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Trigger Warning: self harm, rape, drug abuse, bullying, eating disorder, mental health and PTSD, victim shaming/blaming

Being sent to Hyde School in Bath, Maine was the catalyst for a series of events that would destroy my life and self worth for many years.

I am one of the girls interviewed in the 48 hours episode about former Hyde School student Alix Tichelman regarding her involvement with the Google executive  She was my best friend at Hyde in 2002-2003 when I attended in Bath for a few months, and during the prior summer challenge.

I went to Hyde my first year as a junior in 2002-2003. I was sent to Hyde because my adoptive parents couldn't handle me, so they paid 40k to have me imprisoned at this character cult. My mother used to beat me regularly and my father always travelled. My father was having an affair which didn't come out until after I turned 18 and divorced my mother to be with this woman. He never disclosed this in any family "session" at Hyde. I revealed in the family seminars that my cousins had molested me for years, and Hyde responded by doing nothing to help me work through this. No counseling. No mental health help (not that they actually employed any mental health professionals). No family "therapy" beyond that visit (which was pseudo-therapy, really, as it was run by amateurs who all lacked proper credentials). After my mother left, she told me on the phone, "We can't let the rest of the family find out [about the molestation] because it would ruin them, and you're the black sheep anyway."

I spent my whole life at Hyde on 2-4, which was the 24/7 punishment labor crew, where I was treated like a slave with no dignity. I built a gravel road along the track while on work crew and received zero education, classroom or otherwise. The reason I was put on 2-4 so often was because I acted like a bitch to everyone who bullied me and made fun of me. I challenged the teachers to make sense and the faculty and medical providers (which was really just a nurse or a quack referral doctor in town) to truly help my declining mental state. While I basically lived on 2-4,  I grew very close to Liz Steinberg (who I ran away with) and Alix Tichelman.  I eventually started dating a boy who lived in town named Dennis. I'd always sneak over to his place. He was one of the only men other than Ross Forsbergh (who I am still friends with to date) on that whole campus of adults and peers, or in the town of Bath, that treated me with any dignity.

I was heavier at that time; around 200 lbs.  I developed an eating disorder at Hyde due to social pressure from students and faculty to change my body. I began cutting again there. I begged faculty for help with my depression and they referred me to a joke of a doctor in town who truly did nothing but treat me like wanting my adhd meds made me an addict.

In October, I'd finally had enough of 2-4 and being treated like shit, and having adults do nothing but criticize me while not helping me; while claiming to be "developing my character", that I ran away. The constant abuse from staff and peers had simply become too much, and my repeated attempts to obtain any kind of adequate mental health treatment proved futile.. After I ran away from campus, I was raped by a man who I had thought would help me find safety. I went to the local hospital to report the rape, and they did a rape kit, and I filed a report with the police.  Then I was brought back to the Hyde campus from the hospital. This was a few days before Thanksgiving break.

I remember being driven from the hospital to campus while clothed in a dingy one color two piece sweat suit (think champion grey) and led to Hyde's nurse. I was then forced to walk in this sweat suit (because my clothes were taken with the rape kit) back to my dorm at the far end of the populated campus, while the students and faculty stared at me and talked under their breath. I felt like I was wearing a Scarlett letter and I was told by the faculty that this was the first step in taking accountability for my actions because I had caused my rape, because I had run away.

Meanwhile, I was inappropriately touched by guys who were on the lacrosse team, and because they were considered to be gods on campus, no one believed me. I had it at that point. Disgustingly, a few of these guys even reached out to me recently via social media  to tell me I look great now as an adult.  The Gaulds and my faculty "team" decided that I would be best suited to stay on Inpost during Thanksgiving Break as an accountability for running away, after I had just been raped, exploited and given no mental health care. This meant I couldn't go home like all the other students.

Inpost was supposed "to help build my character".  I was to shadow an older buddy at all times. However they, like everyone else, didn't actually care to assess my well being, and so during some unattended time I swallowed a LOT of pills in my dorm room, trying to overdose.

I was found unconscious and was rushed to the hospital. They pumped my stomach, and when I was revived, I was extremely upset that I was still alive. I was held on a "Temporary Restraining Order" in a psych ward for 3 days, then for a few more days, and they only released me when I lied my way out by saying I had taken so many pills by mistake. Then they finally transferred me home. I never went back to that hell hole of torture called Hyde.

After returning home, I eventually went to a residential program for a year and a half called Graydon, and later graduated from a mainstream high school in 2004 with honors. My eating disorder that had begun at Hyde now had me weighing in at 86 lbs, like the Olsen twins at the height of their ED's. I had severe depression, constant paranoia, couldn't trust adults, had no friends, experienced night terrors, and continued to hurt myself and hide it.

The Gauld family (who founded and run Hyde) made it clear to 16 year old me that my actions were the reason I was raped, and said I needed to "own" that. They provided no follow-up counseling or mental health care after this occurred. I was diagnosed later in life with CPTSD that stemmed from these Hyde experiences and from the molestation I endured during my early adolescent years. These events shaped a self destructive pattern for my adulthood.

After Hyde finally said they "couldn't handle me" and sent me home post-suicide-attempt and mental hospital, and after I had endured even more abuse at Graydon, I began using drugs heavily and acting in a hypersexual manner to numb the pain. I ended up dating a guy who was 21 while I was a senior in high school and he was physically abusive and used to beat the living shit out me. Mind you, I was totally conditioned to think I was the problem; I thought this is what I deserved.

