Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > CEDU / Brown Schools and derivatives / clones

Cookies and cache

<< < (5/11) > >>

Anonymous:
You are lucky your kid is not a basket case. CEDU orignally stands for Charles E. Dederich University. You can read all about Dederich and Synanon here (scroll down to Synanon): http://www.rickross.com/reference/brain ... ing35.html

Son Of Serbia:
i apologize for assuming you were a man.  ottawa5, doesn't sound very feminine to me.  
for the record, my wife is also a canadian citizen,  so please don't get the idea that i hold that against you.

Now that you have confirmed that you are a woman,
there is one thing i have to know.  as i'm
sure you are aware, several posters on other topics in this site have raised the possibility
that you may be a recruiter, or that you are a former or current cedu employee. i've been reading your posts, and the information you've shared about your son, and the details about your experiences finishing the cedu program with him sound vaguely familiar to me.
i believe i have heard this story before,
14 years ago.

On December 28, 1990, i was delivered to cedu by two rather large private investigators (they told me that they were the "school escort service"). i was 14 years old.  The first person i met was the director of admissions (i think that's what she called herself),a woman named PAT SAVAGE.  at first she was extremely friendly, and she began to tell me about the "wonderful opportunity" that awaited me for personal growth and discovery  :???: (i was a stupid 14 year old kid, i had no idea what the hell she was talking about). Pat began to tell me about how her son who had graduated from cedu in the mid 80's.  apparantly Pat's son was abusive to his siblings, failing in school, getting in trouble with the law, and his behavior was tearing the family apart.  Pat explained to me how cedu turned her son's life around, and brought them closer together, because she was allowed to GO THROUGH THE PROGRAM WITH HIM.  Pat also mentioned that her experience with cedu INSPIRED HER TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL,CHANGE CAREERS, and that she decided to work at cedu.  Pat kept using words like "Wonderful" and "Amazing", she really made it sound like life at cedu was paradise on earth (boy was that a crock of shit!).

Pat spoke with an accent that i was completely unfamiliar with, however, it was clear to me that Pat was not from California or Chicago (where i lived) or anywhere else i'd ever visited .  i had never met anyone from Canada at that time, but looking back now, Pat could very well have been Canadian.  Pat then handed me a stack of pages (more or less a contract saying that i would follow cedu's rules) that i was supposed to sign.  i asked her if i could think about it, Pat hesitated, and said that i could think about it, but i had to come back to her office and sign the papers before the end of the move-in process. at this point Pat was still being very nice to me.  Pat then turned me over to Russ Decker and 2 older students.

Russ and his 2 cedu sheep walked me around the campus, and then took me to my dorm. they then proceeded to rummage through my belongings and confiscated everything that meant anything to me. Russ then told me i would be stripped searched, and ordered me to disrobe. I refused, and told him "The only guy i'll ever take my clothes off for is my doctor."  I was informed that i would not be allowed to stay if i didn't strip.  i said i didn't want to stay, so Russ and his 2 sheep escorted me back to Pat's office.

the PAT SAVAGE that i met this time was a completely different person.  she was hostile, arrogant, and extremely confrontational.  even her face changed, like she was possessed or something.  i told Pat i didn't want to stay,and she started yelling and threatening me. her face turned bright red. i was told that if i didn't stay, i would be sent to lock up until i was 18, where i would be beaten, abused, raped, and that i would never speak to my family again.  Russ also added that if i go to lock up "i better get used to being fucked in the ass."  Russ and Pat had a great big laugh about that one.  i told them i couldn't believe that my parents would do that to me.  Pat then got my mom on the phone, who told me verbatum "our decision is firm, either stay and finish Cedu's program, our go to lock up and be out of our lives forever." then she hung up. i was devestated. i couldn't believe that my mom would say that to me.  I had no choice but to strip and agree to Cedu's terms.

so tell me ottawa, are you Pat Savage?  i think that you are. there are way too many similarities between what i read in your posts, and the story Pat told me. i cannot simply dismiss this as pure coincidence.  if you are Pat Savage, then you are a LYING, TWO-FACED, COLD-HEARTED BITCH! You deserve every bit of the hostility that posters on this site have shown you.  if i am mistaken, then please forgive me.

As for the username SON OF SERBIA, i am 100% Serbian,  so in a sense, i am a son of Serbia. to my knowledge, i am the only Serb who ever attended cedu.  i've always been proud of who and what i am, and that fact was common knowlege to everyone who was at cedu with me. Cedu staff would use my ethnic pride against me, and i was blown away in quite a few raps because of that pride.  One staff member, Patrick Stambusky, even compared my ethnic pride to that of Adolf Hitler and he labeled me an anti-semite (this could not be any further from the truth, being that nazis and their allies massacred over 1 million of my people as well). i think this was a ploy to get the jewish students to side with him while he was screaming at me. it worked.  I'm sure that anyone who sat in these raps with me remebers them. i chose the name SON OF SERBIA in order to give posters who were at cedu with me an important clue as to my identity.

ottawa5:
I am not sure where you went, you say CEDU several times and I haven't got time right now to check your earlier posts--are you talking about CEDU High School or RMA? My experiences were with RMA and at a slightly later time period than you are talking about.

There was an older woman counsellor or team leader or something by the name of Pat at RMA at that time, but she didn't seem to be related to my son's team, I only met her once and I couldn't tell you her last name or her accent or whatever. Suffice to say (and you will have to draw your own conclusions) I am not her, and unless that is the woman you are referring to and she got transferred to RMA I don't even know the person you've described. I'll ask my son if it was the same person when I talk with him next.

