Its like, its like the story Ive always told you, you know about the warden standing up on the, looking out the window of his office and down in the big yard and saying, Come here, George, watch em theyll all fuck each other pretty soon you know, we, we, we most of the people to come into our house and say I would like to live here and turn out to be very, very real crazy people. Seven years before that trial Goldfarb had written a book calling for prison reform using the Synanon-style therapeutic community. We either do that or we stop. WebSynanon Survivors is celebrating 4 years!!! Gina Score, 14, at the state-run juvenile prison camp at Plankinton, South Dakota, 1999 was run to death. Anyway good luck and I hope you found a practice you enjoy. Over the years as I wrote c. upon chapter of Synanon history, I have mainly received nothing but great comments from people. The founder, Charles Dederich, ordered his cult followers to divorce and swap partners, with more than 200 couples complying. He also forced women to have abortions and almost 200 men had vasectomies after Dederich forbade any more children. They made people like Bernie Kolb who I loved very much. Ben had told me you felt I had added more to what you had written and your excellent children study, and when I went back and read it I saw there was ambiguity between when I was quoting you and when I was adding my own additional comment. I comfort him if he hurts his knee or my daughter when she cries, whatever it is. By the mid-80s Straight was operating in seven states. Hopefully somedaywe get back the candidates like that; but Im not smart enough to suggest how. Barker had been arrested at age 16 for burglary and when he was 18 he was charged with assault and robbery, for which he joined the Army a few days later and then went AWOL. WebJan 2010 - Present13 years 2 months United States Im a CEDU Survivor who created & runs the Synanon Survivors Group on Facebook. Maybe if I had written sooner some would still be alive. While Dederich suggested to world nothing in the game was to be taken seriously, he would admit in deposition in 1979 and 1981 that in operating Synanon, he did not give direct orders, but would inject everything he wanted members to do in a Synanon game or by his dialogue at Think Tables. First touted as a rehabilitation center for addicts when it was founded in 1958, Synanon helped thousands get sober and amassed $30 million or more in assets. **, Guy Endores book, Synanon, noted ex-members very early complained that Dederich had forced out the original Board of Directors and replaced them with hand picked trained seals. They appreciated the honesty of the work. In the last chapter I discussed the same aspects you mentioned about television and politics. Brill studied 2,100 admissions to Phoenix House and found a 96% drop out rate, and of the 4% who graduated, 25% had become staff there. Synanon just gave it a giant shove through its PR machine which unfortunately attracted sociopaths wanting an easy road to riches and unfortunately led many governmental agencies and politicians to back their concepts. Kids were assaulted and restrained without cause and all the rest. Died of dehydration. But these rules had long been eradicated at Synanon the root of todays confrontational-type therapeutic communities. Childrens deaths in tough love boot camps include: Michelle Sutton, 15, Summit Quest, Utah, 1990. Some children were taken to foreign countries, or islands, although foreign countries have done more to stop them than our government. His family claims his pleas for help were ignored. Suggest you get my book on Amazonmy life was not limited to Synanon. Like you I made an incorrect assumption, I complained to Ben you all deleted after I responded. ", After reconnecting with his father, Jollett who didn't understand what a "mother" and "father" were while living in Synanon finally had a loving, real-life dad and mom. And that Susan, is what differentiates us, from other countries where there is no freedom of press. I suspected this would happen, because it is well known that people in cults go from outrageous anger to a final whimsical yearning at the end for a time of spirit and comradeship. Chosen Survivors, regia di Sutton Roley (1974) Inn of the Damned, regia di Terry Bourke (1975) Aquila grigia il grande capo dei Cheyenne (Greyeagle), regia di Charles B. Others who completed the program were absorbed into the organization as low-paid or voluntary staff limited to walking around money. Nov 04, 2017 Daina Fanning rated it really liked it. It quotes statements I did not make but Dederich did. Per Ofshe, Dr. Elizabeth Missakian, former Pres. And back is my reply to you. You would also have learned that I have been in the room with many Synanon people countless times. But their position was based on incomplete data, in Janzen s case that was intentional. My disappointment, as stated in my book, is that after all this great work, led by the entertainment field it regressed, with HBO and Showtime saying the best job you could get if you were a woman was to strip or manipulate a millionaire to marry you. Students quickly found themselves in a new, strange, uncomfortable and often frightening world of intense group relationships and heightened, invasive and violent group therapies. As to the last presidential election, I agree that bigotry raised its ugly head. But is there anything worth giving up freedom of thought? Arbitrarily, I would say that young persons under 16 years of age should be excluded from these programs and that careful