We got engaged and I finally started getting treatment. I was scared of every adult and doctor and so I regressed again and began committing crimes; stupid, petty offenses, but kept getting locked up. I've turned my life around and 'm doing well but the nightmares, the trauma, the urges to hurt myself to control my pain and numb it still exist, and worst of all, every human I've trusted as an adult has used this past to hurt me in one way or another. They used this trauma as some type of evidence to show why I don't deserve to be be loved, treated fairly, or otherwise. I still struggle with self worth and have been in a number of abusive relationships.

Now, luckily, I have no criminal record on paper. I've been in counseling for years. REAL counseling, with LICENSED therapists, not the unqualified faculty who oversaw our "group seminars" at Hyde, who used non-evidence-based methods to "help" kids who needed help.  I am about to graduate college for criminal justice with a 4.0. I volunteer, and run an animal rescue on a farm. However, nothing will ever make the negligence and abuse I suffered at the hands of Hyde that they categorized as "character building" and their lack of accountability, and how it shaped my life, okay.

Hyde stole my sense of self worth, my value, my ambitions, my innocence, it taught me to believe that my rape, my painful emotions, etc. were all my fault and that I deserved them. They began (what I consider) grooming me to believe I deserved to be treated like garbage my whole life by family, friends, and partners. They taught me that I was a mistake and I didn't deserve love. What Hyde used was simply abusive, manipulative, brainwashing, punishing behavior modification techniques, and coercive thought reform, but offered no effective help for underlying conditions and trauma. They have been doing this for decades, and they are still open!

Graydon was awful, too. They made me not trust people, and fear that every human would only hurt or abuse me. Graydon made me realize that if I didn't put on the expected act and embody the picture of a perfect, well adjusted person, I would never have any bit of a normal life. Graydon nurtured the seed that Hyde planted; the seed that conditioned me to believe I was broken, that everything bad that happened to me was my fault, and that I could never be truly loved.

So to those of you who say this place helped you, great, but don't for a second diminish the fact that this establishment unlawfully, knowingly, and intentionally ruined others' lives and changed their whole futures in a negative way.

Megan Elizabeth Toohey Price

So ridiculous. The School already settled in Hiler v Hyde and they just let him walk around campus? Pretty absurd!!!

Case links:
1. https://www.fornits.com/phpbb/index.php/topic,44749.0.html
2. https://ia800202.us.archive.org/2/items/gov.uscourts.ctd.18684/gov.uscourts.ctd.18684.docket.html
3. https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/1e0g0oy6/connecticut-district-court/hiler-v-hyde-school/

Here is what Ursus transcribed from photos of the case into text:
From Ursus: https://www.fornits.com/phpbb/index.php/topic,22002.msg297625.html#msg297625

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT

L. HILER VS. HYDE SCHOOL AT WOODSTOCK
CIVIL ACTION NO.
MARCH 5, 2002

COMPLAINT

1.  This is an action by a female student against a private school which, upon information and belief, is the recipient of federal funds, for tolerating and encouraging a pattern of sexual misconduct directed against her and other female students by a male faulty member, over a long period of time.

2.  Jurisdiction of this court is invoked under the provisions of Sections 1331, 1343(3) and 1367(a) of Title 28 of the United States Code and this court's supplementary and diversity jurisdiction over the plaintiff's causes of action under state law.

3.  The plaintiff is an adult female citizen of the State of XXXXX.  She was born on XXX and at all times mentioned herein was an out-of-state student at the defendant's school in Woodstock, Connecticut.

4.  The defendant is a private school located in Woodstock, Connecticut.  Upon information and belief, the defendant receives federal financial assistance for the operation of its educational and related programs.

5.  The amount at issue in this case is greater than seventy-five thousand dollars, exclusive of interest and costs.

6.  In 2001, and for several years prior thereto, the defendant employed at its school in Woodstock an adult male teacher by the name of Larry Dubinsky.  At all times mentioned herein, said Dubinsky was acting as the agent, servant, and employee of the defendant, within the scope of his employment and agency, and for the defendant's financial benefit.

7.  For several years prior to and including the events described hereinafter, the defendant, through its administrators and officials, had actual knowledge that Dubinsky  was subjecting the female students at Hyde School to sexual harassment which included inappropriate touching, staring, and comments.  Despite such actual knowledge, the defendant retained Dubinsky on its faculty and permitted him to continue to have daily, direct and unsupervised contact with the adolescent female students at the school, including the plaintiff.

8.  During the second week of July, 2001, at the school, Dubinsky initiated a "role-playing" incident with the plaintiff in the course of which he insisted upon having full body contact with the plaintiff, repeatedly and over her objection, while making lewd and inappropriate comments to her which included the phrase "fucking pussy".

9.  On August 1, 2001, while instructing a dance routine in which the plaintiff was involved, Dubinsky required the plaintiff to be his partner and to dance with him.  He required her to bend down in front of him, then lifted her, raised her blouse, felt around her body for her hips and placed his hands on her hips.  When the plaintiff objected and moved away from him, he attempted to coerce her into continuing.

