Ihave been over this topic repeatedly. I can only speak for my time in the St Pete seed and how I felt.
Kids were not directly "beaten" by the staff there, but overt threats were made all the time. Placing misbehaviors with big scary guys and standing them up and daring them to "try something", threatening kids with the parent beating schmeal, and then telling the group it could happen to them as well, watching kids thrown down on hard and then piled onto,and my own capture and return of a kid running from the back of the seed where me and a senior staffer threw the kid down hard in the parking lot and he came up bleeding and crying.
This stuff was terryfiing when you were the object of it. I have often wondered just who that kid was, how he is today, and what his take on that event is. I spent years blocking this stuff out and I cannot remember his name.
