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Maine Times - The Selling of Hyde
Article link: https://archive.org/details/mt-16-jun-1978-1/

"Hyde is the model of a new education system. Keep that in mind and accept that it is so. Hyde is already effectively confronting segments of the present system of educating and raising kids in this country. Accept that fact. Hyde is presenting to families in America a vision of the type of relationships that should exist in families. Most of us accept this already."

ON A COLD January night last winter, Joe Gauld, the ebullient, founder of Hyde School, invited to dinner a dozen or so Bath community leaders. He wanted to know what really had poured the city on Hyde, an experimental prop school whose towering goal is to emancipate the public school system.

As it turned out, Gauld did most of the talking . . . and shouting and name-calling. Before the four-hour encounter was over; he mode a proposition to the group: school board members, representatives of the city Council and influential citizens.

Gauld said he wanted to take over the Bath public schools and the entire community to use as an innovative educational laboratory.

"We would be a workshop for the nation," said Sally Haggett, chairwoman of the Bath school board: "From birth to death everyone - would be integrated into a unified educational system with the Hyde philosophy of character building to reach one's 'unique potential' as the basis."   

Hyde then would be able to achieve its deserved national recognition for finding the way to educate people, Gauld suggested. The city of Bath would gain too, as Hyde headmaster Ed Legg later elaborated.

Both could become a leading educational, cultural, commercial and industrial center. The finest, most committed teachers would flock there, as well as top people from all professions, Legg said. His dream for Bath seemed to have no bounds. He envisioned property values and personal income going up, unemployment and juvenile crime dropping and school athletic teams that would be the best. (Athletics is as important at Hyde as academics, and all students are required to participate).

Legg also said that if Hyde and the community joined hands, he could see them together solving growing social problems, like wife beating and alcoholism.

Gauld told the city leaders there could be no compromise; either they were with him and Legg, his protege or they were against him. If the city rejected Hyde's plan, Gauld and Legg threatened to cut off their students' community work with elementary school-students and focus Hyde's energy on another, more appreciative city.


The city leaders rejected Hyde's offer. Haggett said she wasn't even startled by the proposal because Hyde has always been open "about wanting to change the world." In retaliation, Legg suspended Hyde students' work with Fisher Elementary School and Elmhurst, a state home for children. (The programs were reinstated by Hyde trustees.)

Relations between Hyde and community lenders were basically broken off. The confrontation was inevitable, Haggett believes. "Hyde wants to be big nationally. Joe Gauld knows the only way Hyde can be sold to the nation is to show that it has worked in a community like this," she said. "We are a real thorn in their side because they have not been able to take us over."

Haggett said that Hyde has some positive approaches to education that can work in the public school setting, but because Gauld and Legg come on like steamrollers, people are wary of them. "Some citizens, Haggett included, view Hyde as a cult seeking salvation of a person's spirit and mind. "Like any religion, they are zealous and are so convinced they are right they have to proselytize."


A former Hyde teacher, who quit his job lost year, said that "Hyde attracts the religious-oriented types. The kind of dedication one gets into is almost like any ministry, and your life is not your own at the end, Hyde is always shooting for your conversion," said the teacher.

Hyde was true to its word in seeking out another community to take over Portland. Hyde is getting comfortably entrenched in Reiche School, an elementary school of mostly low-income students, and Legg said that he expects to work out cooperative programs with the city junior and senior high schools.

"Portland is better for us. It's urban and will give us more recognition," said Legg. "But we gave Bath the first crack."

However, Legg still hasn't given up on Both. In a defiant move, Legg applied for superintendent of schools. He recently accused the school board of deliberately snubbing him because they didn't send him an acknowledgement of his. application. Their inaction showed "spite, ego and sloppy management," he said in a letter to school board chairwoman Haggett.

About the same time Hyde got the rebuff from Bath, it also got disappointing news from the federal Job Corps.

Last January, the Job Corps signed a $73,383 contract with Hyde to try out the Hyde leadership und training program on Job Corps trainees. The first phase of the three-phase program was for Hyde to tour five Job Corps centers with their musical-historical drama, America's Spirit.

Actress Ruth Warrick, a member of the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, had seen an America's Spirit production in New York and "thought the arts would be the way to crack the tough cover the (Job Corps) kids have." Hyde's mission was to show Job Corps trainees, mostly young dropouts-from the inner cities, how they could build up their self-confidence and self-motivation and be more desirable in the job market.

At the time of the signing of the contract Gauld had said, "The door is opening for Hyde . . . this could prove to be a new beginning for American education. The ghetto may very well be the Valley Forge of the educational system."

"We are committed people. People we are in contact with say we are a breath of fresh air to them." Ed Legg

But when the project fell through, Legg announced that it was Hyde rejecting the Job Corps rather than the other way around as the Job Corps says. He said he wasn't interested in the Job Corps because it wasn't interested in character building. The government just wanted a nice trainee recruitment gimmick, he said.

There is no doubt that the failure of Hyde to move in on the Bath public schools and the Job Corps were significant setbacks. But already Legg is viewing them as learning lessons, rather than rejections of Hyde's philosophy of education.

And if one vehicle for Hyde runs out of gas, Gauld and Legg find another one. They are never without plans for achieving their "national commitment" goals, which simply is to become the national model for education.

"You've got to credit Hyde," said Audrey Alexander, principal of Fisher Elementary School across the street from Hyde. "They are constantly open and searching to see what's the best vehicle for them to reach their goals. And they are spreading their ideas."

Here are some of the major developments at Hyde over the last three years that have changed the coed boarding school from a kind of rigorous military boot camp filled with problem teenagers to a "new leadership school of achievers" with more affluent parents.

-Hyde has developed regional groups across the country but primarily in the East, and parents and Hyde alumni are working hard to convert their friends and neighbors to the Hyde way.

-Ultimately, the regional groups' aim is to establish their own Family Learning centers, such as the one on the Bath campus. The center 'is where parents learn what steps they can take to further their growth as individuals and as parents." according to a Hyde admissions brochure. Parents use sensitivity training in group sessions and give each other grades on growth, partially based on this level of financial commitment.

-Joe Gauld is constantly traveling across the country, using national television and newspapers to sell Hyde. He is coming out this year with a book about Hyde's educational experience (to be published by Bantam Books). Gauld hopes it will be popular enough to sell in grocery stores, where it would reach a mass market.

-They Gauld and Legg are establishing relationships with important people in the arts and political circles, such as Broadway producer Ted Mann and his wife, opera singer Patricia Brooks, and Mimi Lee, wife of the acting governor of Maryland. Mann has given over his Circle-In-The-Square Theater to Hyde's America's Spirit production several times. His wife has raised $210 for Hyde with a thrift sale and cleared $3,000 for Hyde with a benefit recital in Alice Tully Hall. Mimi Lee has opened the governor's mansion in Annapolis to America's Spirit and introduced Hyde people to her and the governor's social and political friends. Both Mann and Lee have or had children at Hyde. (Lee said her household is divided over 'the goodness' of Hyde, with one son and her husband believing there are 'fanatics' and 'demented' to another son and daughter who think 'Hyde can do no wrong.' Mimi Lee said she's aware of their good and bad points.)

