Cedu Documentary
October 8th, 2008 — -The Cedu Documentary, “Surviving Cedu,” tells the story of a half-dozen teenagers who were each sent to the Cedu School, variously described to them as a standard boarding school, a wilderness adventure school, or a therapeutic learning environment in the Western mountains of the United States.
– Cedu Brochures
But the experience of the school was something entirely different. Students quickly found themselves in a new, strange, uncomfortable and often frightening world of intense group relationships and heightened, invasive and violent group therapies. Relationships at the school between students – and staff – seemed to have little formal structure or sense of normal boundary – and a student’s life was always under threat of intense and unpredictable disciplining and punishment.
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.
– San Bernardino Mountains, California
The real origins of the Cedu schools remained hidden from the students, their parents – and much of the staff – until years after their graduation or departure. At the heart of the Cedu program was a philosophy that had grown out of various self-help movements of the 1960s and ’70s, such as Lifespring, Werner Erhard’s EST, and most directly, from Charles E. Dederich’s “Synanon” cult, “church,” and street-level heroin-cure program. The Cedu Schools developed into an industry of sister schools, clones and copy-cats, that are now a multi-million dollar, international – and unregulated business.
– Synanon and Cedu
“Surviving Cedu” follows the narratives of these students, 15 to 20 years after leaving, graduating or escaping from this unique, troubling and isolated world.
Clips from the documentary will be made available here and through video-sharing websites. The documentary is still in production. The schedule will be updated here.
Blogs and articles on the making and researching of the documentary can be found below.
Help build a biography of the Cedu program by leaving referenced (url, book title, etc) comments below. I will format referenced comments into the main page as we go on.
- Clip 1 – Welcome to Cedu
- Clip 2 – Come Smush with Me.
- Clip 3 – Let’s have a Rap
- Clip 4 – Propheets
- Clip 5 – Who Is Mel Wasserman?
- Clip 6 – Castle on a Cloud
- Clip 7 – Crime, Punishment and Fulltimes
- Clip 8 – Cedu – Come Work for Us!
- Clip 9 – I Versus Me
- Clip 10 – Run Away pt.1
- Clip 11 – Clip 11 – A Rudy Rap
- Clip 12 – Caroline the Wolf
- Clip 13 – The Summit
- ASTART Video: Dr. Nicki Bush, on the Alliance for Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate Residential Treatment Programs. The ASTART Guidelines. [pdf]
Video player
More Soon!
Blogs and Articles:
- The Cedu Program Resurfaces in Mount Bachelor Academy, Oregon
- House Approves Legislation for Residential Treatment Programs
- Cedu Raps and the Synanon Game
- Selling the Schools – Cedu Brochures
- I and Me and Summit Scripts
- Rudy Bentz and the Swift River Academy
- Calling All Cedu Survivors
- What’s a ‘Cedu’?
- Cedu Documentary in Progress
Links and Further Reading
- Cafety – dedicated to oversight and overhaul of the troubled “troubled teen industry.”
- ASTART – an organization of professional psychologists and researchers who advocate for ethical regulation of the industry.
- Fornits – a gathering place for survivors, grads and escapees of Cedu Schools and their clones.
- Straight Incorporated - “The Synanon Church and the medical basis for the $traights”
- Synanon Pages at the Rick Ross Cult Research Institute
- Paul Morantz.com – A history of Synanon from the lawyer and cult expert who fought it, and lost, and won.
- Brainwashing, Cults and Mind-Control – Definitions and discussion [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].
October 8th, 2008 at 11:36 PM
Thank you Liam. Thank you for letting it be known.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:45 AM
I came across this looking for information about Morava Academy – an US school that was closed in my country years ago. I try to educate myself on this topic – as a mother of two teenagers .I know how desperate a parent can be – but it would never cross my mind to send my child away . We do not have CEDU schools in my country – for this I am grateful, but we must be carreful still.It is so scary to know that such school exist at all.
Thanks a lot Liam, good job!(And excuse my English)
October 9th, 2008 at 9:14 PM
Hi Marie!
Thank you – I think you’re English is lovely! Post a link on Morava Academy, if you’d like, and we can look it up and learn about it.
I wish you courage! Bonne Courage with the teens – I’m not sure what they’re up to. You can have them pop onto the site and write a note, if they’d like. Or, if they’re being small terrors, we can probably tell them a few stories that will encourage their most determined good behavior…
very bests,
Liam
October 11th, 2008 at 11:27 AM
Hi Liam,
Morava Academy operated in the Czech republic in 1998 and was closed after 9 month. The Americans hired Czech staff – and some of them contacted police and reported what was going on there. I remember that the journalists wrote about a concetration camp for american teenagers – it was horrible and we were really upset and angry – I cannot magine that similar school exist to this day in your country… My little monsters (DS 18 and DD 16) are just typical teenagers , we were always very close –but as puberty hit – hey, who are the two strangers in my home??- sure, they drive me crazy and I almost passed out when I found out that DD smoked pot?!? But I educate myself , choose my battles , and hope fot the best!
Kind regards from Prague and all the best for you!
P.S. Do you know that similar schools existed in communist Russia around 1918?
