Fornits

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

Someone else should probably do this for their program.  

Milieu Control.  - Doors to our cabins locked from the outside.  We could only leave the cabin with the rest of our group or for special purposes like seeing a nurse.  Traveling anywhere (like to the cafeteria or school building) required linig up heel-toe and counting off, marching in formation to the destination, and counting off again.  Communication was restricted to letters which could only be sent to our parents' address.  Phone calls were rare, monitored, and could only be made to parents.  Communication within the facility was limited to those who had earned the privelege.  Writing notes or speaking in a foreign language were severe offenses.

Mystical Manipulation. - Many (all) of the games and activities in the LGATs were rigged to prove some kind of point to us.  Not sure if this quite counts as 'mystical' but it was certainly manipulative.
Demand for Purity - Working/not working, Accountable/victim.  In agreement/out of agreement.  We had hundreds of petty rules that had to be followed at all times.
Confession. -  Every day.  You must confess all of your rule violations.  Are you out of agreement?  Better 'fess up now (or someone else will do it for you, and there are even harsher consequences)  Confess your sins in the program, confess your sins BEFORE the program.  Just how much of a terrible son/parent were you?  Tell us all about it!

Sacred Science. They held themselves out as the ONLY people with the answers to self improvement/enlightenment.  Without them, we'd be dead or in jail!  Disagreement in the LGATs/seminars was not tolerated and was grounds for "Choosing out" which is how they described being kicked out.  "Choosing" is "accountable" language.
Loading the Language. - "There is no such thing as right and wrong - only what works and doesn't work." "Based on your results you have exactly what you intended."  "Nothing can change when you are comfortable." "What you create in the seminar is a mirror of your life." "Victims feel trapped and powerless.  Victims are at effect.  Accountable people are free and empowered.  Accountable people are at cause."  "There are no large or small agreements, only large and small consequences."
Doctrine over person. - One of the first exercises the LGAT facilitator did was ask us to raise our hands if we believed that we would have been able to get into college had we not gone to thr program.  Anyone who raised their hand was browbeaten and many of these kids were forced to tears.  The program was the one solution to everyone's problems and everybody had those problems.

Dispensing of existence. - This is something that was done more heavily on the parents.  They were told how important it was to complete all of the seminars and keep their cihldren in the program until they 'graduated'. People who decided to pull their children out early were mocked and marginalized by the staff and facilitators.  There were plenty of Newspeak pejoratives for people who disagreed with any element of their doctrine or did not believe any portion of it applied to them.

http://http://www.teenswithproblems.com/treatment.html#warranty

If I find a document with this on it I will scan it for you.  This is from one of their (many) marketing websites.

If you would like a glimpse of the 'loaded language' and 'doctrine over person' check out this detailed account of one of the WWASP parent seminars: http://http://www.wwaspsinfo.net/wwasps/krbean.pdf

Here is the introduction to the parent manual, describing how to ignore your child's complaints.  This probably serves as a decent example of how parents are convinced not to trust their children's letters.  I'm sure I said nearly all of these things at one point.

Dear Parents:

Let me introduce myself. My name is Cameron Pullan. I started working with teens eight years
ago with the YMCA Program. Five years ago, I continued this line of work as a Residential
Manager for Spring Creek Lodge, LaVerkin, Utah, in addition to Psych-Technician work at
Brightway Adolescent Hospital. I then accepted the position of Director of Spring Creek Lodge
in November of 1996. I am excited about our Program. The setting is ideal for teens needing a
change in their lives. We have an excellent process for growth and we, as a staff, are committed
to your child's success. Let me outline what you can expect over the next few months.
When your child first comes to Spring Creek, there is usually a “honeymoon” period. The scenery
is beautiful; breathtaking mountains and rivers. However, when your child sees that the Program
has high attitude/behavior expectations, a firm set of rules and an insistence that he make
appropriate changes, the “honeymoon” is over. While no two situations are the same, the Student
will then usually go through several phases. Let me outline some of them:

Denial Phase - This is typified by statements like:
   “I can’t believe you did this to me”
   “I don’t belong here”
   “I’m not learning anything, all they do is babysit me”
   “The kids here have problems much worse than mine”
   “They have criminals, kooks, and drug addicts here”

Guilt Trip Phase - This is typified by statements like:
   “If you really loved me, you would bring me home”
   “You don’t know how terrible it is here, or you would get me out”
   "I'm going to starve, the food is disgusting"
   “No one cares about me, the staff do whatever they want to me”
   “I’m treated like a prisoner”
   “You can’t believe the staff, they will say anything to keep me here”
   “The others here are a totally bad influence on me, you should hear what they talk
about”

Anger Phase - This is typified by statements like:
   “If you ever want to see me again, you had better get me out of here”
   “You’ll wish you had never done this to me”
   “I don’t want to be your child anymore”

Negotiation Phase - This is typified by statements like:
   “If you bring me home, I promise there won’t be anymore problems”
   “We can work out our problems better at home as a
family, we can all go to therapy together”
   "If I work hard, will you take me home by_______________"
   “I’m willing to work on my problems but can’t I do it at a different Program, one that will help me.”

