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"If the Foreign Relations Committee wants proof I have it. My records from the Rhode Island Psych. Institute where Straight, Inc. in Boston/Stoughton sent me after I repeatedly attempted to run and slash my wrists in my 13 months there. I have some hospital  records I am sure somewhere from the x-rays taken on my right cheekbone after Tom D. punched me in the face. . .  I also have news clips sent to me that prove Tom D.  was rehired to Straight after I left the program even though he was fired for hitting me. I have present-day records from my current doctor who treats me for panic and anxiety attacks and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. If they want proof I still have scars on my arms."
Karen D.

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I tried drinking a bottle of shampoo with alcohol in it and slitting my wrists more than once... even cutting my wrists with the torn out tile in the intake room worked. I guess I'm more daring when it comes to something like that...the site of blood still doesn't bother me.

When I threatened suicide or was misbehaving, my oldcomer would wake me up every hour and ask me 'your not hurting yourself are you?' really meanly. She bitched and complained about it when she had to take us to group because she also had to go to school and said that because of me she had lack of sleep. I was thinking "shit lady, I didn't make you do that, staff did.. and if I wasn't so unhappy here, I wouldn't think of killing myself" (of course we could
never "talk back" to oldcomers).

S. Minns, Straight-Detroit, describing being in the shower at her host home on first phase in 1990

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"I stole and hid a razor in the program so I could try to kill myself. I was on second phase and wanted a way out. When they found out I was set back and strip searched a lot.  Later, on first phase, I grew my thumb nail and carved in my wrist at night when everyone was sleeping. Not very effective, I know,  but I was desperate.  I hid it from everyone and it got infected. One day my old comer grabbed my wrist and saw it because I flinched. I was more angry it didn't work. Mostly we just wanted out of our pain. When I left [to become a program on trainee]  I took a bottle of Aspirin to try to kill myself.   I ended up throwing it up. I didn't want to my body [taken] over."
Heather S., a Canadian citizen. Heather was in Kids of North Jersey for 5 years and 10 months and then became a counselor. After almost eight yars she finally escaped one day by taking a cab to a mall under the pretense of getting a prescription for her glasses renewed, and then fled. 

Crimes against humanity?   confession and re-acculturation:
using shame and guilt, and separation 

to induce body carvings and suicide attempts

by Wesley Fager (c) 2000 

 

    sound control   (If you're not getting music,  click here.)

 

You don't mind a bit of a stink, do you, Karras?
From The Exorcist
I need treatment. I do also believe at some point I need the forgiveness of these men.
Former Straight counselor Arthur Nicol (who is a former judge) speaking to Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Brandt C. Downey III after receiving a seven year sentence for sexually abusing a 15 year-old Straight student and his 14 year-old friend.

Introduction.   Any serious student of thought reform,  including the Straight planners,  knows that there will likely come a point when a person undergoing the deprivations and humiliation of "brainwashing",  shamed and made to feel overwhelming  guilt  from his extorted confession,  will come to fear total  annihilation of self and might become preoccupied with thoughts of suicide.  At the height of brainwashing of the general populace in Red China people would not walk down the sidewalks for fear of someone jumping from a building and landing on  them.  Public parks were fenced-off to keep citizens from hanging themselves from public trees.  Chinese thought reform students are  watched continuously,  24 hours a day,  even when they used the bathroom to make sure they do not slice their wrists  on a loose nail or screw.     In this chapter we will see how Straight students,   suffering from physical hardships and  mental tortures, undergoing a perverted sexual therapy to treat a drug problem that most did not have, resorted to carving on their  bodies or attempted suicide to escape from their tormentors. Coinciding with the many suicides and suicide attempts by Straight thought reform students or former students, was a study conducted by a Straight research doctor named  Richard Schwartz  to determine why so many teenage girls carve on their bodies. His results are published in the 1989 report "Self-Harm Behavior (Carving) in Female Adolescent Drug Abusers." (1) Straight's position is that its clients are druggie kids and druggie kids are violent and have to be restrained, and that druggie kids commit suicide. There are major flaws  with Straight's reasoning.   For example,  many Straight clients are entered for non-drug related reasons like eating disorders and emotional problems.    Many being treated for drug abuse have no drug problem at all--they have been shanghaied in at intake interviews fraudulently disguised as sibling interviews.   Often when a Straight sibling turns 12 program officials convince his parents that he also needs treatment.  Further, of those who have indeed used drugs, many are not really drug addicts; rather they have experimented with alcohol or marijuana. One just need look at the restraint rate of the Sembler-based synanon SAFE, Inc. with a reported restraint rate of

