Well said, Kat.
Anon above, you are attacking someone who is here sharing her story and is supporting others who wish to share theirs.
They have something in common and they wish to discuss it. Nothing wrong with that. I've never seen anywhere that Kat professes to be any sort of therapist.
Looks to me she's a smart woman leading a very productive life who wants to be an advocate for others who shared a similar experience at MMS. I honestly can't see anything wrong with that.
There is a very huge difference between advocacy and therapy.
Now John, with his degree in what, Ecology? Doesn't really qualify him for his group meetings where he forced girls to share their innermost secrets in front of their peers. If they didn't have anything to offer up he claimed they were lying. In order to avoid being singled out and given some forsaken punishment, girls felt they had to lie and make things up about their sex lives, their drug history, and so on.
I don't think he shared with the girls the fact that he would be faxing these histories to the parents, then urging the parents to share them with other family members. How healthy is that?
What gave him the power to do that? Seems destructive to me - hurtful, not helpful. I can't even begin to imagine having to fill out a 20, 30, or more page questionnaire about my sex life at age 14. I didn't have a sex life yet. But according to John I would have. So I would have had to make it up.
And what about the drug histories? If you really didn't take drugs, or if you smoked a little pot and that's it, well, that was never enough for John. No, you had to have more. So you wrote about whatever you thought you needed to so that he would leave you alone and you wouldn't end up building fences for the next 8 months, or shoveling shit for the next three months. You get desperate and you do what you have to.
Just imagine having smoked pot a time or two, then out of fear and desperation writing that you had done some serious drugs, and that being faxed to your parents? Great way to convince your parents you should stay at MMS an extra year or two. Clever, huh?
There the was always the criminal history. What kind of family discord would be caused when a girl felt compelled, out of fear, to say things that were not even true. Then her parents get a copy. There's just no part of me that can find that useful or helpful. I think not!
So, I don't really think you can even begin to compare anything we've read about John Mercer with Kat. There is absolutely no comparison and it's rediculous you brought it up.
What about intervention? Did you ever participate in that? Were you ever forced to live for weeks without a shower? For weeks in the woods without any education? Oh, yes, education was a privilege at MMS. Food was a privilege. Showers were a privilege. Damn, did the girls lose all of their basic rights there?
Because to me those things are truly rights, not privileges. School in America, last time I checked, is a right. Everyone has the right to go to school - isn't that what our taxes are paying for?
And in this case parents were paying up to and over $100,000 per year for a great education for their girls. Little did they know their child's education would be taken from them if they did not conform to the impossible requests of MMS. What about the time education was taken away for 8 monhts when a girl was forced to build fences, fences that benefited MMS. And that girl lived in utter fear. How can anyone find that healthy? And why did the other adults stand by and watch this and promote this. Of course there were the employees who felt these things were wrong and guess what happened to them? They were either fired or they quit. Fired because they had a brain and spoke their minds.
Did you hear about the intervention because two girls shared a bra? Now, how on earth could anyone justify taking some 40 or so girls out of school for weeks to make them become slaves, kept them hungry for a lot of the time, without showers? Because two girls shared a bra? Just makes no sense to me whatsoever. And guess what? That happened in the early 2000's, not the early 90's. So things don't appear to have changed all that much, now have they?
And one more question - did you ever rat a girl out and gain points with John or the others for doing it? Because girls did that at MMS, in 2000, 2001, and in 1990. Hmmm... changes?
Intervention - early 90's, early 2000's
Rat girls out - early 90's, early 2000's
Shovel shit - early 90's, early 2000's
Sexual history - early 90's, early 2000's
Group - early 90's, early 2000's
Fear and manipulation - early 90's, early 2000's
Live in tents - early 90's, early 2000's
Showers as privilege - early 90's, early 2000's
Food as privilege - early 90's, early 2000's
School as privilege - early 90's, early 2000's
Brainwashing - early 90's, early 2000's
Fear of John Mercer - early 90's, early 2000's
Censored mail - early 90's, early 2000's
Censored phone calls - early 90's, early 2000's
Weigh & measure food - early 90's, early 2000's
Forced to hold it - early 90's, early 2000's
Urinary tract infections - early 90's, early 2000's
Assumed all girls were lying - early 90's, early 2000's
So really not much has changed. And I'm sure the list could go on and on. I've just touched the surface.