Fornits

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

I recently came across this little gem, which might explain why Minister Larivee has been unwilling to make a single peep regarding All About Receiving Cash.  AARC's rubber stamp Peter Choda was on this panel with Larivee and AARC-believer David Swann.  Interesting to see Choda accused of having a non-traditional (wat dat is?) doctorate from the States.  Union buddies with the Wiz, Luciano and Miller Newton?
https://www.alberta.ca/child-intervention-panel.aspx

"Dr" Choate is not a psychologist - he is not registered with any professional body as such in any jurisdiction; nor could he be given that he received his so called "PhD" from a non accredited US "educational" institution (ie: diploma mill). He is a masters level sociologist. His approach, interpretations and assessments can be flawed and dangerous. If one should challenge him regarding his credentials he becomes extremely defensive. Caveat emptor."
https://www.ratemds.com/doctor-ratings/3202061/Dr-Peter-Choate-Calgary-AB.html

All About Receiving Cash continues to maintain the lie that they are not subject to any regulation as their faith-based behaviour modification program is non-residential.  This is, like so much of the AARC story, simply untrue. 
At the time that AARC graduate Amy O'Flynn was being sentenced after running down and killing Ricky Vienneau while intoxicated, and then attempting to stage a vehicle theft in order to evade prosecution, AARC sect leader Dean Vause told the Court that:

"Level one of the program the clients are removed from their homes and our [sic] under our supervision twenty-four hours a day"

Now the Wiz has never been one to have his actions limited by fear of criticial analysis of the nonsense that eminates from him.  I often wonder if he has some type of unique gland from which lying is secreted, a sort of "decepticle".  So he has no problem telling a judge that somehow his non-residential program provides 'twenty-four hour" supervision.  AARC is of course residential, with the Recovery Homes serving as a fundamental aspect of the program to eliminate and then create anew the subject's identity and position in a social matrix.

Premier Notley, in her enthusiastic abandonment of her duty to investigate AARC, has latched onto the fundamental AARC lie in order to avoid undertaking an investigation of the sect.

According to Vause, AARC subjects are being provided treatment on Sundays when they are not in the sect's facilities.

"Amy was at the center during the day.  We provided a recovery home at night.  Amy was under 24 hour supervision."

"Amy was in a recovery home every night.  Although she had time away from the center to work or go to school, she was in treatment 7 days a week."

This is a curious notion given Vause's adamant position that the only thing he does at AARC is arrange AA meetings.  Which he does, according to the Calgary Herald, for $85k per year per exorcism, an increase of $40k per annum from the first time I looked at the sect in 2007.  When cornered, the Wiz is resolute in defence of his assertion that he does not provide treatment of any kind.

"1. My work is restricted to the application of the “Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Step Program” relating to
alcoholic or addicts under a contract for services with AARC being a non-profit corporation of Alberta
which program does not fall within the definition of a “health service” under the Act.
2. The implementation of the “Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step Program” does not require the services of
a professional psychologist or other health professional, therefore section 46 of the Act which
references section 28(2) does not apply."


The statement to the Court in the O'Flynn case also includes the Great Dodgeball Coach claiming to be a clinician:
"In closing, I had the opportunity to spend a full day clinically addressing the accident and the shame Amy felt."

https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abpc/doc/2005/2005abpc129/2005abpc129.html?resultIndex=2

Dean-o's consistent lying brings to mind the late great Joe Dimaggio: "'why did you play so hard?'
'Because there might have been somebody in the stands today who'd never seen my play before, and might never see me again'

Word on the street is that when the All About Receiving Cash SLAPP suits get to trial, the Great Dodgeball Coach will not be making an appearance.  Clearly cooler heads have prevailed, and as Dean-o's oratory skills make Miller Newton look like Frederick Douglass, unfortunately the Snowman will apparently not be discovered or put on the stand.  Instead, the sect has manged to dredge up this winner to represent them in court:
http://firms.cpaalberta.ca/docs/tribunals/Ironside_Gordon_-_2012.pdf?sfvrsn=4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_noilU08ro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RRJVZF5WDg
Subsequent to the exposure of All About Receiving Cash on the CBC's Fifth Estate program, future Premier of the Province Rachel Notley seemed quite bothered by the child abuse cult:
"Wednesday, February 18, 2009
NDP calling for youth centre investigation
By Gwendolyn Richards
The Calgary Herald
The provincial NDP's children and youth services critic is calling for an investigation into an addictions recovery centre in Calgary following reports some teens were victims of abuse.
Edmonton-Strathcona MLA Rachel Notley made the call for the investigation following question period Tuesday, where the issue was raised...
Notley said the government has an obligation to examine the allegations.
Also troubling, said Notley, is that peers are serving as counsellors in the facility despite having no training and without supervision."

