Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

Who wants to bet the program director here is putting on a show?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homestead-migrant-detention-facility-all-unaccompanied-minors-removed-hhs-says-today-2019-08-03/

What's sad is that if nobody gave a shit about American kids, you can guarantee even fewer will care about those who may lack citizenship.

This country disgusts me. I hope it's utterly destroyed.

Link here.

It mentions Josh Shipp, Aspen Education, Swift River Academy, and others.

Full text here minus videos and photos for posterity (emphasis added):

AMERICAN TEENS ARE BEING TRAPPED IN ABUSIVE 'DRUG REHAB CENTRES'
By Matt Shea

If you like Army Wives, Preachers’ Daughters, Dance Moms or any other TV show attempting to create a taxonomy of women based on the professions of their husbands, fathers and children, then you may well have caught an episode of Teen Trouble. It’s a reality TV show on the US Lifetime network where a guy named Josh Shipp sends “at-risk teens” to "alternative rehab centres", where they’re forced to endure emotional and physical abuse before being allowed to rejoin society.  

Shipp is your classic Jerry Springer brand of therapist – no real qualifications, a huge ego and a penchant for money and entertaining TV over science and genuine psychology. “I’m a teen behaviour specialist,” he says in the intro. “My approach is gritty, gutsy and in your face.”

But the show is a lot grittier than you might expect from that typical teleprompter spiel. The unregulated "troubled teen" industry is able to persist despite numerous allegations of physical and sexual abuse, torture and death at various institutions, and Shipp is exploiting that same system for monetary gain. Even when they aren’t abusive and/or deadly, the pseudoscientific practices used at “tough love boarding schools” have often proven to be ineffective and can lead to PTSD, anxiety, depression and drug addiction. Maia Szalavitz, author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, told me about some of the horror stories her own research uncovered.

“The classic list is food deprivation, sleep deprivation, public humiliation, beatings and denial of access to the bathroom to the point where you wet or soil yourself. But I’m also constantly hearing stories of people being forced to re-enact various traumas, like being raped,” she told me.

Szalavitz continued, "At Mount Bachelor Academy,

an Aspen facility

an investigation found bed sheets that had been used during re-enactments, and one of them had, ‘I am the yes girl, spray your cum on my tits,’ written on it. Let’s be real: this is not therapy.”

The methods used at these facilities are arguably traceable to an anti-drug cult in the 60s called the Church of Synanon. Their method was to abduct addicts and then “rehabilitate” them through beatings and humiliation. “I found that virtually all of the programmes that exist today using the harshest tactics were either founded by former Synanon members or sent people to Synanon to learn the treatment,” Szalavitz told me.

Former patients have been airing their stories on Reddit and other websites, so I contacted a few of them to find out more. It soon became clear that today’s residential teen treatment centres still have all the trappings of a cult.

One night, Nick Quinn was roused from sleep at his home and taken to Aspen Education’s Outback programme in Utah (the same programme Josh Shipp sent Jacob to in episode two of Teen Trouble) because his parents caught him smoking weed.

“At 4.30AM, I was woken up by two strangers holding handcuffs. They took my wallet and phone and told me that if I didn’t want to go easily they would make it hard for me. I thought I was being kidnapped. Next thing I know, I’m in a big white truck on my way to the airport,” he told me.

Once he arrived, Nick was given new clothes and survival gear, tied up and shipped into the wilderness, where he would remain for eight weeks. His boots were taken away at night to prevent him from escaping on the freezing cold ground. All of which seems a little aggressive for smoking a bit of weed.

After his ordeal, Nick was sent to another Aspen institute – the Swift River Academy in Massachusetts – where he was kept for seven months. “I was lucky my parents pulled me out. You could just tell they wanted the kids to be there as long as possible. They were milking it; my parents spent around $150,000 (£98,407).”

At Swift River, Nick endured the same kind of “therapy” I’d heard about from every other young victim, and which numerous academics had told me can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to Szalavitz, the goal is to break the child down psychologically and brainwash them: “The reasons these tactics sound similar to enhanced interrogation techniques, AKA torture, is because they're the ways you can break people and leave minimal marks.”

