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1
Hyde Schools / Where's that "movement of concerned Americans?"
« on: April 09, 2012, 07:50:03 PM »
Oh my Stars & Stripes! America's self-proclaimed (and self-recognized) experts in character development ... seek to engage the public in a discussion on the Topix Education Forum.



    educationrebel
    "To an educational revolution"[/list]
    Below is the opening lob served up by Joe a few years ago, and inspiring, thus far, a regrettably less than robust response:

    -------------- • -------------- • --------------

    time to stand up for american kids


    #1 educationrebel · Bath Maine · Jun 25, 2009
      Those in power so want to clone American kids into Asian students, that like cattle, they have committed them all to be 100% academically pure by year 2014.
      Never mind how that twists the character of American kids; that they don’t like our schools, and that one drops out every 12 seconds.
      Or that 2/3s of them cheat on tests, 1/3 steal from stores and 93% are satisfied with their ethics and character.
      Or that the best and brightest went on and threw America's economy under the bus. The Bank, Enron and Madoff fiascos, plus the extensive systems that supported them, made it very clear our economy had a character leadership problem, not an intelligence one.
      Don't blame the kids. I've been teaching for 58 years, and like the Hitler Youth Corps, if you brain wash them long enough that achievement and ego satisfaction is what’s life is all about, not deeper things like self-discovery and a life of purpose, then this is what you get.
      Our forefathers gave us a profound gift: a nation built on an ideal: All men are created equal. Respecting that ideal has been an enormous challenge, but it built an exceptional society never seen in the history of the world.
      So why the hell are we trying to copy someone else?
      What we need today is something we have never had—a truly American system of education; one that truly respects the unique potential and character of each kid; to help each one answer the critical questions of life: Who am I?; Where am I going?; What do I need to get there?
      This focus would re-center American education on parents and family, who desperately need the school's help and support, as the school desperately needs parent and family involvement. If the purpose is really to prepare kids for life, it is ridiculous to separate family and school.
      I am the founder of a network of 5 Hyde private and public schools that I began 43 years ago. We set out to develop the unique potential and character of each student, and discovered we had to help parents and families to be successful. It's been a real challenge, but the huge rewards are in reuniting families and in seeing kids go out and lead meaningful lives.
      Once you truly motivate kids, academics are no longer a problem. Hyde serves 2,000+ students, 80% minority, and 98% go to college.
      But it will take a lot more than Hyde Schools to change American Education. We need a movement of concerned Americans.
      I hope this hits home with you and maybe with others you know. If so, let me know what you think. we need to start a groundswell!


    Copyright ©2012 Topix LLC

    2
    Hyde Schools / Apparently, some courts are STILL friggin' CLUELESS
    « on: March 26, 2012, 02:04:50 AM »
    Excerpted from the below posted legal document, emphasis added:

      {¶ 5} In a report dated October 22, 2009, the GAL opined that E.B. should "remain in his father's care with respect to school placement and that he be afforded the opportunity to continue at the Hyde School." The GAL noted that E.B. had repeatedly and vehemently expressed that he wanted to live with his mother and attend school in the Orange School District, but the GAL informed the court that Hyde is an exceptional school with a committed faculty that was "deeply invested in making him succeed."[/list][/size]
        {¶ 15} The GAL testified that Feng was opposed to E.B. receiving therapy, and E.B. did not make progress in therapy. According to the GAL, E.B.'s biggest problem was with peer interactions, and he behaves differently with each parent. After discussing the matter with E.B.'s counselor, the GAL learned that E.B. might benefit from a school that was located away from his home. She visited Hyde, met with faculty members, and determined that it offered the structure and opportunity for peer acceptance that E.B. needs, and it would also teach him how to get along with others.[/list][/size]
        Geeeezzz... Can we suck on the propaganda popsicle stick any harder than this?
          ::OMG::

        ------

        A summary, admittedly of somewhat biased perspective, and assuredly with the limitations of a layman's legal understanding or lack thereof:

          Mom and dad were divorced but shared joint custody.

          Mom wanted Junior, aka "E.B.," to attend local schools. Junior was of the same mind.

          Dad, however, wanted Junior to
        attend "The Hyde School." And so attend he did, as Dad, as per an unsigned agreement, had final say as to educational particulars.

        This didn't go over too well with Mom and Junior, who, after some short time on the duck farm, decided that he didn't much care for it. Mom pulled Junior from Hyde without telling Dad.

        Dad started court proceedings. The court assigned a guardian ad litem to E.B., who was also his court appointed attorney, and who apparently, imo, did not research Hyde thoroughly enough.

          {¶ 27} On February 9, 2011, the trial court adopted the magistrate's decision in its totality. Extensive proceedings followed the February 9, 2011 judgment. See In re Contempt of Feng, 8th Dist. No. 95749, 2011-Ohio-4810. In relevant part, the trial court granted Berger's emergency motion for return of E.B., entered a civil protection order preventing Feng from having contact with Berger and E.B., ordered E.B. to attend Hyde, ordered that Feng not interfere with E.B.'s attendance there at Hyde, and further, found Feng in contempt. Id. Herein, Feng appeals from the June 17, 2010 judgment that adopted the magistrate's decision upholding Berger's enrollment of E.B. at Hyde in Connecticut. Feng raises seven errors for our review. Berger cross-appeals, assigning three errors for our review.[/list][/size]
          The below posted legal document contains the court's review of Feng's Appeal and Berger's Cross-Appeal...[/list]

          3
          Video news footage at the title link:

          -------------- • -------------- • --------------

          News9.com
          Two Die In Edmond Rollover Accident

          Posted: Mar 01, 2012 8:51 PM EST
          Updated: Mar 02, 2012 12:31 AM EST




          EDMOND, Oklahoma - Two men are dead following a single-vehicle rollover accident in Edmond.

          Police say the Honda SUV was westbound on East 15th Street near Post Road about 7:30 Thursday night when it swerved off the road and rolled several times.

          Two occupants were ejected and both died.  A third occupant who was not ejected managed to crawl out of the vehicle and was taken by ambulance to a local hospital.

          Police have not released the names of the victims pending the notification of relatives.

          The cause of the accident is not yet known.


          All content © Copyright 2000 - 2012, WorldNow and KWTV.

          4
          New Info / Shawn Prichard's "clinical preoccupation" with fornits
          « on: March 06, 2012, 09:28:16 PM »
          Ohhh... I came across an interesting website lately, namely:


          Despite being registered* to a "privacy conscious" company based in Toronto, Ontario, it appears to be run and maintained by a

            Dr. Shawn Prichard, psychologist[/list]


            ----------------------
            * Registry info from Network Solutions:

              fornits.org[/list]
                Domain ID:D160552062-LROR
                Domain Name:FORNITS.ORG
                Created On:31-Oct-2010 17:56:50 UTC
                Last Updated On:02-Oct-2011 04:38:37 UTC
                Expiration Date:31-Oct-2012 17:56:50 UTC
                Sponsoring Registrar:Tucows Inc. (R11-LROR)
                Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
                Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
                Registrant ID:tuPfibngmbNnrEc2
                Registrant Name:Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0125275020
                Registrant Organization:Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0125275020
                Registrant Street1:96 Mowat Ave
                Registrant Street2:
                Registrant Street3:
                Registrant City:Toronto
                Registrant State/Province:ON
                Registrant Postal Code:M6K3M1
                Registrant Country:CA
                Registrant Phone:+1.4165385457
                Registrant Phone Ext.:
                Registrant FAX:
                Registrant FAX Ext.:
                Registrant Email:fornits.org@contactprivacy.com
                Admin ID:tuPfibngmbNnrEc2
                Admin Name:Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0125275020
                Admin Organization:Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0125275020
                Admin Street1:96 Mowat Ave
                Admin Street2:
                Admin Street3:
                Admin City:Toronto
                Admin State/Province:ON
                Admin Postal Code:M6K3M1
                Admin Country:CA
                Admin Phone:+1.4165385457
                Admin Phone Ext.:
                Admin FAX:
                Admin FAX Ext.:
                Admin Email:fornits.org@contactprivacy.com
                Tech ID:tuPfibngmbNnrEc2
                Tech Name:Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0125275020
                Tech Organization:Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 0125275020
                Tech Street1:96 Mowat Ave
                Tech Street2:
                Tech Street3:
                Tech City:Toronto
                Tech State/Province:ON
                Tech Postal Code:M6K3M1
                Tech Country:CA
                Tech Phone:+1.4165385457
                Tech Phone Ext.:
                Tech FAX:
                Tech FAX Ext.:
                Tech Email:fornits.org@contactprivacy.com
                Name Server:NS1.MDNSSERVICE.COM
                Name Server:NS2.MDNSSERVICE.COM
                Name Server:NS3.MDNSSERVICE.COM
                Name Server:
                Name Server:
                Name Server:
                Name Server:
                Name Server:
                Name Server:
                Name Server:
                Name Server:
                Name Server:
                Name Server:
                DNSSEC:Unsigned
              [/size]

              5
              Tacitus' Realm / Former Desisto exec steps down as Romney AZ co-chair
              « on: February 20, 2012, 02:28:09 AM »
              Many thanks to the astute Fornits reader who alerted us to this story, and who wishes to remain anonymous...

              -------------- • -------------- • --------------

              The Arizona Republic
              AZ/DC Blog
              By Dan Nowicki

              Babeu steps down as Romney Arizona co-chairman



              Embattled Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, who is facing explosive allegations that he and his attorney tried to intimidate a former lover by threatening to have him deported, on Saturday quit his position as an Arizona co-chairman of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

              “Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him," Romney spokesman Ryan Williams told The Arizona Republic in a statement. "We support his decision."

              Babeu, who also is running for the U.S. House in Arizona's new 4th Congressional District, and his attorney, Chris DeRose, deny the accusations. But Babeu's judgment also is coming under scrutiny for allegedly taking provocative photos of himself and sending them over the Internet. News of the accusations against Babeu first broke Friday in the Phoenix New Times, which also published the photos.

              Besides being a Romney Arizona co-chairman, Babeu also recently appeared at a Romney event with former Vice President Dan Quayle in Paradise Valley.

              Follow AZ/DC on Twitter @DanNowicki.

              Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 11:51 AM

              Topics: Arizona, Mitt Romney, AZ POLITICS, paul babeu, 2012 presidential race



              Copyright © 2011, azcentral.com.

              6
              News Items / ~2 dozen Programa Ibicuy residents escape and notify police
              « on: February 10, 2012, 11:49:44 PM »
              This piece of news is about a year old, but nonetheless noteworthy enough to warrant its own thread...

              The original article (in Spanish) follows immediately below; crude Google translation to be posted subsequent:

              -------------- • -------------- • --------------

              Diario Junio - Argentina
              25/01/2011 - 07:06:59

              ISLAS IBICUY: El centro privado está ubicado en Villa Paranacito

              Más de 20 internos de un centro de rehabilitación se escaparon y denunciaron malos tratos en la comisaría

              Un total de 24 pacientes del instituto de rehabilitación de adicciones ubicado en Villa Paranacito se escaparon y entregaron un petitorio a la policía de ese lugar en el que denuncian malos tratos. Mientras la justicia de Gualeguaychú investiga el carácter del petitorio, los pacientes decidieron no regresar al instituto privado. En el petitorio se hacían severas críticas por la calidad de las comidas y las condiciones de albergue.

              Quienes se escaparon, en su mayoría, padecen problemas con el consumo de estupefacientes y provienen de la provincia de Buenos Aires, Capital Federal, Córdoba, Rosario y Mendoza.

              Fueron localizados en cercanías de la costa del río y luego fueron trasladados a la Jefatura de Islas, ubicada en Villa Paranacito. El petitorio de quejas fue entregado al juez de Instrucción de Gualeguaychú, Eduardo García Jurado. Según informa Uno, los empleados del instituto Ibicuy dio aviso del escape.

              El hecho ocurrió el domingo y vale destacar que presentaron una contradenuncia, las autoridades del Programa Ibicuy, por el delito de amenazas en su defensa.


              Diario Junio Digital - (c) 2003

              7
              News Items / Runaway from Montcalm (Starr Commonwealth)
              « on: January 26, 2012, 07:04:39 PM »
              WWMT-TV · Newschannel 3
              Search continues Thursday AM for missing teen in Calhoun County

              January 26, 2012 7:13 AM


              Jeffrey Scott Mooney

              SHERIDAN TOWNSHIP, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - Calhoun County Sheriff's Deputies responded to a missing teenager complaint around 7:30 Wednesday night.

              They say 15-year-old Jeffrey Scott Mooney walked away from the Starr Commonwealth in the 13000 block of 26 Mile Rd. in Sheridan Township.

              They say he left a note stating that he was leaving and would not be returning.

              Mooney is described as a white male, 5'9" tall, 178 lbs., with blue eyes and short, light brown hair.

              Deputies spent several hours searching the area for the missing teen after learning he has a medical condition and because of the cold temperatures. At one point the Michigan State Police brought in a helicopter with a heat sensor system, and tracking dogs both from the Springfield Department of Public Safety and Michigan State Police.

              Throughout the investigation deputies found out that the teen had spent four months in an outdoor wilderness survival class in Utah, and did have warm, thermal clothing on when he left.

              If anyone has seen or has any information on the whereabouts of Mooney, please contact the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office at (269) 781-0880.


