http://www.wadesilverman.com/id8.htmconsultant psychologist for Straight and proud of it!
email
http://www.thestraights.com/images/obrien-letter.htm ) and Tough Love (Phyllis York, founder of Tough Love, Insight on the News, Feb 6, 1995 ) and the public at large. Straight gained national notoriety well before your involvement in 1988 and was featured on 60 minutes in 1984 when reporter Ed Bradley interviewed 6 girls who were tortured there. We were starved, beaten, kept awake for days, and some even raped. In fact, the Montel Williams show aired a segment on 1/18/05 where they interviewed Samantha Monroe (
http://www.montelshow.com/featured_prom ... 5%20hi.wmv ). Samantha was one of many young women raped by male staff at Straight Incorporated. Her story also appeared on fox news (
http://www.webdiva.org/fox/ ) She was raped, impregnated, and forced to have an abortion at straight without her parents knowledge or consent. She was 12 when she entered Straight. This should come as no big surprise, given the fact that the counselors, most of which did not even have a high school degree, had complete milieu control over the clients with the only qualification of being a former drug addict and graduate of the program. It doesn?t take a PhD to understand that?s a recipe for disaster. The survivors of Straight are very thankful to the psychologist who worked so hard to close the program down and protect us, psychologists like Dr. Margaret Thayer Singer (
http://www.rickross.com/reference/singer/singer8.html) and others who have spoken at the survivors conferences.
As an educated psychologist, you are familiar with laws such as having to notify authorities in the case of rapes, child molestation by family members, etc. but Straight Inc. refused to follow such protocols. The peer staff and the executive staff did not have the education that you do, and needed your rubberstamp to label these children as "addicts" and to approve of their "treatment". Speaking of treatment, try doing a google internet search for "spit therapy", you will not find it in any educational materials, but anybody who has been at any Straight in America, knows exactly what it is and only Straight and Straight spin-offs show up in the internet search.
So what is the point of this email? I have two challenges for you Dr. Silverman. First, find one single human being that was a client at Straight that is glad they were put there. People were "glad" they were put there while they were indoctrinated, but that wears off after a year or so after leaving the program. You would be hard pressed to find anybody out of the roughly 50,000 people who went through those doors that would be appreciative. Is this the kind of legacy you want as a counselor? Second, take off that part of your history from your website and résumé, its a slap in the face to all of us that were tortured there, we were intimidated, humiliated, beaten, starved, kept awake, and some even raped. All of us were tortured in one way or another. You?re involvement with Straight, is something to be ashamed of; it?s nothing to be proud of. I shouldn't need to remind you of why Straight you worked at was closed down.
For more information of the crimes of Straight, please visit
http://www.isaccorp.org/documentsnz.html#straightSincerely
Me
