Didn't we all used to be friends?

[katfish]

On 2005-05-08 22:39:00, Anonymous wrote:

"No program is perfect, none has 100% satisfaction rate, none fixes everyone, none of them work for everyone.  Normal high school did not work for me... works for some others.  



Obviously you are all going to say Colleen was lying in the email she wrote to me, and I'm somehow stupid not to see through it.  But whatever.  I'm over reading malicious comments."

No program is perfect, but what about abusive?

Reagrding Colleen lying, yup, she is... and that's disappointing.  I don't think you're stupid for believing her, I would if I didn't know better.  
I think that most of us unhappy with MMS have much better things to do with our time than sit around and plot to be malicious.  It's ridiculous to suppose we're just saying these things to be mean- if we didn't feel this was such an important issue that needed to be addressed, rest assured we would not waste our time.  
Hopefully those of you who feel we're simply being mean can consider that, myself and several other students who are perfectly happy with our lives (some who left MMS over a decade ago- myself included) feel so strongly that their tactics were unethical that we are willing to sacrifice our precious time to bring it to the light of day not for the sake of ourselves, but for others. It's cathartic and even theraputic, I'll admit, but that's about it.
Best to you,
kat

[Anonymous]

Katfish! You are awesome!!!

[katfish]

why, thank you very much.

[Anonymous]

Sarah-Thanks! I respect your facts!

Katfish- I hear ya. Do you understand that MMS has changed completely since you attemned it Ten years ago?  

And you have power here in this forum the power of influence-Especially on institutionalized, confused women that just got on a website that shows the negative side of the place that supposedly helped them and probable freakin did wheather you liked it or not. Hypoycritical behavior Colleen threatened lawsuits, so are we, John did therapy with out a liscense, do you or Anitgen have a liscense.I think that it is great that you all are getting your thoughts and experiences out. I have seen some harmful things here as well, gossip, insults, people theruputizing when no one asked for it, and recruiting.  I am bringing this up because I urge you to understand that you and antigen are some kind of leaders here.  And you making some big public claims. Everyone believes what your saying. This is a very big responsebilitie.  Maybe there is to much power,

Someone else anonymously posted that this was confidential.  Its not.  Anyone can read this and if they have and care everyone knows whats going on, or whats not going on.  

One last thing and then I will hush.
To whom ever posted The FACTS page they aren't facts they are your perception, they are your facts.  This is about me merely posting someof my own facts signing off......

nameless like the rest.

[katfish]

Hey anony, post above,

I understand MMS may have changed, although from what I've heard it's changed not necc. for the better. However, I did hear John Mercer appears less and less and that sounds like a good thing to me.  Although someone said he will be appearing more frequently and that alarms me.

Whatever power I yeild here, which is probably limited to girls who find similarities in our experiences.  While I agree there is sense of power in that, it is not the way you describe.  It is always empowering to the individual to find like-minded individuals who offer support by relaying like stories and describing instances in which they feel they were wronged/abused.  Like minorities in a society, you gain strenth in unity and by association.  I'm confident these young women know their own story well enough as they have been clear in their descriptions of it and expect that my opinions have no bearing on their feelings about what they experienced at MMS. I certainly not that powerful! That is, perhaps they feel better knowing I have shared my feelings and thoughts and feel comfortable sharing, but as far as influence, I disagree. I think it's fair to say that if MMS helped them they would say that- several girls have certainly been clear that MMS was not only harmful but also helpful.  Others are clear advocates for the program.  

I'm not a therapist nor have I ever offered up any kind of therapy to another here, although I do work as an advocate and counsel people in a limited capacity outside this forum, I don't believe I've ever stated that here. If I do offer up theories with regards to MMS they are based on studies posted through various educational websites.  One need not have a license to post other peoples work or offer up a summary of that work.  In fact honrary degrees are offered to people who have not studied in institutional setting...One final point, there's an obviously tremendous difference between posting my experiences without having license and running a school for struggling teens without the proper training...

[Anonymous]

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.

[Clymerchick]

Food was never a privaledge. It was always a right while I was there. I admit there were flaws and on intervention we worked really hard and got hungry because we were burning more calories, but we still got food. When I went on intervention in the winter we got extra food after we complained of being hungry. I admit it would be abuse to take away food since it is biologically necessary, however, that never happened.

As for the other stuff... you don't like camping very much do you?

Take a step back and think about third world countries for a sec. Are showers a right? No. Education? You'd be lucky.
I think you are blowing things a little out of proportion.

