put your kid on your roof and tell them to jump off to show them they can't fly and teach them what you think is a valuable lesson, when he breaks his leg, good intentions or not, it is abuse.  

And I hear this argument a lot, not just here on Fornits, but on other sites as well.  A lot of people who defend the program argue that the staff weren't evil, they went in to it with good intentions.  And I don't know what value you can place on that.  Or if it is true or not.  We all know that these programs take the worst sort of people and make them counselors.  Staff with criminal backgrounds, drug abuse issues, anger issues, alcohol problems and some are potentially or literally child molesters with no concept of boundaries.  Yet they are hired.  But whereas a normal, well balanced and average intelligence individual might readily understand that yelling, screaming, hurling endless obscenities and humiliations, making girls perform lap dances, having kids condemn their friends to die (life boat experience) and making them write their own epitaphs, is wrong, some of these staff weren't all that bright or well educated to begin with.  

So were all of them capable of understanding that what they were doing was abuse?  I know most had to have been able to.  They weren't all complete idiots.  Which leads me to believe that if most knew, and none objected or tried to put an end to it, you can't make the argument that best intentions were the rule.  It seems like collusion was the rule.  But again, to be fair, you have to consider that Stanford University experiment in social behavior from way back.  When normal people who were not cruel, but basically people who were typically as politically correct as could be back then, when given authority, collectively abused it.  And they probably all went in to it with good intentions.  But I bet, when their behavior was later pointed out to them, they were able to recognize that they had abused those under their control.  And, I am just as willing to bet that those who were abused, were probably not able to see good intentions as justification for the abuse.  And as you pointed out, determining whether abuse took place does not require one to consider whether anyone had good intentions.  I do think it is interesting, the Stanford University Prisoner/Guard study and the abuse that went on at these programs, to delve deeper in to what conditions need to exist where adults are able to rationalize abuse in their own minds as not being abusive. And collectively rationalize it.  Because if you accept that they were capable of knowing it was abuse, how did they then rationalize their actions?  It sounds like they decided their intentions were good, thus it wasn't the same as if they had sought to abuse in the first place.

[Ursus]

So were all of them capable of understanding that what they were doing was abuse? I know most had to have been able to. They weren't all complete idiots. Which leads me to believe that if most knew, and none objected or tried to put an end to it, you can't make the argument that best intentions were the rule. It seems like collusion was the rule. But again, to be fair, you have to consider that Stanford University experiment in social behavior from way back. When normal people who were not cruel, but basically people who were typically as politically correct as could be back then, when given authority, collectively abused it. And they probably all went in to it with good intentions. But I bet, when their behavior was later pointed out to them, they were able to recognize that they had abused those under their control. And, I am just as willing to bet that those who were abused, were probably not able to see good intentions as justification for the abuse. And as you pointed out, determining whether abuse took place does not require one to consider whether anyone had good intentions. I do think it is interesting, the Stanford University Prisoner/Guard study and the abuse that went on at these programs, to delve deeper in to what conditions need to exist where adults are able to rationalize abuse in their own minds as not being abusive. And collectively rationalize it. Because if you accept that they were capable of knowing it was abuse, how did they then rationalize their actions? It sounds like they decided their intentions were good, thus it wasn't the same as if they had sought to abuse in the first place.

Such is the power of the perceived consensus of the group, of mob mentality, and of the therapeutic community modality as a tool for modifying the behavior of individuals.

Staff, by living and working in that milieu, were also subjected to those corrosive forces.

[RMA Survivor]

I totally agree.  And further, there is some evidence that staff bought in to the programs on some level.  I commented on some other thread about how when I was at RMA, there were staff who actually formed "split contracts" with other staff.  That they felt a need to run away, whereas it was just a job...couldn't they just quit?  

And though many staff came from the local town, the staff all seemed to spend their time off with each other.  This had to reinforce the behavior of the collective.  That nobody outside the program could possibly understand them.  That they too, no longer fit in to normal society just as students who left found it difficult to readjust.  And you see this in the way staff move from one program to another, rarely if ever leaving the system they created for themselves.  

Did you ever notice that staff seemed to marry staff?  How often does that happen in the work place where you marry your co-worker?  Some came in to the program already married, and it seemed their spouses tended to work there as well.  Lisa and Brett Carrey.  Ray Kreider and his wife.  Doug and Mona Kim-Brown.  Tim and Kathy Brace.  Caroline Wolfe and Randy Eide.  Dan and Carmen Earle.  Dan and Mare Krumptitch.  Come work for us, invite the whole family!

Cults reinforce the concept of not being able to function without the cult.   It is like being religious and not being able to marry outside of your religion.

And because it was like they were creating their own religion, with themselves as the priests, writing their own dogma as they went along, it was far easier, in my opinion, for a mob mentality to form.  Where everything they did was sanctioned by themselves, determined to be good based on group consensus, all acts justified because as priests, they decided collectively they were infallible.