29 in 1 month

compared to a restraint rate of 

1 in 3 months 

at all other juvenile residential drug treatment programs combined in the same state health district in which it operated!

The previous chapter points out  case after case of outright child abuse and human misery inflicted on American teenagers at Straight-based synanons.  That chapter and this one are  building towards the next chapter  which discusses  known suicides and murders (known to this author) committed by former students in Straight-based synanons.  But   before addressing the specific suicides and murders,  we will need to look at a few more depraved aspects of Straight-like synanons in order to better determine whether Straight itself caused any of these deaths.  We need to look at sexual abuse issues at Straight and we need to determine whether there is any historical basis for suicide related to so-called "brainwashing."   With that data in hand we will try to profile the attributes of a young suicidal candidate in America as established by expert opinion.  We will then show that  Straight creates an environment and establishes a mindset among its young clients that completely replicates the mental state of a typical young suicidal person--if there is such a mindset--and to that pot Straight adds another suicide-inducing agent, namely, brainwashing itself. In other words it will be shown that Straight creates a situation that is bound to lead to suicidal ideations--in many instances.  And that is what this current page is about.  It will show that Straight,  by its depraved methods,  creates an environment for suicide   and concludes by discussing many known suicide attempts and body carvings by Straight students while in Straight .  We will read statements by many Straight officers admitting that Straight has a terrible problem with suicide attempts,  but writing off the problem to "druggie" kids,  deprived of their drugs want to kill themselves.  I think the evidences are going to  show otherwise.  That it was Straight itself causing the suicide attempts.  And if Straight was the cause  then what was Straight's plan should the parents withdraw the child after he's been broken-down but not yet rebuilt;  or if a child escapes at the same stage of his "treatment";    or if  the child makes phase and can be left alone at his own own but now secretly harbors suicidal notions;   or if she graduates but is depressed because of her treatment.    

"The only time in my entire life I ever considered suicide was while I was actually in Straight. I was 15, and at the time I did not realize that all I had to do was ride it out, my parents didn't have the money to keep me there. So I was SURE I was stuck until I played the phase game, which I figured was probably gonna' take at LEAST 16 months, or, even worse, wait until I turned eighteen. Mind you, I was considering these options about one hour into my stay at Straight! As the next few weeks went on, I decided I would much rather be dead than to deal with the madness of that place for the next 3 years. I actually made a few weak attempts while I was there. Although I never did have a period during the time I was there (I guess from stress) I told my oldcomer I had started and asked for a tampon. I had decided (rather creatively I thought) to try and give myself toxic shock syndrome. My plan was, either I would luck out and die, or at the very worst maybe merit a trip to the hospital, and hopefully a chance to run. After a couple of days, this option became uncomfortable, not to mention it did not seem to be working, so I gave that one up! I managed to sneak a mirror into the bathroom with me once (of course what did it matter, I was still watched all the time). The plan was, I would smash it really quick, and boom, slit my wrists. Well, that whole thing kinda' makes me squeamish--needless to say I never bothered even trying that one. Sadly, some days, just knowing that mirror was with me helped. I guess I figured if it ever got so bad I didn't think I could stand it, I HAD THE POWER to off myself, and in some warped way it made me feel better to know I had SOME sort of option, never mind how bizarre or detrimental." 
T., Straight-Atlanta

 