Now, years later, Nick has developed an anxiety disorder, experiences recurring nightmares from his time in “therapy” and still smokes weed. Understandably, his parents regret sending him there as it seems to have caused more damage than it prevented – something that appears to be a recurring theme with victims of troubled teen camps.

"Pretty much all the kids who I’m in touch with [from the camps] have dropped out of school," Nick told me. "Most get re-addicted to drugs. When you get out, you have all this freedom and you don’t know what to do with it. You lose control, you know?”

Aria Leonard, who was sent to the Monarch School in Montana seven years ago, had similar experiences. Aria told me her mother sent her there because she “disliked the friends she was making because they were ‘different’ – black, gay, etc.” After a pricey $2,000 (£1,312) visit to an “educational consultant”, Aria was diagnosed as depressed, as a drug addict and told by her parents she’d be going to “boarding school”.

Aria first realised it was no ordinary boarding school when her belongings were taken and she was strip-searched on entry.

“Right after that I was taken directly to a group session. People were talking about drugs, sex and alcohol, then everyone started screaming and crying. I was really confused and started to wonder if there had been some sort of mistake. I was then asked what drugs I'd done to be put there, and – despite my insistence that I'd never done drugs, was a virgin and wasn’t violent – they didn't believe me.”

Aria was forced to undertake pointless physical labour, like cutting down huge trees and dragging them along the ground for half an hour, as well as being told to sit opposite a wall at night and continuously write stuff like, "I am a slut" and "I'm not good enough".

Like most victims of the troubled teen industry, Aria was forced to divulge “disclosures” – a form of ludicrously invasive confessional. “You had to write about everything bad you'd ever done, with an emphasis on ‘sexual disclosures’. I had very little experience in sexual anything, but they wouldn’t believe me, so in the end I just made it up,” she said.

Aria was also put through the same emotional breaking-down sessions inflicted on Nick. During procedures known as “insights”, teens were denied bathroom access, food and sleep for three to five days. They would also be made to perform role-playing exercises that ended in them acting out their own death – exercises Shia likened to the kind of “therapy” seen in this bizarre video.

Aria remained in the centre for 18 months. Like Nick, she has since been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and continues to have nightmares about her experience.

Liz went to 39 residential treatment centres and describes being abused and raped multiple times. Rape claims are common in the industry, but – as the children are completely under staff's control for years – lawsuits rarely surface.

“The excessive use of punishment and humiliating procedures isn't only unhelpful, but also traumatising for young people," said Professor Robert Friedman, a child psychologist. "As is the practice of having strangers wake them in the middle of the night and transport them far away without any preparation.”

And it’s not just the trauma-inducing methodology that makes the industry questionable; it’s also the diagnosis. "What is a 'troubled teen'?" Szalavitz wonders. “The idea that we put kids with Asperger’s, heroin addictions, depression and extreme anxiety disorders in one programme with a rigid, regimented schedule and expect it to help all of those kids – how could that be?

“Americans have this idea that addiction and drug use is about complete hedonistic abandon, seeking extra pleasure and defying your parents. They missed the fact that the people who really tend to have problems with drugs are people in pain seeking relief. Their idea is that these people don’t have enough pain, so we need to give them more pain to fix them,” she said.

No matter the intention, these forms of therapy aren't only pointless and outdated, but cruel and damaging. Any emotional trauma that teenagers suffer at Aspen Education’s institutes must only be matched by the neglect they feel at being abandoned by their parents for an important part of their formative years.

While these practices might seem abhorrent, the troubled teen industry is huge, powerful and experienced in deflecting allegations. In 2002, Forbes magazine’s Erika Brown estimated its worth at $2 billion, and since then it's only been on the rise. The industry has managed to stick around in some incarnation since the 60s due to its powerful Republican and Christian roots. Many programmes can be traced back to Straight, Incorporated, Nancy Reagan and George Bush Sr's favourite anti-drug programme that was closed due to abuse lawsuits in the early 90s.

Here, I disagree.  The influences come from Synanon, est, LifeSpring, and whatever else worked.  There are facilities that are Christian and mormon, but in most cases the religious dogma had less to do with practices and more as a cover.  Also, few programs today are direct Straight decedents.  Most are spawn of CEDU, which in turn is a spawn of Synanon.  WWASP is a spawn of LifeSpring and other Utah facilities such as Provo Canyon.  Yeah republicans have also been in support of the industry, but I hate it when they bring politics into this.  Democrats would just as easily have supported places like CEDU clones.  Hell. I'm willing to bet Whooter votes democrat.