10.  When the plaintiff complained to the defendants administrators about the aforesaid misconduct, she was summoned to a meeting at which she was required to meet with Dubinsky and was criticized by administrators for not wanting to look at Dubinsky during the meeting.  The following day, she was summoned to yet another meeting with administrators, which the administrators concealed from her parents.  When school officials were informed in September of 2001 that the plaintiff was suffering from recurring nightmares regarding Dubinsky, a faculty member falsely accused the plaintiff of flirting with another male teacher.  Her mother's pleas to the defendant's highest administrators that Dubinsky be kept away from the plaintiff and not allowed on school grounds were rejected.  In February of 2002, the plaintiff was required to serve as a waitress at a party given by the defendant's headmaster at which other under-age students were required to serve alcoholic beverages.  Dubinsky was an invited guest at that party.

11.  In the manner described above, the defendant has, on the basis of the plaintiff's sex, excluded her from participation in, denied her the benefits of, and/or subjected her to discrimination under an education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance in violation of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, Sections 1681 - 1688 of Title 20 of the United States Code.

12.  In the manner described above, the defendant through its aforesaid agent subjected the plaintiff to assault and battery on each of the two separate occasions described above, in violation of Connecticut state law.

13.  The conduct of the defendant and its agent described above was extreme and outrageous and was carried out with the knowledge that it probably would cause the plaintiff to suffer emotional distress.

14.  In the manner described above, the defendant further acted in negligent disregard  of the probability that its conduct would cause the plaintiff, like any person of ordinary sensibilities similarly situated, to suffer emotional distress so severe that physical illness could result.

15.  As a direct and proximate result of the acts and omissions of the defendant described above, the plaintiff has suffered severe emotional distress.

WHEREFORE, the plaintiff claims judgment against the defendant for compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorney fees and costs.

CLAIM FOR JURY TRIAL
The plaintiff claims trial by jury.

THE PLAINTIFF

BY:______________
JOHN R. WILLIAMS
Federal Bar No. ct00215
Williams and Pattis, LLC
51 Elm Street
New Haven, CT 06510
TELEPHONE:  203.562.9931
FAX: 203.776.9494
E-MAIL:  [email protected]
Her Attorney


   

More on this topic from the same blogger, original full post: https://evantucker.blogspot.com/2012/06/800-words-brief-history-of-my-weight.html


...I suppose I can’t talk about my weight without talking about the high school itself which to this day controls my feelings about my body, a subject I try not to let come up on this blog too often. I avoid talking about Hyde in part because there’s far too much to say about it, and in part because I worry how some people might co-opt anything I have to say about it for their own agendas. I will say very simply, I don’t have any truck with most of the students who pick fights with the methods of that place. Nevertheless, few people will be happier than I on the day that the Hyde Schools are shut down for mistreatment of their students, and it’s only a matter of time before they are. To this day, I view Hyde as the defining experience of my life, as I imagine most people would who went there, for good or ill. Opinions on that school differ from student to student, teacher to teacher. But given the extremity of their methods, it is impossible not to have an opinion.

After three years at Hyde, a boarding school for bad high school students who’d exhausted normal options, I swore to myself that no one but me would ever make me do any physical activity for the rest of my life. When we all read the reports about the detention camp in Guantanamo, certain methods of theirs rang eerily true to the punishments which Hyde faculty administered (or that students administered to one another). The more I read about the methods of authoritarian regimes, the more similarity there seemed to the methods of extracting information to which Hyde students were subjected. The more I read how propaganda machines manipulate language to create submissive citizens, the closer Hyde seemed to such a model. One day perhaps I’ll write about my experiences there, but even now – eleven years after it was over, much of it is still too painful to revisit.

By no means should anyone compare the methods of a New England boarding school to a totalitarian regime (I feel ridiculous even writing that), and as someone whose grandparents lived under both Stalin and Hitler I should feel particularly sensitive to that sort of comparison. But even my father, a PhD in Eastern European history who spent a year living in Caucescu’s Romania, agrees that the comparison is not without merit. So have Eastern European friends to whom I described what students like us were subjected. Even so, on a basic level, it is absolutely ridiculous to make any comparison between Hyde and any sort of police state. Nevertheless, I can’t deny that in its own infinitesimal way, Hyde School gave me an insight I never wanted into what my grandparents endured.

The greatest benefit Hyde gave me was that it was the greatest possible training for a budding writer – forcing its (often fascinating) students to observe one another to the minutest possible detail. At any moment, any one of us could be accused of doing something wrong – sometimes truly and just as often falsely, and every student there had to evaluate whether or not another student could stab them in the back with these sorts of accusations. In theory, we were all supposed to evaluate one another to help each other achieve our best in all areas of our lives. In practice, such evaluation usually dissolved into a mob mentality in which bullies found an outlet to pick on weaker kids that was completely sanctioned by the school...

...But back to the weight problem. Even in my last year at Hyde, where for my last six months I managed to ‘trick’ the school into not making me play sports, I began to put on weight. By graduation, I was certainly well over a 150 pounds, perhaps even 165. During the last ‘punishment-workout’ I ever had to do at Hyde, a mere two days before I graduated, I did the one thing I’d avoided in three years of extreme physical activity – I threw up.

Six months later, my wrestling coach saw me for the first time when I came back to visit. The first thing he said to me was: “Tucker!....Step on the scale!” I was 184 pounds. By the end of my freshman year I was probably 190. By the end of sophomore year, I passed the landmark I thought I’d never reach, two hundred pounds. By graduation, I was 220.

