The smoking gun - do survivors lie?

[Watchful Yeoman]

I'm tired of being tormented to hell.

Program people are paper pushing, money grubbing, soulless, conscienceless thieves and liars.

Yes, they are, as exemplified by the previous poster.

[Froderik]

I'm tired of being tormented to hell.

Program people are paper pushing, money grubbing, soulless, conscienceless thieves and liars.

Considering the topic of the thread you posted this in,Frod, what you really mean is:

You are energized and elated because:

Program people are considerate, non materialistic, religious, extremely honest people?

Hate to admit it, but that was funny.

[Whooter]

My experience was that my niece told the truth about her family/family dynamics, and her honesty got her sent to a program.

Meanwhile her parents were the liars and manipulators who, for example, lied to my niece and told her they were going on a family vacation, when in fact she was handed over to goons who transported her to a program. My niece was honest about being angry that they did this to her, while her parents wanted her to lie about her feelings and say she liked and needed the program.

Her parents lied to all of us when they said she would only be there for a few months, when she was there for more than 3 years with no home visit (although in fairness, I don't know if this was a lie told to them by the program). The program also told a whopper when they diagnosed her, absurdly, with Asperger's (she did not and does not have the symptoms).

Manipulation and lies were tools the parents and the program used to force conformity, while honesty and truth got my niece sent there and kept there.

I think this serves as a very good example on how to communicate to the general public how a child was handled and this also serves to help communicate my point at bit more.

".....when in fact she was handed over to goons who transported her to a program."

If AuntieEm2 had written that her niece was kidnapped and taken to a Gulag and placed in isolation for 3 years where she was cut off from society  and systematically tortured and brainwashed I think we would all agree that we could not be sure how long she spent in her program.  

We would ask ourselves: "Was the 3 years exaggerated the same as the kidnapping was ?"

The language that AuntieEm2 chose to use was open and honest and we can believe that "3 years" is not an exaggeration (in my opinion), whereas in the previous paragraph we would all doubt that she spent that long in a program at all based on the other exaggerations in the sentence.  We would probably conclude that she spent a few months there maybe tops.

so I think it is important to chose the words wisely and be accurate about what happened to you from start to finish.



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[yeshadette21]

Because if the child was threatening and tormenting his family to the point of they were seriously scared for their safety, then it is not kidnapping.
Hey, try this 2 cops walk in his bedroom snatch his butt drag him to the squad car throw his ass in the car and cart him off to jail. Is that kidnapping. No it is called going to jail, well call this going to a program.
Ya know not every story is a picture you have in your head.[/b]

Safety is everybody's concern in all phases of life. Children needs protection from people whom they believe they can get it. Perfect health condition is also needed by all children. We can all give it to them if we only know what to do.

[Anne Bonney]

My experience was that my niece told the truth about her family/family dynamics, and her honesty got her sent to a program.

Meanwhile her parents were the liars and manipulators who, for example, lied to my niece and told her they were going on a family vacation, when in fact she was handed over to goons who transported her to a program. My niece was honest about being angry that they did this to her, while her parents wanted her to lie about her feelings and say she liked and needed the program.

Her parents lied to all of us when they said she would only be there for a few months, when she was there for more than 3 years with no home visit (although in fairness, I don't know if this was a lie told to them by the program). The program also told a whopper when they diagnosed her, absurdly, with Asperger's (she did not and does not have the symptoms).

Manipulation and lies were tools the parents and the program used to force conformity, while honesty and truth got my niece sent there and kept there.

I think this serves as a very good example on how to communicate to the general public how a child was handled and this also serves to help communicate my point at bit more.

".....when in fact she was handed over to goons who transported her to a program."

If AuntieEm2 had written that her niece was kidnapped and taken to a Gulag and placed in isolation for 3 years where she was cut off from society  and systematically tortured and brainwashed I think we would all agree that we could not be sure how long she spent in her program.  

We would ask ourselves: "Was the 3 years exaggerated the same as the kidnapping was ?"

The language that AuntieEm2 chose to use was open and honest and we can believe that "3 years" is not an exaggeration (in my opinion), whereas in the previous paragraph we would all doubt that she spent that long in a program at all based on the other exaggerations in the sentence.  We would probably conclude that she spent a few months there maybe tops.

so I think it is important to chose the words wisely and be accurate about what happened to you from start to finish.

I think you're getting too caught up in the words we've chosen to use.  On the rare occasions when I speak about this stuff outside of Fornits, I don't normally use the words you seem to be so hung up on.  Here, since it's a site mainly populated by survivors, I don't see it as the big issue that you do and quite frankly, I think you bring it up as more of a distraction and discrediting method than anything else.