              Video news coverage: Search For Missing Teen
                Crews will be out again at first light this morning, searching for a missing teen in Calhoun County.


              Copyright © 2012 Freedom Communications

              8
              Hyde Schools / Another student who opted NOT to return...
              « on: January 22, 2012, 02:04:19 PM »
                According to Raff, his parents sent him to Hyde because, "my dad went there as a kid, and my parents thought I was hanging with the wrong group of kids, and I wasn't doing that great in school."

                So on Jan. 15 of last year, Raff was sent off to a boarding school that, according to its website, is a "network of public and boarding schools and programs known widely for its successful and unique approach to helping students develop character." But Raff didn't enjoy his stay in Maine, claiming that it was way to strict and that there wasn't anything fun to do.

                "There were athletics, but
              it wasn't good out there," Raff said.[/list][/size]
              A classic understatement, I would say...

              From the sound of the article below, Tyler seems to be "developing his character" just fine on his own terms. No brainwashing needed! :D

              Good thing that Tyler's parents came to their senses.

              Ah, well... Hyde's loss, the Whippany Park Wildcats' gain!

              -------------- • -------------- • --------------

              Daily Record
              Raff a welcomed return to Wildcats

              9:08 PM, Jan. 19, 2012

              Tyler Raff, who played soccer, basketball and lacrosse for the Wildcats, missed his junior season on the hardwood because he had been sent to the Hyde School, a boarding school in Maine.

              According to Raff, his parents sent him to Hyde because, “my dad went there as a kid, and my parents thought I was hanging with the wrong group of kids, and I wasn’t doing that great in school.”

              So on Jan. 15 of last year, Raff was sent off to a boarding school that, according to its website, is a “network of public and boarding schools and programs known widely for its successful and unique approach to helping students develop character.” But Raff didn’t enjoy his stay in Maine, claiming that it was way to strict and that there wasn’t anything fun to do.

              “There were athletics, but it wasn’t good out there,” Raff said.

              So when he came home for summer vacation on June 2, he begged his parents to let him return to Whippany Park. And good news for both Raff and the Wildcats, his parents relented and he transfered back for his senior year.

              In the fall, Raff wasted no time on the soccer field. He set a school record for goals with 31 and had 20 assists, and was named the Morris County Coaches Association’s Player of the Year.

              And when it was time for basketball season, no one was happier to have the guard back than coach Jeff Kleinbaum.

              “He is a very big part of our team,” Kleinbaum said. “He usually brings incredible energy and he’s a superior shooter. One of the best shooters in the county. He’s a long range shooter, and always a danger to shoot threes. He's an uplifting, energetic guy. He gets lots of steals, he’s aggressive and he’s a real good scorer. Him and (junior guard) A.J. Holleran are the leading scorers.”

              The Wildcats started the season 4-0 before losing to Madison by one point 64-63 in the championship of the Whippany Park Holiday Tournament. Whippany Park picked up wins in its next two games for a 6-1 record until falling to Mountain Lakes in overtime last Friday. Then the Wildcats fell again to undefeated Morristown-Beard on Wednesday, but Raff was on the bench due to a strep throat.

              “We were doing pretty good until last few games,” Raff said of the season so far. “I think we can easily compete (with Mountain Lakes), we just played a bad game. If we play up to our potential we can beat them. But we’ve been letting teams back in when we should be destroying them.”

              The Morris County Tournament seeding meeting is this weekend, and Raff said believes that Whippany Park can turn its string of bad losses into meaningful lessons and move forward.

              “I think we're going to get pretty far,” Raff said. “We’re definitely going to make it to the quarterfinals. I don’t think we’re going to be in the top eight, but I think we’ll win our first game and I think we’ll be better than the next team we play, but after that the games are going to be tough.”

              No matter how tough the tournament and the rest of the season gets, Whippany Park is still a strong shooting and defensive team that has only gotten stronger with the return of Raff.

              “He brings a lot to the table. We’re real happy to have him back for a lot of reasons, basketball being one of them,” Kleinbaum said. “We’re happy to have him back because he comes from a good family and he’s the kind of kid we want at Whippany Park as well as being a good athlete."

              MCT seeding

              The Morris County Tournament seeding meeting will take place at 1 p.m. on Sunday at Morris Catholic High School.

              The preliminary round has to be played by Jan. 28. The first round will then be completed by Feb. 4, the quarterfinals will be held on Feb. 11 and the semifinals will be Feb. 18. All games will be at the higher seed. The MCT final will be on Feb. 25.

              The top seed will most likely go to Morristown-Beard, which as of today is still undefeated at 11-0. Morris Knolls, which lost in the first round last year, beat Mendham on Wednesday night, and the Golden Eagles’ 11-2 record will probably land them No. 2.

              “I’m not even worried about that,” Morris Knolls senior guard Niko Kotoulas said after Wednesday’s game. “We can get whatever we want, one, two, three, four. We don’t care, we’re just going to take one game at a time.”

              The MCT title is what Morris Knolls is gunning for, and so are a number of other teams. Mendham beat Roxbury for he championship last year, and will probably land the No. 3 seed, or at least nothing higher than fifth.

              Morristown-Beard and Madison both lost in the quarterfinals last season, and both teams are having successful seasons so far. But many coaches going into the meeting will probably have the same mindset as Morris Knolls coach Ken Ferrare.

              “We’re just going to go in there and see what happens,” he said.


              Copyright © 2012 http://www.dailyrecord.com.

              9
              Links to the below article are contained within material previously posted here by Reddit TroubledTeens and by Oscar...

              -------------- • -------------- • --------------

              Mother Jones
              Horror Stories From Tough-Love Teen Homes

              Girls locked up inside fundamentalist religious compounds. Kandahar? No, Missouri.

              —By Kathryn Joyce | July/August 2011 Issue


              Photos: New Bethany Alumni; Barbed Wire: Brian Hagiwara/Getty Images

              ONE DAY LAST NOVEMBER, a group of teenage girls dressed in long khaki skirts and modest blouses stepped onto the stage at an Independent Fundamental Baptist church in Maryland where Jeannie Marie (a military spouse who asked that her last name not be used) attended services with her family. The young women, visitors from a Missouri girls' home called New Beginnings Ministries, sang old-time hymns, recited Scripture, and gave tearful testimonies about their journeys out of lives of sin. Headmaster Bill McNamara spoke, too, depicting the home as a place where girls could get on track academically, restore broken relationships, and learn to walk with God.

              New Beginnings describes itself as a character-building facility for "troubled teens," and what Jeannie Marie heard in church that day was that this might be a place for her daughter to heal. While jogging earlier that year, the 17-year-old (whom I'll call Roxy) had been pulled into a vehicle and assaulted by a group of men. Since then, she had begun acting up at home, as well as sneaking out and drinking. Two weeks after seeing the girls in church, Jeannie Marie and her husband left Roxy in McNamara's care with the promise that she would receive counseling twice a week and stay at New Beginnings no longer than two months. "It sounded like a discipleship program," Jeannie Marie recalls. "A safe place where a daughter can go to have time alone to find God and her direction."


              A traveling chorus from New Bethany. "I felt like they stole whatever was inside me that allowed me to trust," says a former resident. [MORE: See photos of life at New Bethany.]

              Instead, Roxy found herself on the receiving end of brutal punishments. A soft-spoken young woman, blonde and blue-eyed with a bright smile, Roxy confided to me that she found it easier to discuss her ordeal with a stranger than with the people closest to her. She told me how, in her first weeks at the academy's Missouri compound—a summer-camp setup in remote La Russell, population 145—she and other girls snuck letters to their parents between the pages of hymnals in a local church they attended, along with entreaties to congregants to mail them. When another girl snitched, Roxy said, McNamara locked some girls in makeshift isolation cells, tiled closets without furniture or windows. Roxy got "the redshirt treatment": For a solid week, 10 hours a day, she had to stand facing a wall, with breaks only for worship or twice-daily bathroom trips.

              She was monitored day and night by two "buddies," girls who'd been there awhile and knew the drill. They accompanied her to the shower and toilet, and introduced her to a life of communal isolation and rigid discipline. Girls were not allowed to converse except from 6 to 9 p.m. each Friday. They were not allowed contact with their families during their first month, or with anyone else for six months. By that time, Roxy said, most girls are "broken," having been told that their families have abandoned them, and that the world outside is a sinful, dangerous place where girls who leave are murdered or raped.

              The girls' behavior was micromanaged down to the number of squares of toilet paper each was allowed; potential infractions ranged from making eye contact with another girl to not finishing a meal. Roxy, who suffered from urinary tract infections and menstrual complications, told me she was frequently put on redshirt, sometimes dripping blood as she stood. She was also punished with cold showers, she said, and endless sets of calisthenics after meals.

              Back in Maryland, Jeannie Marie was unaware of her daughter's plight. Her letters went unanswered—only one of Roxy's replies got past the academy's censors. Getting through by phone also proved challenging, and calls were monitored. A billing dispute with New Beginnings' staff didn't make things any easier. It was two months before she and her husband could arrange a conference call with Roxy and the staff. They asked Roxy if she wanted to come home. Surrounded by her disciplinarians, the girl replied that she had to stay—that New Beginnings was good for her. The call dissolved into a shouting match between Jeannie Marie and McNamara—who finally declared that he would only discuss the matter with her husband.

              When I phoned New Beginnings to ask about the family's allegations, a staffer referred all questions to Wesley Barnum, the academy's attorney, who did not return my repeated calls.

              A week or so after the disastrous conference call, Jeannie Marie traveled to La Russell with a friend who'd heard about places like New Beginnings—sketchy teen homes drawn by Missouri's laissez-faire policy toward faith-based residential facilities. Authorities in the state are barred from inspecting the homes or even keeping track of them. (New Beginnings has operated under multiple names in Florida, Mississippi, and Texas.) "It's hard to understand it, but faith-based is just taboo for regulation," says Matthew Franck, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who authored an investigative series on the state's homes in the mid-2000s. "It took decades of work to get just the most minimal standards of regulation at faith-based child-care centers," he adds. "I just knew that when certain lobbyists would stand up to say, 'We have a concern about how this affects faith-based institutions,' the bill was immediately amended—it was a very Republican legislature—or it would immediately die. That's still true." (Missouri isn't alone. In April, Montana state Rep. Christy Clark, who campaigned on a "faith and family" platform, joined 11 other Republicans in scuttling a bill that would have regulated religious teen homes; a mother of three, she cast the homes' residents as unreliable witnesses who "struggle with truthfulness.")

              When Jeannie Marie arrived at New Beginnings, she had a tense conversation with the school counselor, who insisted that Roxy wanted to stay. She extracted her daughter nonetheless. The school's effects on Roxy were striking, Jeannie Marie told me. When they stopped at a restaurant on the way home, she robotically asked for permission to speak or to use the bathroom. After months of punitive mealtimes, including five-minute "force feeding" sessions for girls on redshirt, she wolfed her food. Back in Maryland, she showed signs of an eating disorder, self-destructive behavior, and severe depression. "I was only there for three months," Roxy said, "but because we weren't allowed to keep track of time, it felt like six."

              Desperate for a way out, she'd attempted suicide—many of the girls did, she added nonchalantly, if only for the chance to get taken to a hospital and beg for outside help. "They take away any feeling that you are capable of doing anything outside the home," she said. "You have this sense of total isolation: There's no way out of it, you're there for the rest of your life."

              NEW BEGINNINGS IS EMBLEMATIC of an unknown number of "troubled teen" homes catering to the Independent Fundamental Baptist community—a web of thousands of autonomous churches linked by doctrine, overlapping leadership, and affiliations with Bible colleges like Bob Jones University. IFB churches emphasize strict obedience and consider teen rebellion an invention of worldly society, so it's little surprise that families faced with teenage drinking, smoking, or truancy might turn to programs promising a tough-love fix. Fear of government intrusion—particularly on account of the community's "spare the rod, spoil the child" worldview—is so pervasive that IFB congregations are primed to dismiss regulatory actions against abusive facilities as religious persecution.


              The entrance to New Bethany's Louisiana compound. [MORE: See photos of life at New Bethany.]

              New Beginnings and numerous other Christian reform schools trace their lineages to Texas radio evangelist Lester Roloff, who founded the Rebekah Home for Girls in Corpus Christi back in 1967, employing disciplinary tactics that were adopted by dozens of imitators. He also pioneered girls' singing groups as a way to promote Rebekah Home—the "Honeybee Quartet" was featured in his daily revivalist radio broadcasts. But back at the hive, Roloff's wards were often subjected to days in locked isolation rooms where his sermons played in an endless loop. They also endured exhaustive corporal punishment. "Better a pink bottom than a black soul," Roloff famously declared at a 1973 court hearing after he was prosecuted by the state of Texas on behalf of 16 Rebekah girls. (The attorney general responded that he was more concerned with bottoms "that were blue, black, and bloody.") Later that year, a former student testified that a whipping at Rebekah Home left inch-high welts on her body.

              In a 1979 standoff that would become the stuff of fundamentalist folklore, Roloff declared his cause "the Christian Alamo," organizing hundreds of supporters into barricades to keep state officials off his compound. The ensuing church-state battle outlived Roloff, who died in a plane crash in 1982. The home relocated to Missouri three years later, returning to Texas in 1998 after then-Gov. George W. Bush deregulated the activities of faith-based groups there.

