Fornits

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

I'm afraid to ask, but do you know this from personal experience at Peninsula Village?  If so, from a counselor or patient's view?  The photographer did once mention that someone who gave her a hard time was "fucking with the wrong bee-yotch,"  How could I be with their program?  It would be like getting with the Gestapo, or something.

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The facility is known to show bias based on the ?difficulty? level of certain parents, often resulting in the termination of the difficult parent?s participation in their child?s treatment.   Peninsula Village?s criteria for identifying vexatious parents includes, but is not limited to: making excessive requests for the curriculum vitae of the staff, expressing concerns about sanitation and the nutritional value of meals prepared in the facility?s cafeteria, asking about the certifications of counselors performing physical restraints.  Peninsula Village?s practices often run counter to the facility?s stated objectives, ?Mending young lives and restoring families,?  

1.Unimpeded telephone conversations with the children at least twice each week at reasonable times and for a reasonable duration.  Peninsula Village will not allow private telephone conversations until a certain level of behavior modification is achieved and the patient is not as susceptible to hope.

2.  Send mail to the children which the facility will not open and will not censor.  Mail coming from known parents in opposition of Peninsula Village?s method of behavioral modification is opened, inspected for anything of value, read, then disposed of by PV staff. Any references to litigation against the facility are delivered to Peninsula Village's legal counsel for consideration.  Many parents try to slip messages to their children about changes in custody that could result in a patient?s release from Peninsula Village before the financial commitment period is completed.  Parents are inclined to offer too much hope to patients, and hope is detrimental to the service Peninsula Village provides by destroying everything a patient was, then molding the remains into something that?s in accordance with the dominant/paying parent?s specifications.  All mail is subject to scrutiny.  Continuous violation of the ever-changing parental guidelines will result in an offender losing all communication privileges with their child. Total restriction of contact eliminates potential parental encouragement of patients to believe they don?t belong in Peninsula Village and they might possibly be able to leave before the behavior modification process has been finished, resulting in consumer discontent and possibly a public relations crisis.

3.  Receiving notice and relevant information as soon as practical (but not more than 24 hours) in the event of hospitalization, major illness, or death of the children.   This policy is generally ignored since Peninsula Village is exempt from unwanted police ?child welfare checks?, required when abuse is reported to the Blount County Sheriff?s office.  The Sheriff?s department will not take a report or investigate the matter unless an incident is reported by the facility itself.

... He doesn't have that anger anymore about Bush or about the war or about anything else. That is such a relief to not see those emotional ups and downs anymore -- everything with him now is just on even keel. And no more loud music, no more nasty friends calling or coming around the house. Now his just wants to spend time with his mama and his bible. Thank you WWASPS

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that was a joke posting, a little tongue-in-cheek satire of the troll who posted above.  I really hope it was a joke...

I'm getting ready to watch the Tranquility Bay documentary the French team made.  I watched the first five minutes after it D/l Thursday night and had to turn it off, it was too late and it was giving me the creeps. It's really disturbing to hear a mother on the phone asking a counselor at TB why her son is in such a "stunned" state two months after returning home.  The counselor does the classic plea of ignorance, confirms the use of pepper spray, but cautions (threatens) the mother not to believe everything she hears.  Thanks to someone at Help-for-teens.com, I think, because I posted there that my D/L of the Doc would take 6 days at 1kbs, DSL extreme be damned.  When I got home in the afternoon, it had finished.  Thanks to those guys, and head over to http://help-for-teen.com/smf-pub/index.php , they've got a board up that's getting interesting and there's some well-informed people there.

To a parent who has read all this and says "yes, that's what I want -- a different child" then I would seriously question your ethics.