-And not the least of Hyde's plan is America's Spirit. Hyde's most widely appealing self-promotional enterprise.

Continued in reply..

Hyde tries to improve its credibility by attempting to pass off founder Joe Gauld's son in law, Don Macmillan, as a "clinician" in a promotional brochure:

In the following excerpt entitled "A View of Hyde School? From a Clinician?s Point of View" Don Macmillan writes about the primary ways in which Hyde differs from typical therapeutic boarding schools in how it handles students with cognitive, behavioral, and psychological diagnoses, such as ADD, ADHD, substance abuse, depression, anorexia, oppositional defiance disorder (ODD), etc.:

"[Therapeutic boarding schools] tend to embody a problem-solving paradigm in which diagnosed deficits are remedied. Rather than remedy deficits, Hyde seeks to build upon strengths. Hyde offers a holistic approach to personal and family growth that has often proved to coincidentally help many teenagers with issues pertaining to a given diagnosis."

So, rather than REMEDY any issues, Hyde essentially pretends that children's individual challenges and diagnoses don't exist, and so they blame, shame, ostracize, isolate, and punish children who fail to miraculously overcome them. Hyde mandates that students participate in counseling-style groups called "discovery groups" where student and multi-family therapy-type sessions are facilitated by faculty members with almost no or absolutely no training in therapy, mental health care, psychology, or social work, and all participants are pressured to divulge their darkest demons.

When Don writes about a "holistic" approach, we surmise that he is referring to Hyde's cult-like system of mandatory conformity and punishments, a distorted reality in which students and staff are required to master and use a rather simplistic, jingoistic, doctrinaire, and patronizing package of cliches and Hyde-isms to explain everything that occurs at the school. We assume that he is referring to Hyde's manufactured structure where misery or conformity are the only two options, where no licensed therapists, psychologists, or family counselors have ever been employed to help children (and also their families) through the above challenges. Over the last 15 years or so, Hyde has occasionally had one single social worker on staff.

In essence: Hyde chooses to ignore all evidence-based methods and professionals in relevant fields in favor of simply making everything they do up.

"Hyde offers a holistic approach to personal and family growth that has often proved to coincidentally help many teenagers with issues pertaining to a given diagnosis."
                                                                 -*clinician* Don Macmillan

Yes, the husband of Joe Gauld's daughter, Don Macmillan did obtain a master's degree in counseling from Antioch University with a concentration in drug and alcohol counseling. However, there is no evidence that we can find in any state he would have worked in - Connecticut, Maine, or his current state of Minnesota, that he ever obtained a LICENSE to practice any kind of mental health care.

To obtain a LICENSE to practice mental health care, one must generally complete thousands of hours of counseling patients under the supervision of licensed therapists; a process that takes several years. Once licensed, a health care practitioner is overseen by a board of professionals to ensure they are following scientific and ethical standards, and clients/patients may file formal complaints. Having a LICENSE means that a clinician is held ACCOUNTABLE by a group of professionals for their actions.  It's been observed, of course, that the family who runs Hyde has never been keen on having any outside accountability for themselves, even though their marketing materials and scripted pitches may suggest differently.

A clinician is a professional health care provider who works directly with patients in their field of expertise. Can anyone explain how Hyde gets away with representing the son in law of the school's founder, who possesses very little proper training and no licensure, who as far as we know has never worked with children in any sort of medical setting, and who is accountable to no licensing board, as a "clinician"?



Original fb post: https://www.facebook.com/hydeschoolsurvivors/photos/a.109515974590751/210599737815707

From one Hyde survivor, in response: And listen, as someone who went to school for counseling, got my masters, went through the whole supervision process, and got licensed, I can confidently say that graduate programs usually prepare counseling trainees pretty well for careers as therapists. I had a pretty good grasp on my job during my period of supervision, pre-license. But it doesn't mean I was able to just ignore ethics and practice on my own. On top of that, Don is one of those people with a counseling degree who is DEFINITELY not ready for independent practice upon graduation. I truly don't understand how anyone could finish 6+ years of school, plus internship, and still think that Hyde practices were in any way therapeutic or beneficial to children. It just blows my mind.

Former Hyde student Mary Yoder charged for involvement in partner's abuse, murder of her child

Mary attended Hyde School Bath campus 2010-2013 and Woodstock 2013-2014. She reportedly experienced a lot of trauma there, as she explained in two tiktoks she made a few months ago:
1. https://www.tiktok.com/@frenchfriied/video/6935997172332727558
2. https://www.tiktok.com/@frenchfriied/video/6936002632695794950

Video news coverage of Judah Morgan's murder by his father Alan Morgan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8nO79a2sTk

There is a hashtag trending surrounding this case - #JusticeforJudah
UPDATE: Mother, father facing charges related to 4-year-old son's death:
https://wsbt.com/news/local/la-porte-county-man-charged-with-murder-in-4-year-old-sons-murder

A graphic and disturbing history of abuse. That's what is detailed in court documents as a father and now mother are both charged in the death of a 4-year-old boy.

We've been following this tragedy since early Monday morning of a LaPorte County boy found dead.

Formal charges were just filed today against the boy's mother, Mary Yoder.

Yoder faces 4 charges, including 2 counts of neglect of a dependent -- one of those counts resulting in death.

The boy's father, Alan Morgan, faces 7 counts, including murder and five counts of neglect of a dependent.

Both are in the LaPorte County Jail right now.

We are choosing not to report many of these details. We're only reporting that prosecutors say Alan Morgan tortured and beat his son over potty training.

According to the court documents, his mother knew about it.

Court documents indicated police found 4-year-old Judah Morgan dead early Monday morning.

"Received a second 911 phone call from the mother, Mary Yoder, stating Alan Might flee as he had lost his temper and hurt the child and was scared and did not know what to do."

After police arrived at the house they found Judah with no pulse and cool to the touch.

Three other children were also found in the home, ages 7, 2, and 1, but police state that no adults were inside the home.

After several hours of searching, Alan Morgan, Judah's father, was found and taken into custody Monday.

In the documents, Yoder told police she, "last saw Judah in the basement on Saturday the 9th, which was when she left the house on her way to the hospital to give birth."

Yoder was taken into custody Monday afternoon.

Court records show, "Mary made admissions that she was aware of what Alan was doing to Judah, however she said she was afraid of Alan and could not stop him."

Mary also allegedly admitted she would send Judah to the basement as punishment.

Today we talked to relatives on the phone. They told me the other children are now staying with family members.

As for the child that Mary just gave birth to, relatives told me that the child was placed for adoption.

