Fornits

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

Well, so now I know that the Seed DID take some under-18-year-olds in the 1980s.

The question remaining is, Were they all there voluntarily? Or did the Seed continue to take adolescents on a nonvoluntary basis? (even if they took fewer than before)

hey Ginger am I an organized malcontent yet, for god's sake? Does this post put me over the top? We shall see . . .

Hey, I know this has been covered before here, but I've forgotten and I don't know how to search for the info.

When exactly did The Seed close once and for all?

And at what point was The Seed forced to scale back and only take voluntary "clients" who were over 18?

Thank you thank you thank you!!

Hey look who Scooter Libby's new best friend is.
This is from today's New York Times.

Trial for Ex-Aide to Cheney Is Set for January 2007

By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: February 3, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 ? The trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, in the C.I.A. leak case will start next January, a federal judge said today.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, arrived for a hearing at Federal Court in Washington.

District Judge Reggie B. Walton said jury selection will begin on Jan. 8, 2007. Judge Walton said that he had hoped the trial could begin next September, but that Mr. Libby's lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., will be tied up with another case. Republicans are likely to be pleased that the trial will be held after the Congressional elections.

"We are very happy with the trial date set by Judge Walton," Mr. Wells said outside the federal courthouse here. "The Jan. 8, 2007, date will permit us the time we need to prepare Mr. Libby's defense. The defense will show that Mr. Libby is totally innocent, that he has not done anything wrong, and he looks forward to being totally vindicated by a jury."

Meanwhile, efforts to raise money for Mr. Libby's defense are moving ahead briskly. Mr. Libby has pleaded not guilty to five charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the exposure of a C.I.A. operative's identity.

But the managers of the fund-raising effort on behalf of Mr. Libby say they have already reached the $2 million mark and expect to increase the pace when they start a fund-raising Web site. "It's a particularly excellent start," said Mel Sembler, the chairman of the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust.

Mr. Libby was indicted in October by a special prosecutor who charged that he had misled investigators about his role in disclosing the identity of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Wilson in discussions with reporters. In court filings, his lawyers have strongly suggested that any inaccurate responses he gave were the result of innocent confusion and his being preoccupied with more important policy matters.

Mr. Sembler, a Florida developer who is the former finance chairman of the state's Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, said Mr. Libby's lawyers had estimated that a solid defense would cost at least $5 million or $6 million.

The fund is not obliged under the law to disclose any details, including the number of donors, their identities or the amounts given. Barbara Comstock, a Republican communications strategist and an official of the fund, declined to disclose any of those details, except to say that there had been "hundreds of individuals."

Mr. Sembler said that there was a practical limitation in that federal law requires that taxes be paid on any gifts over $11,000 given in 2005 and over $12,000 this year. He said several donations had been made in those amounts.

"Scooter was a good friend and an excellent senior worker in our government," Mr. Sembler said. "He couldn't possibly afford this kind of legal defense on his own."

The fund's steering committee is composed of several prominent Republicans, a few Democrats and several friends of Mr. Libby. It includes three former Republican senators, Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming and Spencer Abraham of Michigan; two former Republican presidential candidates, Jack F. Kemp and Steve Forbes; and Prof. Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Prof. Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins .

Dennis Ross, another committee member, has worked on Middle East issues for both Republican and Democratic administrations.

"He's been a friend of mine for 25 years," Mr. Ross said, "and I believe in him as a person and that he has a right to defend himself. It's a measure of friendship that you're there when people need you, not just when it's convenient."

Mr. Sembler dismissed any suggestions from critics that people might donate to ensure that Mr. Libby continue to battle the charges instead of providing prosecutors with any information damaging to other administration figures." These are activists who are concerned about this public servant and we're standing by him," he said. "It's not devious and there's nothing else to it."

I have been in email contact lately with Allison Pinto, who heads the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment, or A START, which is a coalition of mental health professional seeking to curb abusive programs like the Seed, Straight, WWASPS, et. al. You can read more about A START here: http://cfs.fmhi.usf.edu/cfsnews/2005news/A_START.html

and Allison's email address is:
[email protected]. Make sure to tell her you are a program survivor. She wants to get at least 100 of our signatures; so far she only has 35 or so.

Next, I'll paste info about the press conference. So . . .

THE LETTER

Honorable Members of Congress
United States House of Representatives and United States Senate
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Members of Congress,

   As parents and family members concerned about the emotional well-being of children, we join together to express our serious concern about the large number of youth with serious mental disorders now housed in unlicensed and unmonitored residential treatment facilities referred to as therapeutic boarding schools.  We feel so strongly about the threat posed by this new institutionalization of children and the need for appropriate and effective services that we must write at this time.

