Fornits

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

Gotta bump this back to the top...Thinking of having a tattoo done of this...And I too would like to get a copy of this. Please PM me and let me know how to get it as well.

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.
--Marquis de Sade, French libertine

I found out last week that "Growing Together " has moved out of their Banana Yellow digs in Lantana Florida and moved up to West Palm Beach. I will try to nail down an actual physical address for them and post it as well. they can run, but they can't hide.

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.
--  J. Robert Oppenheimer

Don't hate the players, hate the game.
::rocker::  ::rocker::  ::rocker::  ::rocker::

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
--Sigmund Freud, Austrian-born psychologist

I quit smoking about a year and a half ago...Cold turkey...I was smoking about a pack and a half to two packs a day...Got tired of waking up coughing like mad then going straight for a cigarette....It got to where I would smoke one cigarette and there wasn't enough nicotine or whatever other chemical is in the cigarettes I was craving, so I lit up a second one. I finally realized I couldn't keep on like I was going so I decided to quit. I woke up on a Monday morning, looked at the pack I had beside my bed with 3 cigigarettes in it and said to myself " NO MORE ". That same pack is still sitting on my dresser with the same 3 cigarettes in it. I've made a promise to myself if I ever smoke again I would have to smoke them first....And you know as long as they've been sitting around, they would be good and nasty.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

On 2002-10-19 23:54:00, enough wrote:

"Let me clarify some of this-



I was the only staff-trainee in the bathroom the entire day.There were four or five guys brought in over different periods of time.



NO bones were broken and NO blood was spilled while I was in there. Period. Whoever claims there was is repeating a rumour and talking without direct knowledge.



One kid had his head dunked in the toilet one time, that was Bob Ambrose, the youngest of the brothers. And although I was in the room when it happened, I stopped it after one dunk, because I had begun to realize that it was wrong at about that point.



We did make physical contact with clients that day, but no one was beaten, so to speak, we poked them in the chest, pushed them against walls. Frankly many many people were treated worse in open group, hundreds of times.



The stuff that happened in there was wrong no doubt, but it was by no means a license to beat people as some may have told you. Mostly we screamed and yelled and humliated people in a intense envronment similar to a boot camp.



 Mr. Tilly was the exec in charge then, and I have no idea if he was specifically aware of what was happening while it happened.



Monty Bingham is the Sr. Staffer that told me to take a list of people into the bathroom and do 'whatever it fucking takes, I don't care, but make them change'



He was also in the office the next day with Kris and others, all of the execs, while I was confronted for what happened. Ironically, the primary arguement against me was that this was not how I had been treated. I agreed, not having the nerve to tell the truth, that I had been treated as bad or worse- I was threatened with a gun as a newcomer, sexually molested as a newcomer, and had to ask for permision each time I wiped my ass in one home, just to mention a few things.



 To my knowledge only one other person was set back- Rob was dropped to a fourth phase refrsher as I was. Most of the rest were confronted heavily in group, but I do not remember any of  them being set back. I took full responsibility for what happened, except for Rob, who I believe was set back because he admitted leading the charge to dunk Bob's head in the toilet. Not that it makes it any better, but the toilet did not, as some have claimed, have any shit or piss in it at the time.



Mr. Tilly did leave the program shortly after I did, though whether he was fired or not I have no idea.



If it makes you feel better, I have spent 19 years living with nightmares almost daily that include the events in the bathroom. I can't hold a job, never went to school, am extremely uncomfortable around children, self medicated for the better part of 19 years, I have signifacant health issues because of the stress involved and the degree of self-loathing I feel, even as I write this I find myself wishing that I would simply die to escape the reality of what those bastards turned me into.



I have attempted suicide multiple times, I have commited myself at least twice, and to this day, I regularly consider suicide, and have to call my therapist and talk it out.



I have stress related back problems that are directly related to these events, I have been hospitalized twice in the past five years because of the pain.



 I do not live a happy life, I live a life in which I can not fall assleep, I mostly end up sleeping in the daylight, and only after being awake for 24-36 hours at a time. I dream of home invasions by former clients who come to kill me, and I often wake up screaming and covered in sweat.



