It was held on July 26 & 27 in St. Petersburg, FL. We will be writing up a summary soon for the website (safetyintl.org.) There were people there from different but similar programs like Straight, WWASP and SAFE. The speakers were a survivor a SAFE, (Jeff) and Wes Fager, Rick Ross (the cult expert and a very interesting speaker), Nancy Ann Brighton,LCSW who spoke on recovery from trauma. Harryet Erlich, author of Resurrection and Redemption: Overcoming Mental Illness and Regaining Dignity, an account of the tragedy of a misdiagnosed little girl being treated in a quack medical facility. (Her daughter won a 4.5 million settlement against Miller Newton and KIDS of NJ in 1999) and Gerard F. Glynn,PhD, law professor and executive director of Children First! of Florida who spoke on trends in the legal rights of children placed in institutions. We have just been trying to recover from the preparation that we put into the conference. It was advertised on this forum, as well as emails sent to the people that we had email addresses for. I am sorry if anyone missed it that would have liked to have come. It is good to get together with like-minded people when there is a cause so little publicized as this, in order to bring to the attention of the public. There was journalist there who is working on a book on the subject and also documentary film maker.
Rhonda Sherman
