But I, its a marvelous business to watch these assholes come in and fall all over themselves and try bite me in the ass. The sicker he became, the more he was tormented and tortured by the staff. And that was great. no Mr. Vandeman I am not deleting this as it is not as vulgar as the others. If you think I am wrong to have spent time over the years going through Synanon documents to record its history, particularly its plunge into violence, that is your right and opinion. This is due, in part, to many Synanites having left to form their own lucrative drug rehabilitation companiesa degree in medicine is not a requirement. (16) In 1985 psychotherapists Thomas Bratter and Gary Forrest echoed the conclusion of Rachman and Heller and added a caution of their own when they wrote that such a treatment [for self-destructive drug abusers] may not be necessary or appropriate for other treatment populations, i.e. But acts I have stated, the comments on the site are limited to questions, the presentations of facts, challenges to events, additions and/or support, but but attacks on people who present their information will not be permitted. You would make Wes Fager proud, I am sure, sadly he is no longer with us. But I believe there are important messages in its history I was drivin not to let Janzen alter it. In discussing the aftermath, I tried to explain that my views differed at different times as I received new and different information. Both boys had to navigate poverty and abuse, but Jollett's experience was vastly different from his brother's. As to the above, I remain impressed with your apparent life long research into many areas, and you write so much, it is hard to know where to begin. WebSynanon Survivors is celebrating 4 years!!! Rogers had been referring to the dangers involved with a kid participating in a typical Synanon Game with 11 people yelling at him, where he could fight back verbally, where he could leave if he chose, and where there was no physical violence. A belief system based upon coercive persuasion is expected by all who have studied it to be largely abandoned when the pressures are removed. Hitler did great things for Germany, but it would be wrong to use them to assert we should all think of it as Spring Time for Hitler, as Janzen did of Dederich. First, while our government says that all people are equal the fact is they are not born equal. He wrote that, High discipline programs usually employ the confrontive Synanon game-a leaderless group encounter session to create aggressive and provocative interchange, using ridicule, cross examination and hostile attack. All Rights Reserved. "Then my dad became extremely interested in my life. Eventually, on the subject of rehabilitation, Ofshe would write, Synanon was the failure thats gave birth to an industry.. Totalitarianism societies in the end always end in abuse and a we vs. they war concept. WebSynanon Museum (no password required) Please fill in both the "User ID" and "Password" entries; If you don't have a User Id and Password yet please Click HERE to Sign up: User This is due, in part, to many Synanites having left to form their own lucrative drug rehabilitation companiesa degree in medicine is not a requirement., ***. The game and all other methods of forced confessions, real or false to conform, are the essence of Liftons brainwashing. lawyer magazine paul Morantz on you tube. Despite this, despite the warnings of so many other notables, despite Art Barkers total lack of credentials and less than admirable past, The Seed received a $1.8 million U.S. government grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) soon after it opened. I'm going to rise up above all this kind of stuff, and I'm going to take care of everyone. In the early days of Synanon, the "In the case of my brother, he became the scapegoat. But their position was based on incomplete data, in Janzen s case that was intentional. Straights attorney for that trial was a prominent Washington, DC civil liberties lawyer named Ronald Goldfarb. Yet it was from this that the miracle was proclaimed. How old were you. He wrote the failure of Yablonsky to see the horror of what he had written raised questions suggesting a lack of humanity in Yablonsky. when I was growing up I thought world would be a better place if women were in control. Phoenix House is one of the biggest TCs today. By 1971 Dederich would submit that while 10 to 12,000 people had gone through Synanon only about 10% stayed free of drugs for as much as 2 years, which was similar to the statistics everyone else concluded, which were the same at Lexington Hospital when Synanon was founded. Synanon can make its recommendation not to connect, even expel and announce it will not accept the person back; but there is no right to stop contact by never informing the person of attempts being made and giving the person the choice. 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. WebASTART is a community of professionals, family members and survivors working to protect children from abuse and neglect in residential programs, and ensure families have safe and effective community-based care. But they have settled now, particularly, as stated below, as I slowly learned the results of so many of the Synanon clones, which resulted in so much death and brutality. 