              Rebekah Home eventually closed, and New Beginnings opened in Florida soon after, under the watch of a couple who had worked with Roloff for 35 years. They were Wiley Cameron (who later served on Bush's peer-review board for Christian children's agencies in Texas) and his wife Faye (who was banned from working with children in the Lone Star state). Bill McNamara and his wife eventually took over, and when state officials began investigating the home, they moved New Beginnings to Missouri. "Because I used to listen to [Roloff] on the radio, and read about the great girls coming out of his place, I thought maybe this was God's thing for Roxy," Jeannie Marie remembers. "I didn't know to do deeper research, because, I thought, these are Baptists, these are my people."

              THIS PAST FEBRUARY, parents at Amelia Academy, a Virginia Christian day school with no IFB affiliation, made an unpleasant discovery: One of the teachers had been accused by former students at the New Bethany Home for Boys and Girls—a Roloff-inspired facility in Louisiana—of participating in physical punishments decades earlier. After a heated school-board meeting where parents demanded an investigation, Amelia headmaster George Martin went online to solicit stories from New Bethany alumni. (A criminal background check came back clean, and the teacher, who denied abusing any children, remains at Amelia.)

              One of the students Martin contacted was Teresa Frye, now a 43-year-old mother of four. She told me of her upbringing in North Carolina, where an IFB preacher named Mack Ford occasionally visited her church. He would arrive with a school bus full of teenagers from his girls' home in Arcadia, a Louisiana town of 2,700. They made a striking presentation—young women in white blouses or dresses, with lovely voices, singing and offering dramatic testimonies. They spoke of living as prostitutes and drug addicts before finding salvation at New Bethany, where they now rode horses and studied the Bible. Churchgoers emptied their wallets, pouring out "love offerings" to sustain Ford's mission.

              Interviews with a half-dozen former students indicate that most of the girls were merely "rebellious" teens—like Frye, who at age 14 began resisting her strict Baptist parents. In 1982, they sent her to New Bethany, and her 10-year-old sister followed soon after. The girls found themselves at a remote compound bordered by a rural highway and ringed with barbed wire. There was no horseback riding. Their studies consisted of memorizing Scripture (mistakes were punishable by paddling) and a rote Christian curriculum. Discipline ranged from belt whippings to being forced to scrub pots with undiluted bleach or—in the years after Frye attended—wearing painfully high heels for weeks on end, or running in place while being struck from behind with a wooden paddle, according to alumni.

              Then there was the "big sister treatment"—established students, directed by staff, inflicting punishments on the newbies. "It was basically like in the military, where they do a 'blanket party,' throwing a blanket over your head, and your teammates beat the crap out of you to make you get back in line," says Lenee Rider, a New Bethany alum whose father, an IFB pastor, frequently hosted Ford's touring chorus during his training.

              Rider recalled one new girl she was assigned to supervise: Angela was a firebrand who'd arrived at New Bethany straight out of a mental institution and became such a target of staff and "big sister" discipline that she twice attempted suicide. First she jumped through the glass of a second-story window. Later, she slashed her wrists. Rider found her in the bathroom, surrounded by shards of broken mirror. After a housemother bandaged Angela's arms, Rider said, she heard the girl being beaten down the hall. When Rider tried to apologize, Angela asked why she hadn't just let her die.

              In 2000, Rider created a New Bethany "survivor" forum comprising as many as 400 former residents and staff. Among them was Cat Givens, an Ohio radio technician who stayed at New Bethany in 1974 and became so shell-shocked by the routine of punishment and submission—and the spectacle of runaways being returned by the police and handcuffed to their beds—that she lost her will to resist. "After a while, I was so brainwashed I didn't even want to run," she told me. "I figured this was God's plan."

              Karen Glover, a Navy veteran who attended Indiana's Roloff-inspired Hephzibah House as a girl, described what she calls "the bowel and bladder torture." The girls were given bran, made to drink lots of water at breakfast, and then denied bathroom access until lunchtime. There was no apparent reason for this treatment, Glover says, save reminding the girls who was in charge. Dave Halyaman, assistant director of Hephzibah House, would not respond directly to Glover's claims. Instead, he offered to put me in touch with two pastors who had daughters there. "We have our critics, but also people who think very well of us," he said.

              New Bethany founder Mack Ford proved even less talkative. I reached him at home on three occasions, and he hung up on me twice. He refused to discuss any allegations of abuse. ("I don't know anything about that," he said.) Nor would he divulge the name of his attorney or agree to have his attorney contact me.

              FORD OPERATED A SEPARATE New Bethany home for boys in Longstreet, Louisiana. Clark Word, now 44, was sent there when he was about 15. On his second day, he recalls, he watched administrator Larry Rapier punch a boy of 10 or so in the mouth for wetting his pants on the bus to Sunday worship. Violence was the norm, Word says, and students were expected to enforce discipline. In one memorable 1982 incident, a student named Guy disappeared from the school after he was badly beaten with golf clubs by other students, leaving Guy's terror-stricken friends to wonder whether the staff had finished him off. (Rapier's ex-wife Dee told me she sent Guy to recover at her mother's Texas home before returning him to his parents.)


              In 1982, when New Bethany's leaders shut down the home to avoid a state inspection, they had a volunteer staffer put up this banner.  [MORE: See photos of life at New Bethany.]

              My attempts to track down Larry Rapier proved fruitless. But Dee Rapier confirmed the atmosphere of physical and psychological torment at the facility she ran with her former husband. "Larry had a room that used to be a storage place that was six by eight, or eight by eight, that he called 'solitary confinement,'" she told me. (A former staffer called them "revival rooms.") Misbehaving boys were put in isolation, given a can to pee in, and forced to listen to hours of taped sermons, Word remembers.

              After Word had been there for almost seven months, his "watch" escaped. Police normally returned runaways to the home, but the severity of the boy's injuries led state officials to investigate. Rapier, who had continued running the school while free on bond in a 1981 child-abuse case (the charges were eventually dropped), sent the other boys away—some went home, some were placed at kindred facilities. School records, Dee Rapier told me, were shredded.

              The school reopened the next year in Walterboro, South Carolina, under a new administrator, Olin King. Word's 14-year-old brother, Doug, was sent there soon after for stealing a neighbor's Playboy magazines. In 1984, police were tipped off by escapees about a rope "chain gang" working the gardens, and beatings with PVC pipe—which, the boys darkly joked, stood for "pound victims cruelly."

              Officers raided the compound and discovered Doug Word bound, in his underwear, on the floor of a dark and padlocked isolation cell. King and his assistant were charged with kidnapping, unlawful neglect, and conspiracy. They pled no contest to false-imprisonment charges and received suspended sentences and probation. "I took that case personally," recalls Emory Rush, the now-retired sheriff's chief deputy who led the raid. "I abhorred the fact that they would do children like they were doing them."

              The raid grabbed headlines, but the school reopened again, this time merging with Ford's New Bethany girls' school in Arcadia. Over the next two decades, both the girls' and boys' branches would close and reopen several times more—swelling at times to hundreds of students.

              Authorities and watchdog groups are familiar with the patterns—the state-hopping, the frequent openings and closings—but "people forget," says Deputy Rush. Indeed, Olin King (who through his wife declined to comment for this article) now runs a North Carolina home for preteen boys under the names King Family Ministries and Second Chance Ranch. New Bethany alumni alerted local authorities to King's past and his new location. But Maj. Durward Bennett, the former chief deputy of the local sheriff's department, told me they didn't see fit to investigate King's new home because, Bennett erroneously insisted, King was never convicted, and North Carolina has never deemed him unfit to operate a home.

              The operators of shady homes do seem to have a knack for avoiding major prosecution. Just last year, prosecutors in Blount County, Alabama, charged Jack Patterson—a Roloff protégé and founder of a boys' home called Reclamation Ranch—with aggravated child abuse. Then-prosecutor Tommy Rountree said deputies raided the ranch after an escapee alerted them to beatings, isolation cells, and armed staffers who would "go hunting for runaways."

              The raid uncovered handguns and rifles, leg irons, and handcuffs; 11 boys were taken into state custody. But because deputies neglected to seize Patterson's computer, which the escapee claimed contained files of videotaped beatings, Patterson was able to plead his felony charges down to a "verbal harassment" misdemeanor carrying a $500 fine. He now runs a home for adult men on the Reclamation Ranch property and a girls' home called Rachel Academy in neighboring Walker County—and is in the process, he says, of opening new homes in Ohio, Florida, and Michigan.

              Rountree, who bluntly calls Patterson "evil," says he and his staff traveled extensively to gather testimony from former Reclamation Ranch kids, but found little usable evidence. He blames this on the contracts parents sign—one mother who owed Patterson money feared that "Big Jack" might sue her if she cooperated with the state—as well as fervent support for men like Patterson among many Christian fundamentalists.

              Patterson insists that the abuse allegations were bogus and denies using any corporal punishment or isolation tactics. Reclamation Ranch, he says, had "a family-style atmosphere." He points to his misdemeanor sentence as proof that the prosecution was politically motivated. As for the shackles and weapons, "I never knew how they got there," he told me. "My fingerprints were never on them." But he adds that he fired three staff members shortly before the raid for abusive methods: one for shooting a rifle over the boys' heads, one for "roughhousing" a resident and shoving him into a locker, and one for placing a boy in handcuffs.

              Despite the bad PR, Christian reform facilities appear to have no trouble attracting new recruits. Bruce Gerencser, who spent 25 years as an IFB pastor, recalls Lester Roloff visiting his Bible college to promote the homes. Once Gerencser reached the pulpit, he saw teen-home directors showing up at pastors' fellowship meetings to peddle their services; Hephzibah House director Ron Williams—who now hosts a show on the Bob Jones University radio station—visited Gerencser's own church with a girls' chorus. "I would give literature to parents about the schools," says Gerencser, who is now a critic of the IFB mindset. "I'd never visited those homes, but you took at face value that people were doing good things. I look back on it and see how irresponsible that was."

              In September 2008, Clark Word began doing some research on New Bethany. He found Rider's online community, which included Dee Rapier, the wife of his old nemesis. Now 65 and living in Texarkana, Texas, Dee had pleaded for forgiveness from her former charges. She had posted her phone number for anyone wanting to talk, drawing a cautious but earnest call from Word. "She wanted to know how I'd turned out," Word recalls. "She said, 'So many of you turned out to have alcohol and drug problems.' I didn't tell her at that point that she'd ruined my life."

              Indeed, a lot of the kids who were forced to regale churchgoers with phony addiction stories turned to drinking and drugs to help them cope with what happened at the schools. After leaving Hephzibah House, Karen Glover ended up becoming both an addict and a sex worker for a time. Teresa Frye "did my body weight in drugs" after her stint at New Bethany. Lenee Rider "stayed drunk for a year." Angela, her old watch, died of complications from cirrhosis in 2008. "I felt they stole whatever was inside me that allowed me to trust," Rider says.

              NEW BETHANY FINALLY shut down its remaining Louisiana compound after years of police raids and legal battles. Its board of directors reportedly voted for closure in 2001, but rumors abound that New Bethany boarded girls as late as 2004. That the home's own former staffers aren't sure of the year speaks volumes about an industry so poorly regulated that state officials can't verify whether certain homes even exist.

              Survivors and their families complain that the state authorities seem uninterested in prosecuting abuses at the homes—particularly in Missouri, where some facilities settle so far out in the sticks that state agencies are unaware of them. Nanci Gonder, press secretary for the Missouri attorney general's office, suggests that officials are hamstrung—private schools don't require state accreditation and are not governed by laws regulating the public schools. "Our only authority is through the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, which would include concerns like false advertising," she says.

              That's the backdoor channel that Donna, a military wife and mother of eight in the Northeast, ended up taking. In 2007, she sent her 14-year-old daughter, Kelsey, to the Circle of Hope Girls Ranch in Humansville, Missouri. The girl had been caught drinking with school friends. Donna, spread thin with her husband on his third Iraq deployment, and fearful of a family history of substance abuse, worried that Kelsey was headed for trouble. At Circle of Hope, Kelsey was allegedly ordered to do pushups in horse manure, restrained and sat upon by staff members, and pushed to make false confessions about promiscuity. Donna estimates that the family spent $20,000 on her three-month stay—tuition and fees, plus the cost of counseling and educational catch-up required after Kelsey came home. Jay Kirksey, Circle of Hope's attorney, would not address Donna's claims, but he extended an invitation to come visit. "Unfortunately, just like there is in the public schools and public sector, there are disgruntled parents, who, instead of looking at their own child and situation, choose to talk about the school," he said.

              Donna told me that she has approached at least seven state and federal offices—including the Missouri AG—seeking action against Circle of Hope for stating falsely on its website that it was state-registered, a claim she says gave her the confidence to send Kelsey there. "I've been fighting this. I've been calling everyone," Donna says, "and I want to know: Why is nothing being done?"

              "Our Consumer Protection Division is still looking into the issue," Gonder responds. "The school cooperated in providing information, but their information was different from hers."

