Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry

Apologia - Serious debate only, please!

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Anonymous:

--- Quote ---On 2003-12-20 18:03:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Deborah wrote: "It is not always accomplish overtly. Just as my son was not told which "lie" to concoct, but he knew what they wanted to hear. When that happens day in, day out, that can/does condition one's thinking and processing."



Deborah, just for clarity sake - your son was not in a wwasp program.  Is it possible there is a difference?  What the wwasp grads have told me is that "you can't bullshit a bullshitter."  Explained to me as: if they are saying what they think you want to hear, they can see right through it.  THey might be able to fake it for the staff once in a while, but they can't fake it with their peers for very long.



Please read the link I posted in ANOTHER DEBATE thread.  I'd love to hear your take on what it says.  



"

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I'm sorry, but that's a crock of shit.

With method acting, I can bullshit *anyone*.

And we have had *plenty* of ex-program-kids show up in this and other forums and relate that how they finally got through it was to "play the game"--that is, to use a version of method acting to tell the staff and other kids what they want to hear.

The key to the game with the programs, of course, is to realize you *will* be abused and genuine innocence *will* be taken as bullshit-----so you have to give them just enough of what they want to hear that they can beat on you (metaphorically in some programs, physically in others) and feel good about it, but little enough that you fit within their "Stepford Kids" mold of making "progress."

The problem is that to make the lie convincing, you have to immerse yourself in the role---and some kids get lost in the role---most of the ones who *know* that's what they're doing probably snap out of it quicker than the ones who resist the wrong way and get genuinely broken and brainwashed.

"You can't bullshit a bullshitter"?  Complete and utter crap.  Bullshitters are some of the easiest people in the world to bullshit if you know how, because their grip on reality is about appearances rather than what's really underneath.

Anonymous:
[/quote]

Don't take my word for it or mine and Greg's or mine and Gregs and the folks who keep dropping in to applaud. Just look up as many program grads as YOU can find, not just the ones WWASP tells you to talk to, and ask them yourself.
[/quote]

Yes, I agree -- even if I am guilty of applauding Ginger, Greg and others for telling it "like it is" in ways that resonate with pundits on either side of the aisle. Sorry, I won't do it again.  :smile:

The truth is it is absolutely vital that parents do due-diligence when considering private placement which includes, but is not limited to, locating and interviewing as many program grads as one can find.  When speaking with parents or grads who present themselves as "success stories" be aware that anecdotal evidence is more often than not, what you are going to see and hear.

Antigen:

--- Quote ---On 2003-12-21 15:29:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Please share your feelings on this little excerpt on the above wwasp site -





"...each School and Programs have at the facility on a daily basis a number of professionals including teachers, therapist (many who are independently contracted by the parents), nurses, visiting doctors, and others who are all under a professional and legal responsibility to report any abuse. All of these professionals are trained to identify abuse or potential abuse. The many Professionals are happy to testify concerning the quality of care at each of the facilities and that there have been no need for reports of abuse made by them or others who work closely with the facilities on a daily basis."



 



"

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I feel a deep sense of trepidation connected to an image of that old blow-hard, Dr. Hugh Burns.  He had been the executive staff most likely to actually lead a rap and know something, true or not, about each kid. But it turned out either he didn't know much or he's a damned liar.

I talked to him on the phone a couple of years ago, twice. The first time, I asked him if he knew what ever happened to a particular kid I'd been worried about for all these years. Here's my recollection of what happened to that kid http://fornits.com/anonanon/sidetalk/messages/22.htm

Well Doc said he didn't even remember this kid and that whatever happened to him must have happened after he'd left his job at Straight. Not long after that conversation, I came accross some old newspaper articles, naming good ol'e Doc as a Straight staff member up until at least December of 1982. I'd left the program for the last time in Oct of `82. So there was no way that what he'd told me could have been true and, unless he took 3 days off in a row, there is no possible way that he could have not heard what we were doing to this kid. In short, the son of a bitch lied to me.

So I called up Doc again, only to find the number disconnected. No problem, I had found two numbers for him when I initially looked him up, so I called the other number. Doc was not happy to hear from me. Wouldn't even stay on the phone long enough for me to ask him about this discrepancy. A week later, that second number had been changed as well.

Then comes to mind the physician who examined me in the little medical room in the corner of the big group room. See, I'd been held in a 5 point for around two hours for refusing to apologize to Group for having run away. I didn't want to fight and get beat down, so I just complied. But after two hours, my whole body was numb to the point of intense pain and I started to worry about permanent damage. So I yelled out, twice, "If I miscarry, I'll kill somebody."

Next day, a real live medical doctor (or so I would assume, cause that's what they said he was) came to the building to administer a pregnancy test. I told him, point blank, that I knew I couldn't be pregnant and that I'd only said it to make them stop hurting me. Never heard another word about it.

Anon, this is par for the course. Over and over again, kids who have been in WWASP programs report never having seen a medical doctor, psychiatrist or other professinal for the duration of their stay. Parents and kids rebort huge discrepancies between the sales brochures and the realities of Program life. So we have this small group of people who, whether motivated more by money or by religious zealotry, consistently claim that these other hundreds of people who tell the same stories about them are all liars. They make themselves out to be nobel martyrs, just like Betty Sembler does to this day.