Now of course, no such investigation was ever undertaken by anyone.  Here is the Premier's response to AARC in 2018, still in the absence of any investigation whatsoever:

"Thank you for your email regarding your experience with the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC).

I am very sorry to hear about your negative experiences with AARC, and that they have sued your partner and others who appeared on CBC’s The Fifth Estate. The Government of Alberta is aware of AARC and its treatment model and shares many of your concerns. 

The lack of regulation for privately funded addiction treatment facilities in Alberta is currently under review by the Minister of Health and her office is working towards the implementation of regulations.  Her office would be pleased to keep you apprised of this work. 

In the meantime, Alberta Health is committed to supporting providers and people seeking services with resources on how to select quality and safe treatment.  In November 2017 the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, with funding from Alberta Health, developed the Finding Quality Addiction Care Guide.

Should you or your partner be aware of physical or psychological abuse committed at AARC, I urge you to contact the police.

Thank you for reaching out to help us understand your concerns with private addiction operators. The Minister of Health will be in touch with updates as regulations are developed.

Sincerely,
Rachel Notley
Premier of Alberta"

All About Receiving Cash continues to use the unlicensed, unregulated private jails known as "recovery homes" that are the hallmark of the Seed/Straight/Kids thought reform program.  The phenomenon is so bizarre, it is difficult to describe.  A hybrid foster home and DIY jail, these homes constitute the residential aspect of AARC, but AARC claims not to require a license as a residential facility as the residences are private homes.  A con from start to finish.  AARC's web page maintains a testimonial from this unfortunate sect member:
http://css.ubc.ca/projects/newcomer-inclusion-project/research-team/

“Recovery homes are an amazing component of the AARC treatment model. When it became time for us to open our host home, AARC provided us with thorough training and checked our house with the utmost care to ensure safety for all. Never once did we feel at risk over the several months that we operated a host home, yet we knew we had the immediate assistance of AARC if any problems did arise, something we never had before coming to AARC. Our daughter was trained as a host home old-comer so she could provide leadership to the new-comer and we all followed very strict rules and protocols. Not only did this provide our daughter with an opportunity to take responsibility, regain health boundaries, and give back to other young people, it once again modelled to new clients that there is a way out of the disease of addiction.”

[Wendy Frisby, Ph.D., AARC Graduate Parent; Professor, University of British Columbia, Chair Women’s and Gender Studies

http://aarc.ab.ca/program/the-program/

This kook's take sums up the fraud that is AARC.  Her testimony refers to her safety while she operates a private jail, with a traumatized alleged addict Oldcomer in charge of some poor bewildered Newcomer who is subjected to the complete destruction of all previously existing social and family bonds. 

M. Frisby didn't seem to want to discuss AARC outside of shilling for the sect:

"Dear M. Frisby,

In light of your endorsement of the Recovery Homes used in lieu of licensed residential facilities by AARC, would you care to comment on this letter written to Dean Vause by Sarah Miller, a former client who is now a lawyer practising in British Columbia.  The letter reads as follows:

