Fornits

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An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

I think it depends in great part what you are trying to bring to action.  What aims do you have?

Is it to work to shut down the various Cedu schools and other places like them?  If so, contributing to the two investigations that have been cited in this forum seems like a good start.  You might also ask the investigators how you could get more involved, perhaps lobbing individuals actively to come forward with their stories of abuse and help them decide to attach their names to the narratives.  The majority of posts on abuse on this site, while disturbing, are not evidence.  I can also imagine that actively posting to forums for parents considering sending their kids to emotional growth schools might also have an impact.  There is finesse to that tactic, but if the post was not anon and presented appropriately I can imagine that people would think twice before choosing Cedu. I have called Detective Chuck Wyatt in Twin Peaks and provided him some narrative on my experiences at RMA and my take on the program in the early 1990s.  He said it was useful as background. I was very troubled by the investigation into abuse allegations that he mentioned and am disturbed by all of the posts on abuse I have read on this site.  They make me sad and angry on a couple of levels, but mostly sad.

Best, M[ This Message was edited by: mad on 2004-08-10 17:43 ]

The part that I find troubling is not having people in my life who understand the intensity or specifics of the RMA/Cedu experience.  They can?t fathom the base experiences I describe or the intimate friendships I forged (never mind the peculiar lingo).  It is just too far from their experience in life, never mind high school, for them to grab onto. Sometimes I feel lonely about it.  When I?ve had the chance to sit with someone who had been though the same program as me I have found it to be great and to have an immediate sense of connection with them ? the aha, they get it moment.

At this point in my life having graduated from RMA isn?t loaded though it was to a certain extent when I was younger and closer to my experience there (I?m 30).  Where RMA was concerned, I used to be somewhat careful with whom I shared that part of my life story with and what I choose to keep private. Sometimes that meant changing the subject, sometimes that meant drawing boundaries (?My experience of high school was different than for a lot of people and I don?t want to talk about it right now?), and sometimes I choose let people into that part of my story.  In retrospect, I never had a bad outcome from talking about my experience.  At worst people just thought it was weird and didn?t really want to know anything more, and at best, a friendship was made deeper (in great part because at some point people ask what I did to get sent away).

I?ve come to the point now where I don?t mind talking about RMA with people as long as they are genuinely curious and their queries don?t feel exploitive or voyeuristic.   I?ve had some really nice conversations about my time and work at RMA.  When people talk about their high school experiences in a group I chime in with things that were similar (sports, friends etc.).  If someone asks me where I went ? I tell him or her the name of the school. Sometimes that is the sum total of the conversation and sometimes not.  Often people will probe or say, ?I?ve never heard of that school?? or ?was it a boarding school?? I usually counter with ?Yes, an alternative boarding school.  You know, the type for troubled yutes??  In my experience that use of humor forces the conversation down one of two paths ? either people veer into another realm of dialogue because they really don?t want to know more than I have told them, or they become intensely curious.

At this point, going to RMA has become like any other major piece of my story and maybe that is why I now feel safe to talk about it.  I don?t have the expectation that the listener respond in any particular fashion ? or rather I feel OK with however they respond, whether good, bad, or indifferent. I have to admit though that I don?t mind the ?oh my God, you turned out so well? type of stares or comments now.  Usually those awkward moments are an opening in a conversation and serve to make the other person more aware of their biases, stereotypes, and judgments.  ?Well what did you think that someone who went to one of those schools would be like?? is usually a good way to make clear to them that their assumptions are probably misplaced most of the time.

Best, M

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on the road of experience...[ This Message was edited by: mad on 2004-08-09 10:18 ]

I was taken by force to RMA by two men who picked me up at work; my uncle also came and helped by luring me outside of my workplace so as to cause less of a scene.  Like your son, and many of our peers, there is no way that my mother could have talked me into going up to the school on my own volition.  She had given me that choice and I had taken to living on the streets instead of "going to visit the school?" as she had suggested.  She also choose to send me to RMA because she knew that I would walk away from Cedu as soon as I was dropped off.

It was a humiliating experience to be publicly plucked out of my life against my will and forcibly transported to RMA.  However, I don't know of any alternative that would have ended with me being at the school.

The only thing that I wish my mother and stepmother had done differently was to be absent when I was picked up.  They watched me be "taken" from a safe distance of a parking lot away through the windows of their car.  The power dynamics of that moment were unnecessarily painful.  It was clear that my mother was taking control, but there was something sadistic in having her watch.  I tried to revisit this with her years later but her perception of that moment as a mother is very different than mine.  She had wanted to be sure that it worked and had wanted to have a sense of closure over the drama in which we had been living.  While I appreciate that, I still wish that she had put my needs for some privacy during a humiliating moment before her own needs for emotional containment.

Best, Mark

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on the road of experience...[ This Message was edited by: mad on 2004-08-08 08:31 ][ This Message was edited by: mad on 2004-08-08 08:33 ]

I've called and left a message to find out more about his investigation.

M

My name is Mark, I live in Boston and went to RMA from 91-93. I'd welcome meeting Cedu/RMA folks who are out my way.

Best, M

I graduated from RMA in 1993.  I was there while the school moved from the ?Family? system to the ?Team? model and was a founding member of Team Vision.  Simply ? RMA saved my life and has helped me to thrive all of these years later. I continue to reflect on some of the things that I learned while I was there and sometimes have new understandings of the work that I undertook.  As an adult I have also begun to uncover some of the things about the program that are no longer useful to me.  RMA taught me how to look at the world in a manner that was binary ? things were good or bad, black or white, safe or unsafe, life or death.  This was a very useful model for me for years.  It simplified the world and helped me to make sense of the chaos that had been the tenor of my life.  At 30 years old though I am finding that life can be lived subtly ? bittersweet, ironically sad, powerfully silent ? and with far more quiet compassion than my RMA experience would have led me to believe.

I write today with an invitation.  If you would like to know more about my experiences at RMA or since graduating I am pleased to offer them.  Know though that my understanding is that the school from which I graduated really doesn?t exist anymore.  I was among the last of my kind and was at the school before the days of good psychotropic medication (indeed, no one was on any psychiatric medication), mandatory reporting (vis-à-vis students stories that involved physical or sexual abuse), and the professional boundaries that are now the hallmark of professional therapeutic practice (all staff used to go through the program as students).

To my peers on this listserv, if you would like to chat or write with someone who was at RMA I am open to a dialogue.  I am not interested in bashing the school, but if you would like to make sense of your experiences there or how they have impressed on your life since, and talking with someone who has an insiders view would be useful to that journey, I am open to being part of it.

Peace and blessings, Davila