Prosecutors have already filed a motion to seek Life without Parole if Alan Morgan is convicted.

______________________________
4-year-old homicide victim was bound by tape, frequently kept naked in basement, courts say
Anna Ortiz , Sarah Reese Oct 12, 2021 Updated Oct 14, 2021
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/4-year-old-homicide-victim-was-bound-by-tape-frequently-kept-naked-in-basement-courts/article_1db63592-6d39-5353-a957-28d926516621.html

LAPORTE ? Before his death, 4-year-old Judah Morgan was repeatedly bound with duct tape, confined in a dark basement for days at a time, beaten and starved, according to court records.

Police documented the alleged abuse in charging documents filed Tuesday against Judah's father, Alan D. Morgan.

Morgan, 28, was taken into custody Monday, hours after LaPorte County sheriff's police found Judah unresponsive in a bedroom at the family's home in the 3100 block of East County Road 875 South in Hamlet. His vehicle was recovered in Knox, records state.

Judah's mother, Mary E. Yoder, 26, was charged Wednesday with two felony counts of neglect of a dependent and misdemeanor counts of cruelty to an animal and failure to make a report.

Judah was found naked, covered in a blanket and had bruises "all over his body," LaPorte Circuit Court records state. He was unresponsive and had bruises and red marks on his face and head.

A woman and Yoder, who was not home because she left Saturday to give birth to the couple's fifth child, each called 911 early Monday to report Judah was hurt, court records state.

Yoder also told dispatchers Morgan lost his temper and hurt the child and might flee, according to court documents.

Police entered the home through an unlocked door, found Judah unresponsive and removed three other children from the home.

Online court records did not yet list whether Morgan has entered pleas to charges of murder, five felony counts of neglect of a dependent and misdemeanor cruelty to an animal.

Cousin: DCS failed Judah
Judah's cousin, Jenna Hullett, said Judah was removed from the custody of his parents after he was born and placed in her home by the Indiana Department of Child Services in October 2017.

She raised him as her own child until a court ordered he be returned to his parents' custody in April, she said.

"He was a bright, happy, energetic little boy," Hullett said. "He was loving. He cared about everybody."

Hullett, who is Morgan's cousin, said she was speaking out, because she blames the Department of Child Services for failing to protect Judah.

"I want awareness, and I want justice for Judah," she said. "And, I want DCS held accountable, just as much as the so-called parents here."

A Department of Child Services spokeswoman said DCS provides information to the courts but does not make placement decisions. She declined further comment, citing Indiana confidentiality laws.

Hullett said Judah was placed with her family after DCS intervened because of allegations Morgan had abused one of Judah's older siblings.

Department employees visited Hullett's Starke County home once a month to check on Judah's welfare and told her several times during the nearly four years she cared for the boy that she would eventually be granted custody, she said.

She attempted to warn the department that Judah told her Morgan hurt him during visits and that the boy was afraid of his father, she said.

She alleged a DCS manager apologized to her in June 2020, because the department had planned to file a termination of parental rights against Morgan and Judah's mother but someone "dropped the ball."

"He said all he could do was say he was sorry," Hullett said.

Hullett said DCS told her Judah would be placed with his parents for a "six-month trial visit" and that the department would regularly check on the child.

"If anything happened, if they messed up, I was supposed to get Judah back," she said.

Morgan was arrested in August on a felony charge of resisting arrest and misdemeanor operating while intoxicated and possession of marijuana charges, records show.

Hullett said she reached out to a case worker to ask if Morgan's arrest would affect Judah's placement.

"They told me, essentially, it was none of my business," she said.

Hullett said if DCS had filed to terminate parental rights, Judah would still be alive.

"He would be happy and healthy and his natural loving self," she said.

Instead, Hullett was preparing Wednesday to view the body of the boy she loved like her own child, she said.

Police make grim discovery
LaPorte County sheriff's police found Judah's body about 2:45 a.m. Monday, after responding to a report of an unconscious child, they said.

No one answered the door, so deputies entered the home when they found it unlocked.

After removing the surviving children from the home, police obtained a search warrant and discovered the home "in disarray, with clothing, garbage, rotting food and animal fecal matter strewn about," court records state.

Deputies noticed "a strong, pungent odor of urine and rotting food" inside. A cord and key-style lock were attached to the refrigerator, preventing anyone from opening it.

Police found an emaciated dog in a 3-by-2-foot cage, which had matted fur and urine and fecal matter in the bottom of it, records state.

As officers descended to the basement, they found it was cold and dark with no working lights.

Several pieces of duct tape were found in the basement, some of which was stuck to the wall and some of which appeared to make a small circle on the floor.

Duct tape was found stuck to a fluffy blanket, which smelled or urine, and a toddler-sized pair of sweatpants also smelled of urine, records state.

Police found a cable and two small pipes near other items found in the basement, according to court documents.

A small infant-style toilet had urine and feces in it.

 Boy suffered multitude of injuries in weeks and days before his homicide, doctor testifies
Mother's story didn't add up, police say
Police interviewed Judah's mother, Yoder, who said the boy was repeatedly sent to the basement "for punishment for not being potty trained like the other victims in the house," records state.

Hullett said Judah was potty trained at 2 years old, and she gave the infant-style toilet to Morgan and the children's mother to use for one of Judah's younger siblings.

The mother also claimed she was afraid of Morgan, but tried to stop him from abusing Judah by telling him "that's enough" and "leave him alone," records state.

The mother told police lights in the basement were shut off on purpose as a scare tactic, and food was also withheld from Judah, according to the documents.

The mother said Morgan bound Judah with duct tape and typically forced him to go to the basement naked. There was nowhere to sleep in the basement, but Judah was given a fluffy blanket, records state.

The mother told police Judah was sent to the basement about three times a week, and Morgan would grab him by the neck and carry him downstairs if he didn't go, records state.

The mother said she last saw her 4-year-old son Saturday in the basement when she left to give birth to another child. She denied abusing Judah herself but said she "could've put a stop to this but didn't," documents state.

Police interviewed the other children, who said they saw their mother and father force Judah into the basement, records state. They described hearing yelling and hitting noises coming from the basement and said Morgan would tape Judah's arms behind his back.

A relative told police the family had a birthday party for one of the children Sunday. Morgan told relatives Judah was at a friend of his mother's, records state.

One of Judah's siblings told police that Judah actually "was in the basement where he normally is" while they had cake during the birthday party, records state.

An autopsy showed Judah died from blunt force trauma to the head, which caused a massive subdural hematoma, records show.


Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact Detective Sgt. Brett Swanson by calling or texting 219-363-9623.

