Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Elan School

Happy Anniversary

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Anonymous:
One year since they closed their doors. http://www.elanschool.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2kY93Gnj1o

"[Don Schlosser, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services] told the Associated Press that the department's evaluation team had 'never seen anything quite so bizarre and degrading.' He said 'the whole concept of this program seems to be a brain washing technique.'"

From the Associated Press and Maine Sunday Telegram, March 25, 2007.

"We were taken on our tour by a resident, 'Chad', who was 17 and had been in 'school' for two years. He introduced us to 'Karen' who had cheeks smeared with rouge, heavy eye makeup and a billboard sign across her back that said: 'I am a whore. I whore around for attention. I do this because I hate myself. I hate myself because I am a whore.'
 I do not recall the precise explanation for this or how the 'treatment' was supposed to help Karen. I suspect my horror outranks my memory ... but she was the first of many as we watched the student drill sergeants up close and personal in the faces of other misbehaving 'students' shrieking at the tops of their lungs: 'YOU are filth. You are nothing but filth. You are slime. You keep behaving this way and you will DIE!!!'"


Testimony in An American Gulag: Secret P.O.W. Camps for Teens (2000) from "Arleen Lewis," the 20-year manager of a juvenile justice agency. She called Elan a "national disgrace."

Anonymous:
"As the residents surged over the scuffed linoleum of the dining room, knocking over metal chairs, Kim curled into a ball. 'You fucking bitch, fucking whore, fucking fuck-up!' Kim was enduring a 'learning experience' ...

'[We] were whipped into a mob,' says Arnold ... 'It was brainwashing. People like Kim were gonna be junkies or hookers if we didn't make them get their shit together.' Arnold soon added her voice to the eardrum-breaking sound of 100 young adults caught up in the adrenaline rush of anger. To an outsider, it must have looked like madness, a Lord of the Flies outpost with castaways who were regularly dressed in tinfoil, diapers, and 'hooker' skirts. Some had signs around their necks that read: I'M AN EMOTIONAL VAMPIRE or ASK ME WHY I'M A BABY or CONFRONT ME AS TO WHY I'M A WHORE. All were red with rage. 'Kim,' Arnold recalls, 'was semi-catatonic.'"

From Details Magazine, November 2001.

Anonymous:


http://www.amazon.com/Life-Gone-Awry-Sc ... t_ep_dpt_2

Review
 "This story brought up old hurts, wounds and anger. I was a resident at Elan for almost 2 years, I watched Elan change into a violent atmosphere in a matter of years. I witnessed the change in residents being brought to Elan from Mental facilities, Juvenile detention centers, Autistic children ect....I watched Staff and Directors leave en-mass and I watched 3 people who are still there deny they are doing children harm, It is beyond shameful".~Daniel Lee Bennison

Product Description
 When Doctor M. Scott Peck suggested Elan to my parents I was skeptical because the first program he sent me to was a drug program, and I had never done drugs. He said it wasn't, and that Elan treated teens with emotional problems. He told me that Elan had psychiatrists and counselors, and activities, so I agreed to go.

What I witnessed was unbelievable. Elan was an insane asylum, run by the inmates, and Joe Ricci was God. For more than thirty years I told people I had been in prison, rather than the truth of what happened there. After you read this book you will understand why.

The Media

"The tales of treatment at the school during the 1970s were well-documented during the 2002 murder trial of former student Michael Skakel, and the practices of isolating students, screaming sessions called “general meetings” and physically rough treatment have been written about by dozens of former students, including disturbing details of Wayne Kernochan’s time at the school between 1978 and 1980 detailed in his e-book, “A Life Gone Awry: My Story of the Elan School.”~The Lewiston Sun Journal

"Former student Matt Hoffman, who boarded at Elan between 1974 and 1976 had little good to say about the program Wednesday, calling the campus "a sadistic, brutal, violent, soul-eating hell hole."~The Lewiston Sun Journal

Survivor Quotes

"I can't thank you enough for telling your story. I have felt alone for many years, and because of your story, now I don't"~Debi Levin Johnson

"Wayne's book about Elan, lucid vivid, captures the gist and grinding of what it was like to be in Elan, even during my time which was 7/74 to 7/76(a couple of years before Wayne) This book touches me to my very being. It cuts through to the marrow of my bones."~Matt Hoffman

none-ya:

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Wayne, unless someone comes forward, and says that they knew you from Elan, your fraudulent story doesn't hold water. You were spoonfed the story of Elan, and tried to make it your own. If you really lived it, your book wouldn't be so short, with so many holes in it. Your book is old news. Please take it and go away!

Anonymous:

--- Quote from: "none-ya" ---
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Wayne, unless someone comes forward, and says that they knew you from Elan, your fraudulent story doesn't hold water. You were spoonfed the story of Elan, and tried to make it your own. If you really lived it, your book wouldn't be so short, with so many holes in it. Your book is old news. Please take it and go away!
--- End quote ---
Why don't you go away. You contribute nothing here but hate. You're a loser and a bum who can't create anything, so you try to destroy anything good.

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