I don’t doubt that there was an enormous confluence of reasons that made me gain so much weight in so little time; everything from laziness to medication to gluttony to anxiety played its own part. Like so many college students, I was eating like there was no tomorrow, drinking like a fish, and smoking like a chimney. All the healthiness I’d gained in those three years I happily gave up for the chance to be a different person. I felt as though I had three years of my life to make up for, and if I could help it I was going to enjoy every minute of it. I can’t say that I derived enough enjoyment to justify gaining eighty-five pounds in seven years (maybe forty-five…), but at least for days at a time, I managed to dispel the crippling fear, guilt, and insecurity with which 3 years at Hyde would leave any student with a shred of humanity.

After college, I went to live in Israel; and as Israel has done for a century of Jewish kids, it boosted my health - to the best it had been since before college. I found a workout partner who became a close enough friend that we’re travelling Europe together for a month this summer. The Harris is a good four inches taller than I, yet weighed less than 130 pounds. The experience of working out with him was everything Hyde was not. He never pushed me to overexert, was always understanding when I couldn’t complete a set, and our workouts often took three hours because we’d talk for twenty minutes between each exercise. By the end of my time in Israel, I was down to 190 pounds, and could do a strenuous, hour-long workout with no break that made me feel better by the end than I did at the beginning.

But when I returned to America, I had no idea what I was doing with my life; without a job, utterly without prospects, stuck in my parents’ house in Baltimore with no sense of direction. Within a year, I’d gained another 45 pounds. At this time five years ago, I was a full 235 lbs. It is, I vow, the largest I ever will be. For normal sized people, 235 pounds is not really that fat. But when you’re 5’4 ½, 235 pounds is enormous – not quite morbidly obese, but certainly obese with a capital O. Were I a foot taller, it would be the equivalent of being well over 300 pounds.

Most of this extra weight is carried my Falstaffian gut. My physique is surprisingly well maintained in other areas, but for years I’ve had a paunch to rival any sexegenarian. A pot belly usually comes with a greater risk of heart disease, and at my largest, I had all the symptoms of heart disease at far too young an age; pain in my chest, tingling in my arm, dizziness, windedness, and constant fatigue. On the other hand, I was eating some damn good food.

I can’t help that I love food – I love all types, all flavors, from the most gourmet to the grossest fast food.  If left to my own devices, I would probably eat every minute of every day. For whatever reason, my body has very little sense of when it’s full, and I can’t understand why people would leave some food on their plate untouched. What an alcoholic is to booze, I am to food. I long since gave up cigarettes with little trouble. I could even see myself cutting out alcohol completely with little regret. But the mere thought of limiting my food intake seems like a cross too great to bear.

In the last two years, I’ve been to two cardiologists, both of whom told me that I have no heart problems whatsoever. I do, however, have rather severe heart burn, terrible back pain, a probable ulcer, and still more severe hypochondria. The last few years have been a steady stream of constant diets and inconsistent physical activity – Atkins, calorie counting, biking, and weight lifting. Today, I start the severest diet of them all – a week-long ‘detox’ diet of nothing but fruits, vegetables and six ounces of protein a day that will hopefully take the edge off some of my most extreme cravings.  For all that effort, my weight has steadily yo-yoed between 225 lbs and 200, and never below 200.

Thin people simply never understand why a person would go to such weird lengths to lose weight. Why not simply limit your food intake and consistently get exercise? Why not indeed? Fat people have been wondering why they’re incapable of following these prescriptions for good health at least as much as their thin friends. There are only two options to believe – either fat people are simply lazy, or we have a biological problem that is not easily cured. Many people, particularly many thin people, believe the former. Perhaps they're right, but my experience tells me to doubt them. Bulimia is considered a disease, yet the condition still involves the somewhat involved process of a bulimic person finding a drain in which to throw up. In the same way, even if one has a choice to stop eating, perhaps one doesn’t. Alcoholism, compulsive gambling, anorexia are all diseases that involve a free choice as much as compulsion – yet they’re still considered diseases.

One day, I will be thin again. I truly believe this. I just hope it’s before I turn 35 or 40 or whatever age it is when ailments from bad body maintenance become truly irreparable. I want to be thin, really I do. But it’s goddamn hard. Asking me to stop eating so much is asking me to amputate one of the biggest parts of myself (no pun intended). It’s almost as though can no longer imagine my life as a thin person.

Original Blog post from a Hyde survivor: https://evantucker.blogspot.com/2013/03/800-words-to-my-19-and-24-year-old.html

Tuesday, March 12, 2013
800 Words: To My 19 and 24 Year Old Political Selves (Part II)

The defining realization may have come from college, but the need for a defining realization came from Hyde School: the defining three years of my life to this day, and I expect for many decades more.

I don’t know what the Hyde School has become, it’s an experience that is more than ten years in the past. But at the time, Hyde School was a place which bred unreality. It prayed on desperate families and provided them with a ready-made doctrine for life as rigid as any religious or totalitarian dogma - and once those families were ensnared, it proved just as hard for them to escape. Like with any religion, there should be no doubt that there are many people whose lives were made better by its ministrations. But, like religion, the improvement of those lives was almost always effected at the cost of worsening the lives of others. Like all totalitarian regimes, it encouraged friends to turn against friends, contorted language so words would mean precisely their opposite, and weaponized fear as a means of conditioning students to love their tormentors. It was a feasting ground for sexual predators, both teacher and student, and was a place where bullies could stretch the full plumage of their inner sadists in ways that were completely sanctioned by the school. It utilized interrogation techniques that made the techniques which the Bush Administration approved at Guantanamo seem all too familiar, and used them far more liberally than the Bush Administration ever did. Hyde was a school, one of many in America for wayward youth, whose entire apparatus is built for the reconditioning of kids’ brains to alter their sense of reality. Now, before you accuse me of sounding like a raving conspiracy theorist, let’s put some things about Hyde in proper perspective.