              At both the state and federal levels, the "troubled teen" industry—religious and secular—enjoys quiet support from many politicians. (Key fundraisers for Mitt Romney's 2008 and 2012 campaigns hail from Utah's teen-home sector.) Local courts promote the homes as an alternative to juvenile detention, and facilities can collect a variety of state and federal grants.

              Congress has tried, and so far failed, to rein in the schools. In 2007, a spate of deaths at teen residential programs prompted a nationwide investigation by the Government Accountability Office. Its findings—which detailed the use of extended stress positions, days of seclusion, strenuous labor, denial of bathroom access, and deaths—came out in a series of dramatic congressional hearings over two years. The result was House Resolution 911 (PDF), which proposed giving residents access to child-abuse hotlines and creating a national database of programs that would document reports of abuse and keep tabs on abusive staff members.

              Hephzibah House's Ron Williams and Reclamation Ranch's Jack Patterson urged supporters to fight the bill. In an open letter, Williams argued that it would "effectively close all Christian ministries helping troubled youth because of its onerous provisions." They were joined by a group called the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, which opposed HR 911 on the grounds that states—despite all evidence to the contrary—are best situated to oversee the homes. The bill passed in the House, but stalled in a Senate committee.*

              In March 2010, the House passed the Keeping All Students Safe Act, a bill that would have banned the use of seclusion and physical or chemical restraints by any school that benefits from federal education money. (It, too, died in the Senate.) Andy Kopsa, who covers abusive homes in her blog, Off the Record, noted that GOP members whose districts host tough-love schools rallied against the act. They included former Indiana Rep. Mark Souder (Hephzibah House), Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt (Reclamation Ranch, Rachel Academy), and North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx (King Family Ministries), who testified: "This bill is not needed...The states and the localities can handle these situations. They will look after the children."

              In the absence of federal action, alumni of the teen institutions have been trying to expose the abuses. In 2008, Susan Grotte, a Hephzibah House alum, led some 60 survivors in campaigning for its closure; they wrote to newspapers and picketed outside the county courthouse in Warsaw, Indiana, near where the school is located. "We have laws to protect people from illegal incarceration," she says, "but apparently not if you're a teenage girl." In the past year, New Bethany alums staged a reunion trip to confront the Fords, and they joined with members of kindred groups such as Survivors of Institutional Abuse to gather and publicize survivor stories. SIA is planning a 2012 convention for adults who have been through "lockdown teen facilities."

              Back in Maryland, Jeannie Marie has introduced Roxy to the survivor community in the hope that sharing her ordeal will help her recover. "I show her the websites," Jeannie Marie says, "and tell her, 'Look how long ago this happened to these girls: 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. These girls are just letting go and finding freedom because they started discussing this.' I said, 'Roxy, don't wait that long.'"

              Clarification: The version of this article that appeared in the magazine left the impression that Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) was concerned that HR 911 could interfere with parents' rights. In fact, in a letter to the constituents inquiring about the bill, Brown had simply noted that this was a concern of the bill's opponents, not necessarily his own view.

              KATHRYN JOYCE
              Kathryn Joyce is the author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.



              Copyright ©2011 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress.

              10
              Psych Hospitals / The CIA's Shocking Experiments on Children Exposed -- ...
              « on: December 17, 2011, 11:13:38 PM »
              TruthOut.org / By  H.P. Albarelli Jr.  and Jeffrey S. Kaye
              The CIA's Shocking Experiments on Children Exposed -- Drugging, Electroshocks and Brainwashing

              A look back at America's most shameful period of human experimentation.

              August 12, 2010  |  Bobby is seven years old, but this is not the first time he has been subjected to electroshock. It's his third time. In all, over the next year, Bobby will experience eight electroshock sessions. Placed on the examining table, he is held down by two male attendants while the physician places a solution on his temples. Bobby struggles with the two men holding him down, but his efforts are useless. He cries out and tries to pull away. One of the attendants tries to force a thick wedge of rubber into his mouth. He turns his head sharply away and cries out, "Let me go, please. I don't want to be here. Please, let me go." Bobby's physician looks irritated and she tells him, "Come on now, Bobby, try to act like a big boy and be still and relax." Bobby turns his head away from the woman and opens his mouth for the wedge that will prevent him from biting through his tongue. He begins to cry silently, his small shoulders shaking and he stiffens his body against what he knows is coming.

              Mary is only five years old. She sits on a small, straight-backed chair, moving her legs back and forth, humming the same four notes over and over and over. Her head, framed in a tangled mass of golden curls, moves up and down with each note. For the first three years of her life, Mary was thought to be a mostly normal child. Then, after she began behaving oddly, she had been handed off to a foster family. Her father and mother didn't want her any longer. She had become too strange for her father, whose alcoholism clouded any awareness of his young daughter. Mary's mother had never wanted her anyway and was happy to have her placed in another home. When the LSD Mary has been given begins to have its effects, she stops moving her head and legs and sits staring at the wall. She doesn't move at all. After about ten minutes, she looks at the nearby physician observing her, and says, "God isn't coming back today. He's too busy. He won't be back here for weeks."


              From early 1940 to 1953, Dr. Lauretta Bender, a highly respected child neuropsychiatrist practicing at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, experimented extensively with electroshock therapy on children who had been diagnosed with "autistic schizophrenia." In all, it has been reported that Bender administered electroconvulsive therapy to at least 100 children ranging in age from three years old to 12 years, with some reports indicating the total may be twice that number. One source reports that, inclusive of Bender's work, electroconvulsive treatment was used on more than 500 children at Bellevue Hospital from 1942 to 1956, and then at Creedmoor State Hospital Children's Service from 1956 to 1969. Bender was a confident and dogmatic woman, who bristled at criticism, oftentimes refused to acknowledge reality even when it stood starkly before her.

              Despite publicly claiming good results with electroshock treatment, privately Bender said she was seriously disappointed in the aftereffects and results shown by the subject children. Indeed, the condition of some of the children appeared to have only worsened. One six-year-old boy, after being shocked several times, went from being a shy, withdrawn child to acting increasingly aggressive and violent. Another child, a seven-year-old girl, following five electroshock sessions had become nearly catatonic.

              Years later, another of Bender's young patients who became overly aggressive after about 20 treatments, now grown, was convicted in court as a "multiple murderer." Others, in adulthood, reportedly were in and of trouble and prison for a battery of petty and violent crimes. A 1954 scientific study of about 50 of Bender's young electroshock patients, conducted by two psychologists, found that nearly all were worse off after the "therapy" and that some had become suicidal after treatment. One of the children studied in 1954 was the son of well-known writer Jacqueline Susann, author of the bestselling novel "Valley of the Dolls." Susann's son, Guy, was diagnosed with autism shortly after birth and, when he was three years old, Dr. Bender convinced Susann and her husband that Guy could be successfully treated with electroshock therapy. Guy returned home from Bender's care a nearly lifeless child. Susann later told people that Bender had "destroyed" her son. Guy has been confined to institutions since his treatment.

              To their credit, some of Dr. Bender's colleagues considered her use of electroshock on children "scandalous," but few colleagues spoke out against her, a situation still today common among those in the medical profession. Said Dr. Leon Eisenberg, a widely respected physician and true pioneer in the study of autistic children, "[Lauretta Bender] claimed that some of these children recovered [because of her use of shock treatment]. I once wrote a paper in which I referred to several studies by [Dr. E. R.] Clardy. He was at Rockwin State Hospital - the back up to Bellevue - and he described the arrival of these children. He considered them psychotic and perhaps worse off then before the treatment." (This writer could find no case where any of Bender's colleagues spoke out against her decidedly racist viewpoints. Bender made it quite clear that she felt that African-Americans were best characterized by their "capacity for laziness" and "ability to dance," both features, Bender claimed, of the "specific brain impulses" of African-Americans.)

              About the same time Dr. Bender was conducting her electroshock experiments, she was also widely experimenting on autistic and schizophrenic children with what she termed other "treatment endeavors." These included use of a wide array of psycho-pharmaceutical agents, several provided to her by the Sandoz Chemical Co. in Basel, Switzerland, as well as Metrazol, sub-shock insulin therapy, amphetamines and anticonvulsants. Metrazol was a trade name for pentylenetetrazol, a drug used as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant. High doses cause convulsions, as discovered in 1934 by the Hungarian-American neurologist and psychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna.

              Metrazol had been used in convulsive therapy, but was never considered to be effective, and side effects such as seizures were difficult to avoid. The medical records of several patients who were confined at Vermont State Hospital, a public mental facility, reveal that Metrazol was administered to them by CIA contractor Dr. Robert Hyde on numerous occasions in order "to address overly aggressive behavior." One of these patients, Karen Wetmore, received the drug on a number of occasions for no discernible medical reason. During the same ten-year period in which Metrazol was used by the Vermont State Hospital, patient deaths skyrocketed. In 1982, the FDA revoked its approval of Metrazol.

              Here it should be noted that, during the cold war years, CIA and Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) interrogators, working as part of projects Bluebird and Artichoke, sometimes injected large amounts of Metrazol into selected enemy or Communist agents for the purposes of severely frightening other suspected agents, by forcing them to observe the procedure. The almost immediate effects of Metrazol are shocking for many to witness: subjects will shake violently, twisting and turning. They typically arch, jerk and contort their bodies and grimace in pain. With Metrazol, as with electroshock, bone fractures - including broken necks and backs - and joint dislocations are not uncommon, unless strong sedatives are administered beforehand.

              A November 1936 Time magazine article seriously questioned the benefits of Metrazol, citing "irreversible shock" as a "great danger." The article described a typical Metrazol injection as such: "A patient receives no food for four or five hours. Then about five cubic centimeters of the drug [Metrazol] are injected into his veins. In about half-a-minute he coughs, casts terrified glances around the room, twitches violently, utters a horse wail, freezes into rigidity with his mouth wide open, arms and legs stiff as boards. Then he goes into convulsions. In one or two minutes the convulsions are over and he gradually passes into a coma, which lasts about an hour. After a series of shocks, his mind may be swept clean of delusions.... A patient is seldom given more than 20 injections and if no improvement is noted after ten treatments, he is usually given up as hopeless."

              The Army, the CIA and Metrazol

              Army CIC interrogators working with the CIA at prisoner of war camps and safe house locations in post-war Germany on occasion used Metrazol, morphine, heroin and LSD on incarcerated subjects. According to former CIC officer Miles Hunt, several "safe houses and holding areas outside of Frankfurt near Oberursel" - a former Nazi interrogation center taken over by the US - were operated by a "special unit run by Capt. Malcolm S. Hilty, Maj. Mose Hart and Capt. Herbert Sensenig. The unit was especially notorious in its applications of interrogation methods [including the use of electroshock and Metrazol, mescaline, amphetamines and other drugs]." Said Hunt: "The unit took great pride in their nicknames, the 'Rough Boys' and the 'Kraut Gauntlet,' and didn't hold back with any drug or technique ... you name it, they used it." Added Hunt, "Sensenig was really disappointed when it was found that nothing had to be used on [former Reichsmarschall] Herman Goering, who was processed through the camp. Goering needed no inducement to talk."

              Eventually, CIC interrogators working in Germany would be assisted in their use of interrogation drugs by several "former" Nazi scientists recruited by the CIA and US State Department as part of Project Paperclip. By early 1952, the CIC's Rough Boys would routinely use Metrazol during interrogations, as well as LSD, mescaline and conventional electroshock units.

              Metrazol-like drugs are still used in interrogations today. According to reports from several former noncommissioned Army officers, who served on rendition-related security details in Turkey, Pakistan and Romania, drugs that produce effects quite similar to Metrazol are still used in 2010 by the Pentagon and CIA on enemy combatants and rendered subjects held at the many "black sites" maintained across the globe. Observed one former officer recently, "They would twist up like a pretzel, in unbelievable shapes and jerk and shake like crazy, their eyes nearly popping out of their heads."

              In 2008, at the behest of US Sens. Carl Levin, Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel and in reaction to a March 2008 article in The Washington Post, the Pentagon initiated an Inspector General Report on the use of "mind-altering substances by DoD [Department of Defense] Personnel during Interrogations of Detainees and/or Prisoners Captured during the War on Terror." It is not known if the investigation has been completed. Among the more famous recent cases of the use of drugs upon prisoners concerns one-time alleged "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla, who had originally been accused of wanting to set off a "dirty bomb." The charge was later forced, but Padilla was held in solitary confinement for many months and forced to take LSD or other powerful drugs while held in the Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina.

              The government has gone to great efforts to keep the public uninformed as regards use of drugs on prisoners. In an article by Carol Rosenberg for McClatchy News in July 2010, Rosenberg reported that, when covering the Guantanamo military commissions trials, when the question of "what psychotropic drugs were given another accused 9/11 conspirator, Ramzi bin al Shibh, the courtroom censor hits a white noise button so reporters viewing from a glass booth can't hear the names of the drugs. Under current Navy instructions for the use of human subjects in research, the undersecretary of the Navy is described as the authority in charge of research concerning "consciousness-altering drugs or mind-control techniques," while at the same time is also responsible for "inherently controversial topics" that might attract media interest or "challenge by interest groups."