It's a bit frustrating---I'd rather not give my own name, not only because my child deserves confidentiality if he is not interested in this forum, but also  because I am convinced that there are some potentially deranged people who check in at this site from time to time, I really don't care to be that open with them. If someone wants to be hostile or rude with me that's one thing, but some of these people are talking about assault rifles and going after people's children--I want to stay away from people who would even joke about such stuff---unless I'm working with them as a therapist in a locked ward or something.  Probably just being paranoid, but that's not uncommon here, I've noticed.

But for what it's worth, I have never worked for CEDU, any school, any thing of that nature.  I am in graduate school myself now, I did a recent practicum with some oppositional children as part of my training but that was at a regular high school. Otherwise my past work experience has been in non-psychological/educational areas.

You know, we all initially focus on what we have personally experienced--I tend to focus on CEDU good outcomes because that is my personal experience (to get info on the other side of that equation is part of why I am interested in this site).

You, I would guess, tend to focus on the bad outcomes. Many here will not even entertain the possibility of good outcomes--those "good-outcome" students are, by definition, brainwashed, they're bullies, they're recruiters in diguise, whatever.

But everything I know, and I am a pretty good observer, tells me that there really are good outcomes and among kids who are not bullies and not brainwashed. I'm just not talking about my own family, I'm talking about other families that I know. And I want to understand how people can have such a different experience--does it have to do with different staff, maybe some kids just have personalities that are not going to work with this type of program, maybe at different times, or even on different teams. things were done very differently.

So please consider that there are many stories like mine out there, where both the child and the parent learned a lot and grew from the CEDU experience---maybe that's why the story is familiar to you---it is not unique, that's for sure, I keep in touch with some parents who have the same perspective and have had similar experiences to my own.

I also know parents who have had a variety of other experiences--for instance in one case that I know of, the kid is doing find, but those parents really didn't get much out of, or change much personally because of the parent part of the whole deal.  In another case, the child is right back where he started, but the parents have no complaints about the school, yet were not particularly moved by the parent seminars. So there are many different aspects to this whole thing---I am interested in parsing out the good and efficacious parts of the emotional growth experience, as well as why it was positive for some and not for others.

Why for example, were the raps a nightmare for some people and helpful for others (taking for granted that no one really liked them). Confrontation is not always bad, it comes in and out of fashion in psychology (think about Gestalt techniques), it's actually being used a bit more now in CBT brief therapy than it once was.  It's also a pretty common part of  substance-abuse group work.  But I agree that, especially with children, it must be done with good control, and with real caring (and it is not suitable for children without the ego resilience to cope). If what I read here is not embellished, a good child/program match has not always happened in these schools. These are the sort of between-the-lines parts of the experience that I want to make sense of.

Somebody posted a link to info on SYNANON (I think that's the spelling) and that was helpful because it shows how an idea can get out of hand. That is the kind of useful stuff I am looking for. If I can, I am going to open my own school someday, and that is one part of my interest, the other is to see how good techniques can be developed and used with adolescents in trouble, even if the idea of a school of my own never materializes.

Anonymous:
Ottawa,
In my view, scientific approaches to judging CEDU is not always helpful.  In fact, people in science have created some of the worst human atrocitites of this millenium.

Second, while I sppreciate your reasoned approach on some level, I feel you gloss over how we were held at CEDU using an excessive and inhumane level of fear.  Such as what Serb mentoned, being threatened to go to Lock Down and being raped. (many of us were threatened this way and many of us were not remotely aggressive or insane.)

In my case, nothing that pertained to any of the reasons that got me into CEDU were ever discussed in a rap or propheet.  Many of the things staff brought up were either partially or totally false. But I had to live with the implications.  In addition, traumatic situations such as rape etc. were handled in a way to make feel more dirty than I already did.  If you read other posts, girls who had sex with one partner were repeatedly told they "had their legs open to the world."  This was very consistent with my experience.  In addition, I have a profound bi-lateral hearing loss.  The staff treated this in the most ignorant fashion possible.  Berating me when I couldn't hear and humiliating me instead of helping me compensate for this disability and not letting it run my life.

I am a sensitive person; all I needed at CEDU was "this is what happened to you.  You can't let fear guide your life. Let's come up with techniqiues to overcome them." I would have been overjoyed at therospect of using POSITIVE peer "pressure" to overcome things.  However, raps were psychologically and verbally abusive and tore me down without really getting at roots of a problem.  In fact, I can safely say that I don't have a single rap experience that was authentic in terms of dealing with the real issue. Staff were not helpful in this goal.  In fact, because I pretty much just followed the rules, it was as if I was in the woodwork and then the would realize "we gotta create something here so we can show something." The staff had a script and followed it. I'm very self insightful, I knew what my issues were, I did not know how to build self esteem or coping skills.  CEDU did not help in this endeavor.
 Last, staff were very manipulative w/my parents.  

As far as how CEDU helped you, I am sure they used gentler, more humane practices to help you in your self discovery.  I doubt they would bite the hand thatfeeds them.  

I guess what bothers me about your posts is that you seem to put the experiences in two categories: positive and negative, but you don't seem to mind that some of us were lied to, manipulated, and verbally and psychologically abused.  That is what is most upsetting about your posts.

I shouldn't care about someone who appears to write the latter group off as just "not benefitting from the CEDU experience" but it does hurt.

Helena Handbasket:
Ok, did you still want the answer to the original question??  

To clear your cache and cookies, assuming you're using Internet Exploder (oops, I meant "Explorer")... go to your control panel, and click "Internet Options".

Got that?

Good.

Now, at that front screen, click "Delete Cookies".  Gone?  I hope so... but that's all we have to work with right now.

Then....

On the same screen, hit "Delete Files" - this will also delete some retained information that you might be worried about...


Now, if you're really worried about security -- find another OS, use another browser, and check into encryption - oh and...

 ::troll::

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page