There is no one in the world who needs their perceptions of reality altered more than teenagers, and particularly badly behaved teenagers. So for all its problems, let’s not exaggerate, and let’s give the devil it’s due. The majority of kids who ended up at Hyde were those whose conduct was so beyond redemption that a proliferate measure of the harshest possible discipline might have done some of them good - and a few of them probably needed still harsher discipline than Hyde afforded. Furthermore, it gave some children with a bent toward fanaticism and sadism (sentiments which, for the sake of argument, let’s admit might be used to advance virtuous causes so long as there are proper and ironclad restraints on how it is used...) the self-assurance they needed to face adulthood with a confidence they otherwise would never have developed, even if that confidence came at the expense of students who were less willing to give their critical faculties over to other people. But against the gains accorded these students must come the losses of the students who were more withdrawn, more isolated, more uncertain, and less self-confident, than their extraverted peers. No amount of public shaming, or barely disguised corporal punishment, or extreme mental pressure to confess to bad acts (often acts which never happened), will raise their sense of self - it will only destroy what little self-possession they have. If such students had fragile mental faculties to begin with, their ability to adequately process reality in any context would have been utterly demolished by a school which puts such stock in destroying a person’s previously held sense of self. So no, Hyde is not the Soviet Union. It may have ruined lives, but Hyde never killed anybody. Though if laws had permitted them...

This is not a post to document its various crimes and abuses Hyde committed, though I’m sure that post will one day come. I’ve already written about those years in certain ways before, though never in great detail. Hyde is like the proverbial elephant in the room of this blog, the experience of which stalks every post in ways I probably still can’t even imagine. Doubtless, had it been about any other subject, Hyde would have told me to document every single abuse, and denounce them all in the most humiliating and public possible voice (“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable” was one of the most oft-repeated, and most terrifying, cliches which they parroted ad nauseum at their students. When I was a student, they even had it printed on a banner in the senior lecture hall.). But most of what happened there is so much stranger than fiction, so utterly bizarre and often in the most disturbing ways, that I couldn’t possibly do it justice unless I am operating at the very peak of my ability as a writer - something I’m sure I’m still a long way from achieving, if I ever do.

But the point of bringing Hyde into this post is to talk about one, particularly strange, facet of its culture - no stranger than any other of its many strange aspects: the radicalism of its views toward the outside world. Because Hyde School was a place which viewed the outside world as a beef stew of disgustingly corrupt influences, it naturally attracted people who agreed with their view of the world to work there. And because there were so many disagreements among the teachers about what was responsible for the corruption of the world, there was a seemingly unique agreement among adults who numbered themselves as members of both the Hard Right and the Hard Left to leave each other’s political disagreements alone in the classroom (at least we never saw them). English classes would be routinely interrupted by a teacher’s discursion about the plight of the Chilean minor against American imperialism, speakers would be brought in from local progressive organizations (and there are many in Rural New England) to talk about the existential importance of pacifism, history classes would be interrupted by a teacher’s frustrated digression that the contemporary world seems so intent upon oppressing Catholics, and our German-educated civics teacher would find nothing creepy or ironic about the innocuous fun of of beginning his class by calling role and making every student stand up and shout confidently “ICH BIN HIER UND BEREIT!”

Hyde was like a magnet for fanaticism of every stripe and every breed. And because it found something so admirable in fanaticism, it (rather amazingly to me now) tolerated fanaticism in its students, including some times when the fanaticism went against the ethos of the school. But then again, did it?...

There were two strands of high school teacher who found a perfect outlet for their convictions at Hyde. One was a typical right-wing fanatic: intellectually lazy, temperamentally belligerent, unthinkingly cruel and authoritarian - and they made up the lion's share of the long-term faculty. They believed in institutions, they believed in tradition, and attributed everything wrong with the students who came to Hyde as a case of a decadent world that granted them too many rights, too little responsibility, not enough discipline, and not enough punishment. 

But there was a second strand of fanatic, a left-wing fanatic, that was attracted to Hyde as well. At the time, these were my absolute heroes, and I worshipped the ground every one of them walked on even if they couldn’t (wouldn’t?) do much to protect me and others from the cruelty to which their smartest students were routinely subject. They were everything these other teachers weren’t; intellectually glamorous, rebelliously thoughtful, willing to see that some students needed a simple confidence boost and an ear to bend, and - most importantly - willing to concede that the methods of the school were extreme and unproductive, no matter how good the intentions of their administration.

And, clearly, these teachers gave something important to the school that none of the other teachers could have, or else they’d have been fired on the spot for their public disagreements with school policy. What they gave the school was intellectual credibility - miles of it considering just how dumb some of the other teachers were. These were bookish men and women who were intimidatingly well-read and often amazingly charismatic. Some of us often wondered what the hell they were doing teaching at Hyde when they should have been running for public office or writing books. And because Hyde didn’t have enough good teachers to oversee a real curriculum, the school gave these teachers the lattitude to teach in whatever manner they liked. Against all Hyde’s efforts to subvert it, students ended up receiving bits and pieces of a real education. Compared to the red tape they had to cut through in public school, a Hyde classroom must have seemed like paradise itself for those teachers. At least for a time...