              Dr. Bender Discovers LSD

              In 1955 and 1956, Dr. Bender began hearing glowing accounts about the potential of LSD for producing remarkable results in children suffering mental disorders, including autism and schizophrenia. Bender's earlier work with electroshock therapy had brought her into contact with several other prominent physicians who, at the time, were covert contractors with the CIA's MK/ULTRA and Artichoke projects. Primary among these physicians were Drs. Harold A. Abramson, Paul Hoch, James B. Cattell, Joel Elkes, Max Fink, Harris Isbell and Alfred Hubbard. Some of these names may be familiar to readers. Dr. Abramson, a noted allergist who surreptitiously worked for both the US Army and CIA since the late 1940s, was the physician Frank Olson was taken to see, shortly before his murder in New York City in November 1953. About a year earlier, Drs. Hoch and Cattell were responsible for injecting unwitting New York State Psychiatric Institute patient Harold Blauer with a massive dose of mescaline that killed him. Dr. Elkes was one of the earliest physicians in Europe to experiment with LSD, having requested samples of the drug from Sandoz Chemical Co. in 1949. Elkes was a close associate of Dr. Abraham Wikler, who worked closely with Dr. Harris Isbell at the now-closed Lexington, Kentucky, prison farm, where hundreds of already drug-addicted inmates were given heroin in exchange for their participation in LSD and mescaline experiments underwritten by the CIA and Pentagon. Elkes worked closely with the CIA, Pentagon and Britain's MI6 on drug experiments in England and the United States.

              Dr. Fink, who was greatly admired by Bender, is considered the godfather of electroshock therapy in the United States. In the early 1950s and beyond, Fink was a fully cleared CIA Project Artichoke consultant. In 1951, CIA officials under the direction of Paul Gaynor and Morse Allen of the agency's Security Research Service (SRS) that oversaw Artichoke, worked closely with Fink in New York City in efforts to thoroughly explore the merits of electroshock techniques for interrogations. The CIA was especially interested in the use of standard electroshock machines in producing amnesia, inducing subjects to talk and making subjects more prone to hypnotic control. According to one CIA document, Fink told officials "an individual could gradually be reduced through the use to electroshock treatment to the vegetable level."

              In addition to Fink, Bender also greatly admired the work of Dr. Lothar B. Kalinowsky, a psychiatrist who also consulted closely with the CIA on electroshock matters. Kalinowsky, who was part Jewish and had fled Germany in 1933, was Fink's close friend and, like Fink, was widely recognized as an expert on electroconvulsive therapy. Kalinowsky met with the CIA's Allen and Gaynor frequently and sometimes was accompanied by Dr. Fink at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where he worked closely with Dr. Hoch.

              While it is clear from Dr. Bender's papers that she also considered the early LSD work of "Dr." Alfred M. Hubbard in Vancouver, Canada, to be "very substantial and beneficial," it is important to state here that Hubbard was not a physician nor did he have any formal medical training. Hubbard, a jovial character who sometimes worked with the FBI and CIA, was a strong proponent of the use of LSD. Despite the fact that he had no medical credentials and once served time in prison for smuggling, he hoodwinked the Sandoz Chemical Co. into supplying him such ample amounts of LSD that he dispersed so widely and abundantly that he earned the title "The Johnny Appleseed of LSD." Hubbard's use of LSD in allegedly curing alcoholism is still cited today. How Hubbard so easily passed as a physician is unknown. Even a 1961 paper published by New York Medical College, Department of Psychiatry, and authored by Dr. A.M. Freedman, cited Hubbard's LSD work with "children, primarily delinquents" to have been 85% successful."

              Other physicians whom Dr. Bender consulted about the effects of LSD on children were Drs. Ronald A. Sandison, Thomas M. Ling and John Buckman. These three worked in England at both the Chelsea Clinic in London and Potwick Hospital in Worcestershire, outside of London. Sandison is credited with having been the first person to bring LSD into England, this in 1952 after he met Albert Hofmann in Basle, Switzerland, at the Sandoz Chemical laboratories. Hofmann handed Sandison a box of around 600 ampules, each containing 100 micrograms of LSD. Back in England, Sandison shared his psychedelic bounty with associates Drs. Ling and Buckman. Before the year was out, Sandison also turned Hubbard on to LSD, guiding Hubbard through his first trip. Sandison also began a new treatment program at the Gothic-looking Potwick facility that he dubbed Psycholytic Therapy. His program's patients were mostly schizophrenics. In 1958, an LSD treatment unit was established at Potwick. Over the years, it has been reported that the CIA, MI6 and the Macy Foundation secretly helped finance the unit. Dr. Elkes helped by raising about $75,000 for the unit's operation. For the next ten years the unit administered over 15,000 doses of LSD to about 900 patients.

              Drs. Buckman and Ling worked closely with Sandison in the Potwick unit. In 1963, Buckman and Ling wrote in a publication, describing "good examples" of the use of LSD in psycholytic psychotherapy: "The patients' experiences under LSD have not supported Marx's dictum that Religion is the opium of the people but rather that there is a deep basic belief in a Supreme Being, whether the religion background be Christian, Jewish or Hindu."

              Dr. Buckman also worked at London's Chelsea Clinic, often times treating adults and sometimes children. Buckman believed strongly that "frigidity" in women could be treated successfully with LSD. In 1967, he said of LSD: "Many therapists believe that a transcendental experience - a feeling that it is a good world and one is a part of it - is a curative experience in itself." According to several informed sources in the London, for years MI6, the British intelligence service and the CIA closely monitored the LSD work conducted by Sandison, Ling and Buckman.

              Two Sisters, LSD and Dr. Buckman

              Marion McGill, today an attorney and college professor in the western United States and her sister, Trudy, were sent in 1960 by their parents to be interviewed by Drs. Ling and Buckman at the Chelsea Clinic in London. At the time, Marion was 13 years old and her sister was 15. Marion says that both her mother and father were "quite taken with the benefits of LSD and thought that we would also benefit from the drug." Both parents had undergone a series of ten LSD "treatments" at the Chelsea clinic. Marion goes on:

                "As a 13-year old at the time, my decision-making capacity was very limited. I was, by nature, fairly compliant and docile, rather eager to please my parents. I understood nothing of what was being suggested for me and my 15 year-old sister - namely that we participate in some sort of 'research' that both our parents had also participated in. Whether the word 'experiment' was used, I don't recall. The term 'LSD' was vaguely familiar, however, because my parents were 'taking' this drug as a form of 'quick therapy' - their term for it - that had been recommended by my uncle, a psychiatrist at a well known east coast medical school. Both parents needed therapy, in my view. While highly successful professionally, my father was a tightly wound, rather angry and insecure man, an accomplished academic, but an 'industrial strength narcissist,' as I later called him. My mother was a submissive, obedient, Catholic woman without much identity of her own, other than being a doctor's wife.

                "My sister and I, however, were about as 'normal' as any two teenagers could be. We were at the top of our classes in school; both of us had lots of friends, participated in extra curricular activities. We didn't need 'therapy.' We were told we would get a day off from school after each overnight stay at the clinic for this LSD. It was perhaps the prospect of a day off from Catholic girls' school that persuaded us to do it. I wasn't aware of making a 'decision.' The purpose of this program was never explained. There were to be 10 sessions - once a week for 10 weeks. I believe they started in January 1960.

                "The experiences at the clinic where the LSD was administered were quite strange. There was a brief 'interview' by Dr. John Buckman, asking banal questions about health issues (none), but providing no information about what to expect from the LSD. There was no mention, for example, of hallucinations or perceptual distortions or anything frightening. I was not informed of any persistent effects, such as nightmares. Certainly the possibility of lasting damage was not mentioned. The word 'experiment' was not used. There was, in other words, no informed consent whatsoever. I was not told that I could refuse to participate, that I could quit at any time (as provided in the Nuremberg Code). Since I was below the age of consent, my parents would have been the ones to agree to this. Indeed, they were the ones to suggest that we be used in these experiments. It would not otherwise have happened. But my parents would never discuss this in later years and never explained why they did it.

                "During the 10 sessions, each of which involved an injection, my sister and I were kept in separate bedrooms, darkened rooms, usually with someone present in the room, but I don't know who the person was. Occasionally, my mother was also present. At times, I was so frightened by the hallucinations that I screamed and tried to escape from the room. I remember once actually reaching the hallway and being forcibly put back into the bedroom by my mother. I saw a wild array of images - nightmarish visions, occasionally provoking hysterical laughter, followed immediately by wracking sobs. I had no idea what was happening to me. It was terrifying.

                "There was no effort to counsel us during or after each of these sessions. There was no 'debriefing,' no explanation of what was happening or why this was being done to us. Why I did not refuse to participate after I first experienced it, I don't know. But as an adult and later as a professional medical ethicist, I recognized this lack of resistance as a function of childhood itself. Most children who are victims of parental abuse do not know how to resist. They fear rejection by parents more than they fear the abuse, it seems. The 'power differential' is huge between parents and children and the dependence on parents is virtually absolute. We were also, living in London at the time, away from our friends. My sister and I had been told not to talk about what we were doing. We were Catholics, obedient to parents, etc. Our father was a doctor, after all - it was hard to grasp that he would do harm to us or that our mother would. Children just don't think this way initially. A child's dependency usually means trusting one's parents or caregivers.

                "Although each individual session was often terrifying, any lasting effects of the LSD unfolded gradually. In the weeks immediately following the final session, I experienced frequent nightmares - visions of crawling insects, horrible masks, etc. I couldn't sleep. I was afraid to shut my eyes. I became afraid of the dark. My parents were dismissive and unsympathetic. Their attitude was, in some ways, more disturbing to me than the experiments themselves because it meant that my parents had known full well that the experience would very likely be frightening - and hadn't cared.

                "I discovered that my parents were dishonest and unfeeling in ways that I could not comprehend. They told my sister and me never to talk about the LSD experiences, never to disclose what had happened in London. This further ruptured our relationship with them, a relationship that was, by then, permanently damaged. I was still dependent on them, however and so was my sister.

                "Two years after these experiments, during her freshman year in college, my sister suffered a nervous breakdown. I don't know the extent to which the LSD may have precipitated this. But my parents' response to what was probably a mild breakdown from which my sister could have recovered, was coercive and drastic. She had been asking questions about the LSD at this time. She was angry about it. We both were. We talked about it together, but I was afraid to confront our parents. My sister was not. The angrier she became, the more she was 'diagnosed' as a 'psychiatric' case and the more medication she was given. To this day, my sister is heavily medicated. She never fully recovered from that first episode.

                "Our parents responded to my sister's anger in a way that frightened me further. I also felt tremendous guilt for not being able to prevent the horrors that my sister endured. Once she was 'classified' as a psychiatric patient, she was lost. Everything that was done to her in the name of 'treatment' seemed to me to be a form of ongoing abuse and torture.

                "The fact that our father was a prominent, internationally known and widely respected physician - and his brother, who had introduced us to this LSD horror, was a prominent, internationally known and widely respected psychiatrist - made it impossible to expose them or go against them. Their reputations were more important to them than the health and well being of my sister.

                "My own response was simply to leave home. I never trusted my parents again after the London LSD experience. I discovered many other ways in which my father and my uncle lied, covered up, dissembled and eventually threatened me, in order to keep this story from being told.

                "On a positive note, the experience informed my career choices in both human rights and medical ethics, but it also made me alert to the ways in which academic medicine was - and is - corrupted by the drug industry itself and by the continuing abuse of human subjects to further the development of drugs as weapons - both for interrogation potential and also, more subtle behavior control on a massive scale. My own experience also sensitized me to the special vulnerability of children and teenagers in the medical environment.

                "Even when I subsequently confronted my father with the evidence that LSD had been tested by the CIA for use as a military weapon in the 1950s and 1960s, he dismissed his participation by saying that it was an 'enlightening experience, like visiting an art gallery.' When I pointed out that this was not my experience as a child, he dismissed it, including the presumption that I must be a 'conspiracy theorist' to propose such a thing. At the age of 91, he finally admitted that it had perhaps not been a very good idea to subject my sister and me to LSD.

                "Dr. Buckman and Ling were knowing participants in ongoing intelligence-based work with mind altering drugs. I 'met' Buckman in London when I was 13, but encountered him again years later at the university medical school in the United States where he was on the faculty.

                "I went to see Dr. Buckman in his office. I asked him what he thought about the ethics of using children in an LSD experiment. At first, he didn't seem to realize who I was. I identified myself as one of his 'subjects' and gave him my business card as a Medical Ethicist and lawyer. He was clearly shocked, stood up, refused to talk to me and told me to leave his office. Shortly thereafter, I received a phone call from my father. His brother, the psychiatrist and colleague of Dr. Buckman, had been alerted to my impromptu visit. Subsequently, both my uncle and my father threatened me, saying they would make sure I lost my university faculty position if I disclosed anything publicly about the LSD experiments in London.

                "'You will never work in bioethics again,' they said.

                "The response of all these men to the threat of disclosure indicates their lack of ethical scruples, their lack of empathy, their own pathology. I don't know what the exact term would be, but I suspect there is a form of psychological 'doubling' at work - the sort of thing that was described in [Robert Jay] Lifton's book, The Nazi Doctors who were able to ignore their Hippocratic oath to 'first, do no harm,' and to inflict unimaginable horrors on their fellow human beings.

