I have found fornits to be a useful resource and was discussing it's legitimacy with a colleague of mine, and they explained that the posters on fornits are people who were in programs years ago, or even decades ago. Is this accurate? I think it's important we tell our readers how relevant our own experiences are compared to the safer, well designed, contemporary programs.
Like MBA? Seems they were doing pretty much exactly the same thing CEDU was doing back in the day. Tell me how programs have changed so very much.
If you don't mind I would like to add my two cents:
Much of the personal experiences here are really dated, psy, I think you can admit that. Now a days kids get unmonitored phone calls home. Special diets are accepted. When was the last time you heard of someone being wrapped in duct tape and tossed into the ocean? There is a thread going where the kids can hang out on the lawn with pedestrians walking by, no fences, they can just walk away if they like. All this mind control, locking kids in hobbits, making them lay face on the floor for days at a time or flapping their arms during group meetings is all in the past. We haven’t seen this in decades.
Will abuse occur? Absolutely. It occurs everywhere, in our public schools, at home, in private schools in residential programs and in Therapeutic boarding schools. No getting around it. As long as we continue to hire human beings then the risk is there. We just need to make smart choices and weigh the risk on an individual basis.
Are programs rooted in the past? Of course everything is…..Rooted to CEDU? Rooted to AA? NA? Does IBM have connections to Hitler? Yes it does!! They sold them punch card machines in 1937. Does this make their software evil? Should our government shut down IBM? Can we trace your family tree to a murderer or two? I am sure we can since they have managed to trace all of humanity back to just 9 people. Should you be viewed or treated differently because of what your ancestors did? Are we all bound to suffer because of our ancestors mistakes? I don’t think so. Many here may disagree.
We have come a long way and in another decade, hopefully, we will be doing a much better job than we are today.
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Wow. That was the single biggest pile of bullshit I have ever seen in my life. You should be a lawyer. You're like Cochran, you're strategy is to confuse and obfuscate the obvious to confuse the living hell out of the jury. You're trying to deny bad things happen in programs today at the rate they did in the past. Well. I got news for you. A woman I know knows this kid who was living successfully (no drugs or alcohol even) away home until he was abducted by controlling parents and placed in a program in Utah. I can't begin to tell you the messed up stuff that has happened. This is going on today right now. Don't act like this is all in the past. The parents in this case don't believe what's really going on and even if they did i'm not sure they would do anything; after all they're getting the obedient little pet they always wanted, devoid of free will. This is not the gentle persuasion of "mother and father have been around longer than you have and know what's best". This is a concerted effort to strip a kid of his dignity, privacy, and ultimately his identity to present a marketable zombie. Well that zombie will eventually figure out what happened and when that happens he'll either turn his suffering inwards and self destruct or he'll act like nothing's happened and never really deal with things or he'll end up figuring things out and talking about it and finding some relief, perhaps here. It might take five years it might take ten, but it'll happen. Just because the "latest batch" hasn't shown up yet doesn't mean they aren't on the way.
The burden of proof is on you, Whooter, due to the track record of the industry, to show things have changed. I've heard "we've changed" far too many times and each and every time it turned out to be bullshit without exception. The only time programs ever change in my experience is to increase the effectiveness of their particular thought reform system, thereby providing a more marketable result with (they hope) a more stable programming (will probably never work). Sure Aspen brushed over the CEDU Propheets to make them superficially different from their "LifeSteps"... they saw what produced results and kept that while removing or improving on defective designs. They understood what they were doing and experimented with it on the kids... ultimately concluding that a lap dance to Kelis's "Milkshake" (a song about hand jobs) had therapeutic value... And when was MBA shut down for this crap? Now I don't necessarily agree with how the state went around doing it's business but the fact of the matter remains that this is what happened. Recently. Not ten or twenty years ago. Just last year. You want me to cite more examples? I can.
There is a thread going where the kids can hang out on the lawn with pedestrians walking by, no fences, they can just walk away if they like.
That has yet to be confirmed but if it's true and it's voluntary and accurately represented that place sounds more like a boarding school than a program. I have no problem with voluntary places. Never have, never will... So long as you can leave at any time and what they're going to be doing to you is accurately represented before it is done (informed consent). If it's not accurately marketed i'd object to it on grounds of fraud.
Now a days kids get unmonitored phone calls home.
It's almost always been like that, but only after a period of silence during which the child is convinced by the staff and peers that what's going on around him is completely normal. After that period of silence comes monitored calls during which the child often tries to say something to his parents and get cut off as a result. After the child realizes his parents won't every believe the crazy shit going on he gives up and gives in to the practical realization that the only way out is to give himself to the program. This turns into "without the program I cannot survive" eventually in the child's mind, creating a dependency. The program becomes a surrogate mother and father, providing conditional acceptance and love for compliance. It's only at this point where a child is given unmonitored phone calls and even those can be revoked at any point.
Often at this point things are generally quite quiet. The child works to progress in the program believing that they will let him progress. During this time the child's ethics and core beliefs are stripped and replaced with one of or compatible with the group**, his life story is revised to portray himself as the evildoer in most or all past events, and his past associations are portrayed as "diseased" or "not real friends". All too often parents do not approve of friends of their "troubled" kids so they express approval and reassure their kids in phone calls that they're coming to the right conclusions. The implication is that you have never truly lived before the program, that you've never connected with another human being, never felt real emotion, much less love. It's hard to resist when everybody around you is going "I was like you once. Now with the help of the program I feel like I found my real self".
So what's wrong with this if it produces results like I describe? Because there is an objective reality and once the child grows up a little and figures things out... figures out that what went on was neither normal nor therapy, the world they have constructed on those lies falls apart. It's a feeling of being raped. Of being violated in one's mind. I imagine victims of sexual abuse feel similar when they grow up and discover daddy wasn't really supposed to do that. It's a feeling of trusting in something and then losing that trust. Trusting in people only to find out they were preaching lies to you... That they did bad things to you (even if most of the staff had good intentions). And after that it's hard to trust again... But in this industry cynicism is not a bad thing. It's prudent, because these bad programs are hardly the exception. They're damn near the rule.
And a large part of the reason for that is that yes, a good portion of the industry is based on toxic philosophy and has cultic roots. It's well documented:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08 ... n-industryYou ask how it extends to today's industry? In today's "clone" programs (close of past programs, often started by staff of defunct programs). The proof of that is in LifeSteps, Carlbrook school in VA, and countless others who have adopted marathon "seminars" similar or identitcal to CEDU's Propheets. Similar patterns apply to most other programs. There's very little that's original out there. Most of it is recycled from other programs. This happens when staff migrate and bring their teachings and practices with them.
** If you want to understand this process in more detail, read Margaret Singer's book, "Cults in Our Midst"
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