Case history:  a boy named Donald 

Donald (not his real name) was 15 years old in 1985 when he was admitted to Father Newton�s KIDS of Bergen County (a Straight spin-off).  He says that at that time he had used alcohol and smoked marijuana five times but if you were to read his admission report he admitted to using much more than that. Why?  He says in his December 16, 1999 deposition for the Rebecca Erlich case that he gave in out of "sheer terror" from having his two intake counselors (two kids further along  in their own treatment)  scream at him and spit on him.  ". . .by the time my intake was done,"  he stated in deposition,  "I came up with a list of drugs by most of which I never seen or couldn�t describe to you what they looked like or what they tasted like or anything else. I didn�t even know what they were . . ."    KIDS' attorneys  must have been impressed with stories like Donald's which I'm about to tell.  They must have been because in April 2000 they just gave up.  They settled out of court with Ms. Erlich for $4.5 million.
  

Donald says that he refused to write a daily confessional called a MI because he felt he didn�t have a real drug problem.   To get him to comply he says they stood him in a corner all night and denied him food until,  after about two days of this,   he decided to comply.  One day as he sat in his chair, he states in sworn deposition, he didn't have his hands in his knees and KIDS� officials felt they should be on his knees so he was restrained by five people. The back of his head was cracked open when they got him to the floor and he was sent to Holy Name Hospital. He estimates that he was restrained 300 - 400 times at KIDS but has trouble placing dates because he was not allowed to look at a watch or a calendar during most of this period. Donald states, "There were an immense number of times where I was forced to urinate and defecate on myself because they basically took my bathroom privilege away. I wasn�t allowed to go to the bathroom. And I witnessed a lot of other people in there ending up urinating and defecating on themselves because being in a restraint. They told you were too dangerous to get up and go to the bathroom, those who asked. If you asked to go to the bathroom, you were afraid because if you did ask, then you�d be afraid to end up getting your tooth through your lip and I had it done many times." When Donald made second phase he was allowed to see his childhood pediatrician. Donald testified that this doctor prescribed Inderal to treat an irregular heartbeat but, according to Donald, Dr. Newton blasted him for "using drugs to deal with my feelings and I had to use the program to deal with my feelings . . ." He was not allowed to take the medication. Dr. Panjwani, a KIDS affiliated psychiatrist, at one point put Donald on Ritalin, but after about 3 - 4 weeks Donald states that Mrs. Newton (Ruth Ann Newton,  the founder's wife)  decided to take him off it.

According to Donald�s deposition, one day Bergen County prosecutors came in and told him that he was a legal adult and did not have to stay in treatment.  Donald left along with a group of other adult students but after a few hours of  freedom  he says he began to feel he could not make it on the outside world so he called Mrs. Newton   asking to come back. A few weeks later Donald left for good. After 4 and a half years of "treatment" he had attended 2 weeks of high school! He was not allowed to associate with the only kids he had known for the last five years of his life because he left in "bad standing" and could have no contact with anyone from KIDS. He declared that, "Mrs. Newton said I had 30 days to live and, you know, in her professional opinion, I had to go to Bergen Pines after I left the program because she thought I couldn�t make it in the real world."

When Donald finally left KIDS at age 19 he says he used no drugs but he did drink alcohol. Was it a self-full-filling prophecy? Here he describes his first alcoholic drink in 4 and a half years. (His story about how he almost tasted Kellog�s Frosted Flakes once after fleeing the cult is more amusing. KIDS students are not allowed to eat sugar):


Q. Why did you go off the wagon? 

A. Good question. I was still under the impression that a lot of the things that I had been told in Kids were true and one of the classic and most disturbing things, I think, about my involvement with Kids was the fact that they kept stressing to me during those four and a half years that if I ever left Kids, no matter what, black and white, I would drink again. It would not work. It would not work for me or anybody else in the Kids program and we were doomed for failure.  So I went to prove them wrong, but I always had it in the back of my mind that it wouldn�t work. When I picked up a drink again and I relapsed, I can�t even say that I did it because I was feeling some kind of urge to drink. I just kind of got tired of fighting that constant thinking of, you know, it�s bound to happen. It�s just going to happen. It�s going to happen. I had no urge to drink at the time, none. 

