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Topics - FLCLcowdude

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1
The Ridge Creek School / Hidden Lake Academy / What the fuck...
« on: January 05, 2008, 01:39:17 AM »
Anything new?

2
The Ridge Creek School / Hidden Lake Academy / You gotta be shitting me.
« on: October 20, 2007, 07:16:55 PM »
Guess who is back?

http://www.hiddenlakeacademy.com/loadPr ... userID=245

Mr. Jose Chalas himself.

Remember the guy who used to work restrictions?

3
The Troubled Teen Industry / AJC Article
« on: September 21, 2007, 07:20:09 PM »
Teen's turnaround gives family a cause

By Bill Sanders
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/20/07

John Brocard is sitting in his den, reading his Bible and waiting for the kidnappers.

It's 2:45 a.m. on a school night. He left the garage door open and the downstairs lights on, just as he agreed he would.

His wife and three kids are tucked in their beds.

By time the kidnappers walk in, John is resigned to what is about to happen.

He's crying as he approaches the men who will take his 16-year-old son. Yes, he tells them. He'll keep his wife, Fair Brocard, out of the way.

With the two kidnappers following, John walks upstairs, opens Bubba's bedroom door and flips the light switch.

"These men are here to take you," John tells his son. "Go with them."

One of the kidnappers tells Bubba that he's a former Golden Gloves boxing champion and will restrain him if needed.

Bubba, bleary-eyed, knows fighting would be fruitless. So he surrenders, both physically and emotionally.

He throws on a pair of pants and a shirt. No time for toiletries or a change of clothes.

The two men get Bubba into their car and drive to the airport, where they fly him 1,000 miles from home.

By the time Bubba goes to sleep again, he's in Loa, Utah, in a place where, at once, the earth's natural beauty beckons and its rugged terrain forewarns.

It's been almost 10 years since the scene played out in the Brocards' home in east Cobb County.

That night, May 12, 1998, changed forever not only Bubba and his parents, but eventually, the lives of hundreds of other families whom the Brocards have counseled because of what they went through with Bubba. Even so, it's still a hard story for them to recount.

Imagine being so desperate to save your teenager that you arrange a middle-of-the-night kidnapping at your home.

Bubba had become a menace. He punched holes in walls during outbursts of rage. He got drunk and belligerent one day, high and aloof the next.

"He was totally out of control," John Brocard said. "He was using marijuana, was drinking alcohol, lying, stealing and manipulating us. He would verbally abuse me and cuss at me in front of my wife and challenge me to fight.

"His constant outbursts of anger and rage scared his older sister and younger brother to the point they were afraid to be around him. His mood affected our whole household and our marriage."

The ensuing weeks weren't easy. Bubba was at a program called the Aspen Achievement Academy. He was angry at first. Ultimately, he accepted it.

Bubba spent every day hiking and camping, every night sleeping under the stars. Not once during those eight weeks was he able to bathe in a real shower or put on deodorant. For the first couple of weeks, he talked with no one back home. He was constantly counseled about how to communicate without fighting.

"The first few days, I was in shock," Bubba Brocard, now 25, recalled recently.

"When my thoughts came to me, I realized I was there for a reason. It was kind of a relief for me. Dad saw it in my eyes as I was leaving, but I couldn't sense that then. But getting away from everything, all the kids I was running around with, and taking a step back to look what I was doing is what I needed."

After eight weeks, Bubba came home. The gamble, John Brocard found, had paid off.

'We were broken'

Bubba Brocard went on to graduate from Wheeler High School, then Kennesaw State University and is now a salesman with a company that sells and rents uniforms. But the Brocards' risk, it turned out, didn't just change Bubba. It had changed his parents.

John and Fair Brocard soon learned they couldn't go on as if nothing had happened. Gradually, John realized work as a corporate lawyer was unfulfilling. Fair's job in the Johnson Ferry Baptist Church children's ministry no longer seemed as important as helping parents in need.

It seemed everywhere they looked, the Brocards saw families being ripped apart. Every time, it opened a painful sore.

They decided to embrace the hurt.

John Brocard would represent troubled juveniles; Fair would counsel their parents and invite them to participate in a Bible-based support group. It started with getting involved in the lives of friends they knew that were going through hard times with their children. In time, it became the nonprofit organization Prodigal Child Ministries.

"We've seen our child hit bottom," John Brocard said recently. "We're about putting lives back together now. We want to reach out to help kids in crisis, but to also teach the parents that it's not always their fault. They can be freed from that. They need to be freed from that.

"We were broken people. None of this was because we were strong. It was God's grace seeing us through it."

From hostage to escort

To many families, the Brocards have been a godsend. Ask Gary and Ella Givens.

Their story was similar enough to the Brocards, a stable family with a child who was brought up to know the difference between right and wrong, yet somehow chose wrong.