These teachers tolerated the methods of the school, at least for a couple years, because they believed one and all in Hyde’s basic mission - which was, allegedly, the teaching of moral character. And like all fanatics, these teachers believed in themselves enough to believe that they could change the school’s entire ethos, an ethos which, with just a few tweaks could be a light unto all other schools in America (and make no mistake, when I was there, Hyde had extremely national ambitions). To teachers like them, a school like Hyde is corrupt only in its methods. But every one of them seemed to leave the school in a huff, completely disillusioned by years of their best efforts to reform the school into something more ethical coming to absolutely nothing. Somehow, these teachers could teach at Hyde for years, or even decades, without it occurring to them that the belief in the specialness of Hyde’s mission was precisely what sanctioned its teachers and ‘best’ students to act as cruelly as they did.

 And the longer these teachers stayed there, the more appetite for fanaticism they clearly had. By staying at Hyde for years or decades, they’d made an unthinking, Faustian pact to sell out all the principles of tolerance and open-mindedness they claimed to hold dear, thinking that only by compromising on those standards could they receive their investments back in spades.

And the radicalism of those teachers absolutely rubbed off on their brightest students. Most of the students at Hyde were as dumb as their dumbest teachers. But the smartest among the students, we prized ourselves like an elect who, having been through hellfire, had scores of wisdom beyond our years and understand the world in a way nobody else did (though how wrong we were...). It was not unlike the bond of soldiers.

Radicalism was the one outlet we had - moderation, apathy, uncertainty, were banished from our lives. At Hyde, skepticism was virtually synonymous with weakness, so better to be lauded for having causes to unthinkingly believe in with our whole hearts than to take the time required to think through what we believe. It is a dangerous, slippery slope, and many people who start young down the path to radicalism can never expand intellectually beyond the person they were at 17. Once you’re taught to disbelieve impartial facts, facts which hundreds of thousands of people in every generation devote their lives to collecting as best they can, you can invent whatever facts you like. If you read no books, you can still be a member of the Hard Right. If you read one book, you can still be a member of the Hard Left.

And so many of these students started down the path to radicalism, some of whom formed a political discussion club with us. Woe would have been the right-winger who’d have joined the club, because even I was often shouted down for having beliefs that weren’t sufficiently extreme. But fortunately, the political right wing students at our school were usually so uncurious and so dumb that that never happened. I’ve often wondered what happened to those other politically active students in the in the intervening years. Did their minds ever get past the infantile rebellion stage? Did they ever realize that the extremity of our beliefs set back the very causes we claimed to struggle for? Did they ever reach a point when the anger subsided and rational discourse found a home in their minds? I can’t imagine it did for too many of them, because Hyde created yet another obstacle in that all-important process.

[First & last part of this former Hyde student's blog post has been cut out. You can find the whole blog post here]

Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The Gym - The Most Depressing Place in America

When I was about fifteen, I stopped going and found myself gaining weight at an alarming rate. I?d been taking ADHD medications since I was eight, and was often told that I was in danger of serious weight gain. My mother had heard that a friend of hers got a trainer for her overweight son at the gym of the Pikesville Hilton who helped him lose quite a bit of weight. I went to the gym, and that?s where I met Kathleen.


Kathleen was twenty-one, a petite blonde shikse from Glen Burnie, whom for reasons I could not fathom worked at the Pikesville Hilton. She constantly wreaked of cigarette smoke and had a giant, multicolored tattoo on the small on her back. She was constantly telling me how much she couldn?t stand the other trainers. Half-hour sessions turned into two hours as she regaled me with stories of her ex-boyfriends and how much her girl-friends slept around. I was in love.


One of the most heartbreaking moments of my adolescence was when Kathleen told me she was leaving the Hilton for a better job. Going to the gym after Kathleen as gone was simply pointless. Not that it mattered. A few months later, I was at Hyde School in Connecticut, and I would be whipped into shape whether I liked it or not.

Physical activity was Hyde?s default solution. There was nothing in their minds which it could not solve. If a student needed to be disciplined, they?d be coerced into doing regimented, military-level workouts for three-quarters of an hour. If a student didn?t do their homework, they were made to run laps around the building. If a student was disobedient rules, they could be made to do physical activities for hours at a time - along with any other student unlucky enough to be around at that moment.