evaluation be given admitting persons between 16 and 18 years of age . Perhaps worse, was Dederichs friendship with Caesar Chavez wherein CED convinced Caesar to live like a rich man on La Paz and import the game which led to mutiny and the downfall of the UFW. But nobody, especially Dr. Rogers, ever imagined children sitting in one continuous synanon 12 hours a day, 5 days a week for several yearswith 200 kids screaming and spitting at him, where the child could not verbally defend himself against his indicters, where he would be beaten and physically restrained, and, most importantly, where he could not leavenamely Straight, Inc. In other words Straight took a program that had been designed (and poorly so) to control hard-core adult heroin addicts and used it to control kids who had experimented with pot and alcoholsometimes worse, but sometimes no drugs at all. "Our parents weren't bad people, they didn't choose to turn their children into orphans. ", "It wasn't like Godfather, it was like Pirates of Penzance," Jollett explains. "At that age, my response was to become the super kid. But Farve had the money so he could be self indulgent. This was Synanon had its worse, andit is not permitted here. Poor and, at one point, subsisting mostly off of rabbits they raised and butchered in their backyard, Jollett was unable to process the trauma he'd experienced, according to the book. 5 years from now we wont need people like you.. We have a freedom of the press, and when it does its job, and people do theres, there is hope. This was written before he joined. Ofshe who had been allowed inside Synanon to study it contacted Dave Mitchell in 1978 to ask if he was serious about investigating Synanon because violence could not occur randomly under Synanons controls and can only occur at direction of management (later admitted by Dederich at deposition). Its just simply if your writing a book on the history of an organization and you are aware that someone filed multiple actions against it, and they tried to murder him for it, if you are a journalist you are going to interview that person. Thank you again Paul for taking my call back in May of 2011,and for taking an interest in the Elan cult. There are more successes, like the Rolling Stones Rick Jones, that stemmed from bona fide psychotherapy. I informed him that some of the people he interviewed were in fact the ones who participated most in the violence and that he had been lied to. And of course, this was what was best in early Synanon, i.e., peers to talk to and help if the craving starts; also support when kicking cold turkey, food and a roof. Aftermaththe Synanon legacy But I DO know the culture of Synanon. The bad publicity led some supporters, Melvin and Betty Sembler of The Seed to create a copycat organization under a different name Straight Inc.but employed Du Point as a consultant. Because he had lived for so long surrounded by yes people, he had no understanding how others would see his actions and thus was very open in admitting what he did, including that violence could not happen unless he approved it. On June 27, 1990, six weeks after the death of Michelle Sutton, 16-year-old Kristin Chase died at the Challenger wilderness camp in Utah of hyperthermia and dehydration after a 5-mile forced march in 105-degree heat. Most of what I wrote was a no comment description in detail of Synanons evolution taken from its own records. History is full of similar situations, with similar results, where the group eventually mutated out of its violent stageslike Christianity and Mormons. But I believe there are important messages in its history I was drivin not to let Janzen alter it. "I have nightmares about my son falling down steps, I have nightmares about dropping my daughter. Kimberly Stafford, the Vision Quest counselor who was driving the supply vehicle, was convicted of careless driving. It was also capable of controling the floor show when ever there was an investigation, during these times Elan became a large weird hotel lobby, albeit briefly, while investigators simply saw our blank faces. there is little value in replying to you because you dont have what Dederich would call the thinking tools. You say there are lies But you dont list them. The belief that Synanon was a breakthrough, as stated, was mainly because of its public speaking bureau. That is just a fact. Straights attorney for that trial was a prominent Washington, DC civil liberties lawyer named Ronald Goldfarb. And we sort of took that on, and it's sad because it's not a real portrait of a man, it's a child's imagination of a man. Some children have been placed for nothing more than marijuana smoking, and some because the programs told the parents unless they gave them the younger kid they would expel the older sibling. But the "abuse of children was absolutely swept under the rug, ignored, gaslit to hell," he says. Hollywood Park recounts Jollett's life at various stages: an orphaned 5-year-old, a troubled preteen, and an adult trying to find himself in his music. As a key distinction between comparing Synanon to America, those in Synanon who tried to warn or criticize were shut down and shoved out. ), "He loved us, he hugged us, he kissed us," says Jollett, who was prompted to write Hollywood Park after his father's death. Relationships at the school between students and staff seemed to have little formal structure or sense of normal boundary and a students life was always under threat of intense and unpredictable disciplining and punishment. 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