Lindsey Givens became a cocaine addict shortly after graduating from Georgia Tech, her parents said.

The Givenses, who live in Acworth, didn't know the Brocards. In a matter of days, they learned of them, got to know them, then trusted their lives to what they had to say.

"We knew very little about programs, where to go, what to do, etc., but a friend who had a daughter with similar issues told us about the Brocards and gave us their number," Gary Givens said recently. "This was on a Thursday morning. Ella [Givens] immediately contacted them and asked a hundred questions. They were so helpful and patient, providing much guidance, concern and love even though we had never met them.

"They recommended a place in Utah, gave us contacts and numbers and by the grace of God, on Saturday morning, Lindsey and I were on a flight and the path to recovery."

Lindsey wasn't taken against her will. Most who go there aren't. But once there, her experience was very similar to Bubba's, which was as hard on Mom and Dad as it was on Lindsey.

"The next several months were some of the hardest we ever had to endure in our lives. So many things happening, very little contact with Lindsey, by design. During that time, John and Fair were always there to answer our questions, comforting us and giving us hope and giving us sound advice to cope with this period. We set up a group of prayer warriors who we would update continually and ask for their prayers, and the Brocards were always there when we needed them."

Fair Brocard did some quick math —- 20 families a year, times 8 years —- for the number they've had in their groups.

"But there's many more that we've not had in a group, but counseled and given out information on various camps to," she said.

Like Bubba, Lindsey has come out the other side, clean, sober and stronger than ever.

A few years ago, before Bubba Brocard went into sales, he worked for the Center for Safe Youth, a program similar to the Utah one he attended. He was an "escort."

Escort sounds so much friendlier than kidnapper. But kidnapping is the term John and Fair Brocard still use.

Bubba Brocard admits it's more like a kidnapping than a guided tour.

"It was a reward and a nightmare at same time to be working with them," Bubba said. "I knew how I felt when I was escorted, and it wasn't good. I felt a lot of kids that I transported felt same way. They'd say: 'I can't believe you do this as a job.' They'd lash out at me pretty good. But I was there because I believed in the program and knew it could help these kids, and that's what I'd tell them."

Bubba Brocard speaks to some of the adults and kids that his parents work with and has decided that sharing his story is more beneficial than hiding it.

What he does, what his parents do, it all seems natural to Bubba now.

"If you'd have asked me 10 years ago, could I see myself sharing this story, or being an escort, or seeing my parents change career course, I never would have guessed it."

4
The Troubled Teen Industry / Need some help
« on: August 23, 2007, 11:45:26 PM »
Hey, I have a former HLAer that is about to be sent away again. I need some help talking her parents out of this. PM me.

5
The Ridge Creek School / Hidden Lake Academy / HLA grad
« on: August 23, 2007, 11:17:51 PM »
Hey, this girl I know from HLA posted this myspace bulletin saying the following...

Quote
i think i might be getting sent away again but fuck it i don't care well i do cuz i won't have as much freedom, but at the same time i don't care. the only reason i wanted to be home is kind of gone!!! and i don't think it will be coming back but i have a week well kind of less then a week but ya i don't think its gonna work so w/e if i get sent away again ill just leave in 11 months and drop out of school fuck it and maybe even change my name so no one can find me and i mean no one like im gonna really start my life over by meeting all new people and not communicating with anyone in the past when i say past i mean now, well if it happens thats how its gonna be im bein 100% real there ant gonna be no more paula!!!! you damn right


I sent her a message back saying to message me, but I might need some help from you guys.

6
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- This might help explain why teenagers act like, well, teenagers.

Researchers reported Sunday that a hormone produced by the body in response to stress, that normally serves to calm adults and younger children, instead increases anxiety in adolescents.

They conducted experiments with female mice focusing on the hormone THP that demonstrated this paradoxical effect, and described the brain mechanism that explains it.

If, as the scientists suspect, the same thing happens in people, the phenomenon may help account for the mood swings and anxiety exhibited by many adolescents, they said.

"Teenagers don't go around crazy all the time," said lead researcher Sheryl Smith, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, in a telephone interview.

"But it really is a mood swing where things seem fine and calm, and then the next thing is someone's crying or angry," she added. "And I think that's why people have used the term 'raging hormones."'

Smith's team reported the research in Sunday's issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Increased suicide risk

"Responses to stressful events are amplified, and anxiety and panic disorder first emerge at this time, being twice as likely to occur in girls as in boys," they wrote. "In addition, suicide risk increases in adolescence, despite the use of adult-based medical strategies."

THP, also called allopregnanolone, generally serves as a natural tranquilizer. It is not produced immediately with stress, but rather several minutes later, and calms neural activity to reduce anxiety and assist the individual in adapting and functioning amid stress.