                "The loss of my sister has been a life long source of sorrow for me. I attribute it to the LSD and its cover up, whether the chemicals themselves 'caused' her disintegration or not. In law this is called a 'contributing cause.' I learned that people cover up the most awful things, not just within a family but within communities, within universities, within 'polite society.' There is probably no absolute barrier that will prevent these things from being done, but they have to be exposed and called out for what they are, whenever they occur."
                [/list]

                Dr. Bender's LSD Experiments on Children

                Shortly after deciding to initiate her own LSD experiments on children, Bender attended a conference sponsored by a CIA front group, the Josiah Macy Foundation. The conference focused on LSD research and featured Dr. Harold A. Abramson as a presenter. In 1960, Abramson conducted his own LSD experiments on a group of six children ranging in age from five to 14 years of age. A few short months after the Macy Foundation conference, Dr. Bender was notified that her planned LSD experiments would be partially and surreptitiously funded by the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology (SIHE), another CIA front group then located in Forest Hills, New York. The Society, headed by James L. Monroe, a former US Air Force officer who had worked on top-secret psychological warfare and propaganda projects, oversaw about 55 top-secret experiments underwritten by the CIA. These projects involved LSD, ESP, black magic, astrology, psychological warfare, media manipulation, and other subjects. Apparently, Bender's work with children and LSD raised some concerns at the CIA's Technical Services Division (TSD). A 1961 TSD memo written to Monroe questioned the "operational benefits of Dr. Bender's work as related to children and LSD," and requested to be kept "closely appraised of the possible links between Dr. Bender's project and those being conducted under separate MK/ULTRA funding at designated prisons in New York and elsewhere."

                In 1960, Dr. Bender launched her first experiments with LSD and children. They were conducted within the Children's Unit, Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens, New York. The LSD she used was supplied by Dr. Rudolph P. Bircher of the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company. (Dr. Bircher also provided Bender with UML-491, also a Sandoz-produced product, very much like LSD but sometimes "dreamier" in effect and longer lasting.) Her initial group of young subjects consisted of 14 children diagnosed schizophrenic, all under the age of 11. (Because diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, autism, and other disorders have changed over the decades, one cannot assess what actual conditions these children really had.) There were 11 boys and three girls, ranging in age from six to ten years old.

                Jean Marie is almost seven years old. She came here nearly a year ago after her parents abandoned her to the care of an aunt who had no interest in raising her. Marie, who prefers to be called Jean, is shy, withdrawn, and distrustful of most adults she encounters. There are reports she may have been sexually molested by her uncle ... Despite her withdrawn nature she smiles easily, and enjoys the company of other children. After receiving LSD on three occasions earlier this month, Marie ceased smiling at all and lost any interest in others her age ... In the past week, she seems to have become easily agitated and has lost any interest in reading, something she seemed to very much enjoy before treatment.

                In a published report on her 196 LSD experiments with 14 "autistic schizophrenic" children, Bender states she initially gave each of the children 25 mcg. of LSD "intramuscularly while under continuous observation." She writes: "The two oldest boys, over ten years, near or in early puberty, reacted with disturbed anxious behavior. The oldest and most disturbed received Amytal sodium 150 mg. intramuscularly and returned to his usual behavior." Both boys were then excluded from the experiment.

                The 12 remaining children were then given injections of 25 mcg. of LSD and then days later were each given 100 mcg. of LSD once a week. Bender's report states: "Then it was increased gradually to twice and three times a week as no untoward side-effects were noticed.... Finally, it was given daily and this continued for six weeks until the time of this report."

                Bender's findings and conclusions concerning her LSD experiments indicated she found the use of the drug promising. Bender reported: "In general, they [the children] were happier; their mood was 'high' in the hours following the ingestion of the drug ... they have become more spontaneously playful with balls and balloons ... their color is rosy rather than blue or pale and they have gained weight." Bender concluded: "The use of these drugs [LSD, UML-401, UML-491] ... will give us more knowledge about both the basic schizophrenic process and the defensive autism in children and also about the reaction of these dilysergic acid derivatives as central and autonomic nervous system stimulants and serotonin antagonists. Hopefully these drugs will also contribute to our efforts to find better therapeutic agents for early childhood schizophrenia."

                In an article published in 1970, Dr. Bender reported on the results of LSD dosing upon "two adolescent boys who were mildly schizophrenic." She reported that the boys experienced perceptual distortions. They thought the researchers were making faces at them, that their pencils were becoming "rubbery," and one boy reported the other boy's face had turned green. The boys began to complain that they were being experimented upon. Even so, Bender and her associate continued the two male adolescents on a regimen of 150 mcg. per day, in divided doses, of LSD. While one of the boys supposedly "benefited very much," Bender reported that he later returned to the hospital as "a disturbed adult schizophrenic." The other boy kept complaining that he was being experimented upon and they stopped giving him LSD, not because of the drug's effects itself, Bender explained, but "because of the boy's attitude towards it," which she attributed to "his own psychopathology."

                Dr. Bender's LSD experiments continued into the late 1960s and, during that time, continued to include multiple experiments on children with UML-401, a little known LSD-type drug provided to her by the Sandoz Company, as well as UML-491, also a Sandoz product. Bender's reports on her LSD experiments give no indication of whether the parents or legal guardians of the subject children were aware of, or consented to, the experiments. Without doubt, parents or guardians were never informed that the CIA underwrote Bender's work. Over the years, there have been multiple reports that many of Bender's subject children were either "wards of the State" or orphans, but the available literature on the experiments reveals nothing on this. The same literature makes it obvious that the children had been confined to the Creedmoor State Hospital for long periods of time and that many, if discharged, needed "suitable homes or placements in the community." There is also no evidence that any follow-up studies were conducted on any of the children experimented upon by Dr. Bender. Today, Dr. Bender is best known and highly regarded in some circles as the creator of the Bender-Gestalt Test, which measures motor skills in children.

                On Bender's use of LSD on children, Dr. Leon Eisenberg said years later: "She did all sorts of things. Lauretta Bender reached success in her career long before randomized controlled trials had even been heard of. She didn't see the need for trials of drugs because she was convinced she knew what worked." (See: "A History of Autism: Conversations with the Pioneers" by Adam Feinstein, Wiley-Blanchard, 2010.) Many other physicians speaking privately were far less diplomatic in condemning Bender's LSD work, but, still today, many are reluctant to criticize her, and, remarkably, many of the aging stalwarts of the arguable "virtues" and "potential" of LSD continue to cite her work with children as groundbreaking science.

                Today, nearly 60 years beyond the horrors of Dr. Bender's CIA-sponsored experiments on children, few people are aware that they were conducted. For most people, regardless of their awareness of the experiments, it is difficult to fathom how intelligent, highly educated physicians and scientists could partake in such brutal, uncaring, unethical and illegal experiments on children. What was the basis of their motivation? Was it the quest for some sort of elusive medical grail? Was it for economic gain? Or was it simply the result of a misguided search for knowledge that appeared so infinitely important that any sense of compassion and respect for human rights and dignity was cast aside in the name of a higher goal or good - a search at times so exhilarating with the sense that one is at the precipice of a momentous discovery that any semblance of respect for humankind was thrown aside?

                One can easily come to any and all these conclusions simply by reading the professional papers of such scientists and researchers. Not once do any of these papers express concern for the subjects at hand or denote any pangs of conscience at violating any oaths, codes and statutes regarding patient rights, human rights or human dignity. That America's most shameful period of human experimentation, the years 1950 through to about 1979, came on the heels of the making and adoption of the Nuremberg Codes only adds to the shame and hypocrisy. Today, human experimentation is still aggressively conducted by US government-sponsored and employed physicians and scientists regardless of those codes, which came directly out of the shocking madness of the Nazi era. That government-sponsored experimentation still occurs makes a mockery of any governmental efforts, however valid, to protect people from science run amok - and a nation that uses its young, its children, for such pursuits is a nation whose commitment to human rights and democratic principles should be seriously questioned and challenged.

                (The names Marion McGill and that of her sister Trudy, are pseudonyms. Marion is a highly respected attorney and college professor, who asked that her real name not be used in this article. All other names in this article are real.)

                H.P. Albarelli Jr. is the author of "A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments," (TrineDay, 2010). His book documents and details numerous CIA and military sponsored unwitting human experiments. He is a founding member of the North American Truth and Accountability Commission on Human Experimentation.

                Jeff Kaye is a psychologist in San Francisco and an expert on current torture and rendition techniques and developments. He writes on torture and other subjects for Firedoglake and Truthout web sites.



                © 2010 TruthOut.org

                11
                Psych Hospitals / Vermont State Hospital and Dr. Robert W. Hyde
                « on: December 16, 2011, 09:09:41 PM »
                Dr. Robert Hyde is better known for his long term affiliation with MKUltra via the Boston Psychopathic Hospital (renamed as the Massachusetts Mental Health Center some time in the 1950s), and for allegedly being the first person to try LSD in the U.S.

                -------------- • -------------- • --------------

                Rutland Herald
                Evidence suggests CIA funded experiments at state hospital

                By LOUIS PORTER Vermont Press Bureau - Published: November 30, 2008

                Few people in Vermont remember Dr. Robert W. Hyde, but one of his former patients can't forget him. The doctor was involved in one of the nation's darkest chapters in medical science: In the 1950s, Hyde conducted drug and psychological experiments at a Boston hospital through funding that apparently originated with the CIA. Later, he became director of research at the Vermont State Hospital.

                The patient, Karen Wetmore, is convinced that Hyde and other researchers subjected her and possibly other patients to experiments paid for by the CIA at the Waterbury facility.

                In addition to her claim, new evidence, though incomplete, suggests that such tests might have been conducted at the Vermont State Hospital.

                Several books and numerous newspaper accounts have detailed how techniques developed through testing, including on mental health patients at hospitals in other parts of the country, are related to the interrogation methods used in Guantanamo and other locations in the war on terror. These well-known and well-documented drug experiments began in secret after the Korean War and were sponsored by the U.S. government.

                News accounts and histories of the experiments have not mentioned the Vermont State Hospital, but a congressional committee concluded that dozens of institutions, some of which have never been identified, were involved in secret experiments for the CIA.

                A complicated, disturbing story

                Wetmore, who grew up in Brandon and now lives in Rutland, resided at the Vermont State Hospital for extended periods in her teens and early 20s.

                Hyde had a long and distinguished career as a psychiatrist and university researcher before he returned to Vermont in the late 1960s. He died in Bakersfield, his birthplace, in 1976.

                This story centers on the possible intersection of Hyde's research work and Wetmore's experiences at the state hospital. The strands of the narrative, constructed from government documents and her memory, is complicated, confusing and sometimes disturbing.

                Her claim, that the Waterbury hospital was involved in experimentation on patients, has never been reported despite numerous instances in which it could have come to public attention, including a lawsuit that Wetmore settled out of court.

                Further complicating matters is Wetmore's severe memory loss, which she says is the result of her treatment at the Vermont State Hospital where she says she was given experimental drugs, experienced repetitive electroshock therapy and was subjected unwittingly to other tests. Her medical records from the Vermont State Hospital, including daily logs and summaries of her treatment support these claims.

                Another obstacle for Wetmore is the social stigma of mental illness. She says once a patient is committed to a mental hospital, "the first thing they take away from you is your credibility."

                In order to figure out what really happened to her at the Vermont State Hospital and to overcome this credibility gap, Wetmore has spent more than 12 years collecting and analyzing reams of government documents, including state hospital records, declassified CIA paperwork and histories of MK-Ultra, the code name of the CIA's best-known clandestine research projects on mind-control.

                At many points Wetmore reached dead ends: The government denied her requests for certain documents and heavily redacted key evidence from others. Some documents were destroyed.

                In 1997, Wetmore decided to bring a lawsuit against the state. A psychiatrist and a Rutland lawyer agreed to help her with the case and spent months collecting and poring over evidence. They both came to the conclusion that Wetmore was the subject of drug experiments at the hospital.

                Wetmore and her advocates could not unequivocally link her case to the CIA's research activities at other institutions through government documents from the agency, but histories of the CIA's psychiatric testing, other documents and a preponderance of circumstantial evidence around Wetmore's treatment based on her medical records suggest the Vermont State Hospital may have been one of the sites for secret experimentation.

                The CIA destroyed much of the evidence regarding the drug and psychological tests on unwitting patients in the 1970s as the truth about its funding for the tests came to light, according to a 1975 congressional review headed by U.S. Sen. Frank Church.

                Several authors have examined government research programs in other parts of the country, but they have not fingered the Vermont State Hospital as a site for the secret experiments.