Alan Morgan
Arrest Date: Oct. 11, 2021

Arresting Agency: LaPorte County Sheriff's Office

Offense Description: Murder; Neglect of a Dependent; Resisting Law Enforcement

Class: Felonies

Age: 28

Residence: LaPorte

Grieving parent of a former Hyde student shares his testimony.
Trigger warning: Suicide

I am not ready, even after these years, to discuss the details of what happened to my son, the long tortured path that led to his death. I said that Hyde was a station along the way and contributed, though Hyde is not solely responsible in that sense... I am also afraid to give too much away that might identify me to Hyde trolls or others. The people at Hyde have shown they are quite capable of the most nefarious behavior in protecting their God Gauld and their little enterprise and I have no room left in me for fighting. I can tell you that they spun him like a rat.. changing the maze whenever he thought he had it down and convincing him that he was a piece of s--- unless he played their game. He couldn't. He didn't. He failed there and they smashed his self-confidence to pieces. He was weak, mentally ill, needed some form of treatment but no one recognized it. I pulled him out jail over and over again, retrieved him from international locales after he'd been arrested, incarcerated in various institutions.. his illness progressed and everyone along the way who made it worse - like the people at Hyde - contributed. I contributed myself. When your  20-year-old son takes your shotgun after breaking into a gun cabinet and blows his brains out, you are also destroyed by it.

Suffice to say that the vulnerable types must be protected from institutions like Hyde because Hyde is no different from the general society, in that respect. Who doesn't conform, is destroyed. It is the school's failure to determine who it can help and who it cannot - who it will in fact make worse - that makes it a quasi-criminal enterprise. Any truly idealistic institution would recognize its limitations to protect those it might harm. Not Hyde. Money drives Hyde. Money, power and self-aggrandizement are its stock in trader. Once they get your money, it's actually in their interest to force you out because it's non-refundable and they get paid for not doing anything. Meanwhile the next fool steps up, urged on by [pro-Hyders] no doubt, and another $30-40-50,000 goes into the company safe. It's a racket run by a kind of Mafiosi, sociopaths with suits and sob stories and a very slick brochure.

This past February was the fourth anniversary of my son's suicide in the basement. Prior to that he had spent some time at Hyde, perhaps a year or less and whatever problems he had to begin with were so exacerbated by his experiences there that I have always linked the two. I couldn't say it was direct because there was some time between when he was thrown out of Hyde and when he shot himself, but I believe to this day that the actions of the head of that school and several of its psycho caretakers were direct contributors.

I can't go into details about what happened at Hyde except to to say that the profound, deep, dishonesty practiced by the staff, many of whom I am sure are unqualified to be called such, the cultism, the terrorism inflicted on already disturbed children would result in long prison terms to the practitioners thereof in any reasonable society. Hyde, in my opinion, is a nightmare, a mental torture chamber created by a psychopaths and created to breed acolytes...

Do not send your son to Hyde. If you have already done so and he wants out; do not believe the staff at Hyde. Their entire purpose functions just as the street soldiers of Scientology function to recruit and impress more members... If I were a praying man, I would pray for you and your son; as it is, I can only avail you of the benefit of my experience there and the terrible consequences one faces when allowing these kinds of individuals to oversee the psychological development of a child, especially one already having difficulty in the world.

To the parent... Every once in a while you come across really extreme advocacy for Hyde. I urge you to be wary on this basis alone... There are many children who go through Hyde and come out the other side but that isn't the issue... Those cretins don't know one illness from another from a third and they simply put everyone through the same filter, discarding those who don't pass... If your child is among them, he will be destroyed by the Hyde process... it's Hyde as in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. these people (I use the term loosely - they are monsters in their own right) are self-appointed cultists, emotional terrorists and liars through and through... the fact that some less vulnerable children survive the experience and come back proselytizing for the cause means nothing... These people and many like them should be shut down and I believe that sooner or later the awful truth about what goes on at Hyde will "out" and people like [Pro-Hyde commenter] here will find some new excuse for it... Don't send your son to Hyde unless you are certain that he is strong enough to withstand the emotional battering he will receive there. They have made themselves very rich on the despair of others and employ their family and friends and other advocates as rewards - just like any cult... These people are dangerous, untrustworthy and eventually I believe they will be seen as criminal.

Reposted from another post from June 2011.

Former Hyde Student Ron Posner kills girlfriend?

Providence Journal (RI) - Sunday, January 28, 2001
Katherine Brown: A turbulent relationship, a tragic ending
* Katherine Brown and Ronald Posner began dating when they were seniors at Barrington High School. "It was off and on," one friend said. "Either things were really good or really bad."

* * *

PROVIDENCE - Four days before her death, Katherine Brown screamed as she ran up and down the stairs pounding on apartment doors.

Get out! Get out of my apartment! I want you to leave, the neighbors heard her shout. You're scaring me.

Neighbors opened their door and saw the slight, 20-year-old woman facing the young man they knew as her boyfriend, Ronald Posner. He stood in the yellow light of the dingy foyer, watching her.

Brown's voice shook and tears streamed down her face. A raw red mark, like a choker, was around her throat.

The neighbors called the police.

Posner put his hands to his head. Neighbors heard him yell back at her: Look at what you're doing to me. You're going to get me in trouble.

She grabbed her car keys and ran out onto the porch. He followed, softly begging her to let him come, too. No, she cried, I don't want you in my car. You scare me.

The Providence police got the call at 6:56 Sunday night, Jan. 14, and when they arrived, they blocked the driveway of the East Side Victorian with their cruisers. They talked to Brown and Posner in the dark parking lot.

Neighbors watching from their back window were stunned when the officers soon drove off.

A second neighbor called the police, saying "the girl left, but the young man wants to talk to someone."

When the police came back, both Brown and Posner were there. Brown told the police that Posner, not a panic attack, as she had earlier told them, caused the marks on her neck. But don't arrest him, she said. Just take him away. The police described Posner as "nervous and confused."

It was agreed that the police would take Posner to a friend's house on Federal Hill. But as the patrol car drove off, Brown followed.

Before Posner ever got into the apartment, Brown's black Honda pulled up. Posner got in.

And they drove off together.

"I forgave him, I had to," she told a friend hours later. "I really love him."

"I want to be with him."

BROWN WAS with him in her death, the police say.

When they found Brown's body in Posner's Barrington driveway on Jan. 18, Posner stood nearby, his blue jeans and fleece jacket covered in blood. The police removed hair resembling hers from Posner's hands.

Authorities haven't divulged how Brown died. Posner has pleaded innocent to a charge of murder.

For a decade, there has not been a murder in Barrington, a quiet town where the grapevine flourishes like the marsh grass that fringes the million-dollar views.

Virtually everyone in town knew Katherine E. Brown or Ronald A. Posner, or knew someone who did, or knew their fathers hers a noted child psychiatrist, his, the owner of a half-century old jewelry company.

Posner's family lives in Rumstick, which juts out, like an elbow, into Narragansett Bay. Stone walls separate the manor-style houses and cobblestone barns that adorn rolling meadows. Golf-pro Brad Faxon and an executive who entertains Bill Clinton live in the area.