Q. In a sense, what they said came true?

A. It was a self full[-fill]ing prophecy, yes.


Donald describes resorting to body carvings at KIDS.

A. Right. There were other times in Kids when I felt extremely discouraged. I felt extremely trapped. I was convinced that I would never get out because that was the message, if you ever leave, you�re going to die. So if you�re going to die anyway and I�m never getting out of here unless I live with their system, which I couldn�t give myself into, I couldn�t totally push down my sense of self to comply with their group, I felt discouraged and in conflict. In that conflict, I began to -- and maybe I�m going to reword what I said. I�m not saying the other three attempts were not serious, which they weren�t suicide attempts. What they were, they were self-destructive actions. 

Q. What were they?

A. I would take plastic forks and cut my body just out of pure rage, pure despair, discouragement. Something to kind of deal with that pain because I really didn�t have any kind of-- any other kind of other devices that would have been unhealthy is totally taken away and stripped from me.

A. It wasn�t three. I could probably say it was closer to fifteen. There were very minor incidents with moderately sharp to dull objects that I would cut my body with.

Q. So that was your modus operandi on this type of thing, you cut your body with a sharp object?

A. Yeah. I got to a point where I kind of lost hope. I was filled with despair and it was my only vice.


Donald had drunk alcohol and smoked five marijuana cigarettes and now found himself in a very abusive destructive-mind cult.  He felt so overwhelmed and utterly hopeless that he had resorted to carving on his body.  Was Dr. Newton concerned that Donald might escape in this KIDS-induced demoralized state?    Donald describes his first serious attempt to kill himself which occurred within two hours of his escape from KIDS.   Like drinking alcohol  was this another self full-filling prophecy?

A. No. I ran away. I was gone for about two hours and I thought everything that they had told me, that I�m going to die if I leave, I can�t make it in the world because I lack the skills everyone else has, so I decided if that�s the case, I don�t want to go back. I might as well die and I cut my arm then.

Q. Where did you cut your arm?  I don�t mean on your arm physically. Where were you?

A. I was in the parking lot at Riverside Square Mall. Kind of hiding out.

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Q. What did you do in an attempt to commit suicide?

A.  I broke a bottle and took the center piece out of the bottom of the bottle and I gashed my wrists very deeply to the point where the vein was very obvious. 


Donald says he was found and forcefully taken back to KIDS. That they refused to take him to the hospital and that, "when I had asked Tony K.  and Mrs. Newton if I could go to the hospital that first time and they said no. They told me to build my ego off the scar and at that point was when one of the veins in my arm was showing pretty clearly."

Donald describes his second serious attempt at suicide. This time he was at the KIDS treatment camp but wearing a sweater so as to conceal his deadly attempt to escape from KIDS.


Q. What was your second?

A. I snuck a double-edge razor blade into group and bit the plastic piece off and gashed my wrist open and shot blood all over the floor.

Q. Same wrist?

A. Yes.

Q. When you did that in the middle of group at the time, what happened?

A. I was doing it under a sweater. I had a long sweater on and nobody could really see what I was doing.

Q. When you began to bleed, I assume somebody noticed?

A. That�s how they noticed when they saw blood spilling out of the sweater.

Q. What happened then?

A. They took me out of group and ran me to the bathroom.

Q. What did they do in the bathroom?

A. Washed my arm out.

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Q. Take you for medical attention?

A. No. In fact, they refused medical attention when I asked.

Q. Did they put on any kind of a bandage?

A. They put gauze and they put on some bacitracin or something.

Q. Nobody called the doctor?

A. I asked staff to go to the hospital.  I asked them to see a doctor and they said no.


Donald says he was allowed to see program-affiliated psychiatrists to discuss his anxiety and his suicidal ideations, but always in the presence of Mrs. Newton and/or other program counselors. Donald says that one psychiatrist, Dr. Galitizin, suggested to him that he read books and self-help material, but Donald states that Mrs. Newton told the psychiatrist that he was not allowed to read and that "that wouldn't be a good idea."