The changes that happened at MMS were very drastic. Since no one has explained it yet I guess I will:

John decided to implament phase work at MMS. Now we were all familiar with the four phases that we had at MMS tht never really meant anything other than that you were done with your histories or that you had gone on your off campus. Well (this may be desputed because I have heard several different stories) Deb and Mike Finn left the school because they did not agree ith where John was taking the school. Basically MMS was turning into a formal procedure. You had to write phase transtion summaries which were very extensive and explained to the most intricate detail, the work that you had done in the phase. You had to petition to get out of the phase and move on to the next one. Just because you had your parent visit no longer meant you were in phase two. These phase summaries included a seperate summary for each program area and a petition to transition. In the summary you had to answer six questions, the last having about five parts to it on each issue you had. I wish I had a coer sheet for it still because yu would be quite disturbed. So all in all these summaries would be very long and very detailed. Might I add that you could only turn them in on Mondays which meant that I sat u in the cabin five bathroom numerous sunday nights, typing on my computer when I wasn't supposed to just to get them in on time. My phase three transition summary was about 140 pages. You thought the sexual history was bad.... this is whole different story. After they are turned in each program area reads the respective summary and wither approves or disapproves it. Then it is read by John and he has to approve all the program areas and the petition until you can move to the next phase. Needless to say John takes forever to do things (but he got better at it because we needed to graduate) and so it could be weeks before you got it back. In addition to these summaries there was a long list of tasks that you had to complete for each program area and each phase befroe you could transition. There were things like creating a project to give back to the community, how are academics important to you, what does group functionality mean to you and how do you demonstrate that. Depending on the phase there were lots of things on community, leadership, environment, etc. Anyway, for each project that you had to do you had to run it through the proposal procedure which was the same as the summaries procedure (each program area needed to approve and then John).

Since I was actually the second "cohort" of people to do the phase work we had a much different ecperience than probably the girls do now. We had a quite a few tasks taken off our list because we just wouldn't have time to do them before we graduated. We also had to suffer the technica difficulties of trying a new system. In addition to writing a complete aftercare  plan, we also had to write a defense, this was where we needed to explain we thought that we were ready to graduate. On the day of graduation we went through an oral defense proceure where we read out our reasons to graduate and where everyone (including parents) had the opportunity to take a crack at why they thought we werent ready and we had to basically defend ourselves. It was really quite intense.

Anyway, I'll explain more about phase tasks and stuff later, but you can see how the school has changed yeah?

By the way when I was there our letters weren't screened, we just had limitations on who could send us mail and who we could send it to that had to be approved by the parents and the therapist. And I'm really sorry if I made a million typos in this because I am a horrible typer and I don't want to read it over for mistakes cause it's one in the morning and I have a chem test tomorrow. :sad:

Oh yeah and I was informed that all of my histories would be given to my family before they were and I think that it is a god idea to share them with your parents. I never felt compelled to make up things that I did priory to going to MMS. My experience with them and the other peopel I witnessed was that people lied about their histories (minimizing) and were caught, thus being forced into sharing them with the whole group. Wrong or not it doesn't hurt to be hnest the first time. If you did feel complelled to make stuff up I'm really sorry because that would create very awkward conditions and assumptions between everyone.

Anyway... bed. Must go to bed.

Jessamine

[katfish]

Woa, phase stuff sounds crazy intense!  Wow, I'm kind of speechless.  I know Mike thought those phase programs were too easy to manipulate your way through, I can see why he left.
The thing with lying at MMS, in one instance, was John was bound and determined that he would be able to interpret what written in my diary prior to MMS, many allusions.  He assumed incorrectly and didn't believe me when I denied having had sex (I had just turned 14 when I arrived at MMS), among other things.  
Also at that time it was insisted that we talk about an issue when we have a break down from a physical activity.  Of course one had little to do with the other, but that was the idea.  Except for maybe being frustrated that it was hard to keep up with the pace,  I felt forced  to make up or exaggerate and issue/feeling  b/c otherwise there would be consequences for not dealing with your shit.  May have to carry rocks on your back- who wants that?  Go figure.

[Anonymous]

Regarding the food issue - I've heard girls talk about how hungry they were during certain periods of time. They were not deprived of all food, just most food. They were given very little and it was not the same as everyone else was eating (early 2000's and early 90's).

They were not allowed to eat with the other girls, rather alone if they were on personal intervention, or whatever they called it when they singled a person out to live in a tent and do rediculous stuff like shovel shit all day long or build fences all day long without getting their education WHILE their parents were paying for them to get a great education.

Get my point? Camping is one of my favorite things. The difference is when I camp I have plenty to keep me warm (girls were frozen at night), I'm not left out in the middle of no where alone, I have as much food as I want, whenever I want, I'm not forced to shower in a bucket (unless I want to, then that's different), and I wasn't forced to do physical labor to benefit someone else.

I'm sure things have changed on some levels, because life is change. But my point was that there are many things there that have not changed - those are some of the very things people complain about here.

[Anonymous]

Clymerchick,


        You spoke about Intervention and it seems to me that it did not bother you all that much. I do not know which intervention you are talking about, but I was there the entire time and I hardly even remember you. I think you were there at the end of the intervention period, unless it was a different intervention (the one with trading bras?) Anyway, those of us who were there for all, or most of the intevention had it worse. I think that you were there during the easier times of intervention so it is hard for me to listen to you when you speak of it. But I could be wrong.

Also, about the whole food issue bussiness-now getting on my nevrves!- The whole point is that 1. WE DID NOT ALL HAVE EATING DISORDERS- so it was unfair to make everyone go in to a "plan"
2. SOME EAT MORE THAN OTHERS- like myself I had a high metabolism and I would get shaky if I didn't eat enough. I needed extra food.