The Browns lived three miles away on Bernard Avenue in West Barrington, a neighborhood styled in post-war, although expensive, suburbia split-levels, ranches, and Colonials with basketball hoops in the driveways.

The Browns moved to Barrington when Katherine was little. They had lived briefly in California; her father would later joke that his daughter had grown into the quintessential California girl, with her straight sandy blond hair and love of sunshine. And her flair for the dramatic.

She took dance classes and won a part, at only 10, in a play being put on by Perishable Theatre in Providence. It was called Harm's Way, and the subject was so mature that her parents weren't sure she should see it, much less act in it. She convinced them.

She filled her room with collages and posted inspirational messages on her mirrors. She had three best friends, and they planned each phase of their lives, with the ending a real-life version of The Golden Girls.

In Barrington High School, she wasn't a standout student or the president of this or that. She played field hockey for awhile and danced in school productions, and loved fun, sometimes inviting everyone she knew to weekend parties at the two-story blue Colonial she shared with her parents and younger brother and sister.

And she was becoming known for another quality.

Her father was a noted researcher, studying sexual abuse and other childhood syndromes, as director of child and family psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital. Larry Brown's daughter, perhaps, had inherited his empathy.

More than one friend called her a rock, a crutch, or a shoulder on which to lean.

By spring of her senior year of high school, someone new was drawn to Brown's compassion: Ronald Posner.

HE WAS TALL and lanky with curly hair. And when Posner arrived at Barrington High School, he was carrying some baggage: emotional troubles and a few run-ins with the police.

Over the previous two years, Posner had begun a downward spiral falling from soccer star at Providence Country Day School to accused thief who victimized his friends' parents.

In late 1997, Barrington police pulled over a car and found Posner inside with stolen goods and drug paraphernalia.

About two weeks earlier, Dr. Stephen Schiff, a Barrington urologist, had reported the theft of a diamond ring his wife had given him for his 40th birthday and a bracelet he'd received from his parents. The items had been stolen from an unlocked locker at the Barrington YMCA.

He remembers the telephone call from the police officer: "He told me, 'We think we got your stuff.' "

Schiff says the police officer gave him a copy of his report which said the officer had found "all kinds of drug paraphernalia" in the car, "and a bunch of other stolen items among which were my ring and my bracelet."

"And then what we heard was the father was making an attempt to make sure everything was paid back," said Schiff. "He was going to kind of take care of things so that this wouldn't go to court" including paying back some charges made on stolen credit cards.

Because the value of Schiff's items totaled more than $500 making the theft a felony police officers urged him to press charges. This is not something to sweep under the rug, the police told him.

Schiff, however, dropped the matter once his ring and bracelet were returned.

Another woman, who asked not to be named, said police returned jewelry that Ronald Posner a good friend of her son's had stolen.

Posner's father, Ralph, also came to her house, she said, and apologized. She said Ralph Posner explained how his son had been stopped by Barrington police and found in possession of stolen property.

"I believe he [Ralph Posner] had a meeting with all of us," the woman said, referring to the others who had belongings stolen.

The woman said Ronald Posner was often in her home. "When he was around us, he was always a polite, nice young man," she said. But after the theft of her jewelry, "My son was just hurt. He felt betrayed by a friend." The friendship dissolved.

"It's very sad," the woman said. "His parents tried. They really tried. But it was very hard to help him."

IN DECEMBER 1997, Ralph and Maria Posner withdrew their son from Providence Country Day, six months before his scheduled graduation.

By January, he was attending Hyde School, a $25,000-a-year boarding school with 300 students in Woodstock, Conn.

"Plain and simple, this is a tough school," Hyde's website proclaims. "We have a highly structured curriculum and a demanding code of ethics. . ."

Families should consider Hyde, the website says, "if they are looking for an environment that will address character development, college preparation and family renewal."

Posner lasted about a year.

"He came midyear and he left midyear," said headmaster Kenneth Grant.

By February 1999, Posner was back in Barrington and enrolled at the town high school.

He grew close to Katherine Brown, but the turmoil continued.

In May 1999, Barrington police were called to the Posner home at the end of South Meadow Lane.

Posner had allegedly slapped his mother, pulled a telephone cord from a wall and smashed a glass table top.

Police arrested him. At his arraignment, a judge issued a no-contact order, keeping him away from his mother.

Weeks later, the no-contact order was vacated and the charges were dismissed.

BROWN KNEW POSNER'S other side. How he liked to get dressed up and go out to dinner, and to laugh. The two shared things creative: she loved photography, he was a talented sketch artist. And they bonded in deep talks often about his problems.

But life was calling Katherine Brown.

In early August 1999, she left Barrington for the University of Maine at Orono, a rural campus 12 miles north of Bangor.

She arrived three weeks before the semester began to participate in Running Start, a program for students who make it into college, but who may benefit from more guidance than other freshmen.

She got a jump on her credits, taking a mini-course, Literature of the Sea. On weekends, the Running Start group camped at Baxter State Park, in the shadow of Mt. Katahdin. She was nervous about rock climbing, but she did it, just as she camped in the rain. Once the semester started, the Running Start participants met weekly to talk about the adjustment to college life.

She hung pictures of Posner, and her friends from Barrington, in her tiny dormitory room. But things had changed.

"They weren't officially together when she was here," said Sarah Waller, 20, who met Brown through Running Start. "But they still talked."

And Brown talked about him, a lot. Waller had never met Posner. But she had mixed feelings about him.

"She would talk about all the fun things they did together. But he'd randomly call her up and accuse her of doing things that she didn't do," she said. "Then other times he would call her up and say how much he missed her and hated being without her."

When Waller asked her friend how she could stand the roller coaster, Brown explained that Posner had emotional problems. His family was wealthy, she'd say, but not warm.

"She tried to help him. He was just a really messed up kid, and when he'd do stuff . . . she thought he wasn't doing it on purpose," Waller said. "That was the kind of caring person that she was."

Posner planned to visit her in Maine once, but the trip fell through. When Brown returned to Maine from spring break, she told her friends she had spent every minute with him.

"It was off and on," Waller said. "Either things were really good or really bad."

Brown loved the college parties, but she could do without the classes or the Maine winters.

She was 19. She wasn't sure what her role in life was, recalled Angela Cole, her Running Start advisor. She didn't really want to be in college. She wanted to travel, to see Europe. She was a dreamer. She had goals and right then, they didn't center on a syllabus.

"She struggled in some ways with having to conform, to be in a box, it just wasn't who she was," Cole said. "Not that she was rebellious she was just really a free thinker."

Last summer, Brown sent Cole an email. She was going to take time off, then perhaps go to the University of Rhode Island. Cole was concerned, worried that once out, she would not return to school.

Brown called her friend Waller, too. She said she was "really happy." It had been a nice summer, things were good with the boy she called "Posner."

