I totally understand y'alls point that say "staff of any kind? fuck 'em"
But I just want to point out that becoming a staff trainee and then becoming junior staff is part of the manipulation bullshit...it was part of the program. So you've really bought the idea that you're gonna die and loose your whole family if you don't start believing all this bullshit, to survive, mind you. You graduate, etc. Next logical step...staff, if you're asked. Right? You're still a brainwashed kid. You don't know better. And you have no real skills (accept being 'bust-ass'). All you know is this subculture, language, etc. I don't mean to say, aw...poor staff, but it's still part of the victimization, no?
I say this b/c I never graduated. I simply could not force myself into this way of thinking. And boy did I give it a good try. 2 years, never above 3rd and that was for 2 weeks. So, to people like me, 4rth and 5th phasers are also satan incarnate if we go by the logic of those posting before me. I mean, you could run away, why didn't you? Hell, that's what I did everytime I reached a phase. And believe me, most of my trauma stems from the actions of phasers (guided by staff, of course). When I think of staff members like Steve Turney and John Gugliamo I feel a sickened, fearful feeling, but when I think of getting humiliated pubicly, screamed at, spit on, pushed around, restrained (for stupid, mindless shit) by those 5th phase fuckers FH, JP, and JG, I feel rage, and then I weep for my poor innocent hurting 15-year-old self. So they weren't on staff, they made a choice to do what they did, for whatever reasons, and deserve to have this haunt them for- ever, right? Actually I don't really think so.
Behaving this way was how they learned to survive. They were victins victimizing victims and herein is the insidiousness that was straight.
No, I don't know where to draw the line of where the victimization chain of command stops. But I don't think this is such a black and white issue, either.