Donald testified that he had never been suicidal before KIDS.


Q. Prior to your admission to KIDS, had you felt suicidal?

A. Not seriously.

Q. Had you un-seriously tried it or attempted it?

A. No. I cut my arm on the top of my arm to impress my friends, but no, I had not actually,  with full intentions, planned or tried to kill myself.

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Q. When you cut the top of your arm to impress your  friends, you were trying to impress them that you were  thinking about suicide?

A. No. I was trying to impress them by showing them I can handle a lot of pain.


When asked whether he had engaged in any "suicidal gestures or attempts" since leaving KIDS Donald responded "no" but he did offer that in 1990, after leaving the program for good, he went to Valley Hospital for emergency treatment. He says he was having "suicidal thoughts from leaving the program." One therapist Donald has met with since leaving KIDS is Sharon Everett who, according to Donald, says he was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder and that it could be as a result of some of the incidents and his involvement in the KIDS program."

Donald is alive and well today, but he came close to ending it all from being in one of the most abusive drug rehabs in the world. Donald�s story is important to us because it shows that abusive Straight-like programs can drive a kid to such preoccupations with suicide that they have to be watched around the clock, and even then inventive kids might find a way. And furthermore his story underscores the point that Straight has a real problem of what to do with children it has made suicidal when the child finally leaves the program either through escape, graduation or withdrawal.

Confession: Perverted Sexual Therapy and the $traight School of Homosexuality. 

Red Chinese citizens in thought reform schools confess to and criticize themselves for being reactionaries and saboteurs; they publicly criticize their fathers for being counter- revolutionaries and slackers who harbor western ideals.    Western missionaries trapped in China after the Communist takeover who underwent thought reform confessed to using their church as a front for OSS (CIA) spy activities or for exploiting  Chinese citizens (they had cooks didn't they).    U.N. soldiers confessed that the United States was the aggressor in the Korean War, that the war was wrong, that Americans mistreat blacks, that America was dropping chemical bombs on North Korean children. Straight kids are not made to denounce their church or country, or to confess that they are reactionaries or even that the Vietnam War was wrong. Rather Straight kids are coaxed into confessing to exaggerated drug usage and to confessing to being sexually promiscuous  or to being sexual perverts. [f]

-------------------------------
Interim notes:
[f] Straight planners probably got their ideas about sexual confessions from the Communist Chinese also. Consider this from a Chinese soldier's diary found by British soldiers during the war in Malaya the following entry is made:

" All comrades are present in the field. They are ready to attend the criticism meeting, scheduled for 7. P.M. . . . The self-criticism made by the comrades at the meeting was all frank. Some even told us how they came to know the real taste of masturbation, how they felt when they first joined the army. . . As a matter of fact, masturbation is quite ordinary, only comrades must bear these points in mind: 1. Masturbation will ruin your lives and will affect your revolutionary work. 2. We must always try "to part from the evil and follow the good."
From Brainwashing in Red China, the Calculated Destruction of Men's Minds [p.189].

  

"No man who is not himself honest can be free--he is his own trap. When his own deeds cannot be disclosed, then he is a prisoner; he must withhold himself from his fellows and is a slave to his own conscience." 
L. Ron Hubbard,  the founder of the Church of Scientology, and one the biggest liars to have ever lived.
"It's a game Wes.  The only problem is everybody knows it but you."
A former official of the old Cult Awareness Network enlightening the author on how cults get confessions.

Straight�s Statement of Philosophy, About the Program (Sect. AB, p. 10, item 10) states:   "Honesty (total self-disclosure) is the standard for therapeutic communication in Group, at home, and with self."   In a Straight pamphlet titled THERAPY for Guilt and Shame in Adolescent Drug-Use and Recovery Therapy, � 1982, by Straight�s national clinical director, Dr. V. Miller Newton is found these bullets:

Therapy for GUILT

1. Talking about behaviors that produce the guilt.
2. . . .
3. The supportive love of others who say: "I can relate to you. I did the same thing, and feel the same way."