Today, funding from Mitt Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital (of which he has resigned as CEO, but continues to profit from) has allowed the industry to thrive. The biggest name in the business, Aspen Education, is owned by CRC Health Group, which was bought by Bain Capital in 2006 and is responsible for many of the institutes used on Shipp’s show. Since the takeover, Aspen has seen six deaths occur in its facilities, mainly due to neglect. Worryingly, the US Department of State advertises Aspen programmes for teens on their website.

Hardly known as a bastion of Republicans.

I confronted Shipp about the issue, but he brushed it aside as an unfortunate change of staffing in a few of the programmes, rather than a powerful nationwide industry that’s rotten to the core. “Treatment facilities can change ownership, management and staffing quite regularly," Shipp told me. "Parents need to proceed with caution with any programme at all and be armed with the right questions to ask.”

Shipp also assured me that, “A family therapist chose the aftercare for each kid based on the situation they were going through.” But if there’s one reason that the industry has managed to survive other than money, it’s that there’s almost no supervision for psychological treatments in the USA, which is kind of at odds with Shipp's claims. As Szalavitz told me, “If I wanted to start a addiction rehab centre tomorrow where treatment just involves standing on your head for extended periods of time, then I could do just that.”

It’s not difficult for the industry to legitimise itself. Professor Friedman told me that “groups like Aspen are now trying to build an empirical case for their programmes by hiring evaluators to conduct supposedly independent studies that validate the effectiveness of the programmes. These studies aren't independent and are more of a marketing effort than a genuine evaluation.”

This kind of “therapy” comes from an older America: one which believes that society is subject to moral decay and that the solution is to force outliers to conform to Republican and Christian ideals of abstinence and hard work. It’s an America that puts its faith in the ecstatic emotional climaxes of TV evangelism and “tough love” over the tried scientific methods of modern psychology.

Again. Unnecessary and polarizing.  Christian dogma has nothing whatsoever to do with, for example, the human potential leanings of many program's workshops.  There is nothing in the Bible that even speaks to drug or alcohol0 prohibition at all.  According to the Bible, Jesus drank, and not just for ceremonial purposes.  His first miracle was to convert water to wine so people at a party could get drunker than they already were.  I'm not a fan of Christianity (or Islam, or any religion for that matter), but I hate it when journalists blame it for a paranoid, reactionary, prohibitionist culture that developed independently and only as of this past century worked it's way into mainstream Christianity, and only by blatantly ignoring things like Jesus's fondness for wine.

All this does is to convince Christians reading the article that it's just written by some atheist leftist with an unfair grudge against all things moral.  It undermines the core arguments which should otherwise be important to everybody regardless of faith or political persuasion.  Articles like this will only keep kids of OWS Democrats out of programs.

Where we see experimentation and the pushing of boundaries, it sees sin and societal corruption that must be violently scared out of people. Normal teenagers are being told that they are wrong and worthless, then broken and abused with the goal of making them “born again” as upstanding adults. And all the while, their parents’ bank accounts are being emptied straight into the coffers of America’s richest men. (The recession has dampened the industry’s growth, but CRC Health lists the net revenue per child in outdoor programmes as $438.96 per day, and in residential programmes as $257.87 per day.)

And yet, while minor investigations have forced individual rehab centres to change staff, the industry continues to thrive. That's because these institutions use the same methods, have the same roots and are funded by the same people. Which begs the question: Why has there been no attempt at state regulation of treatment centres? Until there is, American kids are destined to continue suffering in these abusive institutions.

Follow Matt on Twitter: @Matt_A_Shea

An example of a survivor’s story without the drama… i.e. Kidnappings, torture, brainwashing, starvation, beatings and attacks.  You will notice that the author included the ups and downs in his/her point of view, not just the negative points.  To me this is refreshing and makes the post very credible. Yet I noticed no one extended a welcome to this poster.  Could this be because he failed to say he was kidnapped and abused?

This is a story that I think parents would believe to be credible.  The author isnt seeking attention or trying to run down the program and seems to take responsibility for himself and his actions.