[Ursus]

My experience was that my niece told the truth about her family/family dynamics, and her honesty got her sent to a program.

Meanwhile her parents were the liars and manipulators who, for example, lied to my niece and told her they were going on a family vacation, when in fact she was handed over to goons who transported her to a program. My niece was honest about being angry that they did this to her, while her parents wanted her to lie about her feelings and say she liked and needed the program.

Her parents lied to all of us when they said she would only be there for a few months, when she was there for more than 3 years with no home visit (although in fairness, I don't know if this was a lie told to them by the program). The program also told a whopper when they diagnosed her, absurdly, with Asperger's (she did not and does not have the symptoms).

Manipulation and lies were tools the parents and the program used to force conformity, while honesty and truth got my niece sent there and kept there.

I think this serves as a very good example on how to communicate to the general public how a child was handled and this also serves to help communicate my point at bit more.

".....when in fact she was handed over to goons who transported her to a program."

If AuntieEm2 had written that her niece was kidnapped and taken to a Gulag and placed in isolation for 3 years where she was cut off from society  and systematically tortured and brainwashed I think we would all agree that we could not be sure how long she spent in her program.  

We would ask ourselves: "Was the 3 years exaggerated the same as the kidnapping was ?"

The language that AuntieEm2 chose to use was open and honest and we can believe that "3 years" is not an exaggeration (in my opinion), whereas in the previous paragraph we would all doubt that she spent that long in a program at all based on the other exaggerations in the sentence.  We would probably conclude that she spent a few months there maybe tops.

so I think it is important to chose the words wisely and be accurate about what happened to you from start to finish.

I think you're getting too caught up in the words we've chosen to use.  On the rare occasions when I speak about this stuff outside of Fornits, I don't normally use the words you seem to be so hung up on.  Here, since it's a site mainly populated by survivors, I don't see it as the big issue that you do and quite frankly, I think you bring it up as more of a distraction and discrediting method than anything else.

Yep. I agree. Whooter just likes to twist folks' words into what they're not, and goad them into reacting with angry tirades. Must make him feel awfully superior, like ... "My sandcastle is bigger than your sandcastle!"  

[Anne Bonney]

My experience was that my niece told the truth about her family/family dynamics, and her honesty got her sent to a program.

Meanwhile her parents were the liars and manipulators who, for example, lied to my niece and told her they were going on a family vacation, when in fact she was handed over to goons who transported her to a program. My niece was honest about being angry that they did this to her, while her parents wanted her to lie about her feelings and say she liked and needed the program.

Her parents lied to all of us when they said she would only be there for a few months, when she was there for more than 3 years with no home visit (although in fairness, I don't know if this was a lie told to them by the program). The program also told a whopper when they diagnosed her, absurdly, with Asperger's (she did not and does not have the symptoms).

Manipulation and lies were tools the parents and the program used to force conformity, while honesty and truth got my niece sent there and kept there.

I think this serves as a very good example on how to communicate to the general public how a child was handled and this also serves to help communicate my point at bit more.

".....when in fact she was handed over to goons who transported her to a program."

If AuntieEm2 had written that her niece was kidnapped and taken to a Gulag and placed in isolation for 3 years where she was cut off from society  and systematically tortured and brainwashed I think we would all agree that we could not be sure how long she spent in her program.  

We would ask ourselves: "Was the 3 years exaggerated the same as the kidnapping was ?"

The language that AuntieEm2 chose to use was open and honest and we can believe that "3 years" is not an exaggeration (in my opinion), whereas in the previous paragraph we would all doubt that she spent that long in a program at all based on the other exaggerations in the sentence.  We would probably conclude that she spent a few months there maybe tops.

so I think it is important to chose the words wisely and be accurate about what happened to you from start to finish.

I think you're getting too caught up in the words we've chosen to use.  On the rare occasions when I speak about this stuff outside of Fornits, I don't normally use the words you seem to be so hung up on.  Here, since it's a site mainly populated by survivors, I don't see it as the big issue that you do and quite frankly, I think you bring it up as more of a distraction and discrediting method than anything else.

Yep. I agree. Whooter just likes to twist folks' words into what they're not, and goad them into reacting with angry tirades. Must make him feel awfully superior, like ... "My sandcastle is bigger than your sandcastle!"  

I'd have used a different descriptor :rofl: , but yup!   :seg2:

[Whooter]

I'd have used a different descriptor :rofl: , but yup!   :seg2:

Ursus used the analogy of Sandcastles because he knows that Pro-program people are typically better endowed then the anti-program types in that area.



...