   In the last fifteen years, unlicensed privately run residential programs for youth with mental and emotional problems have proliferated.  Hundreds of new programs now market aggressively over the Internet preying upon desperate families who seek help for their children.  Many families pay enormous sums?facilities cost up to $100,000 per year?to obtain ?treatment? for their troubled children.  The programs are located around the country, and even outside the country, and often times children are transported hundreds, if not thousands, of miles across state lines to these programs.

   The reality of what occurs in some of these programs is often quite different from the highly individualized, highly structured programs advertised to parents.  These programs are troubling for a number of reasons.

¨   Children are often prohibited from speaking with their own families for up to six months, a practice which has significant negative consequences for child and parent relationships;
¨   Seclusion and restraint procedures are significantly more restrictive than what is generally accepted by mental health licensing and accrediting bodies.  These practices have resulted in several documented deaths;
¨   Even though the needs of the children in these facilities are great, unqualified staff are charged with implementing treatment plans and supervising children;
¨   The educational services provided to the children often fail to meet even minimum standards;
¨   No research has demonstrated that these programs have long-term benefits.





Even more alarming is that abuse and neglect are all too common within these
facilities.  There have been many highly public media accounts of atrocious examples of sexual and physical abuse, and medical neglect in these facilities.  Yet, there is still little to no public oversight, leaving these already emotionally fragile children even more vulnerable.  The lack of oversight in these facilities also means that the full scope of the problem is unknown.

   Alternatives have been developed to meet the needs of our children?options that work better and cost less, but they are frequently not available.  As the Surgeon General?s Report on Mental Health Reported in 1999, ?the most convincing evidence of effectiveness is for home-based services and therapeutic foster care.?  A comprehensive system of care would dramatically reduce the number of children in these facilities because children could be served in their own communities, at a significantly reduced cost.

   Today, we join with others in calling on the General Accounting Office to conduct a study into the issue of children housed in unlicensed therapeutic boarding schools, and the conditions that they are required to endure, so that the full extent of the problems in these facilities can be understood.  We also urge Congress to enact legislation to increase protections for children in therapeutic boarding programs in the United States and abroad, and to improve access to essential community and school-based mental health services.

   Specifically, we urge lawmakers to enact the following bipartisan, commonsense proposals that would support the call from President Bush?s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health to ?swiftly eliminate unnecessary and inappropriate institutionalization,? and that would make the use of therapeutic boarding schools both safe and rare:

¨   End Institutionalized Abuse Against Children Act of 2005 (H.R. 1738);
¨   The Keeping Families Together Act (S. 1704, H.R. 3243);

Too little information is known about the extent of the problems and abuses, and yet what is known is the cause of great concern.  As parents, we believe that at best these programs do not meet the needs of many of our children, and, at worst, they subject children to abuse.  The undersigned individuals look forward to working with Members of Congress to enact these reforms.

ON BEHALF OF:


AND NOW ABOUT THAT PRESS CONFERENCE:


Allison Pinto writes:

We are on track to conduct a press conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, October 18.  It will be led by A START (Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment; http://cfs.fmhi.usf.edu/cfsnews/2005news/A_START.html) and formally co-sponsored by the American Psychological Association, Child Welfare League of America, American Association of Community Psychiatrists, American Orthopsychiatric Association, and Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health.  The panel of individuals who will be speaking will include: a clinical psychologist from the Florida Mental Health Institute; a child/adolescent psychiatrist from Seattle; a former unregulated program staff member who worked at a program in Idaho; a former program participant who attended a small program in Montana; a parent of a former program participant who attended large programs in Montana and Jamaica; an attorney/MH rights advocate from the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in D.C. and Congressmen George Miller and Pete Stark.
 Some family members and former program participants have contacted me to ask whether they would have an opportunity to speak at the press conference, and I clarified that the structure of this press conference will not provide formal opportunities, except for the one parent and one youth representative on the panel.  However, we anticipate that some of the journalists who are present might want to speak with youth and parents who have had direct experience with the programs.  (We have sent invitations to journalists at the Washington Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Boston Globe, Gannett, Reuters, Associated Press, UPI, Time Magazine, NPR, Primetime,  Dateline, Frontline and CBS Nightly News.)  We are putting together a sheet with the names and contact info of the parents and youth who have let us know that they would be willing to be contacted by the press by phone or email afterward.
We are really hoping that this press conference prompts a request for Congressional testimony, and when that happens, that is when it would be really important for as many youth and family members as possible to travel to D.C. to share their stories.  We will certainly let everyone know when we hear of a call for testimony from Congress.