                Several striking conclusions have arisen from their research and Wetmore's paper trail:

                • As a teenager, Wetmore was a patient at the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury. While Hyde was not her primary doctor, he at least reviewed her case. She was also treated with powerful drugs, some of which were almost certainly experimental.
                • Hyde was an international pioneer in the development of mind-altering drugs and in their use in treating mental illness. He was involved in research programs sponsored and secretly funded by the CIA and the U.S. military. With an Army psychiatrist, he also conducted research on drugs designed to produce mental illness in healthy people who volunteered for such studies. In 1949, Hyde was an early experimenter with LSD: He volunteered to take the drug himself.
                • The Army psychiatrist, Dr. Max Rinkel, was particularly interested in using LSD to induce in mentally healthy people a schizophrenia-like state. The symptoms exhibited by these test subjects show similarities to those Wetmore experienced, according to her medical records from the Vermont State Hospital.
                • The experiments conducted by Rinkel, Hyde and their associates (sometimes even on themselves) were an important part of secret programs run by and for the CIA to construct "black operations" for prisoner interrogation and other espionage and military uses. "Black ops" were designed to look like civilian programs, even to the researchers, with the CIA gleaning the results.
                • The intelligence funding was often disguised as grants that were passed through organizations or other agencies. Psychiatric researchers at dozens of sites around the country, including state hospitals, prisons and universities, many of which have never been identified, cooperated sometimes knowingly and sometimes unwittingly in research on human test subjects.
                • Finally, official documents Wetmore has uncovered show that the Vermont State Hospital had a history of experimenting with drug treatments on its patients. At least one of those experiments, which predated Hyde's tenure at the hospital, was financed by the federal agencies identified by researchers as a conduit for money for the CIA "black-ops" experimentation. In addition, the Vermont State Hospital doctors were corresponding about that grant work with Dr. John Gittinger, a CIA scientist in Washington, D.C.

                Many of the people affiliated with the Vermont State Hospital in the 1960s and 1970s when Hyde worked at the Waterbury facility said they do not believe or do not have evidence that either the hospital or Hyde carried out such experiments on patients at the Waterbury facility. Few of the individuals interviewed for this story were willing to speak on the record; many of the most important potential sources are now deceased.

                The Vermont State Hospital's current director, Terry Rowe, said she is not familiar with the questions Wetmore raises.

                "This is information that was unknown to me," Rowe said. "I don't know it if is valid or not."

                It is also important to note that although the experiments represent an ugly period in American psychiatric research, they were followed by a revolution in the field of mental health. In some instances, the same scientists who were involved in CIA-funded experiments also conducted the research that has led to the development of drug therapies that have enabled many patients to live comparatively normal lives.

                This phenomenon in turn has allowed mental hospitals and other institutions around the nation to significantly reduce the number of patients who require 24-hour care.

                A researcher's dark connections

                The trail linking Karen Wetmore's treatment at Vermont State Hospital to the CIA is twisting, sometimes nearly impossible to follow and for the most part cold, but what kept Wetmore going was the recurring and distinctive footprint of Dr. Robert Hyde.

                Hyde was 25 when he graduated as a Reserve Officer Training Corps student at the University of Vermont's school of medicine in 1935. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and worked as an intern at the Marine Hospital in New Orleans.

                He later became a researcher at Boston University and Harvard University and assistant superintendent at Boston Psychopathic, a hospital associated with Harvard now known as the Massachusetts Mental Health Center – and one of the key institutions connected to the CIA research. Hyde then served as assistant superintendent at Butler Health Center in Providence, R.I., before returning to Vermont as director of research at Vermont State Hospital.

                Hyde died on Aug. 1, 1976, leaving a widow and no children. He was, in the words of a co-worker at the Waterbury hospital, "a sweetheart."

                He also was an intellectual adventurer. In 1949, while serving as assistant superintendent at Boston Psychopathic, he experimented on himself, taking what many believe to be the first acid trip in America.

                "There is no way of determining who was the first American to take LSD. But one of the earliest was a Boston doctor named Robert Hyde," Jay Stevens wrote in "Storming Heaven," a history of the drug. "What followed was fascinating. Right before their eyes, Hyde, the even-keeled Vermonter, turned into a paranoiac, as a swarm of little suspicions — why are those people smiling? Was that a door closing? — began eating away at his composure."

                It was Hyde's colleague, Rinkel, who is credited with bringing the first batch of LSD into the United States. Earlier in 1949, Rinkel had obtained a supply of LSD from Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland, where it was developed, and brought it home with him to Boston Psychopathic. Rinkel and Hyde went on to organize an LSD study at the facility in which they tested the drug on 100 volunteers, reporting their initial findings in May 1950 at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.

                So began the scientific foray into an aspect of mental health research that struggled for funding, although it eventually produced revolutionary breakthroughs in the field. The new drug therapies led to a significant reduction in the number of institutionalized mental patients nationwide. At the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury the shift has been dramatic. Once there were 1,200 patients housed at the facility; now it treats about 50.

                Long before the Boston researchers' work laid the foundation for those groundbreaking psychiatric studies, it garnered attention from another, less benign profession. Soon after the Rinkel-Hyde report appeared in the APA journal, the CIA became interested in the researchers' work, according to Stevens and others who have researched the subject.

                "Early on they contacted Rinkel and Hyde at Mass. Mental Health, and with Hyde as the principal contact began pouring as much as $40,000 a year into LSD research," Stevens wrote.

                The CIA and the U.S. military had their own reasons for wanting to finance such experiments, an interest dating at least to the Korean War when American prisoners of war were subjected to various psychiatric drugs.

                In the 1950s, the New York Times, reporting on congressional hearings and studies of the effect of Communist interrogation of U.S. prisoners, wrote: "Chinese Communist attempts to create confusion, disloyalty and doubts about this country's role were highly effective among American prisoners captured during the Korean War, an Army psychiatrist said here today."

                The article went on to report on the 1950 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association and on Rinkel's research "based on the experimental reproduction of mental illness in 100 normal volunteers. The illness, similar to schizophrenia, was induced by small dosages of the chemical d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)."

                More recently, since the United States launched the war on terror, government use of earlier research into mind-altering drugs and torture-resistance techniques for U.S. soldiers have come under scrutiny. Military interrogators employ related tactics at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at other sites around the world, according to articles in the New York Times, the New Yorker magazine and a book by New Yorker staffer Jane Mayer, "The Dark Side."

                The Korean War torture methods were outlined in a chart published in a 1957 Air Force study.

                "The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guanatanmo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency," according to a New York Times report in 2008.

                Another recent mention of the connection between "spies and shrinks" was made in an Oct. 18 Newsweek article.

                "The ties go back decades, to the early years of the Cold War when psychologists helped the CIA experiment on U.S. citizens with mind-altering drugs. The relationship has warmed and cooled over the years, heating up whenever defense or intelligence officials wanted better mind-control methods, ways to direct people's behavior or detect deception," according to the magazine.

                The quote came from an article about Steven Reisner, a psychologist who is vying to become head of the American Psychological Association. Reisner wants to end cooperation of the organization's members with interrogators.

                It's not clear Rinkel and Hyde knew the CIA and U.S. military were secretly financing their work — although histories of the subject make the case that they did.

                Their colleagues and friends, however, insist the researchers did not collude with military intelligence.

                In 1977, in response to an investigation into the CIA experiments, Harold Pfautz wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times defending his own research — funded in part by the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, an MK-Ultra front — and that of Hyde.

                Pfautz wrote: "I know that I (and I am convinced that Dr. Robert W. Hyde, then superintendent of the Butler Health Center, as well as my other colleagues) had no knowledge of the CIA auspices and functions of the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology. In a word this was a 'black' operation — deceptive and intended to deceive — on the part of the government and addressed to me as a citizen."

                No one has specifically looked at whether MK-Ultra experiments occurred in Vermont. Former employees, attorneys and doctors familiar with the facility and its patients, as well as researchers who have studied case histories of the hospital's patients, have all said they found no evidence of unethical experimentation before Hyde returned to the hospital or after that would lead them to believe that the institution had been used for MK-Ultra experimentation.

                Among the strongest defenders of Hyde's reputation is Lois Sabin, who was an administrator at the hospital for years and served for a time as director of nursing education.

                Sabin is adamant that Hyde left his interest in experimental research behind him when he returned to Vermont to work at the state hospital.

                "He was a very brilliant man and a great asset at the hospital," said Sabin, who is now retired and still lives in Waterbury. "I thought he was a sweetheart. He was very, very knowledgeable."

                A trail of missing documents

                Conclusive answers to the many questions Hyde's history raises may never be known: many of the documents concerning the CIA funding, the front organizations and the drug experiments on mental health patients have been destroyed. In addition, many of those who were involved in the programs or may have known about them have died.

                A 1994 Government Accounting Office report on the clandestine research notes that at least 15 of the 80 facilities around North America known to have participated in the research remain unidentified and may never be, while others, including Boston Psychopathic Hospital and McGill University in Montreal, are well-known.

                In the McGill case, a prominent Albany, N.Y., psychiatrist, Ewen Cameron, was accused of working for the CIA and performing experiments on patients in a mental hospital there in the 1950s and 1960s.

                According to a book on the subject by John Marks, "Patients of Dr. Cameron were subjected to a regimen that included heavy doses of LSD and barbiturates, the application of powerful electric shocks two or three times a day, and prolonged periods of drug-induced sleep." In 1988, the U.S. government paid nine former patients $750,000 to settle a lawsuit in the matter, and the Canadian government has also paid dozens of compensation claims.

                Wetmore is convinced that mind-altering experiments were also conducted at the Vermont State Hospital.

                Some of the procedures used in Cameron's experiments, specifically electroshock and drug therapies, appear to be similar to those that appear on Wetmore's medical charts at the state hospital.

                To support her claim, Wetmore cites a report on the results of a federal research grant for schizophrenia and the use of tranquilizers that was undertaken at the Vermont hospital in the late 1950s. The report was written long before Hyde became director of research at the state hospital and before Wetmore was a patient there.

                This research project included experimental use of the use of tri-fluoperazine on patients at the Waterbury hospital, an antipsychotic drug that is still used for some schizophrenia sufferers.

                The study reported disturbing results, including: "On the third day, the charge attendant said, 'It's like old times. It's bedlam.' "

                "Thirteen patients were suffering severe withdrawal reactions indistinguishable clinically from a moderate withdrawal reaction following long-term ingestion of morphine," according to the study results. Later in the study an attendant said nine patients were "constantly pacing back and forth like caged lions."

                One of the consultants working on the study was Dr. Milton Greenblatt, who was also assistant superintendent at Massachusetts Mental Health Center — the former Boston Psychopathic, where Hyde was assistant superintendent.

                An even more direct link is in a report on a personality study at the Vermont State Hospital between 1963 and 1966 titled, "The Use of Programmed Instruction with Disturbed Students" and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The institute was one of the cover organizations used to conceal the source of funding for various CIA projects. These groups also paid for research unrelated to military or espionage studies.

                The study lists a Washington, D.C., address, 1834 Connecticut Ave. N.W., as a source for personality-testing information. That address is identified as a front for the spy agency in Marks' book about the CIA's experimental work, "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate."

                The top CIA psychologist, John Gittinger, developed this personality assessment test that, according to Marks, became a centerpiece of the agency's psychological work.

                The researchers in the Vermont hospital program not only used Gittinger's test; they also sent him results of their own trials, according to a report on the research grant written by Vermont State Hospital doctors.

                So, was the Vermont State Hospital one of the institutions used by researchers to perform now-discredited experiments on hapless mental patients like Karen Wetmore? She believes absolutely that it was; others say they doubt it.

                The evidence is circumstantial and incomplete. Unless someone brings a case to court that breaks down the barriers that have been erected by the CIA, conclusive answers to questions Wetmore and the documentation she has gathered raises are unlikely.

                A patient on a quest

                The first time Wetmore was admitted to the Vermont State Hospital she was just a young girl.

                "It's the only time I ever saw my father cry," she said recently.

                A troubled child, Wetmore had been treated at outpatient mental health clinics, but her illness persisted. At 13, after she threatened her mother and was found wandering confusedly in the halls of her school in Brandon, Wetmore was committed to the Waterbury hospital for a little less than a year in 1965-1966 and again between 1970 and 1972.

                Now in her mid-50s, Wetmore, is physically frail and drawn looking. She lives alone in Rutland and is still in therapy. She speaks hesitantly when she talks about what little she recalls of her experiences at the Vermont State Hospital.

                In the intervening years, Wetmore has tried to trace the cause of her mental illness. She believes several traumas may have triggered her lifelong struggle with multiple personality disorder (a dissociative disorder in which the sufferer often compartmentalizes memories and aspects of their personality) and a form of extreme anxiety, a condition her doctors referred to as "hysteria" in the 1960s.

                Wetmore says that as a child she remembers seeing someone die in a fire. She also says she was traumatized by sexual abuse that she believes was perpetrated by a family friend. She attempted suicide twice as a young woman.

                When she was 15, Wetmore seemed well enough to be released from the Waterbury hospital. Looking back, she says she seemed to be recovering from her mental illness.

                She had been out of the Vermont State Hospital for two years when she was engaged to an 18-year-old from Brandon. In 1969, her fiancé was killed in a car accident.

                "That pretty much did it for me," Wetmore said.

                Over the next few years, she was in and out of the state hospital, and she was eventually transferred to the psychiatry ward of Mary Fletcher in Burlington. Wetmore was 20 when she was finally released in 1972.

                Wetmore's road to mental health has been difficult. She attempted suicide before and after her time in the hospital and was held in the psychiatry ward at Rutland Regional Hospital several times, including after her stints at the state hospital.

                Gradually, she gained control of her life, though even now there are long periods of her personal history she cannot remember. To retrace her forgotten steps she has documented what happened to her through medical records starting in the mid-1990s. Now boxes of documents and shelves of books line a closet in the Rutland apartment where she lives.

                "We had to go through hell and high water to get my medical records," she said.