But their story just doesn't wash. They seem to be saying here that the places are just crawling with presumably objective and detached professional people from the outside. But no kid who attends these programs, even those who swear by it, will stand by that claim. No one, including the parents, is allowed access to the clients unless they're convinced that any report of abuse is manipulation.


The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.


--H.L. Mencken
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spots:

--- Quote ---


"...each School and Programs have at the facility on a daily basis a number of professionals including teachers, therapist (many who are independently contracted by the parents), nurses, visiting doctors, and others who are all under a professional and legal responsibility to report any abuse.

--- Quote ---

[don't these people ever proof-read their stuff, or at least have a high school senior look it over for grammatical or spelling errors before it becomes "official?"

My understanding is that the **only** psychiatric professional allowed onto the Casa by the Sea campus is Dr. Marc Chappius (referred to in one news article by the Utah State department for licensing as "...the bottom of the barrel, not the brightest star in the Utah psychological community."  Dr. Chappius charges up to $300 an hour for medical assistance at the school, and a "pre-entrance psych exam" will run the parent about $900 more than the nearly-$4000 admissions package (see contract for Casa by the Sea for exact wording).  Dr. Chappius (according to The Guardian/UK article statement by Jay Kay) spends 2 weeks a month in Tranquility Bay, and spreads his time during the rest of the month over the remaining WWASPS facilities (thinly, one would presume).

During my child's sentence in Casa, she knows several other teens whose parents paid for medical visits (apparently told through letters from home), but were never visited by any medical professional.  One girl's mother was said to have paid $1000, with no medical visit forthcoming.  If one were "lucky" enough to see the Mexican medical doctor visiting, his advice was across-the-board, "Drink more water", regardless of the ailment.  BTW, drinking water other than that available from the kiosk in the courtyard of filtered water to fill your plastic water bottle was a Category 5 violation, Self-Mutilation.

My kid went in with braces, and even though I asked about their maintenance during every single letter I wrote her, it wasn't until Month 8 that she was allowed a dental visit.  She was taken by a "mama" she did not know into a car (a real adventure, after all that time in confinement), and silently driven into Ensenada.  There, the "adventure" ended with her once-over-lightly by a Mexican dentist [not an orthodontist], with new bands (R-W-B, much to the mama's chagrin) and an adjustment.  This visit was repeated, but upon returning home after 10 months, the local California orthodonist declared the entire program set back and basically needing to start from where they left off.  During this entire period, my kid was only a Level II (not entitiled to talk to peers, phone home, nor *visit offsite*).  I have no idea what precipitated the eventual dental care visit, except that maybe they thought they'd better do something, because it didn't look like she was going to cave and go to a higher level soon.

As to the following:      

{quote}
All of these professionals are trained to identify abuse or potential abuse. The many Professionals are happy to testify concerning the quality of care at each of the facilities and that there have been no need for reports of abuse made by them or others who work closely with the facilities on a daily basis."
{quote}



...my conversation with Al Anzaldua, embassy officer in Tijuana responsible for "protecting" the rights of US national minor children in his northern Mexico territory, was as follows:

"...I worked a long time with abused children in New Mexico and I can tell you that I recognize abused kids and these kids were not abused."  

Mr. Alzaldua related how he walked around the campus with Dace Goulding on his "unannounced" visits [after he and Dace had lunch, about every 3rd Wednesday], and a boy came up to them and said "You owe me a game, Dace" [the boy had a basketball], and Goulding replied, "Not right now".  Mr. Anzaldua took this incident to represent the warm fatherly love Mr. Goulding's charges had for him.  I would refer to the CIA memorandum from Allen Dulles, first CIA Director to J. Edgar Hoover in 1955, outlining the new phenomenon or brainwashing by the Koreans on our soldiers, and how taking away all hope - and replacing it with the ultimate authority figure - can engender such "misplaced love".  

Mr. Anzaldua also related how he had heard much from parents about abuse, and "snuck away to peek around a corner" to see if he could find abuse [kids hanging from irons on the south wall?].  What he found was a small group of kids sunning themselves in beach chairs, overlooking the cliff that fronts the sea at Casa.  Anecdotally, one can presume Mr. Anzaldua was carefully guided to see only upper levels, and his "proof" of non-abuse [kick-back tanners] was atypical to say the least.

The only sort of abuse that the US Department of State seems to be able to identify is outright flogging..."Show me the bruises and I'll testify to abuse."  Even extended solitary confinement (my kid spent pretty much her entire first 2 months in Worksheets, alone and without physical exercise, school, or decent food..a period encompassing Thanksgiving and Christmas).  During this extended "introductory" period, her mother had every-Tuesday phone calls from the staffer in charge, and was told that "She is doing fine...having some problem with the rules, but doing fine".  

I somehow suspect a kid can eventually weather getting smacked upside the head as "abuse" better than the grinding, pervasive, helpless knowledge that you are under indefinite sentence for who-knows-what, and that you parent doesn't give a damn.  Never trust an authority figure to determine what is and is not abuse of your own child.
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Anonymous:
Never trust an authority figure to determine if your kid is being abused, Spots????  Aren't you the one that is attempting to enlist authority figures to do this in Montana?  You discount what parents know, but you are saying here the parents are the only ones to know for sure?

Seems that the parents AND the authority figures say there's no abuse, but you can't accept that.  

Your contact with the representative in California, so far, has gone no where. Your contact with the Mexican Government didn't say what you wanted to hear, either.  IS that the reason you are now saying that the authority figures won't determine abuse is going on or not?

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