Dr. George Ross, PhD in education and Straight's former education director,   left Straight in the early 1980s to form his own Sembler-based synanon in Sarasota, Florida which he called LIFE.   He subsequently founded  Kids Helping Kids in Hebron, Kentucky (which today runs out of the old Straight facility in Milford, Ohio)  and  then he founded Possibilities Unlimited in Lexington, Kentucky which dissolved shortly after he was cleared of criminal charges for falsely imprisoning teenagers.  In his 1994 book Treating Adolescent Substance Abuse Understanding the Fundamental Elements Dr. Ross addresses sexual issues with young people. This is what he has to say, in part. But such issues as pregnancy, abortion, homosexuality, rape, masturbation, and sexual promiscuity must be talked about openly, compassionately, and frankly if recovery is to occur. Experience has taught that these issues are best discussed in segregated group therapy sessions.   And then he gives a useful method in helping recovering teenagers overcome the challenge of revealing past sexual secrets  by quoting from a lecture he gave in Lexington, Kentucky in 1983 titled,   We�re Only as Sick as the Secrets We Keep.   From that lecture he writes that before each Sex Rap he reads a passage to Group from the Hazelden Meditation Series titled Each Day a New Beginning.   I would suggest to Dr. Ross that in the future, in order to break the monotony of reading the same old passage at Sexual Confession Raps, he might sometimes just go right to the source and read to the children the account of Mr. Hu from Robert Lifton�s THOUGHT REFORM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TOTALISM as the parallels are obvious. 

From Each Day A New Beginning by Hazelden Meditation Series as used by former Straight education director George Ross, PhD as a persuasive catalyst to ease kids through their embarrassing confessionals:

Harboring parts of our inner selves . . . keep us separate . . .  Carrying secrets makes it impossible the attainment of serenity. . . Abstinence alone is not enough. . . And one of [these many steps]   is total self-disclosure. . . When we tell others who we really are, it opens the door for them to share likewise. And when they do, we become bonded . . .  Our struggles to be perfect, our self-denigration because we aren�t only exaggerates even more the secrets that keep us sick. . . . secrets are great equalizers when shared.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The story of Mr. Hu from THOUGHT REFORM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TOTALISM: A Study of Brainwashing in China, 1969 ed.,  pp. 266 - 277.

Mr Hu had struggled against his classmates-- and they against him--in school. Mr. Hu began to have nightmares that he was talking in his sleep and giving away his "secret". A fellow student had committed suicide by jumping into a well making him think this student must also have had some "hidden secret". Two other students had been sent to a mental hospital apparently having become psychotic. He estimated that a third of all students had "visible psychological or psychosomatic symptoms--fatigue, insomnia, loss of appetite, vague aches and pains, and upper respiratory or gastro-intestinal symptoms." Hu himself suffered from fatigue and general malaise, so he went to the school�s doctor who told him: "There's nothing wrong with your body. It must be your thoughts that are sick.   You will feel better after you have solved your problems and completed your reform."  And indeed, he shared with many other students a state of painful inner conflict.  In his final confession Hu said he easily passed the first part which was about himself. He had called himself an "exploiter" and accused himself of "having adopted a stand diametrically opposed to that of the people," and having been in the past "actually...an enemy of the people." But the second requirement was not quite as simple, for it was the denunciation of his father, "both as an individual and as a representative of the old order."

 

Dr. Ross says that after the teenagers hear this passage most will start sharing some of their sexual secrets. It is helpful, he says, to have others who have already related their sexual secrets to start talking about them to get newcomers to start opening up. By frequently repeating the Sex Raps, Ross states, it gives old comers additional opportunities to report other sexual experiences they have forgotten to talk about.  Those currently running Sembler-based synanons should note that Mr. Hu had witnessed one suicide,  two of his classmates had become psychotic,  and there was a multitude of illnesses amongst the other students.

