Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Mission Mountain School

the truth about it...

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Anonymous:

--- Quote ---On 2005-03-31 13:00:00, Anonymous wrote:

"He gets away with it by intimidating everyone, students and staff alike. I know of at least one person who quit because she couldn't stand to watch the way he treated the girls. Unfortunately, there isn't much work in the area so people put up with him to keep their jobs. It's also a small town where few are bold enough to make waves.  "

--- End quote ---


Exactly. People HAVE done things but people often take stands that go unnoticed by most. Just because you didn't hear about people standing up to John Mercer here doesn't mean that they didn't. I am not backstepping in any way. I do agree with what Kerry said as I know it happened but you can't blame every person there for one persons actions. There were lots of things that happened there that were mistakes but I wouldn't at all consider abuse. Making judgements on how to deal with children is hard, and being a child and dealing with punishment is hard. While there were certain punishments that I don't feel helped they also were far from abuse. If you are judging people for not doing everything perfectly. I would like to see you go try it yourself. Even having been through it and knowing what worked and what didn't I don't think I would do everything perfetly. The only person at MMS who actually is abusive (atleast in my time there) was John Mercer,period.

Melissa.

kerryberry420:
hey melissa!  anyway, yeah everyone's experience at mms was different.  i know of a few girls that would probably defend it to the death, but most girls thinks that a lot of things there were wrong.  i agree with melissa about john mercer.  john mercer seemed like a sadist to me, he seemed to like hurting people.   and the other thing that really bothered me was that in group he would make the girls give really intimate detail about their lives.  one girl was molested when she was younger and was practically forced to give every tiny littlle detail (where she was touched, how, for how long, how she felt, did she like it) in front of everyone.  i can understand that she needed to talk about it, but in that much detail in front of 30 people, while getting yelled at seemed absolutely fucked up to me.  and it wasn't just that.  in our histories we had to write every little detail, down to people we kissed even.  i have been in a lot of therapy and to a lot of programs and i have NEVER seen anything like that before and since then.  a couple staff member quit while i was there and i know at least one of them quit as a direct result of johns actions.  she was shocked at how we were treated and one day yelled at him and we never saw her again.  the only good things i took from my time at mms are that i became close with a lot of the girls and am still in coctact with them, and........well i guess thats it.  but again, everyones experience was different.

Anonymous:
I don't know - making a girl describe every detail of her sexual experience when she was abused seems abusive in itself to me. Also, I'm sure there are some aspects of the program that are good but like was said above, you have to measure how much good versus bad girls get out of it.

Some girls who truly abuse drugs and whose lives are going no where need intervention. I believe that. But what happened to going somewhere close to home, a place where family can visit, a place that does not keep you separated from everyone you love. A place that's monitored and regulated.

When people take kids out in the middle of no where and when there is no one keeping an eye on things, and when they are in a small community where people are afraid to talk or to lose their jobs, then it leaves it wide open for abuse and neglect. I think that's where everyone is coming from here.

I think people just want to know the truth.

Antigen:

--- Quote ---On 2005-03-31 15:55:00, Anonymous wrote:

 I don't know - making a girl describe every detail of her sexual experience when she was abused seems abusive in itself to me.

--- End quote ---


Yeah, it is. It's humiliating. And it's especially sadistic when they use that info against you later. (unless, of course, you saw them coming, told them a lot of fake crap. Then you have a two in one private joke/spontanious reality check to help get you through)  :razz:

But, when I was in Straight, I took part in doing that to other kids. Many of them, I'm sure, didn't see what was coming. To some degree, I was forced. And, as kids, we didn't fully comprehend the harm we were doing to each other. In fact, a good many of us believed (eventually) that what we were doing was not wrong. In fact, some people seem to believe to this day that it was the rightest, purest, most holy thing ever.

In asmuch as some of us believed it and others did our level best to give that impression, it's no wonder the parents sucked it up. What else were they supposed to think? It's what they wanted to believe anyway, which makes the desception even easier.

Not long after I and my dad got out and started talking again, he asked me why, if things had been so bad, I'd never told him before. I just looked at him like that was a dumb question and said "Well, you would have turned me in." He didn't argue.

My point in all this is that I'm not trying to place blame on everyone involved, at least not in a vindictive, retribution seeking way. But I do think it's important to understand the nature of the beast.

To paraphrase Michael Rivero, Everyone likes to say "John Mercer did this" and "John Mercer did that". But the truth is John Mercer did very little. It's the people who follow his orders w/o criticizm that actually did most everything wrong. And it's not like Mercer is unique. There's a whole long list of similar characters discussed in various forums on this site. So it's not just the employees and kids unfortunate enough to land up under their control. These people have the blessing and protection of our government.

My question is, how did we get into this mess and how to we get out of it?

 
Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
--Winston Churchill
--- End quote ---


_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
Seed sibling `71 - `80
Straight South (Sarasota, FL)
   10/80 - 10/82
Anonymity Anonymous
Some days, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

Anonymous:
We stop fighting amongst ourselves and start focusing on a solution. This is a huge problem that will not get solved over night. People in the fight need to at least try to cooperate with each other and to respect each other for the work they are trying to do. Each one of us has something to offer if we would just put it to good use.

They have an army, so we need an army. We are in a mess. These kids are the victims of the mess. And we are the ones, like it or not, who need to get a grip, find a way to work with each other, and find a way to solve this.

We don't all have to like each other but we need to respect each other. Don't you think they feed off of seeing discord among the people who profess to want the same thing - to help these kids?

Let's not make their day. Think about it - they could be posting here stirring things up. People need to not feed into it.

I do believe that many people have no clue this even exists. We come on this forum and feel everyone in the world knows what we know. This has taken over many of our lives. We eat, sleep, breathe this problem every single day.

But so many people don't even know the problem exists. I know. I was one of those people. The only reason I am here today is that I was personally touched by children put into one of these facilities.

I have spread the word to everyone I know and guess what? None of them have ever heard of this. Some have heard a story here or there about a boot camp, but no one, and I mean no one, has any idea of the industry that has evolved.

I do not claim, in any way, to have all of the answers. I do believe that we need to inform others in our own communities of this problem in a professional way.

What about putting together a Power Point presentation, post it here, and let others use it to share in their own communities. There are many ways to do that. Local churches will often allow people to do a presentation, PTA groups, basically anywhere you can find an audience.

If people are interested I would be willing to put one together.

That is my 2 cents for tonight.

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