Link


Ok too many wrong points and whole lot of good points...I was in the AEG programs for 4 years almost...Yeah I didn't like them but it served me well...Now I wasn't there for Neil and Mary but I did hear stories from some people about their tyranny, but I do not believe they supported terrorists. Get a day job seriously! But from what I heard sometime ago, a girl had to take insulin shots on a daily basis and apparently Neil gave her Hep-C, because he really needed insulin once. SO she used it not knowing he used it, he didn't tell her and now she has it for the rest of her life. And yeah thats a real shit thing to do, but most the kids there refused to do anything about their behaviors, most kids brandished knives, I saw a kid break a part a plastic knife and swallow it. He also carved a girls initials in his own skin. And most of the kids that went had torn family values anyways. And most of them ran away because their parents were absolute monsters. It wasn't like summer camp I know that. We had kids come from Military Schools and they said those schools were more enjoyable than Cedars. To all you parents, yeah you might have different opinions on how Cedars treated your kids, but I went there from 04 to 06. Most of the staff was yeah very unqualified but they were nice as hell. And when I was there they never restrained people or "touched" them in any bad ways. The only reason why I think this is so, they wouldn't let the boys mingle with the girls, that was the only problem any of us had. I mean we still had ways to go around that but it wasn't all bad. Most kids that I saw come and go, faked being sick, faked breaking limbs, faked being attacked by other people, faked being real and faked being anything worth a damn. Oh yeah the other reason was the tuition was like 50 thousand dollars. If you can afford that then good luck to you, reason being all those kids were so damn spoiled that at the end of the day they just went crazy and went nuts, cuz they couldn't have their laptops, IPODS, or cell phones. I went to another AEG school b4 Cedars for a year and half with no technology, grow the hell up and do your work like the rest of us and stop complaining.



...

And how are we to know a program representative did not write that?  Or coerced in-program writing.  Or a brainwashed survivor?  Based on what they do to the kids to attain anything like the above result I should flat this as spam as it's clearly marketing, but marketing is an OK topic.  You want to talk marketing.

Do you have any idea the amount of bullshit I was sold about the program I was sent to?  They lied to me, they lied to my parents, they lied to make money for a sociopathic bitch who drives top of the line mercedes.  I was told I could use a computer for my documented writing disability. Nope.  They thought it was an addiction they could cure because of all their dogma they'd been fed so they treated a documented disability as if it was something trivial.  They made me write in notebooks.  To this day I still have to write very slowly or i'll mess up and string letters together.  It looks like chicken shit.  Point being it was not something they could cure and they tried to "cure" me of a disease I did not have.  And they brainwashed me.  That was the biggest lie of all.  Dogmatic horse shit.

And it's not just 12 step.  It's Scientology influenced (est) derivative workshops for both the parents and the kids full of totally bonkers thinking.  But they get your trust so much you start believing as they do.  They are nice to you and gain your trust and manipulate your emotions with guilt when you break one of their rules.  You start informing on others, not because you're a snitch, but because you believe the greater good is attained at the expense of individual liberty when you're saving people from themselves, and you truly believe you're helping others to follow their program and be saved!  And of course you're taught that if you'll leave the program they'll die...  And so they do.  They AWOL.  They stay, they end up on the streets when the parents are bankrupt.  They die.  They do not believe they can survive so they do not try.  Because they do not try they cannot succeed, and the prophecy of the program is proven true.  In this respect I believe the program sets people up for failure.  And they do it all with lies of one form or another.  And all for profit.  Which is not to say profit is bad, but i do believe that committing fraud to make it is.

Parents do not intervene because they are told that by doing so they are enabling them in their addiction (they see all problems as addictions.  It's AA gone fucking looney toons).  See.  That's where AA is less crazy.  Your garden variety stepcraft practitioners do not try and cure legitimate mental health problems with quackery.  They recognize certain things are disabilities or whatever and or they have the common sense of maybe "hey... let him use a computer for extended writing".  Or "maybe", don't try to convince him he's a drunk when he's only gotten really drunk once before the program, and that was the first time.  Now I have a beer maybe every other week or so.  But there was a time when I believed the lie and I would thank them for "saving my life".  I would lie for them and view it as a necessary thing to defend the program from those who would not understand the divine program truth.