'From: Sarah Miller [mai!to:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 11: 58 PM
· To: or. D. Vause
• Subject: RE: Homegrown Heroes feature
Dr.Vause,
· I know that you're probably really busy, but l also know that you're aware of why I'd like to talk to you, and it
. seems like you're putting lt off.
I know that Mr.G still works at AARC (albeit being on a short leave of absence). As you know from the
email I sent you three years ago, in which I expressed my concerns about Mr.G - a pedophile~ continuing to
work with young teens at AARC, I'm truly concerned about the safety of your current clients. I know that I
told you three years ago that I would let it go because I had confidence that you would do whatever
necessary to protect the kids at AARC, but I had to convince myself that in order to move on without feeling
guilty.
I believed for a long time that you cared about me. My first reaction to the Fifth Estate was that you ·would
never let a client get hurt or be abused [f you were aware of it But then I started to wonder. I know that you
. knew {at the time) that Mr.G was acting inappropriately with me but you chose to 'sweep it under the rug."
So why would it be any different with Rachel or Christine?
I wanted to talk to you about this on the phone or in person - to ask you why you didn't help me - 'Why you
didn't fire Mr.G and how you could keep him around AARC when he is clearly not capable of providing teens
with appropriate care. I know that you knew what was going on because Mr.G told me when I wass 16 that
you ordered him not to talk to me, and even threatened to fight hirn in the parking lot. But Mr.G continued to
talk to me and it only got more inappropriate. l thought that him and I had a special friendship and dldn't
understand at the time why you were being so mean to him. looking back, I resent you for not pushing
harder. I know he was eventually fired years !ater, after he was caught selling drugs out of the AARC van. If
there was one thing about AARC that never made sense to me, it was the fact that graduates and staff
could be abusive, pedophiles, or otherwise unhealthy or dysfunctional - but as !ong as they were sober. they
were a "success." Despite what Mr.G was doing with me, it wasn't untlf he relapsed that you decided he
wasn't a positive Influence at AARC?
As you know, when Mr.Hagg convinced my parents that I should live with him for a few days, Mr.G was
there every day and after Mr.Hagg had gone to sleep, would cuddle with me, rub my back, tell me that we
should get married one day, cried to me because he was "addicted" to me, totd me I should masterbate,
that he liked small breasts ... How could you know this and continue to let him work with young girls? I had
just tried to kill myself and Mr.G selfishly chose to ignore any sense of responsibility as a counselor. This
affects me still today, and despite going through periods when I should have talked to someone, I have not
and cannot bring myself to trust another counselor. The Dr.Vause I thought was "saving lives and helping
families" wou!d have fired Mr.G on the spot AND Mr.Hagg for his methods of putting young girts on his lap
in his counseling sessions and rocking them "to make them feel safe, like lltt!e girls,' as he explained to me.
I also know of a girl who ls extremely distraught after watching the Fifth Estate and is seeing a psychiatrist
because she was treated even rnore inappropriately by Andrew Morton, her counselor.
Like so many graduates, I am not and never was an addict I had self-esteem and behavioral problems,
which were only worsened from the year and a half of "tough love" I received at AARC. It was not helpful to
be told I was a loser druggie and would die if I ever relapsed. The months following my graduation were
some of the darkest months of my life. I didn't know who I was anymore - my life revolved around a disease
that I didn't have. Despite the fact that I was a brat, I was outgoing and lald back before AARC, But after
AARC, I'd been molded into an awkward girl with the social skills of a seven-year-old, and I had counselors
helping me through it by pretending to be my 'daddy.'
When l abandoned AARC and AA, you convinced my parents to abandon me. Anyone who leaves AA ls
treated like a schizophrenic and ignored because they're 'in denial.' The only time I was ever in denial was
when I believed that you, Mr.G, Mr.Hagg, etc ... knew what was best for me and cared about me. I've had to
work really hard to repair my relationship with my parents after them putting me in the hands of your
unqualified staff and trusting them blindly with my safety. They know now that they were brainwashed to
believe that your staff always knew what was best for me, when in fact, they were doing more harm than
'good.
I've been seriously considering filing a police report against AARC, and specifically Mr.G. l was hoping to
· talk to you before doing so, but If l don't hear from you by the end of the week. I can not let this go and try to
move on without feeling guilt.
What I reaily wanted to ask you was if everything you'd ever told me - about how much you cared about
me, and how special you thought I was -was just a lie. I really wonder if you've been sending me all of
these nice emails to convince me to keep my mouth shut. I'd also really like to know - if I'd talked to Glllian
Findlay about my experience with Mr. G and the fact that you knew, would you have called me a liar too?
' I hope to hear from you (any time) tomorrow.
Sarah'

Please feel free to message me back with any comments you might have regarding this piece of correspondence between Dean Vause and his former client.

Regards,

JG Elliott"


"Sent: Saturday, April 7, 2018 12:01:03 PM
Subject: Re: Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre

I feel that it was inappropriate to send me an email that was not
addressed to me and I have no knowledge of this situation so it would be
very inappropriate for me to respond.
Wendy Frisby"

"Dear M. Frisby,

Clearly you and I have very different views on what is appropriate and what is not.

Regards,

JG Elliott"

"Please do not contact me again. Thank you,

Wendy Frisby"

The single biggest lie at the core of the All About Receiving Cash fraud is the myth of deadly teenage addiction.  Here are a few examples of this rubbish:

"As stated by a local medical doctor, Dr. Alan Stanhope, M.D. of Calgary, who provides medical care for clients at AARC, “Children are dying on the streets of Calgary, and a program such as this (AARC) will unquestionably save lives.”
http://www.aarc.ab.ca/AARCs_role_in_treatment.html

"Ben Goresky wrote
at 7:11pm on October 11th, 2007
'I can tell you exactly why anybody would let Dr. Vause (or Mr. Vause at the time) open a place without "proper qualifications". Desperation. Parents were watching their children die, and have their lives destroyed by drugs and alcohol. They were desperate. In fact, it is my understanding that they had to fly Dr. Vause in from Vancouver 3 times before he agreed to open a center.'"