3. WHEN YOU WORK YOU NEED EXTRA FOOD- it is necesary to eat good portions when you do extra work. You should not feel like a pack of wolves when eating meals because you are so hungry.  

This was a typical day's meals:

Breakfast:
bagel, (w/cream cheese, butter, or jelly)
yogurt
cereal
Milk

Lunch: usually peanut butter & Jelly

Dinner: Ravioli (1bowl)
Slice of bread with butter


Damn I think I could have eaten 3 times that much!

[Anonymous]

I forgot to add the menu above is an example of meals during intervention.

[Anonymous]

I have read many of your posts clymber chick, and you have also made me confused. It seems as though you keep going back and forth about this whole issue. I just want to ask you do you believe as entire whole the school was in the right or in the wrong? It's hard to take in your thoughts when it seems inconsistant.

you said:   Take a step back and think about third world countries for a sec. Are showers a right? No. Education? You'd be lucky. -----

Just to comment on that--we were not an a 3rd world country ( well I was when I was born, and can tell you it's hell) our parents paid a A GREAT DEAL OF MONEY! so we shouldn't have had to compare the at all! we are fortunate ones. We should have had a silver platter feom all that money! >

you said: "I think you are blowing things a little out of proportion".
Just to comment on that--I don't think she was blowing anything out of proportion because she was stating the truth. and what exactly do you believe was out of proportion?


"I wish I had a coer sheet for it still because yu would be quite disturbed",  
"Might I add that you could only turn them in on Mondays which meant that I sat u in the cabin five bathroom numerous sunday nights, typing on my computer when I wasn't supposed to just to get them in on time."

Where do you stand in all this??? I could be neutral, but I feel like that's too easy for me..
Sorry, don't mean to make you feel dumb or anything..I just am really curious.

[Anonymous]

I don't ever remember being deprived of food, I don't recall any urinary tract infections.  I remember to much food almost,  and no I didn't have an eating disorder, and when I first got there I hadn't really been taking care of myself that well because eating was  not a top priority.  Everyone thought I had an eating disorder.  And I didn't know up from down, if someone told me to stand on my head in the corner and whistle because it would change my life and make me feel better I would have done it.  ANd you know what some girls where told to do that because it was about not at all getting through school, but being contemplative about your life, your morals and ideals, Like shoveling horse shit can be very meditative.  It was about having a foundation of the spiritual side of life.  About finding beauty in the dark.  And you know what life is still dark, and I still almost pee my pants sometimes, and I still am surrounded by all sorts of people in this world with defects of character, whether they are lying, or I am doubting everything, or she has an eating disorder, or he says hes gonna do all sorts of things and still does nothing different.  

CHange is a part of life when I was about 8 or 9 I stoped changing I became incredibly resistent to change, and my lifenot only unmanageble, and not only was I powerless over afew things and it felt like everything, but my life was unbearable.  

MMS started me on a path of change agian, it recharged my soul to beable to be strong for me and go through life and continue to change.  

It is not abusive to eat the same meal for breakfest, everyday.  I didn't like a lot of things about MMS, I don't like alot of things about life either.  MMS does its best and improves on a daily basis and changes on a daily basis, to be the best parellel to a small world a safe world, a constructive world.  

John was the head master, and he doesn't need a liscense to give  assignments to students.  John is also spiritual, and gave us a place to find ourselve, the negatives and positives.

I can think of a lot f mistakes that happened at MMS, nothing that dems the word abuse or the action of a lawsuit.  

signing off

[Anonymous]

The only instances I can think of where food seemed like more a privilidge than a right was when we'd be in group with john and he wouldnt want us to go to lunch we were there and it was time for dinner but we needed to continue on with group so we ended up not getting lunch and eating dinner at 11 pm. This happened several times but aside from that, I don't think food was ever taken away from us.

[Anonymous]

damn ..can we get off this food issue? No one ever really stated that we were abused though eating damn...someone just made a comment about it..we are not concerned about the school just because of food, there are maIn other concerns. People keep on posting about it...getting off the point..! and the point wasn't at all about food deprivation in the first place. Gawd I hate it when people post VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION OUT OF THEIR HEARTS, and people get the dumbest thing out of it...OPEN YOUR EYES....it's not the food its, not that john didn't have dam licence, it's not about those assignments ..even the tittle of this topic is not the point DIDN'T WE USED TO BE FRIENDS......someone thought it was written because they though it meant WE WERE ALL FRIENDS..take a deeper look at things....IT'S NOT THAT WE USED TO BE FRIENDS ....ITS THAT WE WERE THERE ONCE FOR EACHOTHER BECAUSE OF THE SCHOOL AND THEN YOU GRADUATE AND NO ONE REALLY GIVES A SHIT WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU.--THATS PARTLY WHAT IT MEANT!!!!   and you think you became "wise" because of mms....I am getting so sick of going in circles. write something that make trully think.