[Whooter]

I'd have used a different descriptor :rofl: , but yup!   :seg2:

Ursus used the analogy of Sandcastles because he knows that Pro-program people are typically better endowed then the anti-program types in that area.



...

[RobertBruce]

Exactly, Bruce, sometimes it is easier to see the point if you flip it around and take a look from a different perspective.

If fornits were a predominately pro-program extremist forum and we examined a pro-program posters posts and found that this person was writing posts pretending to be a student who did well in programs and invented parents who had great out comes. Two things could happen:

1. the majority of the people would respond by saying what he did was wrong or
2. they could back him and say he did a good job.

If number 1 was true we could conclude that this activity does not reflect that of the average poster on fornits. If number two were true we could conclude that many people did the same thing as he did and a good portion of the posts by all members of fornits were lies.

"We" cannot conclude anything. You are guessing, based on nothing. You have no real reason to believe that other posters are playing the same game you played for years. You're just using your usual excuse of "others are doing it too!".

This is no different then any of the other numerous accusations you've made towards others without any evidence or basis. Most people refer to that aslying Whooter. Why do you do that?

[Whooter]

So I'm new here, I've been sitting back reading posts here for a few weeks now. I have got to chime in on this stuff. As a survivor of one of the roughest programs out there I have a few things that just need to be said. First of all, there are definitely lies and fabrications by some people about the level of abuse and exactly what happened during their incarcerations. I have seen some posts on another topic that I witnessed personally, and the story was complete B.S. I 100% agree that the people out there lying about incidences of abuse need to reign it in and be honest. That being said, without any fabrication these programs are abusive and wrong. At least the one I was in. Judging from the fact that the people who ran my program (Brightway and Paradise Cove) are basically the same people running most of these programs (WWASPS), I don't discount the fact that abuse occurs, rampantly. Here's my issue. If you are a parent out there and you think that an out of control teen, and there are many variations as to what constitutes "out of control", answer me this. What do you think would happen if you hogtied your teen and locked him in a closet for a week, fed him one cup of rice and a cup of water a day, and if he "refused" to cooperate (CAT 4!!!) so you physically assaulted (I mean "restrained") him or her to the point of causing injury, that means even bruising, what do you think would happen to you?

Well, I'll tell you. You would go to Jail! You would not pass go, you would not get a chance to explain to CPS that this is for their own good, your ass would get locked up. So tell me why are these programs allowed to therapeutically abuse? Plain and simple, follow the money trail. If you were a billion dollar parent, you could afford to lobby some legislation to allow you to beat the hell out of your kid whenever you want.

What I'm saying is, at the least these programs are child abusers. My experience, beyond abuse. Fabrications are completely unnecessary, so the survivors out there please be straight shooters, the lies are only going to help the real criminals get away with their crimes.

Res ipsa loquitur

Thank you for your perspective, Gonzotherapy,  I agree with you and there are many ways for survivors to communicate what happened to them during their stay in a program without resorting to embellishing or lying.  It just really kills the credibility of the whole story and leaves the reader wondering what to believe.



...

[RobertBruce]

Thank you for your perspective, Gonzotherapy, I agree with you and there are many ways for survivors to communicate what happened to them during their stay in a program without resorting to embellishing or lying. It just really kills the credibility of the whole story and leaves the reader wondering what to believe.

Sort of how you lying and posting under various guises claiming success stories where none exists and fabricating a family? Funny how this random posters claims some random story was bs and you assume he's telling the truth. No word yet on which story he's referring to or even what makes him more credible over the original poster.

I'm also still waiting to hear on why you routinely lie about things on here.

[Gonzotherapy]

I will happily clarify, but before I do understand that I hate these programs. I was in Paradise Cove with Chris Sutton, didn't know him well, we played spades a few times but I never really got to know him. Any of you paying attention should know who Sutton is. The story I am referring to was posted in here a few years ago. It pertained to Brian Vaifanua throwing a puppy off of a cliff to terrorize a kid who was there. The story started out somewhat true and then somehow got completely convoluted.

I was there, what really happened was the dog got thrown off a cliff, not by Vaifanua, by one of the Samoan staff. The dog was absolutely not a puppy given to the kid they referred to. Even though Frederickson was way younger than most of us, 12 I think when this happened, and immature for his age ( he looked more like a 9 year old) there is no way in hell they would have let anyone have a puppy. The dog was some stray that wandered around the beaches. Steven was attached to it, and he did name the dog Monkey; but it was not his dog. And it was certainly not thrown off a cliff to terrorize him or anyone else. It was a mangy mutt, it looked diseased. If any of you have been to Mexico, or many third-world countries, they don't treat dogs like we do. They're not friends, they're just animals. And the cliff was more of a very steep hill, I doubt the dog even got hurt. The dog was whacked by a machete, I don't know who did that, but it still wandered around the beach with a giant gaping wound. Personally I wish they would have killed that dog, we had enough disease running around those beaches without having that nasty mutt around.