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. Margo I agree I looked at every branch. But instead he made lab rats out of people. Finally, even the founder was not cured, returning to marijuana by 1977 and to an alcoholic stupor in 1978 that led to drunken parties throughout Synanon, as Phil Ritters and my murders were plotted, and the supposedly rehabilitated and reformed celebrated at the news of resulting injuries. In the last chapter I discussed the same aspects you mentioned about television and politics. Being a journalist, I find this approach, which was not just unique with him, disappointing and when we realize there are a lot of people like that, he creates a problem for researchers trying to ascertain history. In 1966 New York City Mayor John Lindsay hired Puerto Rican psychiatrist Efren Esteban Ramirez to run the citys Addiction Services Agency. It just seems monstrous.". Gina Score, 14, at the state-run juvenile prison camp at Plankinton, South Dakota, 1999 was run to death. I dont have much to argue with what you say about the people in Synanon and do not disagree they helped others, they were there to do that. "At that age, my response was to become the super kid. By the 60s the Los Angeles school system had schools (not all) already well integrated and taught anti-bigotry. Let alone, 'Okay, here you go stranger I've never met, take care of my kid. While Jollett's time in the cult was traumatizing, he reveals that after his mother escaped with him and his brother when they were 5 and 7, life didn't get much better: He recounts watching their roommate, a man who'd also escaped Synanon, being beaten nearly to death in broad daylight. ), "[Tony] went to rehab at a young age, and I think it scared me," Jollett says. They also had to fight for attention from the few loving adults who monitored them, Jollett explains. Below is a chart made by Maia in Mother Jones: A. Orange on his website lists interesting quotes: Tough Love: Abuse of a type particularly gratifying to the abuser, in that it combines the pleasures of sadism with those of self-righteousness. Ex-members have no idea how close they all came to being arrested for conspiracy of RICO violations. Hillary Clinton probably wouldve made a good president, the Alaskan Gov. He spent 15 years By example, as compiled by Dr. Ofshe, in 1961 all Dederich reported was that 70 out of 176 addicts had stayed for 5 days. I also believed that Synanons many clones, adding doctors, and other proper variations, had established successful drug rehabilitation. Synanon was the first therapeutic community devoted to the treatment of the drug addicted according to the Encyclopedia of Drugs and Alcohol, which is edited by the first White House Drug Czar; Dr. Jerome Jaffe Synanon is the prototype of the drug-related therapeutic community-a community where the addict surrenders all aspects of his life, except one-the right to leaveBratter and Forrest write that In less than a quarter of a century, the American self-help residential therapeutic community has come to span the globe. What you write is not experience of all. Joe was a thug and a gangster, but when a law abiding citizen said so, Joe sued his bank and won ten million dollars. Vision Quests leader was convicted of smuggling cocaine. That is just a fact. He also admitted violence could not occur without his approval but he forgot the details due to his stroke. And he started saying, 'Don't be like me. All the civil rights marches, the anti-Vietnam protests, were uniting people of all races. I offered them to him but he declined. I was inducted in late 1976 at the age of 14. Some children were taken to foreign countries, or islands, although foreign countries have done more to stop them than our government. He became the one to blame, he was the angry one. In other words he would have to reexamine his beliefs and consider possibly his own victimization. WebSynanon sought religious status in 1974, with Diedrich as its leader. Good luck. I am still not in the same league with Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, nor the late Margaret Singer, but what all of us shared was a hands-on experience. I listened to countless game tapes. I have countless books of interviews and depositions. What is mysterious about this? Here we go!' Im rich. standing in line at a supermarketI get it reading the rags past the time. As I wrote, starting in 1998, off and on for 3 years; then quitting, starting again in 2009, stopping in 2011 to write the book Escape: My Life Long War Against Cults, and picking up in 2012, that question continued as did the question did Synanon leave any positive legacy along with its revelation that its processes dictated its ultimate outcome and was predictable from the start? The experiences with the original population of adult addicts still pervade the thinking and functioning of most T.C.s. If Dederich had just built a shelter, fed and clothed, and gave support he would have had something. I did not delete Susans comment, they disappeared and then reappeared; have happy holidays. The truth is Santa Monica was enforcing a valid zoning prohibition. I asked him how he could write a book on Synanon without ever interviewing the person who fought it. I would say some things are not debatable. One could argue that the destruction caused by the Synanon game was a legacy to the extent that it helped quash the humanistic movement and the over self indulgence in encounter groups. And that Susan, is what differentiates us, from other countries where there is no freedom of press. A recovering alcoholic named Art Barker in 1970 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and run almost entirely by kids for kids. For those, as stated above, there is no doubt Synanon served as Ofshe stated, a realistic shelter while they got their act together. And you quite accurately describe the reason, it was protected. In my book Synanon was only one chapter. Another idea of merit was The Distribution Network which was to obtain distressed goods which would be distributed to charities. How all of this occurred is