In his worst seller  Kids, Drugs, and Sex [1986], Straight's former national clinical director,  Dr. V.  Miller Newton, Ph.D., Ph.D. holds that confession is necessary for recovery from addiction by quoting from Alcoholics Anonymous' famous STEP 5, "Admitting to God, myself, and another human the exact nature of my wrongs."[p.28] He continues, "The process of dredging up, honestly facing, and seeing the casual relationship of drug-use to guilt-producing behavior is a fundamental part of the recovery process."    Here are some of the bizarre sexual confessions that Father  Newton says he has encountered through the years--presumably at Straight and at his own KIDS program.  His obvious warning to parents is that if you use drugs you will fuck animals and become a homosexual:

Jan (age 16) was a virgin when she started smoking pot, but she progressed in drug usage and to having sex with anyone including two middle-age men and the family dog--now she has crabs [pp. 18 - 19].
Kevin, age 15, was driven by drugs to homosexual experiences as well as sex with several women in their late 30s, his older sister, the family dog, and with a friend's cat [p.19].
Andrea, age 23, went from pot to "downs and morphine daily." Now she "turns tricks", shoplifts, and besides homosexual sex, has had sex with a people much younger and much older than herself and with animals [pp. 21- 22].
Bob has used several different drugs, has had sex with males and females, but now has VD and problems getting it up!

[Definition--druggie past.  In Straight all life before Straight is referred to as one's druggie past.  Thus if a 16 year-old Straightling had been sodomized by an older boy when he was four,  he would refer to the time frame as occurring in his druggie past and his assailant as his druggie buddy.]

Sex is considered by the cult to be just as addictive as drugs and students  are forbidden from having relationships with those of the opposite sex during therapy and for six months after graduation.  In some camps  male students are required to look down if a female passed by.(4)  Male clients can not look at Playboy Magazines. Clients are forbidden to even think of persons of the opposite sex and are required to turn themselves in for such mental behaviors. [h]   When new clients enter the program old comer clients of the same sex are required to help search every orifice of the newcomer--including anuses for the males, and anuses and vaginas for the females. Clients are watched by others of the same sex while they shower; they often sleep in their underwear in beds with members of the same sex; they may of masturbation while they wipe themselves on the toilet as they are constantly under observation and as they are constantly perfecting their confession. They are conditioned to tell on themselves if they have sexual thoughts about someone of the same or opposite sex. They turn in one another if they suspect someone of having feelings towards the opposite sex. They raise 5 fingers in Group to confess sexual confidentially issues with fifth phase  student priests and hope their confidentiality will be respected.  They are placed back in the program and started back over at Phase 1 if they date someone within six months of graduation.

I remember a girl saying that she had sex with her dog and another saying that she masturbated with a carrot she had cut and shaped.
Dana, Straight-Orlando

-------------------------------
Interim notes:
[h] Journalist Skip Hollandsworth writing for Texas Monthly (6/90) observed a boy at Straight-Dallas openly confessing to Group that he had been having thoughts about girls. "Maybe you ought to look into those sexual thoughts," shouted out an old comer, "because it shows that you're not taking any pride in yourself."

"I let him beat me up,  he broke my lip,  gave me a black eye.  I started having sex with him when I was 12, then I started doing drugs.  .   . I would go to disgusting hotels with men and let them do anything to me just to get more drugs.  I got diseases,  this terrible infection.  When I was 14,  I got pregnant.  The day I got my abortion,  I went out on the street to sell drugs so I could buy some PCP.  I was bleeding.   I was sick.  But I didn't care.  Only drugs mattered."
Paula, her blond hair "clipped back in barrettes, her face swollen from crying"  telling her story at MIC Talk to New York Times Magazine reporter Esther Fein and 125 other people.  "Some stories will be even more appalling than Paula's,"  writes Ms. Fein,  adding . . . "If she continues to be this revealing Paula may advance to the second phase."     

 

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This web page is offered as a public service and as an educational resource to those interested in learning about the potential dangers of abusive Sembler-based synanons.   The page is the on-line publishing arm of the Oakton Institute for Cultic Studies.  Music is a rendition of Whiter Shade of Pale provided from page washedashore.com/music/mid.   

 

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