Dear friends (and adversaries and neutral parties),
My online essay about the Seed (
www.insidersview.info/theseed) will be published in an abridged form in January, 2007, in THE SUN magazine (
www.thesunmagazine.org). Also, in that same issue, they'll publish an interview I did earlier this year with Maia Szalavitz, author of "Help at any Cost."
I need a little help.
I wrote, in the introduction to my essay about the Seed:
"The Seed was highly publicized, and the attention eventually proved destructive to for the program. In 1974 the U.S. Senate published a study that accused the Seed of using methods similar to North Korean communist brainwashing techniques. The bad press, in conjunction with lawsuits, forced the Seed to scale back its operations dramatically. By the 1980s, the Seed had shrunk to a small fraction of its former size, and was only permitted to accept voluntary ?clients? who were at least 18 years of age. The Seed endured in this diminished capacity until it finally closed in 2001."
Now, I'm clear about the 1974 U.S. Senate study, and that The Seed shut down for good in '01.
What I'm not entirely sure about is the in-between. Is the following statement accurate?
"By the 1980s, the Seed had shrunk to a small fraction of its former size, and was only permitted to accept voluntary ?clients? who were at least 18 years of age."
Ginger, Greg, Stripe, anyone . . . please let me know. Maybe I should say "By the LATE 1980s . . ."?
Also, I just did a review of all the topic thread titles on this forum, and I saw some discussion of lawsuits about mistreatment (usually medical negligence) of particular kids.
But am I right to say that "lawsuits" are part of what forced the Seed to scale down?
I REALLY appreciate the help! Thank you in advance.