Grieving parent of a former Hyde student shares his testimony.
Trigger warning: Suicide
I am not ready, even after these years, to discuss the details of what happened to my son, the long tortured path that led to his death. I said that Hyde was a station along the way and contributed, though Hyde is not solely responsible in that sense... I am also afraid to give too much away that might identify me to Hyde trolls or others. The people at Hyde have shown they are quite capable of the most nefarious behavior in protecting their God Gauld and their little enterprise and I have no room left in me for fighting. I can tell you that they spun him like a rat.. changing the maze whenever he thought he had it down and convincing him that he was a piece of s--- unless he played their game. He couldn't. He didn't. He failed there and they smashed his self-confidence to pieces. He was weak, mentally ill, needed some form of treatment but no one recognized it. I pulled him out jail over and over again, retrieved him from international locales after he'd been arrested, incarcerated in various institutions.. his illness progressed and everyone along the way who made it worse - like the people at Hyde - contributed. I contributed myself. When your 20-year-old son takes your shotgun after breaking into a gun cabinet and blows his brains out, you are also destroyed by it.
Suffice to say that the vulnerable types must be protected from institutions like Hyde because Hyde is no different from the general society, in that respect. Who doesn't conform, is destroyed. It is the school's failure to determine who it can help and who it cannot - who it will in fact make worse - that makes it a quasi-criminal enterprise. Any truly idealistic institution would recognize its limitations to protect those it might harm. Not Hyde. Money drives Hyde. Money, power and self-aggrandizement are its stock in trader. Once they get your money, it's actually in their interest to force you out because it's non-refundable and they get paid for not doing anything. Meanwhile the next fool steps up, urged on by [pro-Hyders] no doubt, and another $30-40-50,000 goes into the company safe. It's a racket run by a kind of Mafiosi, sociopaths with suits and sob stories and a very slick brochure.
This past February was the fourth anniversary of my son's suicide in the basement. Prior to that he had spent some time at Hyde, perhaps a year or less and whatever problems he had to begin with were so exacerbated by his experiences there that I have always linked the two. I couldn't say it was direct because there was some time between when he was thrown out of Hyde and when he shot himself, but I believe to this day that the actions of the head of that school and several of its psycho caretakers were direct contributors.
I can't go into details about what happened at Hyde except to to say that the profound, deep, dishonesty practiced by the staff, many of whom I am sure are unqualified to be called such, the cultism, the terrorism inflicted on already disturbed children would result in long prison terms to the practitioners thereof in any reasonable society. Hyde, in my opinion, is a nightmare, a mental torture chamber created by a psychopaths and created to breed acolytes...
Do not send your son to Hyde. If you have already done so and he wants out; do not believe the staff at Hyde. Their entire purpose functions just as the street soldiers of Scientology function to recruit and impress more members... If I were a praying man, I would pray for you and your son; as it is, I can only avail you of the benefit of my experience there and the terrible consequences one faces when allowing these kinds of individuals to oversee the psychological development of a child, especially one already having difficulty in the world.
To the parent... Every once in a while you come across really extreme advocacy for Hyde. I urge you to be wary on this basis alone... There are many children who go through Hyde and come out the other side but that isn't the issue... Those cretins don't know one illness from another from a third and they simply put everyone through the same filter, discarding those who don't pass... If your child is among them, he will be destroyed by the Hyde process... it's Hyde as in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. these people (I use the term loosely - they are monsters in their own right) are self-appointed cultists, emotional terrorists and liars through and through... the fact that some less vulnerable children survive the experience and come back proselytizing for the cause means nothing... These people and many like them should be shut down and I believe that sooner or later the awful truth about what goes on at Hyde will "out" and people like [Pro-Hyde commenter] here will find some new excuse for it... Don't send your son to Hyde unless you are certain that he is strong enough to withstand the emotional battering he will receive there. They have made themselves very rich on the despair of others and employ their family and friends and other advocates as rewards - just like any cult... These people are dangerous, untrustworthy and eventually I believe they will be seen as criminal.
Reposted from another post from June 2011.