But what of him? In early September, Posner enrolled at Dean College in Franklin, Mass., and withdrew on the same day.

Then, on Sept. 10, there was trouble.

At around 9 p.m., Seekonk police responded to a 911 call at the Motel 6 on Rte. 114A. They found Brown sitting on a bench crying, her face swollen. She was reluctant to talk.

But after a desk clerk told an officer how a male guest assaulted her, Brown admitted her boyfriend punched her. Posner was arrested and charged with domestic assault.

Weeks after his arrest in Seekonk, Posner enrolled in the "Benchmark Young Adult School" in Redlands, Calif., according to a Massachusetts prosecutor.

The school's website describes its mission as helping young, at-risk adults with emotional and behavioral problems.

Most of the students who enroll in the school's year-long program, "do not want to be here," the school's website says. "Many have been living rather comfortably, skipping school, partying with friends and taking liberties with family values, among other disruptive behaviors."

Posner, 20, was still attending the school in December, when his domestic assault case came to court. The judge continued the case until this June, pending Posner's performance at Benchmark, said the state prosecutor.

Back in Rhode Island, Brown was again on her own. She turned 20, and at a Thanksgiving party told friends she was ready to go back to school and work hard. She made plans to take classes at the Community College of Rhode Island.

From a former Hyde School student....

Monday, August 11, 2014
Depression, Robin, and me
(to whatever god there is, I pray that I eventually have the strength of mind to post this as an in-text facebook post)

I don’t think I’m alone in this regard, but the apparent suicide of Robin Williams has hit me far harder than any celebrity death ever has. It is a horrible, brutal lesson of just how powerless the world still is against depression. The most beloved man in the world, who brought more pure joy and delight to more people than perhaps any figure from history ever has, was nevertheless powerless against depression’s pull. If it can claim Robin Williams, who did so much to redeem himself from its hold, is there any hope at all for those of us who struggle with it every day yet have nowhere near his platform to disarm it?


So it’s far past time to talk about the ravages of this illness publicly in my most public forum where I post 12098572039485 times a day: on Facebook. How can I stand for anything on my own two feet if I don't stand up for myself and those like me who suffer so greatly  - this illness which made me a C and D student and bully fodder in a parochial school that amplified its effect exponentially, even though it was perfectly clear to so many that I was more intelligent than nearly every A student they'd ever met (modesty is not one of its inherent traits, but mania is ), which forced me through the ‘troubled adolescent’ system, in which thousands of cynical or (still worse) fanatically concerned professionals make a quick buck by giving bad advice on how to handle teenagers of whom they clearly have no understanding; which delivered me for three years to a boarding school [Hyde School] where depression was thought of as nothing more than a character flaw, and where extreme mental and physical pressure was exerted every day to ‘correct’ these flaws on all of us in manners that resemble the slimiest tactics of Guantanamo - which in turn delivered me to nearly a decade of psychotic delusions and mental hallucinations which only a decade of consistent therapy was able to address; which in turn led me to years of inability to work a steady job, which of course lead to still more horrible depression. It’s led me to acts against others which, however objectively explicable they might be under the circumstances, I will and can never allow myself any forgiveness. Physically, it may have already aged me far beyond my years - causing me a battery of physical tics and uncontrollable tremors,  vertigo, dehydration, insomnia, along with massive food binges that cause all the predictable chest and stomach pain and rapid heart beat that goes along with it. Romantically, it has prevented any semblance of a long term relationship in my adult life. Socially, it has given me all sorts of difficulty with my (thankfully) many friends. Familially, it has caused more strife than any family should ever have to go through, and I worry has bequeathed a small (though far too large) bit of my infection  - a contagious illness if ever there is one - to my closest family members. In many ways, it is the cruelest of all possible illnesses, because it can strip all who suffer from it for decade upon decade of the ability to recognize any way in which we are still blessed. I’ve written in detail about this plenty of this on my blog, where, I’m well aware, I’m quite safe because nobody actually reads it.

Here is my message: Whenever you look down on someone for publicly advertising their depression online, I want you to remember to look down on me too. Whenever you see an unhappy person as an inconvenience ruining your good time, I want you to remember to view me as a similar annoyance. Whenever you view someone with contempt for burdening you with their mental problems, I want you to remember to have contempt for me too. Whenever you accuse someone experiencing mental anguish of simple emotional manipulation and self-pity, I want you to accuse me of it too. If you become suspicious of becoming friends or dating or working with someone because of their depression, I want you to become suspicious of me too. If you decide that you have no time for people who bring you down, I want you to have no time for me. I want the enemies of depressed people to become my enemies, and I want to take pride that I stood for something that may one day make the lives of those who live with depression not be defined by it, even if it may be too late to define my life by anything else. I have done what I could to conceal this illness (which ultimately is, of course, very little). I tried for what I think is the best of reasons - it was nice for once in my life not to be completely defined by it. And yet the concealment did so little to lighten the burden that I have to ask if it is at all worth the rather superhuman effort it takes (and nevertheless I still dread the thought that it is still very much worth it). This illness has led me to many, many mistakes in my lifetime. But this will no longer be one of them. Some people simply can’t live with the horror of the mistakes which this illness causes them to make, but insofar as it is ever in my control, I will always opt to live with mine. I’ve not done particularly well against it, but I’m nevertheless damn proud of the fact that I’ve done as well as I have in the circumstances. Realistically, I may one day be lost to this illness, either by suicide or by delusion or by physical strain, but so long as this illness is not me, I will choose life, rationality, health and hale every day, and never, never, never give in to it.

Original post

Hyde School
mental illness
abuse complaints reviews
breaking code silence
I see you survivor
Gauld

Considering a Private Residential Treatment Program for a Troubled Teen?
Questions for Parents and Guardians to Ask/Warning from the FTC: original doc- http://astartforteens.org/assets/files/FTC-Warning-Signs-2009.pdf

Private residential treatment programs for young people offer a range of services,
including drug and alcohol treatment, confidence building, military-style discipline,
and psychological counseling for a variety of addiction, behavioral, and emotional problems.

Many of these programs are intended to provide a less-restrictive alternative to incarceration or
hospitalization, or an intervention for a troubled young person.

If you are a parent or guardian and think you have exhausted intervention alternatives for a
troubled teen, you may be considering a private residential treatment program. These programs go
by a variety of names, including “therapeutic boarding schools,” “emotional growth academies,”
“teen boot camps,” “behavior modification facilities,” and “wilderness therapy programs.”

No standard definitions exist for specific types of programs. The programs are not regulated by
the federal government, and many are not subject to state licensing or monitoring as mental health
or educational facilities, either. A 2007 Report to Congress by the Government Accountability
Office (GAO) found cases involving serious abuse and neglect at some of these programs. Many
programs advertise on the Internet and through other media, making claims about staff credentials,
the level of treatment a participant will receive, program accreditation, education credit transfers,
success rates, and endorsements by educational consultants.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation’s consumer protection agency, cautions
that before you enroll a youngster in a private residential treatment program, check it out: ask
questions; ask for proof or support for claims about staff credentials, program accreditation, and
endorsements; do a site visit; and get all policies and promises in writing.