 I was beaten up by a former client outside a bowling alley in 1986. He knocked me out cold and then spent some time hitting me in the face and stomach before I recovered enough to flag down a cop. He made it clear that he felt I was to blame for anything that happened to him because I was a ficking staff trainee- in reality I was jsut as affraid and compliant as anyone elee, and I had little or no power at all.



I moved around from state to state and home to home for a long time without filing a change of address form, for fear that the program or former clients were hunting me down to kill me.



As damaging as these events were to Bob, or to others that were brought into the bathroom that day, they were just as damaging to me, and I suspect to any of the fifth phasers that were in there.



So hate me if you want, if it makes you feel better. But do it for the truth, and not over some rumour that spread over the years and grew into something that simply is not true.



There were similar events in the girls bathroom, I do not know who was involved and I have no idea what became of it. I withdrew from the program within two days of these events.



 There is no way in any sense that I should have ever been left alone in the bathroom in that environment. I was a trainee, and as such I was expendable and a good scapegoat.



The program was by its very nature and design abuseive to everyone who was admitted. It was the very core of the program to humilate people and make them feel intense emotions of guilt and shame, and that was part of the modality far before Straight adopted it- as far back as the 1950's under the name Synanon, and before that as a thought reform process developed in China and Korean POW camps.



The only person to blame is Melvin Sembler, he was the driving force, he knew how the modality worked, and according to former members of board of directors, he was determined to avoid any kind of legitmate medical assesments prior to admission- fro mthe very start.



Everyone who was brought in was brainwashed, from exec's like Ann Crow whose own children when through the program, all the way down the group staff. Sure some people were more comfortable than others with the modality, but then all people are different and some people enjoy power.



Personally I think the Callum kid, who was turned into a walking bruise after breaking helen Mortons Jaw- was treated worse than jsut about anyone in the Atlanta group between 83-85.



I can never getr rid of the image of him being arrested outside that day, literally covered in bruises- and charged with felony battery- while those who had beaten him went scott free. But then the program had some kind of political connection with the sherriff of cobb county at the time, as well as local judges in their pocket.

 



"

Let me clarify....Part of this is a Goddamn lie. Dennis Buttimer was executive staff. People did get physically hurt. Heads did get shoved into toilets and flushed. And as far as this whiney ass feel sorry for yourself ( I hope you die, rott and burn in hell. I know this post is old and I hope you're still lurking out there. And Dave Tilly came after Buttimer because Buttimer was either fired or quit.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.  
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0136374069/circlofmiamithem' target='_new'> Andrew Tannenbaum

I just came across a copy of the rules from Straight and they are unbelievable. Here's some of my favorites.

#2. What you see here, what you hear here, what  you do here--remains here.
      ( We know what this was all about. )


#6. No borrowing money, candy, or cigarettes.
      ( Hell there was no smoking. )

#22. No telling your parents your host parent's names or phone number.
      ( Fear of information leaking out ?? )

#35. No 98 ROCK or Saturday Night Live.
      ( Enjoyment is not allowed. )

#37. No Leaning or slouching.
       ( No telling how many brusies on my back from having some asshole poke me with his finger to make me sit up and motivate. )

#40. Hang on tight to newcomers by the beltloop.
    ( The key word is beltloop not back of the pants creating MEGA-WEDGIE.)

#51. No "R" rated movies.
     ( Must be like Mr Rogers. )
       

To the extent that a society limits its government to policing functions which curb the individuals who engage in aggressive and criminal actions, and conducts its economic affairs on the basis of free and willing exchange, to that extent domestic peace prevails. When a society departs from this norm, its governing class begins, in effect, to make war upon the rest of the nation. A situation is created in which everyone is victimized by everyone else under the fiction of each living at the expense of all.

--Edmund A. Opitz

I just received an e-mail from a person from Atlanta when I was there...I deleted it by accident...Please send me another so I can respond....And I was there 09/03-08/84.

The last struggles of a great superstition are very frequently the worst.
--Andrew Dickson

I keep running across postings from other Atlanta suvivors that were here before me but have not seen any here for a while. I'm starting to wonder where they are. Am I the only one lurking here? Send me a PM if you don't want to post.

When an innocent Californian millionaire gets killed by a drug squad
trying to seize his house with a bogus search warrant, people better ask themselves if they really want to turn their cops into money-makers.
--Vancouver Police Const. Gil Puder