"It's not the immediate fight-or-flight response," Smith said. "And it's thought to be one way that we all can compensate for stress, so we just stay focused and don't go crazy, sort of focus on our task."

Smith's team examined brain activity and behavior in mice before puberty, during puberty and as adults.
Claustrophobic mice

The researchers subjected the mice to a stressful event by suddenly placing them inside a plexiglass container just slightly larger than a mouse's body -- sort of a claustrophobic experience -- and keeping them there for 45 minutes.

"Twenty minutes after stress, both the young mice and the adult mice showed less anxiety. But the pubertal mice showed more anxiety," Smith said.

Further experiments attributed this increased excitability to the effects of THP, the researchers said. THP acts on brain cells via molecular doorways known as receptors.

During adolescence, mice have the usual receptors, but also extra-high levels of a second kind that brings an anxious, rather than calming, response when THP attaches to it.

"The parallel with humans is that in humans there are similar hormonal changes going on in puberty," Smith said.

"So the beginning of puberty is a time when a lot of emotions and responses to stress are increased. It's nothing new that teenagers go through a difficult time. Hopefully this will shed some new light on it."

7
LAFAYETTE, Colorado (AP) -- For nearly a month after she was stabbed to death, Linda Damm's body lay in the trunk of her car inside her garage while her 15-year-old daughter and friends used her debit card to "do teenage stuff," police say.

Three teens tried but failed to get rid of the body, investigators allege, once turning back because they got stuck in the mud of a nearby landfill and later retrieving the body from a grave they had just dug at the edge of a cemetery, fearing it was too shallow.

They were planning to drive north to Wyoming for a third attempt, investigators claim, when an anonymous tip led police to Damm's body on February 28 in her modest house in Lafayette, a small town about 20 miles northeast of Denver.

Now Damm's daughter, Tess Damm, and Tess' live-in boyfriend, Bryan Grove, 17, are being held without bail, Grove on charges of murder, conspiracy and evidence-tampering and Tess on charges of conspiracy, accessory and evidence-tampering. Both are being prosecuted as adults. (Watch Tess Damm's uncle make an offer to help Video)

Their attorneys either declined comment or did not return calls, and prosecutors have said little publicly.

But court records, family members, neighbors and Internet postings paint a picture of a tempestuous relationship between a troubled daughter and her 52-year-old mother.

Linda Damm's brother and two sisters issued a written statement saying she had struggled with alcoholism for years, leading to "a downward spiral in her abilities to properly care for herself and her daughter."

Neighbor Steven Weddig said Linda Damm was a single mom with a difficult life.

"We did hear the daughter scream at her from inside the house," he said. "Linda did tell me she was having so much trouble with her."

In online postings in November and January, someone identifying herself as Tess Damm said her life was "falling apart and deteriorating" and that her mother was an "angry, raging, functional alcoholic" who had lost her job and occasionally became violent.

Grove told police that he and Tess had spoken on February 3 about "how much they hated Linda," according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Grove asked Tess if she wanted him to "take care of Linda for her," and she said yes, according to Grove's arrest affidavit.

Tess told investigators she replied "OK, whatever," because she didn't think he was seriously threatening her mother, according to her arrest affidavit.

Police said Grove went by himself to Linda Damm's home early on February 4 and got into an argument with her. Police said Grove told them he became enraged when Linda Damm said she wished Tess hadn't been born so Grove wouldn't be living with the mother and daughter. She also blamed him for causing problems in the household, Grove's affidavit said.

Grove told investigators he choked Linda Damm until she was unconscious, then stabbed her in the neck and mouth until she stopped breathing, according to the affidavit. The affidavit said he then called a friend who helped him wrap the body in sheets and move it to the trunk of a car in the garage.

The friend, who is 16, has been arrested but charges have not been formally filed and the district attorney's office has not said whether he will be prosecuted as an adult.
Funeral missed

For the next several weeks, Tess and Grove lived in Damm's home and used her debit card, police said. Neighbors said they heard loud music from the house, saw cigarette butts accumulating on the formerly neat lawn and saw Grove "car-surfing" on top of a car while Tess drove.

Police allege Tess and another friend, Jared Guy, 18, helped Grove on the two aborted attempts to dump Linda Damm's body. Guy was arrested March 2 on evidence-tampering and accessory charges, and his bail was set at $500,000. His attorney did not return a call.

Guy and Grove were both being held at the Boulder County jail, and Grove was on a suicide watch Friday because of unspecified comments that raised jailers' concerns, sheriff's Cmdr. Bruce Haas said.

Linda Damm's funeral was Friday, but a judge refused to release Tess from a juvenile detention center to attend.

In their statement, Damm's brother and sisters said they wanted Tess to know they love her but they also believe "every person involved in this horrific crime that resulted in the death and desecration of our sister should be held accountable.