Facts for Consumers

Questions to Ask
Here are some questions to ask representatives
of any program you may be considering. The
responses may help you determine if the program is
appropriate for your child.

1. Are you licensed by the state?

If the answer is yes, find out what aspects of the
program the license covers: educational, mental/
behavioral health, and/or residential?
If the program claims to be licensed, get the name
of the state agency that issued the license and
contact the agency to verify that the license is
current. Often, the licensing will be through a state
Department of Health and Human Services or its
equivalent. If the program’s representative can’t
provide the name of the licensing agency, consider it
a red flag.

If the program is unlicensed and you still want
to consider it, contact the state Attorney General
(www.naag.org), the Better Business Bureau
(www.bbb.org), and the local consumer protection
office (www.consumeraction.gov/state.shtml) where
the program is located.

Regardless of whether a program is licensed, when
contacting any of these groups:
Ask for copies of all publicly available
information, including any complaints or
actions filed against the program, site visit
evaluations, violations, and corrective actions.
Pay particular attention to any reports of
unsanitary or unsafe living conditions,
nutritionally compromised diets, exposure to
extreme environmental conditions or extreme
physical exertion, inadequate staff supervision
or a low ratio of staff to residents, medical
neglect, physical or sexual abuse of youth
by program staff or other residents, and any
violation of youth or family rights.

2. Do you provide an academic curriculum? If so,
is it available to all program participants? Do you
have teachers who are certified or licensed by
your state?

Some programs may offer only self-study or distance
education. Sometimes, educational options are
not made available until a resident has reached an
advanced phase of the program. In addition, some
programs may claim that academic credits will
transfer to the resident’s home school and count
toward a high school diploma. Check with the board
of education in the state where the program operates
– and with your state board if you live out-of-state
– to verify that academic credits will transfer.

3. What about accreditation?

Several independent nonprofit organizations, like
the Joint Commission (JACHO), the Council on
Accreditation (COA), and the Commission on
Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF),
accredit mental health programs and providers.
JACHO accredits and certifies more than
15,000 health care organizations and programs
in the U.S. (www.jointcommission.org)
COA is an international child- and family
service and behavioral healthcare organization
that accredits 38 different service areas,
including substance abuse treatment, and more
than 60 types of programs. (www.coanet.org)
CARF International is an independent accreditor
of human services providers in areas including
behavioral health, child and youth services, and
employment and community services.
(www.carf.org)

Ask whether all components of the program are
accredited, for example, the base program, the
drug and alcohol component, and the wilderness
program. Then contact the accrediting organization
for confirmation.

The GAO’s Report noted that one program claimed
to be accredited by the JACHO, but in fact, only the
base program was accredited. Neither the wilderness
program nor the drug and alcohol component was
accredited.

The organizations above grant accreditation
and certification after evaluating the quality of
services provided by a treatment program. Parents
and guardians should be aware that some other
organizations that claim to accredit schools may
serve merely as membership organizations, and
may not conduct site inspections or otherwise
evaluate the quality of the programs they certify.

If a treatment program claims to be certified or
accredited, parents and guardians should contact the
accrediting organization and ask about the standards
the organization uses when issuing a certification.

4. Do you have a clinical director? What are his/
her credentials?

Typically, a clinical director is responsible for
overseeing, supporting, and maintaining the
quality of care for the program. A clinical director
may have an advanced degree in a related field,
like clinical psychology, and may be involved
in providing individual therapy, assessment and
consultation, staff training and development, and
managing or supervising the components of the
program.

5. What are the credentials of the staff,
especially the counselors and therapists, who will
be working with my child?

Do they have appropriate and relevant advanced
degrees like a Masters in Social Work, a license
to do clinical social work (LCSW), a Ph.D., or
an M.D.? Are they certified or licensed within the
state? If they are, by what agency or organization?

Ask to see copies of relevant documents, and
consider contacting the certifying or licensing
organization to confirm the staff credentials. The
GAO found that some program leaders falsely
claimed to have credentials in therapy or medicine,
which led some parents to trust them with teens
who had serious mental or physical disabilities
requiring different levels of treatment.

6. How experienced is your staff? Have they
worked at other residential treatment programs?
If yes, where and for how long?

Ask to see current certifications in CPR and other
emergency medicine. For wilderness programs, also
ask for proof of relevant training and expertise.

7. Do you conduct background checks on your
employees?

If the answer is yes, find out who does the
background check and how extensive it is. Call the
company to confirm that it provides background
check services for the treatment program. If the
answer is no or the program does not conduct
background checks, consider it a red flag.

8. What are the criteria for admission ? Do you
conduct pre-admission assessments? Are they
in person, by phone, or over the Internet? Who
conducts them?

If your child has serious addiction problems or
psychological issues, take special care to ensure
that the program is equipped to deal with them.
Discuss the appropriateness of the program with
your child’s psychologist, psychiatrist, or other
healthcare provider.

9. Will you provide an individualized program
with a detailed explanation of the therapies,
interventions, and supports that will address my
child’s needs? When is this done? How often will
my child be reassessed?

Ask whether your child will have group or
individual therapy sessions. If the answer is yes,
ask how often the sessions will take place and who
will conduct them. Once enrolled, confirm with
your child that the promised level of care is being
received.

10. How do you handle medical issues like illness
or injury? Is there a nurse or doctor on staff?
On the premises? Will you contact me? Will I
be notified or consulted if there’s a change in
treatment or medication?

Ask for copies of procedures the program follows
on dealing with medical emergencies.

11. How do you define success? What is your
success rate? How is it measured?

Some programs make specific success claims in
their advertising materials. To date, there is no
systematic, independently collected descriptive or
outcome data on these programs.

12. How do you discipline program participants?

Ask about policies and procedures for discipline.

13. Can I contact/speak with my child when I
want? Can my child contact me when he wants?

Some programs prohibit, monitor, or otherwise
restrict verbal or written communication between
you and your child. Find out what is allowed and
prohibited before you enroll your child.

14. What are the costs? What do they cover?
What is your refund policy if the program doesn’t
work out?

Private residential treatment programs often charge
hundreds of dollars per day. While health insurance
sometimes may pay a limited amount, for the most
part, the youngster’s family is responsible for paying
the fees and bills.

15. Do you have relationships with companies and
individuals that provide educational and referral
services?

Some companies may provide services, claiming to
match troubled kids with an appropriate treatment
program. Be aware that although some of these
services represent themselves as independent, they
may not be. They may actually be operated or paid
by one or more of the treatment programs. Ask the
service if it receives commissions from the treatment
programs.