It was illegal for Hyde teachers to slap us or use canes, so they used the pain from physical activity as a form of torture - and it was most certainly torture, torture was precisely the point of what they administered. But even though it was torture, some people thrived on this routine, and developed a lifelong (and no doubt rather morbid) passion for physical activity. For a little while it appeared to many that I might have been one of them. I was a svelte (though not sexy) one-hundred thirty-five pounds, and the immense amount of sweat gave me an acne-pocked face like a pepperoni pizza. There were many times in wrestling we were coerced into doing a ?six-minute drill.? For those who don?t understand what a six minute drill is - it is a period of physical activity so intense that it approximates the physical exertion one must exhaust in a six-minute wrestling match. In itself, that is not terrible, and doubtless exactly what?s used for wrestling teams around America. But one day, as punishment for a few students arriving late, our coach required us to a ?twenty-five minute drill.? The equvalent of four full-length wrestling matches in a row. At the end of the drill, he put the latest kid in the middle of the room - a kid from Hyde?s abortive Middle School who couldn?t have been more than twelve or thirteen. We were ordered to look him dead in the eye, strike the floor with maximum force with our arms and yell out ?Thank You Kevin? every five seconds. The poor kid stood in the middle of the wrestling room, sobbing as we all directed our exhausted hatred at this poor little boy. Shortly thereaftetr, he seemed to undergo a personality change, no longer a happy-go-lucky boy but one of the most rebellious teenagers in the school. I often wondered what happened to him, but I can?t imagine he ever got over that day, it?s probable that here was yet another soul Hyde set irrevocably on a poisonous path.

One of their favorite exercises was what they called the ?block?. You keep your feet running in place at full speed, and then you dive into the floor with your hands being all that stops your head from hitting the ground while your feet remain the air until a half-second later. You?re then expected to get up from this - all in less than a second. One day, for our perceived inattentiveness, the entire wrestling team was made to do five-hundred of these in a row. If that doesn?t sound so bad, try doing twenty of them in a row and see how you feel. At the end of it, the captain of the Varsity Wrestling Team, still the most impressively muscular person I?d ever met, came up to me and said ?Holy shit man, that was not right.?

Another technique of theirs was called the ?wall-sit.? A wall-sit in itself in no way terrible: physical therapists use it to help their patients stretch and build up endurance. However, fifteen minutes to an hour of wall sits without a break is most definitely is a form of torture, and bears an eerie though admittedly curtailed resemblance to the Bush Administration?s Guantanamo technique of not letting prisoners sit down for twelve hours at a time (at least they could stand comfortably if they liked).

If we were wrestlers, we were often expected to go on mid-winter runs at 5AM. If we were disobedient, we were expected to have 5:30 military level workouts - come winter come summer. Exposing prisoners to extra-cold temperatures has always been a favorite technique of authoritarian organizations.

But even now, I expect there are some people who will see all this and say ?this is not so bad and certainly not torture.? It?s not surprising, these techniques are designed for people like you to say exactly that - just as the Bush administrations techniques were designed to do and no doubt just as many, many organizations in charge of discipline design themselves around the ?civilized world.? Like those at Guantanamo, I suppose it?s possible that we deserved no better than we got, but people should still be aware of what transpires in their back yards, and I don?t think they are. 

I?ve gone over the next part before. I swore many times at Hyde that nobody could ever make me do physical activity ever again. And I stayed all too true to that vow. Six years after I left, I was a hundred pounds heavier than my wrestling weight. I suppose that one could argue that perhaps Hyde was a special case and not indicative of larger problems in the society that allowed it to exist, but I would argue that what went on at Hyde was simply a byproduct of a macho society grown fat with ill-gotten muscle on its own testosterone. We?re a culture that caters to sports - American industry may disappear tomorrow, but professional American sports leagues have enough money from overpriced tickets and merchandise to outlast the rest of America for a hundred years. And we?re bombarded with so many airbrushed bodies on television and the internet that many Americans assume it profits them nothing to get in shape if they can?t look like Arnold Schwartzenegger or Kate Moss. Our country?s turned into the physical equivalent of the Eloi and the Morlocks. It often seems as though everybody who doesn?t look beautiful topless looks like a living room sofa. Can you blame us fatties? What hope have we of getting in shape when we?re told that if we can?t work a miracle with our bodies, we might as well stuff our faces on Chipotle?

I don?t ever want to be in wrestling shape again. I don?t want to be an athlete. I have no physical ambitions beyond the ability to play senior-league softball in my mid-seventies should I so choose. I want a normal body. I want to weigh somewhere in the area of one-hundred sixty pounds, and I want to weigh that before I?m incontrovertibly bald......

You can find the whole blog post here: https://evantucker.blogspot.com/2013/04/800-words-gym-most-depressing-place-in.html

Apparently Hyde School still had at least 70 students in 2020-2021 which means they received tuition so I'm not sure why they needed this money for "salaries"... It's been said often on this board that they don't hire many teachers with actual teaching credentials, and don't pay them that well, and hire zero psychologists.. So the payroll costs are not ridiculously extravagant, EXCEPT that Laura and Malcolm together make at least a half million a year or so..  They didn't have to pay these "loans" back if they didn't lay anyone off. They made 93 year old Joe "resign" in early 2021 after he was exposed for saying some terrible things about rape and child pornography distribution on campus by a student.

HYDE SCHOOL
Loan Amount
$899,712  Link: https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/loans/hyde-school-8269817000

Where applicants said the money will go
Payroll- $899,712
Location- Bath, ME Rural
Industry- Elementary and Secondary Schools
Business Type- Non-Profit Organization
Jobs Reported- 71
Lender- TD Bank, National Association
Date Approved- April 8, 2020
Business Age- Existing or more than 2 years old
Loan Status- Not Disclosed

HYDE SCHOOL
Loan Amount
$697,160 Link https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/loans/hyde-school-4755848405

Where applicants said the money will go
Payroll- $697,156
Location- Bath, ME Rural
Industry- Elementary and Secondary Schools
Business Type- Non-Profit Organization
Jobs Reported- 55
Lender- TD Bank, National Association
Date Approved- Feb. 6, 2020
Business Age- Existing or more than 2 years old
Loan Status- Not Disclosed

Companies and nonprofit organizations that receive PPP loans may have the loans forgiven if they meet certain criteria, including not laying off employees during the defined period covered by the loan. Applicants must attest in their application that the loans are necessary for their continuing operation. Note: This data reflects loan applications approved by banks and submitted to the SBA. It may not account for money not distributed to, or credit not used by, a given company.