Most of all I focused on their lie that I was not myself, that I was some insane character dreamed up to haunt me.  That I needed to reject my false me and replace it what they wanted me to be.  Problem what I removed wasn't a mask, it was my face, and what they stitched on was putrid and maggotted.  The identity they convinced me was at my core was a lie.  But I snapped out, by some freak accident while in the program and was silenced.  They called it an excess in "Negativity" which in programsprachen basically means "disagreeing with us" or "telling the truth".

As far as lies in the marketing go, they were all over the map.  I was told I could send letters to my Girlfriend at the time or talk to her on the phone.  Nope.  I was told Change would be optional, that I could advance as long as I followed their program, which they made to seem very objectively judged.  Turns out change was actually not very optional in the program, and you can't exactly opt out either because you don't realize exactly how they're changing you until it's too late.  You arrive thinking these kids must have done horrible things to get set back into the program but you learn.  The program is just there to raise your hopes and send you back a level, keeping you in a sort of limbo for as long as your parents can afford to pay.  Eventually they screw you over and you start to figure it out.  They you talk to others.  Then you figure out what's really going on.  Then you realize you're pretty much fucked.  And of course the program allows one or two to succeed so they can get a success story (proving it's possible to marks) and they threaten those who would dare speak the truth to keep their lie's reputation alive.  

I was told a field of land was supposed to be a volleyball field by the representative at my program.  They lied.  It was used as a punishment field where we would dig all day long in the hot desert sun.  They gave us water and all but it was very unsanitary considering the types of things that are dropped in sand (keep in mind not a nice area).  Broken glass, a dead cat, or at least part of one (second hand source).  Thankfully not any needles but I know for a fact they were discarded around the area because public trash pick-up was also used as a punishment (and it gained the program brownie points in the community).  Thankfully the physical punishment wasn't WWASP class but the mental was far probably a bit more severe (and that's second hand from a survivor who went to both).

Enough for today.  I'm going to continue this tomorrow or on sunday.  Let's you guys give some examples of your own.

Directions:  Survivors and Parents only thread (Whooter excluded...  you can start other threads, Whooter, but no thread flooding.).  I want this thread to document the lies programs have told people over the years, in marketing and in the program itself.  I want the lie that is the program to be exposed.  If it's remotely related to a lie the program told you, it belongs here.  Each poster gets one off-topic exemption with an informal warning to let them know they've used their freebie up.  Please keep AA discussion to the appropriate forum and thread (not a request).  "Mere mentions" of AA allowed so long as it's on topic.  12 step philosophy in program context allowed.

I know what you're saying, but I, personally at least, don't think going to meetings or finding God through religion is anywhere near as unhealthy or as dangerous as a serious alcohol or drug addiction.

Catholic Church?  Yeah they're doing wonders with aids in Africa by telling everybody to knock off the condoms.  Muhammad's 7'th century rampage?  Scientology's targeting of "Suppressive Persons" who've exposed the scam.  Not that i'd qualify Scientology as a religion, mind you.  The problem with belief is that you embrace the illogical and reject the more rational part of you're brain.

And just because AA isn't outwardly destructive doesn't mean it can't cause harm (it can).  It can cause increases in binge drinking behaviors compared to no treatment at all according to the Brandsma study (there are other similar studies).  Belief, what i'm talking about above, is what causes this increase.  Why?  Because drunks, rather than being taught self discipline (teach a man to fish), are taught that they are powerless over alcohol.  They have to "let go and let god" to be saved.  Well.  Apparently god isn't catching many drunks nowadays.  Maybe, if he/she/it exists, he wants drunks to use the free will and reason given to them.

Reason is another thing AA is bad at, and programs use this technique too: they'll ridicule rational thought and logic as "stinking thinking".  People do this all because they believe, blindly, in a guy who was basically a philandering drunk who ripped people off, tripped on acid, and claimed to see god when he was tripping balls on a "belladonna cure".  Seriously folks.  It's fuckin stupid.  

I'm not saying belief is bad, per se.  It can be a source of strength for some people.**  What i'm saying is that you don't mix a bullshit fatalistic belief with the behavioral sciences of people who already have a hard controlling themselves.  Or better yet, figure out for yourself what you believe because if other people are telling you how you can save your "doomed" life, they're probably running a con, or at bes aret blindly misled by con artists long dead.