[ This Message was edited by: marcwordsmith on 2005-10-09 19:45 ]

I have been in email contact lately with Allison Pinto, who heads the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment, or A START, which is a coalition of mental health professional seeking to curb abusive programs like the Seed, Straight, WWASPS, et. al. You can read more about A START here: http://cfs.fmhi.usf.edu/cfsnews/2005news/A_START.html

and Allison's email address is:
[email protected]. Make sure to tell her you are a program survivor. She wants to get at least 100 of our signatures; so far she only has 35 or so.

Next, I'll paste info about the press conference. So . . .

THE LETTER

Honorable Members of Congress
United States House of Representatives and United States Senate
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Members of Congress,

   As parents and family members concerned about the emotional well-being of children, we join together to express our serious concern about the large number of youth with serious mental disorders now housed in unlicensed and unmonitored residential treatment facilities referred to as therapeutic boarding schools.  We feel so strongly about the threat posed by this new institutionalization of children and the need for appropriate and effective services that we must write at this time.

   In the last fifteen years, unlicensed privately run residential programs for youth with mental and emotional problems have proliferated.  Hundreds of new programs now market aggressively over the Internet preying upon desperate families who seek help for their children.  Many families pay enormous sums?facilities cost up to $100,000 per year?to obtain ?treatment? for their troubled children.  The programs are located around the country, and even outside the country, and often times children are transported hundreds, if not thousands, of miles across state lines to these programs.

   The reality of what occurs in some of these programs is often quite different from the highly individualized, highly structured programs advertised to parents.  These programs are troubling for a number of reasons.

¨   Children are often prohibited from speaking with their own families for up to six months, a practice which has significant negative consequences for child and parent relationships;
¨   Seclusion and restraint procedures are significantly more restrictive than what is generally accepted by mental health licensing and accrediting bodies.  These practices have resulted in several documented deaths;
¨   Even though the needs of the children in these facilities are great, unqualified staff are charged with implementing treatment plans and supervising children;
¨   The educational services provided to the children often fail to meet even minimum standards;
¨   No research has demonstrated that these programs have long-term benefits.





Even more alarming is that abuse and neglect are all too common within these
facilities.  There have been many highly public media accounts of atrocious examples of sexual and physical abuse, and medical neglect in these facilities.  Yet, there is still little to no public oversight, leaving these already emotionally fragile children even more vulnerable.  The lack of oversight in these facilities also means that the full scope of the problem is unknown.

   Alternatives have been developed to meet the needs of our children?options that work better and cost less, but they are frequently not available.  As the Surgeon General?s Report on Mental Health Reported in 1999, ?the most convincing evidence of effectiveness is for home-based services and therapeutic foster care.?  A comprehensive system of care would dramatically reduce the number of children in these facilities because children could be served in their own communities, at a significantly reduced cost.

   Today, we join with others in calling on the General Accounting Office to conduct a study into the issue of children housed in unlicensed therapeutic boarding schools, and the conditions that they are required to endure, so that the full extent of the problems in these facilities can be understood.  We also urge Congress to enact legislation to increase protections for children in therapeutic boarding programs in the United States and abroad, and to improve access to essential community and school-based mental health services.

   Specifically, we urge lawmakers to enact the following bipartisan, commonsense proposals that would support the call from President Bush?s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health to ?swiftly eliminate unnecessary and inappropriate institutionalization,? and that would make the use of therapeutic boarding schools both safe and rare:

¨   End Institutionalized Abuse Against Children Act of 2005 (H.R. 1738);
¨   The Keeping Families Together Act (S. 1704, H.R. 3243);

Too little information is known about the extent of the problems and abuses, and yet what is known is the cause of great concern.  As parents, we believe that at best these programs do not meet the needs of many of our children, and, at worst, they subject children to abuse.  The undersigned individuals look forward to working with Members of Congress to enact these reforms.

