Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Three Springs

My experience at Three Springs New Beginnings

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Anne Bonney:

--- Quote from: "psy" ---
--- Quote from: "Hedge" ---One of the punishments that often went along with ROL was "non-com," or "non-communication." That meant you were not permitted to speak to anyone. You also lost clothing privileges and furniture privileges with certain offenses.
--- End quote ---

That's interesting.  Benchmark just renamed "bans" to "noncom".
--- End quote ---


In Straight, it was having our "talk" or "T & R" (talk & responsibility) taken away.  And they wonder why we lump so many of them into the same category.  Hmmmmm, could it be that they use the same basic methods and just keep renaming them??  Wow....I wonder if it could be true?!?   ::)

Hedge:
Hey, what the heck, I'll post another poem. I've written a lot over the years, but this isn't my blog, I'll keep it to a couple.

This is to the staff member with the itchy fists.


I disagreed with you, Mr. BW, and I know you
hated me for that. I had with you a conflict,
an intellectual conflict, and like the others,
this one too was mostly in my head.
My disagreement with you was an ethical
one. I could not remotely fathom how you
could justify:
there was a girl who was nearly
septic from the huge number of
staples she had inserted
methodically into her skin
and we came upon her as a group,
and you said to ignore her.
There she sat with a sharp object
of some kind
(even in our sterile environment
her eyes were so keen and ever
searching the carpet for tiny pieces of metal or
glass that no vacuum cleaner could have
seen)
bleeding from a newly opened wound
and you said to ignore her.
I stood there with the group with my
head about to explode and I
mustered only one sentence to you
(as you intimidated me so much):
“But she’s Hurting herself!”
You had us go back to the day room,
Counting as we walked through the door
“One sir.” “Two sir!”
 
(I learned to convey my emotions through
our two allowed line-words, muttering just
so you could hear or
spitting it at you or
shouting it defiantly or
whispering it sadly)
And you said to ignore her.
And I couldn’t.
 
People could say I identified too strongly with her.
In her I saw myself, who I was back when I was
sick too. Ignoring her was ignoring myself and I
couldn’t do that any more. I couldn’t ignore the
life-pulse in me and by g-d, I couldn’t let you
ignore the life-pulse in her too. I could see it
there, I could see it in her poetry and in her jokes
and in her eyes when you abandoned her while she
was strapped to the Board. I could see it there,
but not you.
Not you, never you.
 
If you had seen the life-pulse,
you would have seen how it
diminished after you beat them.
If you had seen the life-pulse,
you would have seen how it
lay behind her eyes and how it
begged us to stop her.
I cannot believe you ever saw it,
because if you had, you would
have left that place long before
you were forced.
 
I disagreed with you, Mr. BW,
and I know you hated me for that.
I just stopped caring.
 
2:00 PM  7/28/03

Che Gookin:
They have an iso room there right? I distinctly remember something about one.

Hedge:
Yes, there are two isolation rooms.

When you entered the New Beginnings facility, you entered the main office portion. I don't remember that place much, because I saw it under 10 times on my way in and out from passes. When you entered the first alarmed door, the cafeteria was on the right. You walk down a long hall to get to the second alarmed door. This door opened into the "dayroom."

At the back of the dayroom, there was the staff room in the center, with two rooms on either side. (While I was there, the rooms on either side were either used as classrooms, or as bedrooms for people with Pledge and Honors level.) The rooms where the kids slept were down hallways perpendicular to the dayroom (shaped kind of like a T), and there was one isolation room by each of the halls where kids slept.

You could choose to go into an isolation room, or you could be forced into the isolation room, or you could be restrained in the isolation room. (You could also be restrained and tied to the board in full view of everyone in the middle of the dayroom...)

I was never forced to go in there, or restrained, thank goodness. (The time I was beaten was not in the context of restraint, like most of the kids.) I was depressed, and I was pretty good at following rules - that kind of physical "acting out" behavior was never my style.

My "fondest" isolation room memory is being forced to clean up a group member's shit that she smeared on the walls, when the staff ignored her multiple requests to go to the bathroom. Ugh.

Joel:
Edited: Wednesday, October 06, 2010

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