Wise words,guest.  Parents should keep in mind what the U.S. Senate concluded about BM in a bi-partisan study of the Seed program.  Sen. Sam Ervins compared the BM techniques as being identical to the "highly refined" brainwashing techniques used by the North Koreans in the fifties.  Mao Tse Tung implimented behavior modification in his re-education camps.  The Communist methods were identical to the techniques used in teen camps:  peer pressure, breaking down of the individual, constant mental and physical stress, high carb, low protein diets.  Parents' main responsibility should be ensuring the health and happiness of their child, and behavior modification programs are the antithesis of that.  I beg any parent seeking treatment for a troubled child to look beyond an RTC's website propaganda and thoroughly search the internet for info.  There are some wonderful, caring facilities out there, like Sheppard Pratt in Maryland.  With all the benefits of community-based treatment coming to light, we need to promote the idea of keeping troubled kids in a familiar environment and saving them from the trauma of being removed from their homes by strangers, cut off from family and friends and very possibly suffering horrific abuse, or even death.  As the parent of a child in an abusive facility, I can't stand the thought of another child experiencing what my girl is going through.  We've been working constantly to get our girl out of a place that is doing so much harm.  When we get her out of PV, I won't stop.  I want PV shut down, then I'll offer help to anyone or any group taking on this vile industry.  I was told by an advocate that I've been "bit", meaning I've been "radicalized".  I've never been involved in any causes, but what is going on in these facilities is morally reprehensible and repulsive.  I cannot in good conscience allow it to go on.  If someone as apolitical as I am can align himself with a grassroots movement like this, it's because I've never seen injustice on such a level.  These kids have absolutely no rights and no protection, and every time I read about a sweet  child like Angellika Arndt dying, or go to ISAC and see that four kids have died in two months, I'm filled with a maelstrom of emotions.  Sadness, anguish, anger, and fear, too, because my own sweet girl is in one of the most abusive programs I know of on U.S. soil

If you love your kids, work with them and work by their sides, don't ship them off to strangers for "tough love".  As Aaron Bacon's mom said after her son died tragically in a program, "It wasn't tough love, it was only tough".

Weight gain?  Like Thorazine bloating?  I read about a facility that added a healthy dose of Thorazine to the greasy, carb-filled +short of protein cuisine.  The kids were docile, too big to make a break and prone to drooling all day.  Imagine, kids caught smoking pot or drinking beer were thrown into a place that filled them with a drug capable of causing immense liver damage.

I have in no way accused her of being a child molestor.  We'll have to agree to disagree about educational requirements of the staff.  For $300 a day per patient, I would think they could hire people with degrees.  I do think that if these counselors consider themselves mental health care professionals and "experts" as W. calls herself, they should damn well conduct themselves as professionals, which they haven't.  Where are all you attackers coming from?  Has scandal rocked the House of PV?  I knew of 14 counselors with MySpace accounts, they've all been deleted. I think that indicates something occurred.  

I'm not offended at all by the fetish pictures, they're like watered-down versions of Richard Kern's work.  I do find some of the other images she's created questionable, like the ones of the thin, naked goth-girl laying on a bed with her eyes fixed, a gaping wound in her wrist with blood everywhere and a knife next to her hand.  It troubles me, CONSIDERING THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S "OTHER" JOB!  I'll censor it a bit and post it, if you like.  The "Underworld Images" watermark will be there. The mental health care professionals I've shown the blog and pictures to (one a former administrator of PV) have all agreed:  It's unethical and unprofessional to link her job at PV to the  fetish shots.  It's unprofessional to disrepect the views of parents regarding their  children in a public forum when you've identified yourself as a mental health care "professional" and named your employer's facility as well.  It's unprofessional to post details of the facility's financial problems and identify the staff psychiatrist and describe him as being upset over the money woes.   Apparently, the administration at PV came to the same conclusion.  I've dug really deep for information on the PV staff, since PV keeps that info away from parents, AND NOW I KNOW WHY.  If her father had bothered to research the place, he might have changed his mind.  I doubt it, since this is his way of punishing the girl for staying well away from him for three years.  Don't accuse me of making any "assumptions".

And while we're at it, what assumptions you make, sir.  I've only been involved in this child's life for four years.  Her biological father did 14 years of damage by drinking, drugging, committing adultery with both his kids aware of it, and verbally abusing them at the top of his lungs. Father of the Year, huh?

My stepdaughter's biological father has custody, he's had it for three months after getting emergency custody through a shady shyster.  The wheels of justice have moved slow as hell.

Things must have changed since you worked there.  What is going on at PV is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.  As I said, I'm sure she's a good person, I know the kids like her.  What's happening there now is abuse.  PV has suffered program drift.  If you're  truly experienced, you'll know what that means.  There's a girl at PV now who's being medically neglected, and at least on one occasion has been brutally restrained in a way that goes against Federal guidelines, and certainly goes against any sane parent's wishes.  If you're a good counselor and you want to help kids, then you'll understand why I want my girl out of PV.  Nobody should be taking this personally, but PV staffers should really be taking a look at what they do and question it.  

I also know the counselor is a mother to be, and she stated "we really don't want to tell parents we know their kids better than they do, but we're the experts on this shit,".  I know she'll realize how wrong that is when she has her own child.  I wish her all the best, and I know she's planning on leaving PV, so I hope she finds something else she loves at a place that isn't rotten at the roots.