I was at a public pool today with some friends, and we were talking to this guy in his early 20's about various shit. Well he started talking about his necklace which he got from AA for his 2nd anniversary. Well this got me started on talking about abusive treatment programs and my friend Alex, and I asked him if I he had ever heard about straight or safe or these wildnerness things.
As it turns out he had been in SAFE for 18 months from 96-98 until he escaped and his parents agreed to fly him home. He described it as "a year and a half of hell", and talked about how they had tried to slam him against a wall and he stuck his foot out and broke through a wall, which they tried to have him arrested for. He talked about how he broke bones, and really fought the entire time he was there which he says was mostly spent in the quiet room. He said that when he was in there that they would come in and work him over, and that he was ready for them and fought with a lot of them. His only positive comment was that it allowed him to cope with any situation. I asked him if he was interested in filing an affadavit but he said that he did not really remember that much and that he would just rather forget it. I guess that is to be expected. He knew about KIDS and STRAIGHT and he said that what he had been told was that KIDS came before STRAIGHT. As I understand it is the other way around?
I continue to be amazed at how many people in my area have had contact with these abusive programs.
What he was able to tell me, definitely squelched my lingering doubt that maybe SAFE was not physically abusive as those 2 SAFE parents at the conference claimed.
Some good news, I think my friend Alex will be out in less than a month because it is a quasi-3 month program (about 3 1/2 to 4 weeks for each segment and him being in a hotel with his parents was supposedly transition between the 2nd and 3rd segments. I can understand how he said he was doing ok on the phone with his girlfriend, because I would be feeling pretty damn good after having my first hot shower in 2 months. I still don't understand what his parents think they are accomplishing, especially since he is missing the registration deadlines for community college and he is probably going to be in the same situation he was in before, not really doing anything for 6 months.
Oh well I guess they will realize someday that they were scammed out of 20 thousand bucks, and I sincerely doubt that Alex is going to have much of a relationship with his parents especially since he has not had much of one for as long as I have known him and I don't think having him kidnapped to West Virginia for 3 months is going to have a lasting positive effect on it.
Slavish discipline makes a slavish temper... If severity carry'd to the
highest pitch does prevail, and works a cure upon the present unruly
distemper, it often brings in the room of it a worse and more dangerous
disease, by breaking the mind; and then, in the place of a disorderly young
fellow, you have a low spirited moap'd creature, who, however with his
unnatural sobriety he may please silly people, who commend tame unactive
children, because they make no noise, nor give them any trouble; yet at
last, will probably prove as uncomfortable a thing to his friends, as he
will be all his life an useless thing to himself and others... Beating them,
and all other sorts of slavish and corporal punishments, are not the
discipline fit to be used in the education of those we would have wise,
good, and ingenuous men...
John Locke, 1692