Regardless, there is no need to fabricate atrocitites done by these programs. Steven got hogtied regularly, stuck in iso for days at a time, that kid definitely did not belong there and what they did to him there was criminal. He got some of the worst treatment I have ever seen another person go through. Me, I did'nt suffer too much. If you were mentally strong enough to play the game, you could survive there. There were many there who were not, many kids driven crazy by the horrible treatment. If you have never seen someone who has lost their minds from abuse, let me tell you what would happen. As their minds went they started to care less and less about hygiene. It was a task to keep yourself clean there, we usually took three showers a day, in cold water. 10 seconds to get wet, go to the back of the line, 20 seconds to rinse off. If your parents didn't send you soap, you had to buy program soap, basically a bar of wax. If you did not attentively clean yourself and make sure to rinse off all the soap, first the laffa (ringworm) would set in, balls first, then armpits, and if you didn't take good care of that with their "medicine" (acid) that shit would keep spreading. Then of course the scabies, that was always a fun one. Even those of us who did our best to keep clean got this stuff because of the horribly unsanitary conditions. The crazy ones, they were itching infested messes.

That's not even beginning to mention the malnutrition and many other below par child safety issues that went on there. There are people who manage to think that this stuff needs embellished upon, trust me, it doesn't. What actually happened was criminal enough. My experience is that the people who do lie about the conditions are the ones who suffered the most, the ones who didn't bow down to the system and try to survive. Most likely they are lying because they feel the need to make sure that someone is listening, because they don't understand why this was allowed to happen. I excelled in the program, I made it to level three and was a family leader when I left, thank god my parents ran out of money because even the limited amount of brainwashing (and yes, brainwashing is exactly what they do) I succumbed to still took me years to shake off. I never even realized that what they were doing was not "help" it was torture. It was and continues to be wrong. If I ever run across one of the people who benefited from these scams, I wish them the best of luck, what goes around will come around. :soapbox:  :soapbox:  :soapbox:  :soapbox:

[Whooter]

That is a terrible story, GonzoTherapy, I am sorry you had to go thru that.  As to the lying aspect of your post, the stories do get people’s attention and maybe gains them a few minutes of gratification that people may feel sorry for them momentarily.  But I sense it goes beyond that.

There are so many reasons that people lie.  Some people inflate their grades on their resume because they are projecting themselves into a better job and feel justified doing so because they are worth more than the company is paying them.

Some kids become accustomed to lying in their teen years (and earlier) to get themselves out of trouble and when they learn that it works then they continue this habit, many throughout their lives to avoid accountability for their actions, blaming fellow employees for their screw-ups etc.

My sense is that the program wasn’t as bad as what they felt they went through.  They don’t have a story of abuse or a specific smoking gun that will communicate to the reader that the program was torturous.  So they fabricate a story about being kidnapped and taken to this dark place.  Everyone knows that kidnapping rarely ends well and is a good story line and is also an instant attention getter.

Maybe some survivors try to one-up each other and say I was abused more than you?

But my question still remains “Why would a person jeopardize their credibility by lying if the person was really abused?”  Maybe they have nothing to lose because they were never abused to begin with.  But this does a huge disservice to those few survivors who were truly abused during their stay in a program.

I am not sure there is a single answer.



...

[Gonzotherapy]

That's all great Whooter, you sound like someone who believes they are insightful, you sound alot like the program staff. As far as you empathizing with my suffering, I don't need your empathy. I barely even touched on all that was wrong about the program. The physical abuse was nothing compared to the mental, and there is nobody, NOT ONE PERSON, who went to that program and was not abused. They did not adhere to International guidelines on child care by a long shot. I can't speak for other programs as I was only in Brighway and Paradise Cove, but I can certainly say that the organization that ran my program (WWASPS) runs alot of these other ones; and there M.O. is lie, cheat, steal, and abuse. So while there may be embellishments, and I am not for that, they are embellishments on abuse. Not made up abuse, embellished abuse. I don't know what you are, but my insight is that you don't know jack shit about programs or survivors, because you have never been in a program and had to survive it.

Most of what I see in your writing is somebody who believes they are an authority. More power to you. Maybe you should start believing you are superman and take a flying leap into that steaming pile you're shoveling. Seriously, you sound exactly like someone who thinks they know something. I guess one benefit of these programs is learning how to identify bullshit.