Facts for Consumers
1-877-FTC-HELP FOR THE CONSUMER
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION ftc.gov
July 2008
Federal Trade Commission
Bureau of Consumer Protection
Division of Consumer and Business Education

For More Information
Among the sources of information for families
researching private residential treatment programs
for troubled youngsters are:
The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO)
Report to Congress: “Residential Treatment
Programs: Concerns Regarding Abuse and
Death in Certain Programs for Troubled Youth”
(October 2007) – www.gao.gov
The U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s list of state mental health agencies
– www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/state_orgs.htm

The U.S. Department of State Fact Sheet:
“Behavior Modification Facilities” –
www.state.gov
Your State Attorney General – www.naag.org
The Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and
Appropriate use of Residential Treatment
(A START) – http://astart.fmhi.usf.edu

A START is sponsored by the Department of
Child and Family Studies of the University of
South Florida. The Alliance includes leaders in
psychology, psychiatry, nursing, mental health
law, policy and family advocacy, as well as
individuals with direct program experience as
director, evaluator, parent, or participant in
such programs.


About the FTC
The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices in the
marketplace and to provide information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint
or to get free information on consumer issues, visit ftc.gov or call toll-free, 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-
4357); TTY: 1-866-653-4261. The FTC enters Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related
complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law
enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.

Saturday, January 18, 2020
Dear Abby - Beginning
Hi Abby,

It's been fifteen years. Fifteen and a half to be exact. The last time I saw you, I was literally about to graduate college. I was so shocked to see you in Bethesda, so shy, so unwilling to face old Hyde friends, let alone to the fact that I brought a freshman to High School Prom, even to my best friend walking with me who knew so much about Hyde, that I said within five seconds that I had to go right away. The second I left, I knew how incredibly absurd I was being, so I explained what was what to Marc in a Dunkin' Donuts, we got our donut and coffee, and we came back. Thankfully, you were still there, and you knew exactly how weird it was that I ducked out from someone to whom I'd once bonded like a sister. I don't know for exactly how long we talked, but that was the last time we ever saw each other.

You did rather well in life, not just for a Hyde kid, but for anybody at all. A photographer with work featured in Time Magazine and Slate. I saw the work on your homepage, it's pretty impressive. You certainly captured things in your subjects, and why wouldn't a person as empathetic as you always are in my memory elicit anything less from a camera? Even at fourteen, you silenced a whole room of students and parents with a poem at a student poetry reading I organized for Family Weekend, and we were all so shocked into silence by the quality that all Mr. Spaeth and I could do was ask you to read it again. To this day I remember, a refrain bookended it: 'At Eight-Thirty in the Morning," all the more miraculous for coming from your girlish, Jennifer Tilly-like voice, and oh how you excoriated me for making fun of it. Most Hyde kids were not exactly sharp knives, but there always existed a brilliant minority of Hyde kids whose personalities were too strong and original for a typical school to ever find the key to unlock their.... I'm not going to use those two words.... you know which ones.... I would imagine that many of the parents in that room thought you just another Hyde kid too odd for her potential to ever truly reveal itself in anything but artificial circumstances, but whatever the vicissitudes of the real world that flummoxed so many of us after we got out of the gate, you are one of the very few who got to show the wide world a small fraction of what you were capable. And in that sense, your life is so rich in meaning and success to any of us who have yet to discover how to show all that we are to anyone but the small coterie who know us. Whatever our unique potentials,... there... I said the two words now gimme a diploma.... so many of the rest of us are still mute to the world, the stories we can tell of what we have been through and the still worse things we'd seen others endure, completely yet untold.

With all the continual news of death surrounding us from ghosts of Hyde past, I would occasionally see a new picture of you pop up on social media, and feel a little relief when I saw it. You looked so well-adjusted and happy, and I would genuinely think to myself that if even if so many of us Hyde kids would die prematurely from every kind of reckless living, at least Abby would live to be a hundred; and now you're dead from cancer, which you'd apparently been suffering from in all those pictures, and I, who've advertised many of my illnesses so publicly, who've feared for my health for so many years, who am continually amazed that I've neither left the party yet nor been forced to leave, am still here, and look to be here for at least another couple decades.

I heard of Marissa's suicide in September of 2018, and it apparently happened in November the year before, hopefully she can tell you more about what lead to it than I ever heard. Not that you two were ever at Hyde simultaneously for more than three weeks or so, but when two people die so prematurely, I imagine them meeting up in the next world with friends of friends they discover through social media. If you two haven't met up yet, track her down, you're gonna love each other. Marissa was as brilliant as you, nearly as gifted a writer and one of the most brilliant visual artists I've ever met, she was more extraverted and outspoken, and she was funnier than nearly anyone I'd ever met... Life around her was a non-stop dinner party, twelve-hour conversations at a time in which the interlocutor never came up for air, only for the conversation to resume the next day exactly where it left off.

So yes, as close as I was to you, my dear Abby, Marissa was the love of my adolescence, entirely unrequited of course - 'I could marry you Evan, but I can't date you.' An old flame whose flame was extinguished in the span of a few weeks. I literally followed her to American University in DC, it was the best decision I'd ever made, made for entirely the wrong reasons. I made the best friends of my life, graduated with honors, seemed on the cusp of a basically functional life, while Marissa fell in with a drug crowd, and dropped out after two years. We barely saw each other at Hyde, at first I thought it was because she didn't make the effort to see me, and of course I was a little hurt, but the further away we get from those years, the more I wonder if it wasn't the other way around. At some point in those years I made the very, very conscious decision that Hyde was just a mirage in the life of a nice Jewish boy who should never have ended up in so bizarre and authoritarian a place. I don't know how deliberate it was that I cut loose as many Hyde friendships as I did, but I can't imagine it was any more than 20% by accident. And so at the end of sophomore year, we ran into each other and had one last lunch where she told me she was probably dropping out and apologized to me for having so broken my heart. The two of us went back to hang out in my room afterward. I wish I could say that anything happened, but my love of Marissa was always in the abstract, and when she left, I gave her one of my prize possessions to keep, my copy of Dante's Inferno that I studied in private with Mr. Spaeth, whose advice was that if you're going through Hell, the only way out is to go all the way down. It was the last time I ever saw Marissa. My greatest regret is certainly not that I was never her lover, it was exactly the opposite; that whatever hell she was going through, I so easily let her abandon our friendship so that I could spend more time finally being the kid at the front of the class whom I thought I always was yet had so little evidence until I was twenty. Like Sage, Marissa will always be another Hyde kid for whose downfall I feel in some ways responsible, even if my guilt is totally illogical, it's just one of a thousand things for which I feel terrible guilt for what I continually pray are illogical reasons.

...I'm finding this is much too painful to keep going. I pray I can find a way through this impasse in the next little while. Until then, onto the next project.


Original post: https://evantucker.blogspot.com/2020/01/dear-abby-beginning.html