8
Web forum hosting / Cookies?
« on: February 28, 2007, 10:02:24 PM »
Either something is wrong with my computer, or Fornits is like teh broke. The cookies don't stay long enought when I push remember me. They last like 2 minutes. I think it is my browser, but I was just wondering...

9
The Troubled Teen Industry / Devereux anyone?
« on: February 28, 2007, 07:42:09 PM »
What the fuck?

Kennesaw, GA - Devereux employees working with children in Wrap-Around and Therapeutic Foster Care (TFC) programs no longer have to use their personal vehicles with transporting children to various appointments. A brand new 2006 Toyota Sienna mini van has been purchased by Devereux and dedicated for use by staff in the Community Program. The vehicle was made possible through a grant awarded from the Ida Ryan Charitable Ryan Trust managed by Wachovia Bank.

Devereux serves 57 children, ages 8 weeks to 18, who are with foster care families supported by Devereux. As part of treatment, it is often necessary for staff to transport children to doctor visits counseling sessions and court appointments. The Devereux owned vehicle will be used for these purposes and will reduce the liability of the staff and eliminate wear and tear to their personal vehicles.

Allison Barriero-Jones, TFC program manager, and the community staff team worked together to select the best vehicle to meet their needs. The Sienna was selected because of high performance and customer satisfaction ratings. Everyone is excited about having the vehicle and is eternally grateful to Wachovia for its commitment to making a difference in the lives of children.

10
The Troubled Teen Industry / Order a hoodie people!
« on: February 13, 2007, 11:02:08 PM »
Please, support HEAL, and show that you would stand up for what we are fighting for.

http://www.cafepress.com/heal.24024245

11
The Troubled Teen Industry / Another program!
« on: February 12, 2007, 05:39:00 PM »
Quote
New hope. New help. No secrets. Oxbow Academy offers all of that to families seeking treatment for children with sexual dependencies.

Oxbow Academy is a residential treatment center that focuses exclusively on teen boys struggling with sex-related behaviors. The facility opened in late January, 2007 and serves boys ranging in age from 13 to 17. The center is licensed for up to 24 boys.

Located in rural Wales, Utah, Oxbow combines intensive therapy with academic course work. It offers a boarding school setting that is focused on early intervention.

Oxbow's highly specialized environment is designed exclusively for teens with sexual dependency issues. Oxbow students are surrounded by peers who are struggling with similar problems. This provides a supportive, understanding culture.

Shawn Brooks, Executive Director of Oxbow Academy, says the program fills a unique niche. "Our experience with other programs has taught us early intervention is critical to successfully treating these boys. Yet it's almost impossible to find a program that treats teens. Oxbow focuses exclusively on sexual dependencies while offering a holistic therapeutic and educational approach."

Counselors, educators and staff create a unique environment that helps students disclose their behaviors, assume responsibility and begin healing. They are specifically trained to spot behaviors that may be overlooked or minimized in other therapeutic settings. State of the art security is combined with a home-like setting where students study, work and play.

Oxbow provides experiential, or "real time," therapy in the form of equine programs, outdoor activities and daily living tasks. In addition to experiential therapy and group therapy, students receive a minimum of seven hours of weekly counseling sessions. Parents and family members also participate in weekly therapy sessions with their child's counselor via telephone.

Along with therapeutic activities, Oxbow students complete an academic core curriculum that includes English, history, math and science.

Oxbow's management team brings more than two decades of experience helping troubled youth. Six of those years were spent specializing in the treatment of sexual misconduct. The school operates as a campus of Discovery Academy, noted for its excellence as a therapeutic boarding school. Oxbow is licensed by the State of Utah and meets or exceeds state therapeutic and academic requirements.

The Oxbow model is designed to bring boys and their families from fear and hiding to disclosure, treatment, and hope. For more information on Oxbow Academy visit our website at www.oxbowacademy.net.


I can't believe this shit!

12
The Ridge Creek School / Hidden Lake Academy / In the HLA world...
« on: January 22, 2007, 05:20:39 PM »
So, nothing has happened in the last few days... Anyone have any updates or news on the shithole?

13
The Troubled Teen Industry / KarenInDallas wants to be friends
« on: January 15, 2007, 03:27:28 PM »
It is quite obvious that she was just embarrassed so much that she is trying to apologize. What a bitch, 'eh... How dare her try to make peace and make it all better after all of the shit that she pulled. I hate people like that.

BEWARE MILK! This link comes from ST

http://www.strugglingteens.org/cgi-bin/ ... 2;t=001316

14
The Troubled Teen Industry / Another bullshit website
« on: January 10, 2007, 09:32:02 PM »
http://www.helpmyteen.com/index.html

If you just look through it, you will laugh at how ridiculous it is!!

15
The Ridge Creek School / Hidden Lake Academy / Buchi's New Theme Song
« on: December 06, 2006, 09:30:32 PM »
YES! YES!!

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