ON BEHALF OF:


AND NOW ABOUT THAT PRESS CONFERENCE:


Allison Pinto writes:

We are on track to conduct a press conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, October 18.  It will be led by A START (Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment; http://cfs.fmhi.usf.edu/cfsnews/2005news/A_START.html) and formally co-sponsored by the American Psychological Association, Child Welfare League of America, American Association of Community Psychiatrists, American Orthopsychiatric Association, and Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health.  The panel of individuals who will be speaking will include: a clinical psychologist from the Florida Mental Health Institute; a child/adolescent psychiatrist from Seattle; a former unregulated program staff member who worked at a program in Idaho; a former program participant who attended a small program in Montana; a parent of a former program participant who attended large programs in Montana and Jamaica; an attorney/MH rights advocate from the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in D.C. and Congressmen George Miller and Pete Stark.
 Some family members and former program participants have contacted me to ask whether they would have an opportunity to speak at the press conference, and I clarified that the structure of this press conference will not provide formal opportunities, except for the one parent and one youth representative on the panel.  However, we anticipate that some of the journalists who are present might want to speak with youth and parents who have had direct experience with the programs.  (We have sent invitations to journalists at the Washington Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Boston Globe, Gannett, Reuters, Associated Press, UPI, Time Magazine, NPR, Primetime,  Dateline, Frontline and CBS Nightly News.)  We are putting together a sheet with the names and contact info of the parents and youth who have let us know that they would be willing to be contacted by the press by phone or email afterward.
We are really hoping that this press conference prompts a request for Congressional testimony, and when that happens, that is when it would be really important for as many youth and family members as possible to travel to D.C. to share their stories.  We will certainly let everyone know when we hear of a call for testimony from Congress.

As many of you may already know, there has been a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman George Miller of California, entitled the End Institutionalized Abuse Against Children Act of 2005 (HR 1738).

I think it's an excellent start; it basically gives the attorneys general of each state a mandate to investigate the practices of both domestic and foreign-based residential treatment institutions "to assure the welfare and safety of American children."

Some of the people who helped author the language of the bill were disillusioned Teen Help parents, who realized that their kids had been abused.

You can read the bill here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.1738.IH:

You can sign a petition to support the bill here:

http://www.petitiononline.com/hr1738/petition.html

But personal letters are far more effective than signatures on a petition. The main people to write to would be Rep. Miller, thanking him for introducing the bill and stating your support; Rep. John Boehner, who chairs the Committee on Education and the Workforce; and Rep. Henry Hyde, who chairs the Committee on International Relations. (The bill has been referred to both of these committees.)

Following are some template letters; please feel free to copy them. I'm also including each Congressman's mailing address.

***

The Honorable George Miller
2205 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Congressman Miller,

I am writing to thank you for your sponsorship of HR 1738, the End Institutionalized Abuse Against Children Act of 2005, and to express my strong support for this bill.

I am a survivor of a program called ______, which employed coercive thought reform techniques. Coercive behavior modification is nothing but abuse and brainwashing. My experience was traumatic. I would like to see such abuses end. I think if American parents truly understood what such programs entail, they would be much less likely to turn their children over to the abusers.

I see HR 1738 as a good start toward reining in these programs, and raising public awareness about them. I enthusiastically support HR 1738. Thank you for your work with this bill and this important, under-publicized issue.

Sincerely,
 
***

The Honorable Henry Hyde
2110 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Hyde,

I am writing to urge you to schedule hearings on HR 1738, the End Institutionalized Abuse Against Children Act of 2005, and to express my strong support for this bill. Because many of the residential behavior modification programs for teens are situated in foreign countries, though they are administered by U.S.-based entities, I believe this issue falls under the jurisdiction of your committee.
 
I am a survivor of a program called _____, which employed coercive thought reform techniques. Coercive behavior modification is nothing but abuse and brainwashing. My experience was traumatic. I would like to see such abuses end. I think if American parents truly understood what such programs entail, they would be much less likely to turn their children over to the abusers.

I see HR 1738 as a good start toward reining in these programs, and raising public awareness about them. I enthusiastically support HR 1738. Please hold hearings on this important bill, and please help secure its passage.

Sincerely,

***

The Honorable John Boehner
1011 Longworth H.O.B.
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Boehner,

I am writing to urge you to schedule hearings on HR 1738, the End Institutionalized Abuse Against Children Act of 2005, and to express my strong support for this bill.
 
I am a survivor of a program called ______, which employed coercive thought reform techniques. Coercive behavior modification is nothing but abuse and brainwashing. My experience was traumatic. I would like to see such abuses end. I think if American parents truly understood what such programs entail, they would be much less likely to turn their children over to the abusers.

I see HR 1738 as a good start toward reining in these programs, and raising public awareness about them. I enthusiastically support HR 1738. Please hold hearings on this important bill, and please help secure its passage.

Sincerely,

[ This Message was edited by: marcwordsmith on 2005-09-16 12:32 ]