"I have reviewed the material you sent and have certainly concerns about the policies and procedures at AARC which I am now pursuing. I will be discussing it with various people in the addictions/mental health field so I have not ignored this new information.
I also have several people in my immediate circle who believe their child's life was hanging by a thread and was saved. This is not a 'black and white' issue."

AARC's slogan "Helping Teens Reach Their Twenties" is a howling example of this bullshit.  AARC has always taken in adults.  Poor old Scott Fowkes went back in at thirty or so, David Grant was at least twenty-two, Natalie Oldcomer was well past the age of majority, and AARC's graduate number one was twenty-two when he ended up in AARC in lieu of proper mental health treatment.

These young adults make great converts to the sect.  They end up in AARC because they're alienated, and AARC gives them a brand new identity and a sacred purpose.  The problem however, is that there aren't enough of these people who willingly subject themselves to AARC's indoctrination.  From the outset, the Wiz has taken children and put them through the same thought reform process as the adults who willingly join the sect.  Unforunately, these young people suffer immense psychological harm from the process of deconstructing their personalities and their social structures.

AARC was established as a Kids franchise because the Alberta Government was paying for parents to send young adults from Calgary down to Miller Newton's institutional fraud.  These people loved what Newton was selling, and they wanted it up here.  What Newton was selling them was freedom from responsiblity for their malfunctioning adult children.  I went to high school with two of the forty Canadians sent to Kids.  Both were over twenty-one when they went to New Jersey, and both were sent to Kids to deal with eating disorders and behavioural issues. 

There were only two kids from my high school who died during adolescence.  One was thrown from a horse during an equestrian event, and the other died from a head injury incurred while attempting to rescue a drowning victim in a river.  The latter, ironically enough, had been expelled from the exclusive Brentwood private school for bringing hash on a rugby tour to the UK. 

In twenty-six years, AARC has graduated an average of twenty-five people per year.  Despite years of ridiculous claims that AARC's cutting edge "treatment" produces miraculous cures for drug addicts, in order to make up these paltry numbers AARC has had to take in people from across Western Canada, from twelve-year-old children to full-grown adults in their twenties and thirties.    AARC had to have a dangerous kook like Cooke-Stanhope sending kids from her courtroom to AARC, and AARC took in people that no reasonable person could claim were addicts.  It's all about the numbers, which is why part of the AARC survivor's new identity is their graduation number.

We had no epidemic of dead teen addicts in Calgary before AARC came, but there sure are a lot of prematurely dead men who have been through AARC's phoney "addiction treatment".

Very amusing to see that Mr. Goresky has moved on from slavish devotion to All About Receiving Cash and the Leader to advocating the use of cannabis.  He still likes old-fashioned Frank Buchman step-craft and doesn't seem to question placing fifteen-year-olds into a therapeutic community that takes in thirty-year-old sex murderers.

https://www.evolvingman.ca/about-1/

https://omny.fm/shows/cbd-radio/004-ben-shelena

Now I don't mean to pick on Mr. Goresky.  He is a surivor of AARC, and he was traumatized and abused like every other person who went through the Wiz's Thought Reform process.  Here is a description of the experience in Goresky's own words:


"Come Junior High, I was getting expelled from multiple schools for defiance and general oppositional behaviour, and by the time I hit 13, I was addicted to escape and would do anything to change my inner world, mostly by the use of drugs and alcohol. I spent time in group homes and accumulated a few charges for theft, with threats of jail time. At age 15 I was admitted to a long-term rehab facility, against my will...
SO HERE I WAS, IN REHAB. 15 YEARS OLD WITH TONS OF SUPPRESSED PAIN, PRETENDING I HAD IT ALL FIGURED OUT.
Rehab wasn’t a smooth process, and I spent the first few months rebelling against the therapeutic process. I had a big ego, and was determined that I wasn't an addict like my brother. I eventually came to realize that I was the same as the other clients in treatment: lost, hurting, and itching to escape my pain. Slowly, I dug into my pain, and opened the floodgates. I experienced a full spiritual breakdown, and found my identity shattered. I had been living a lie to cover my pain. I surrendered to the recovery process and opened my mind."

AARC shatters the fifteen-year-old's identity and builds him a new one: lifelong sufferer of the brain disease "addiction".

So Dr. Goresky has got two kids with serious emotional and behavioural difficulties.  Ben describes his experience in the home thus:
"I grew up in a home full of turmoil and dysfunction.
On the outside, it may have looked like my family was normal, but behind the curtains there was constant fighting, negotiating, and behaviour management. Bullying and terrorism were everyday challenges for me, as my older brother's aggressive behaviour dominated the home."

Clearly, like all of AARC's amateur jails/Recovery Homes, an ideal setting into which AARC thrusts bewildered, traumatized Newcomers.