set forth in the first book So Fair a House by Dr. Casriel. Before moving in, Jollett had always considered his dad a "badass," a "criminal," a "pirate. I think Synanon was one of the most important stories of the 20th-century and leaves us with one of the most documented histories that is worth studying and learning from. His motive, which Janzen missed, was the eventual plan to steal all the money. Its a real field day.. We know that a, that a, only one out of I think 25 is going to stay long enough to be of any consequence at all. Simon had come to Synanon because his teacher, Abraham Maslow, the founder of the Humanistic Movement, of which Synanon was using its lingo, was predicting that Synanon would transform psychotherapy. Some people, whether from genes or experiences, or combinations thereof, just are not capable of living a good life on their own. 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. one, it was a hard fought battle. I remember how hard it was for a woman to get a job and how few there were in my law school class. you say I profit from yellow Journalism sort of an oxymoron given the fact that my website is free. Jollett and his older brother Tony were taken from their parents his father a recovered addict and former convict, his mother an anti-government activist from Berkeley when they were just 6 months old. Elan generated very large tax revenues for the state of Maine. At least three dozen teens have died in these programs, often because staff see medical complaints as malingering. AA, as Synanon did, says one must participate in AA for life and have a religious belief in AA 12 steps. They covered his mouth with a hand and forced him to inhale ammonia, which caused spasm of his vocal cords and prevented him from being able to inhale. Yet by 1968, to justify ending graduation, if Dederich was correct, there was little success in curing addicts. There is a book called Duck in a Raincoat it is by Maura Curley and this is the 2nd edition, an updated edition if you will. When he begged to see a doctor, the staff sneered at him and called him a faker and asked him if he were homosexual.. He was a great man and kind human being. By 1975 Barker had opened four expansion Seeds, but in 1974 both houses of the US Congress had investigated and made the brainwashing charges., Wrote Fager: Despite the fact that the only way Synanon Church could keep addicts off drugs was to keep them at Synanon foreverthat is Synanon was a cultand despite Synanons sordid pastSynanon was a violent cultthe idea of the Game became the basis for a new breed of therapy where the addict himself helps in his own recovery just as Chinese thought reform students help in their own recovery. Straight used Synanons vaginal and anal searches to search for contraband for years even though they never found any. The Cedu schools (one in California, and one in Idaho) were each located in a mountain wilderness, and students soon discovered that they were teenage captives, without identification or money, in an imposing geography they could not easily or safely negotiate or escape. Also, if a person made that choice sincerely, that person may have a better chance of succeeding in an environment with supporting persons and ex-addicts urging of them on while removing competing problems of how to support themselvessuch as a housing, friends and a job. And, as stated, many of those who left were purposely ejected or forced out by Dederich squeezes. Indeed, that same year Dederich, in his The Wrath of God speech accused addicts of stabbing him in the back by failing to negotiate an apartment complex purchase, and threatened to get rid of all of them and replace them with squares. But that questionwhile interestingis really moot; the fact is that while shelter and support is of assistance, the Synanon system based on hate (as stated by Dederich) and punishment was not only a failure but its achievement in publicity, like a Synanon movie starring Ed OBrien, has led to 50 years of horror to countless victims all over the world and continues to do so. As stated above, as Dederich believed this, his squeezes and toss outslike old timer Bill Crawford was willfully sentencing one to death for CEDs ego and financial gain. as to George Bush, again in my book I said there was no difference between him psychologically and Osama. 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Eventually Dr. DuPont left government service and became a paid consultant for Straight, which had replaced The Seed after the US Senate likened its methods to North Korean brainwashing. But generally, as to your comment, my book was not in disagreement. Ofshe further pointed out Dr. Casreil who wrote the first Synanon book also reported similar short-term stats: 102 stayed 3 months and most who stayed longer were gone within a year. 65-pound Michael Wiltsie, 12, at Camp E-Kel-Etu, a private Florida facility, in 2000 was suffocated to death by a 320-pound counselor who sat on him until he stopped breathing. Well integrated and taught anti-bigotry freedom of press sought religious status in 1974, with as. Studied it to be largely abandoned when the pressures are removed world would be to! The thinking and functioning of most T.C.s growing up I thought world would synanon survivors distributed charities... 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As I received new and different information almost entirely by kids for kids that,. ) already well integrated and taught anti-bigotry on Synanon without ever interviewing the person who it. Close they all came to being arrested for conspiracy of RICO violations Vandeman I sure... My response was to become the super kid 1976 at the age of 14 Mr....