From the following post, from the author who says they are the parent of Larry Dubinsky's victim (Hiler).. https://www.fornits.com/phpbb/index.php/topic,22969.msg279705.html

Yes, I have a question.  What would you call a Character Based School who has every opportunity to avoid a lawsuit by simply keeping the pedophile away from the victims yet refuses to do so?  I call this plain STUPIDITY, don't you?

I am the parent of a girl who was sexually fondled by a staff member with the initials LD.  Although Hyde would like you to believe that some lunatic parent made up a story about their daughter being molested by LD, this is not so! It's called "DENIAL" Hyde, when one wants to pretend something didn't happen in order to live with ones self.

 LD did sexually fondle my daughter. The only reason we did not file criminal charges was because the attorney explained that our daughter would be put through more than she could handle going through a criminal trial. It was explained that she would be re traumatized. LD should consider himself lucky.

I asked over a six month period that LD not be allowed on campus.  Hyde would not agree to this no matter how hard I pleaded.  Their stance was that because LD was a parent at Hyde, (he was asked to resign from staff after we pursued this) he had every right to be on campus for his daughters activities, parent weekends, seminars, and the like.  As far as I was concerned, this not only gave him an opportunity to sexually harass other female students, it re traumatized my daughter by seeing him, as well as sent a very poor message to the other students about what kind of behavior would be tolerated on campus. After our many pleadings fell on deaf ears, we filed a lawsuit under Title IX.

 When confronting Malcolm by phone and asking how he would like it if it had happened to his daughter, his response was, "my daughter could handle it."  Geez Louise, poor thing.  I hope she never has to go through something like our daughter. I am still waiting for Malcolm's apology and explanation for such a stupid remark. Also pretty sad that a head of a school would take this type of attitude. Hyde was however kind enough to offer that our daughter should move to the other campus. I guess this is how they offer assistance to a victim. Let the perpetrator stay where he is and enjoy his life in paid campus housing, and send the victim off to another place where she will feel even more isolated, not have any friends, etc.

  In my estimation the whole sick culture at Hyde is pathetic, but I guess wherever there are desperate parents, there will be places like Hyde.  Good luck to all of you.  If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them.  I also would be happy to speak to any incoming parents who might like to know more about Hyde.

.... there is NOTHING humorous about a young girl trusting an older man in a position of authority, who was supposed to protect her, only to then have him fondle her and rape her of her trust in authority.

There was much more to this story.....what they put our daughter through, how they interogated her without us being informed of the crime, how they NEVER offered counseling, etc. For a school that is supposed to be based on "Concern" and "Integrity" they certainly didn't show any!

This is the past and we have moved on, but seeing this other person talk about sexual abuse I felt compelled to inform you that there are many more cases of the same at Hyde. Any parent who reads this website and still decides to send their kid to Hyde, must be nuts!

...When LD enjoyed himself rubbing his body all over my daughter she  complained to Ken Grant who then called her into a meeting with LD, (without my knowledge) along with other adult staff.  She was made to confront him in front of all. MY GOD, this was a sexual assault and they want a young teenage girl to be in the same room as the perpetrator to "confront" him??  Sorry, but this goes beyond sick!! Every single one of those staff who participated in this and knew it was wrong needs to look at themselves and ask why they were such cowards.  I am referring to the non family members who were upset yet kept silent.

Someone asked if we won the case.  The case was going to trial in Ct Federal Court.  The jury was selected.  Hyde then settled right before.When LD enjoyed himself rubbing his body all over my daughter she  complained to Ken Grant who then called her into a meeting with LD, (without my knowledge) along with other adult staff.  She was made to confront him in front of all. MY GOD, this was a sexual assault and they want a young teenage girl to be in the same room as the perpetrator to "confront" him??  Sorry, but this goes beyond sick!! Every single one of those staff who participated in this and knew it was wrong needs to look at themselves and ask why they were such cowards.  I am referring to the non family members who were upset yet kept silent.

Someone asked if we won the case.  The case was going to trial in Ct Federal Court.  The jury was selected.  Hyde then settled right before.

....The difference between the Catholic Church and Hyde is that the Catholic Church has humbled themselves and are making sure this doesn't happen again. Hyde stood behind LD and when they finally made a statement it was, "LD will be taking a little time off to look at his life."

 There was no doubt that the "concern" was about LD, not the victim.

....There were males and females staff in this meeting. My daughter told me it was the most humiliating thing she was ever forced to do.  She was having trouble being in the same room as the creep teacher, (LD) who fondled her, so was looking the other way. Judy Fortier, a former Hyde Mom and staffer told her, "xxxxx, you need to look at LD when you talk to him." Ken Grant also told her that she needed to confront LD and let him know how uncomfortable he made her feel.

The fact that these misguided, ignoramus, mentally impaired  fools who run Hyde School would think it is normal or therapeutic to put a child (victim) through this says it all!!

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