If people use pot to quit drugs that are hurting them, I'm all for it. Whatever works for people I support, even if it's not AA. If somebody had a solution that worked for everybody, they would be a billionaire. unfortunately addiction isn't that easy to cure, it's more like a lifetime condition where you treat the symptoms, that's how I see it at least.

Well.  You're invested in your lifestyle now.  You have all AA friends, i'm sure. You have a sponsor or are sponsoring others.  You talk about what you believe all the time with those who believe the same way. I'm not surprised you believe with that constant re-enforcement.  You're on a placebo, Max.  Simply a placebo.  But you'll never admit that because you believe you'll end up dead, insane, or in jail.  Heaven forbid you use your "stinking thinking" capacity.  I'm not recommending you do drugs by any means.  What i'm asking you to do is to question whether or not you really need to credit others with work you have done for yourself.  Yes, being around other addicts probably helps, but there are alternatives that don't come with the baggage of a true self limiting belief (i hate that term, but it's appropriate in this case).

** I loved Book of Eli for that reason, even though he sorta did kill a lot of people for a book (ok, so it was the last of a book...  i give him some credit).

It's a bit dated, but it's great reading.  Somebody sent me it this morning.
[attachment=0:24zp13zd]carolina springs insurance case.pdf[/attachment:24zp13zd]

The gist of it is that the insurance company got upset that WWASP allegedly misrepresented itself when applying for the policy. They insurance company is saying that if they knew what was going on they would never have insured Carolina Springs.

Lexington justifiably and reasonably relied upon material misrepresentations, omissions and concealment of facts by CSA when it issued the Policy. These misrepresentations, omissions and concealment of facts were material to the acceptance of the risk by Lexington. If the true facts had been disclosed in the policy application, as required by the application, Lexington in good faith would have: (1) not issued the Policy; or (2) not issued the Policy with as large of a limit of liability or at the premium rate as applied for; or (3) not provided coverage with respect to any claims arising out of any of the alleged wrongdoing alleged in the Vaiden Lawsuit. Consequently, Lexington is entitled to rescind the Policy.

I've added this forum so there's a dedicated, moderated, place where people can discuss addiction treatment philosophies and methods. If you want to discuss AA, Rational Recovery, SOS, SMART, ibogaine, the nature of addiction, etc... discuss it here.

Laws
1. If a thread already exists on a topic, use it, rather than start a new one.
2. Don't derail threads by changing the topic. Start a new topic.
3. No outing of home addresses or phone numbers without a person's consent.  This includes linking to such information.
4. Post your topics in the appropriate forum, with an appropriate name.
5. Multiple usernames are disallowed if you use them for sockpuppetry. Sockpuppets will be outed.
6. No attacking other posters with insults (this includes driving parents off). You can make your point with civility.  Responding to an insult with an insult is not a justification.
7. Impersonation of another poster or living person is not allowed, unless it is obvious parody.  The standard is this: if a stupid person could mistake the identity to be that of the parodied, it's a violation.  You may either agree to have such an account labeled as "parody" or have it deleted.
8. One unmoderated forum will remain (open free for all) however it will be opt-in, similar to the drama box.


Bill of Rights
1. You have the right to your opinion, however unpopular.  You will not be disciplined for your opinions so long their expression stays within the rules of the forum.
2. You have a right to an impartial moderation.  If you get into an argument with a moderator, that moderator may not punish you and must rely on the judgement of another moderator.
3. You have the right to an appeal.  If you feel you were treated unjustly by one of our moderators you have the right to request an appeal.  A panel of moderators will go over your case and make a decision affirming or overturning the decision.  Affirmations must be unanimous.
4. You have a right to be informed of all correspondance concerning your case.
5. You have the right to privacy.  You have the right to create a second or third account for the purposes of retaining anonymity.

Penalties:

You will be informed if you violate a rule.  If repeated violation occur, your account may be disabled temporarily.  After your account is enabled again, you will be considered on a probationary period.  If further violations occur, you may be banned permanently.

This constitution only applies to postings from this point on (9/8/2010).

I'll be editing this rough draft as we come up with ideas. I welcome feedback. Just so we're clear, once these rules are finalized, they'll apply to everybody regardless of their opinions or group affiliation.