The agenda in each of these phases is to work on your emotions in hopes that you will take your
child out of the Program, this way he doesn’t have to go through the long hard process of making
changes. We can certainly all understand why a Student will try any or all of these manipulations
first. This is a tough Program, the food isn't as good as the "home cooked" meals you have
provided them, the accommodations aren't nearly as comfortable as your home, the setting is rustic
and isolated; yet, these are some of the very reasons that the Program is impacting enough to be
effective. We have found that if the Parents and the Program remain strong in their resolve that the
student must make changes, the student will finally reach the Acceptance Phase.

The Acceptance Phase is where the Student finally realizes and accepts that he is here until he
makes the necessary changes. Then and only then will the Program begin to work for your child.
Let’s work together to that end!

Sincerely,

CAMERON PULLAN
Director

Notice how they mix some very serious allegations in with complaining about the food, equating them.

I will work through each of Lifton's criteria in another post.

The obvious answer is because they don't believe those things.  They lie because they have to.  Pretty fucking sick.

The idea is to limit the range of potential actions to those which are acceptable to the program.  Do that long enough and it becomes hard to remember it being any other way.  I had a hard time adjusting to freedom ( and still do ). Remember, these people are mostly in the business of scamming parents out of money and NOT in it to actually help teens.  They only need to create the superficial compliance required to graduate from the program and fool parents into thinking they have performed some kind of miracle.  What this does to the child is of absolutely no concern to them.

Their methods are good at gaining compliance within the structure of the program (and the pseudo-program they teach parents to implement once the child returns) and not much else.  My program even had a warranty.  If you were unsatisfied with your teen up to a year after they returned home you could send them back and get 3 more months free of charge.  They approach teen behavior modification as if they were baking a pizza.  You wouldn't want to take it out before it's done, would you?  After 18 months of being conditioned to do nothing but follow orders and do what is expected kids come out as the perfect, obedient children their parents always dreamed of.

I was in a WWASP program a few years ago.  I haven't read the others posts here yet.

Soon after you first arrive you are shown a "Commitment letter" that your parents have signed stating they pledge to keep you in the program for 12 months to however long the staff deem necessary to complete the program.  Communication was restricted to letters.  The program told parents to write letters of encouragement to "work the program" and not even respond to anything negative as it was just "manipulation".  Of course the first thing kids do when they realize what the program is really like is try to inform their parents of what a terrible place it is so convincing kids their parents don't care and will keep them there no matter what is the most important step in gaining compliance.

Students entered at "level 2" with something like 100 points.  It was easy to keep those points if you decided to be compliant, and very easy to lose them if you decided to show any level of resistance.  You could only talk to someone else if your points added up to 4 so level 1s could not talk to other level 1s or to level 2s without a level 3 or above present.  This had the effect of completely isolating someone who had decided to resist from everyone except upper level students who had either decided to fake it or had bought into the program ( these kind could be really sadistic).  Staying on level 1 for an extended period was asking to be harassed by upper levels & your family rep. So, you would have to become compliant to have any social contact at all. Your level and the number of consequences you got each week were what the family rep reported to your parents each week to show your "progress" so staying in a state of resistance was bad for them.  

The official "consequence" at the time I was in the program usually meant going to "worksheets" and spending hours writing essays about what you did wrong and why, etc. before you could leave the building.  I never had to do this so I can't tell you what that was like but it was time-consuming and even the most resistant kids never spent more than a few days at a time in that building.

Points and levels were tied in with program completion so dropping a few levels could mean several months added to your stay.  "Consequences" could be really arbitrary and upper level students were allowed to give them out.  Some times kids were dropped really obviously just to make them stay longer. This was probably the most effective "stick", though it only worked on kids who wouldn't turn 18 or whose parents promised to leave them with a bus ticket and $5 if they did not remain in the program after they reached the age of majority.

Lots of other stuff.  Basically, not complying was asking for the world to close in on you.  It just wasn't a viable option in the long term and I didn't know anyone who kept it up for more than a week.

What was that about the bringing of good points, son?

The programs which are holding on to these policies are typically the programs which deal with the hard core kids, runaways, heavy drugs, violent, already have a record etc,

Oh, yes. I'm sure that's the reason.  :beat:

This is like second nature to you now, isn't it?

http://http://www.causes.com/causes/26398/about?m=

ISAC is dead so this is all you'll get unless I decide to scan the whole contract some other time.