                Dr. Thomas Fox, the Rutland doctor who treated Wetmore, was so appalled by the nature of her state hospital treatment records that he agreed to help her with a lawsuit against the state in 1997. Fox, who also became a top mental health official with the state of New Hampshire before his death, had never before agreed to be an expert witness in a civil litigation.

                A 140-page deposition and an outline by Fox show that he concluded that Wetmore was an unwitting subject of experimental testing while she was a patient at the Vermont State Hospital.

                "Although Plaintiff was not schizophrenic or otherwise psychotic, she was treated with medication as if she were. Even though it was noted by the Defendants early on that she was allergic to these medications, that they would alter her behavior adversely, and that they would cause her permanent damage and even threaten her life, she was involuntarily administered massive doses of these drugs throughout the periods of her confinement," according to Wetmore's lawsuit. "Plaintiff was kept almost constantly in seclusion, often bound with wristlets behind her back, and left to lie unattended and unrelieved, naked on a tile floor."

                "I became convinced, based on the record, that Karen had been mistreated at certain phases of her treatment in (Waterbury), and that, from a professional standpoint, the way in which we police ourselves, the way in which we keep each other ethical and competent, when we identify that, we (members of our profession) should do something about it," Fox said in a deposition in the lawsuit to Wetmore and the state's lawyer. "That's my feeling, you should act on it."

                He wrote in an outline that he prepared for her lawsuit in 2000: "I must conclude, in my opinion, that Karen was involved in drug experimentation without her knowledge or consent."

                Fox said he reached this conclusion because at the hospital Wetmore was kept in "seclusion" or isolation for extended periods of time — apparently for weeks at a stretch during a period of months. She was given placebos, and her medications were changed, indicating there was an experimental aspect to her care, he wrote.

                Moreover, the treatment Wetmore received did not follow standard treatment for "hysteria," the diagnosis that Fox said would have been most supported by her symptoms. Wetmore has also been diagnosed at the hospital with multiple personality syndrome — an assessment she agrees with — and schizophrenia, which she and Fox both said was not accurate. Treatment for schizophrenia is significantly different from care for a multiple personality syndrome diagnosis.

                While at the hospital Wetmore was given electroshock treatment — sometimes many times a day according to her medical records — and Metrazol, a drug that can induce seizures and whose federal approval has since been revoked.

                She was also subjected to other treatments, including with other medications and shock treatment, the nature of which are still not fully known.

                Fox also noted that during the periods in which Wetmore was there the Vermont State Hospital was engaged in drug research.

                In the midst of building her lawsuit, Wetmore realized she had to drop it because of her failing physical health. She had a heart attack, her second. Wetmore, who still has several serious physical health problems, reached a private settlement with the state instead, according to Alan George, her attorney.

                George, a sometime utility lawyer who practices in Rutland, said recently that because of the strength of the case he was very reluctant to accept that settlement agreement.

                "I didn't really want to drop that suit," George remembered. "I thought we had a pretty solid suit, frankly."

                Wetmore's lawsuit, based on the hard evidence required for a court of law, did not delve into what she believes to be the connections between her case and CIA research at the hospital.

                Fox steered clear of that aspect of the case in his work with Wetmore, he said in the deposition for her lawsuit.

                "I didn't find it germane to what I viewed as my task. It was outside the scope of what I perceived the issues to be," he said.

                "We never really got to the bottom of that (CIA connection). We did not try the case based on some grand, national conspiracy even though Karen had connected some of the dots," George said.

                George said they chose not to pursue her theories about the CIA in part because most of the people were dead by the time the lawsuit was filed. Even so, George said, some aspects of Wetmore's treatment were very strange.

                "The whole regimen of drug therapy ... was bizarre," he said. Furthermore, the background of some of those involved or consulted about the research at the hospital did strike George as odd.

                "There is no question about who these characters were and what they were involved in," he said. "But all of that was guilt by association."

                On the other side of this equation, though, are various mental health professionals in Vermont, including former state Mental Health Commissioner Jonathan Leopold, who in 1971 wrote a letter to Wetmore's worried mother reassuring her that her daughter was undergoing treatment and doctors, including Dr. Robert Hyde, were reviewing her case.

                He also wrote: "Her behavior was very difficult and at times she represented a real danger to herself and to others. She was never, of course, left for three days and nights unattended in a separate room as all patients are taken out at frequent intervals for care and exercise and an opportunity to use the toilets."

                Wetmore's daily logs of her hospital stay and medical records appear to contradict that statement.

                Whatever the connections between the federal government and what happened to Wetmore in the state hospital, the experience has left Wetmore physically frail, but as determined as ever to find out what really happened to her.

                Wetmore says she doesn't think mental health patients should ever be involved, even when they apparently give consent, in psychological experiments no matter how beneficial they may be to society. Her experience, she says, is proof of how such studies can damage the life of a vulnerable person.


                © 2011 Rutland Herald

                12
                News Items / NATSAP Partners with John Reuben's STICC
                « on: December 14, 2011, 05:52:57 PM »
                A press release on NATSAP's website:

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                NATSAP Partners with Like-Minded Nonprofit Dedicated to "Saving Teens"
                September 15, 2011 · By Sara Yokie

                Bethesda, MD, February 28, 2011 — The National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs (NATSAP), a not-for-profit membership organization composed of residential treatment centers, therapeutic boarding schools, and wilderness programs geared primarily to assist troubled teenagers and their families, has announced a partnership with Saving Teens In Crisis Collaborative (STICC), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2004 to assist families of teens struggling with substance abuse and other emotional issues. The partnership will help families who could not otherwise afford services for their troubled teens get the help they so desperately need.

                "We are delighted to announce this partnership," said Cliff Brownstein, Executive Director of NATSAP. "Our organization has been looking to work together with another nonprofit for some time, specifically to help less fortunate families. STICC's 501(c)(3) designation allows them to accept charitable contributions as a foundation, whereas we cannot, so this partnership provides a perfect solution."

                STICC works with health organizations, educational consultants, wilderness programs, boarding schools, rehabilitation centers and educational lawyers to fund and support families who need therapeutic intervention for their struggling teens. Most of STICC's funds come from families who have sought help through professionals or attended programs, have achieved excellent results, and are then looking for a way to help other families access these opportunities as well. Many professionals and programs will subsequently provide partial scholarships for the family.

                NATSAP had previously looked into starting their own nonprofit foundation that could accept donations, but decided that partnering with an already established one with proven results was a more efficient way to achieve their goals. NATSAP reviewed several well-qualified organizations with missions comparative to STICC, and finally determined that STICC matched their criteria, both from a mission and a results standpoint.

                Under the partnership, STICC will serve as an independent foundation arm of the NATSAP organization. NATSAP will actively recommend Saving Teens to its member programs as the preferred outlet for philanthropic donations. NATSAP's member programs will be encouraged to utilize Savings Teens as the recipient of any family or program donations or fundraising events. These donations will be tax-deductable.

                "It is a great honor to work with NATSAP and be referred by them as an organization that is worthy of their trust," said STICC Founder and President John Reuben. "This relationship will enable Saving Teens to reach many more people who understand the value of the high quality care that NATSAP member programs offer families. We hope to present an opportunity to them to contribute to Saving Teens, and its mission of making these invaluable services available to less fortunate families."


                Copyright © ·  Web Sites for Business by Taking Aim Marketing

                13
                Feed Your Head / ASTART Report: Treatment Research Lacks Good Science
                « on: December 09, 2011, 08:22:41 PM »
                An oft-cited "research study" in Aspen Ed marketing literature and web presence is the "Report of Findings from a Multi-Center Study of Youth Outcomes in Private Residential Treatment" by Ellen Behrens and Kristin Satterfield.

                This "report of findings" never made it to publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Rather, after its debut at the 114th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (New Orleans, Louisiana; August 12, 2006), Aspen opted to "publish" it via copious use in their marketing and promotional materials.

                ASTART has recently come out with a Report of their own which seriously questions the scientific soundness, perhaps also the scientific validity, of many of the "findings" of the Behrens & Satterfield Report.

                Here's ASTART's email announcement thereof:

                -------------- • -------------- • --------------

                ASTART Report: Treatment Research Lacks Good Science

                We at ASTART have long been concerned about deceptive tactics used to market teen residential programs, and the dearth of research on the effectiveness of residential programs. One study of wilderness programs is frequently cited in youth residential treatment marketing and promotional materials: a study by Ellen Behrens and Kristin Satterfield.

                ASTART has released a new report detailing the problems with this research, including:

                • Conflicts of interest
                • Flaws in methodology
                • Questionable findings

                Further, industry websites make several claims about the findings and their meaning that go far beyond what the data show, and that our experts believe are misleading to parents, providers and youth.

                ASTART invites advocates, colleagues and supporters to read and share our new report, and access more resources at our website.

                Read: Treatment Research Lacks Good Science
                Visit: http://www.astartforteens.org
                Support: Help ASTART Protect Teens and Families
                Contact: Email ASTART

                Thank you!

                14
                From a blog associated with the Seattle Weekly:

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                The Daily Weekly

                Crime & Punishment
                Safeway Fires Security Guard for Harshly Interrogating 4-Year-Old Shoplifter

                By Curtis Cartier · Fri., Nov. 25 2011 at 10:00 AM


                Savannah "Sticky Fingers" Sharp

                Kids these days. Let 'em steal a couple dried apricots at age four and by age five they're robbing the place at gunpoint. That's why an Everett Safeway security guard nipped a four-year-old future career criminal in the bud.

                KOMO reports that four-year-old Savannah Sharp went to the Everett Safeway and decided to sample a few apricots from a bag on the shelf. The toddler apparently ripped open a bag, popped a few of the healthy treats into her maw and put the bag back on the shelf and walked away.

                Little did she know the security guard had clocked her for what she was as soon as she came in.

                  . . . The guard stopped the pair as they left the store and led them back to a break room.

                  "He proceeded to tell them 'Your daughter stole and she's banned from the store, and we're pressing charges. And she needs to sign this form saying she understands she can't come into any Safeways,'" Alissa Jones said.
                [/size]
                After demanding that the toddler sign the form saying she'd keep out of Safeway, the child's father informed the guard that the girl couldn't really read or write yet, but the man was unmoved. He had the girl scribble her name down on the form as best she could.

                The higher ups at Safeway got wind of the incident through the child's parents, who were pretty pissed off about the whole affair, and soon the security guard was out of a job.

                Safeway spokesperson Cherie Myers said that the company was "appalled" by the guard's behavior.

                The little girl, meanwhile, is offering a Black Friday special today on mint Rolex watches going at the bodega on Aurora and 42nd.

                Tags: child stealing, Safeway 4-year-old shoplifter, Safeway shoplift, shoplift


                ©2011 Seattle Weekly, LLC.

                15
                News Items / Long time JD officer charged: sexual assault, multi counts
                « on: November 29, 2011, 12:08:13 PM »
                So... ya think your daughter is at least safe, 'cuz she's locked up in juvie?

                Sometimes people get attracted to positions of power for all the wrong reasons.

                In this first article, they still didn't know who he was...

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                KING 5 News
                Serial groper targeting women in Parkland



                by KING 5 News
                Posted on November 21, 2011 at 2:41 PM
                Updated Monday, Nov 21 at 10:27 PM


                SEATTLE – Detectives are trying to find a man who has been groping unsuspecting women in Parkland, near Pacific Lutheran University, over the past three weeks.

                The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department says, in most of the incidents, the victims were walking alone along the side of the road when the suspect walked up behind them. The suspect grabbed the victims on their buttocks or breasts, then walked away.

                Investigators are hoping to catch the suspect before the attacks escalate into rape or some other violent attack, said Det. Ed Troyer with the Pierce County Sheriff's Office.

                The six incidents reported so far happened on the following dates and locations:

                • 10:30 p.m. on Saturday October 30th, 2011, in the 800 block of 115th St. S.
                • 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday November 2nd, 2011, in the 12100 block of C St. S.
                • 7:25 p.m. on Tuesday November 8th, 2011, in the 12000 block of Park Ave. S.
                • 4:45 p.m. on Tuesday November 8th, 2011, in the 12000 block of Yakima Ave. S.
                • 2:00 a.m. on Friday November 18th, 2011, in the 12400 block of Park Ave. S.
                • 12:30 a.m. on Sunday November 20th, 2011, in the 12300 block of C St. S.

                The suspect is a light-skinned black male in 20s. He is about 5-feet 7-inches tall with a slender build and facial hair stubble. He was wearing a dark, hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans during some of the incidents.

                "I've lived here for four year and nothing that scary has ever happened, but this is kind-of scary," said Hanna Gunderson, a PLU student.

                All of the incidents took place off-campus, within a few blocks of the university.  The school has sent alerts to students, encouraging them to avoid walking alone.  The school has an escort service that can either walk or drive students from place to place.

                Ed Cedras owns Northern Pacific Coffee Company, which is within a few blocks of all the groping incidents.

                "Obviously, my primary concern is the safety of my staff, especially my female staff," he said.

                Cedras will make sure no employees walk to their cars alone until the suspect is caught.

                A $1,000 reward is being offered through Crimestoppers for information leading to an arrest and charges filed in the case. Callers can remain anonymous. Call 253-591-5959.


                © 2009-2011 King Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of Belo Corp.

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