October 12th, 2008 at 2:39 PM
Liam -
I feel so terrible that I do not remember you or many (I remember Morgan Genser) of the people on your documentary. I can only say that once I graduated in June 1990, I ran back to New York as fast as I could. I only kept in touch with one person. The fear, doubts and harassment at Cedu was something I wanted to forget. It also made me into a total bitch. I was so ashamed for how I treated those people who were there while I was there that being in NY and then Virgina isolated me and I could start over as the person that I really am. I was so hurt and angry that I vowed that no matter what, my children will never get shipped off to some cooky school. My daughter is 12 and thank God that she is doing so well but she knows about Cedu and knows that she will never end up in a place like that. So again, thank you for the documentary and to anyone who was there from 1988 – June 1990, I am deeply sorry for any pain I may have caused you.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:16 PM
Hi Claire,
Cedu is something I think a lot of people wanted to forget! But, you know, it’s good to rescue these bits of history from the memory hole, before they’re gone for good.
Glad you and family are well. Don’t be too hard on yourself for how you were at 16 or 17. I think the point of making this information public, is to help it be known that this type of ’school’ environment, is not healing, therapeutic, or beneficial – it is tantamount to torture, however, and we all, each of us, had to break, according to our nature. It made some of us mean, some of us neurotic, some of us bitter, some of us wildly untrusting –
And we’ve had to journey back from that, into life. So, welcome back, to all of us.
bests,
Liam
October 13th, 2008 at 6:51 AM
Marie -
“P.S. Do you know that similar schools existed in communist Russia around 1918?”
I’ll look this up. Send me any links you have.
Thanks!
October 13th, 2008 at 1:38 PM
Seeking;
Mellissa M., David Mc., Cindy Cng., class of 1990?
Please email me w/contact, if you have info. Do not post.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:48 AM
Liam -
Are you only trying to get info on Cedu? If not, I can tell you things about when I was at DeSisto in MA. I was there before Cedu for some months before running away. People have sued the school. Thankfully I got out. I ran away once and was “double hand held leashed”. There was no therapy there. My parents now look back and wish they had never heard about the school or about Michael DeSisto (who is now dead). If you want more on the school, curriculum etc….let me know
October 17th, 2008 at 12:33 PM
Liam,
First of all… thank you so much for posting everything on CEDU. I watched the clips on the documentary and I have to say that I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I was very thankful that I went through the program when I did because I feel when they lowered the age bracket, things got more out of hand with how the kids were treated. I can’t imagine what some of the kids experienced after I left. It’s amazing… you have such a trust for these people…
On the other hand, I LMAO during the explanation of RAPS… people do not realize that this behavior is not common. My brother was in rehab seven times and no group ever revealed the level of emotion we got to. I still remember the first time I saw someone take care of themself… it gives me shivers. Anyway, opening this porthole for me has been a huge inspiration you have no idea! Talk to you soon. Michelle
October 21st, 2008 at 8:59 AM
Liam,
That is really impressive work so far. I must say that I am a better person for having been there (1979-1981) than I would have turned out otherwise…I had /have a quick temper. I did learn things there to help with that. Yes, there is also some trauma…but I think you would have had it any way, maybe in some other form but still, ‘life changing events’ happen in many ways.
I’m left with this curiosity…do you feel as though you benefited from your time there? Or maybe a better way to ask would be, do you think our time would have been better spent going through our teens else where?
I do have to admit it has taken alot to amaze me since the Cedu days….think I saw it all there!
October 21st, 2008 at 9:31 AM
Hi Gregg,
I must return your question with a question:
Can you describe Cedu in 1979, vis-a-vis what you’ve seen in descriptions from former students in the videos, and in the blog responses?
Same, similar, different?
Raps, Propheets, Disclosure Circles, Staff smushing, no-dating, no-normative teen relationships, music generally forbidden, etc?
Try to cover the bases, and give some detail of the scenario then.
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:29 AM
I just starting viewing your site this week. I graduated in 1988. A former classmate sent me the link. I am very interested in what you are doing here. I had a decent experience overall, but a ton of memories came back to me after viewing a few clips. I am impressed with what you are doing. I am very interested in seeing more.
Sincerely,
Stacey G.
November 2nd, 2008 at 10:34 PM
Liam – I want to thank you for all the work you are doing on our behalf. Unfortunately, many people who attended CEDU still grapple with the denial and invalidation foisted on them by their families, who believe that CEDU “saved our lives.” I know that two friends of mine have shared that these clips helped their family members begin to step out of denial. I hope you make the finished product available for purchase so some of us can share it with our families. I know for me, it’s the last taboo subject.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:39 PM
Hello
I was at CEDU from April of 94 to June of 96. I cannot tell you how happy I am that we are not alone anymore. We now have proof and evidence to what we went through. I have tried to explain CEDU to so many people and am so glad that you are doing all this. I would love to talk to you.
To any of my friends who read this and want to find me…please do
November 13th, 2008 at 10:10 AM
Michele, I believe you were in my peer group with Elana. If you remember me I am on facebook. Hope all is well.
November 15th, 2008 at 9:43 AM
I went to CEDU from 1994-1996. I see a lot of familiar names commenting here. Although while I was at CEDU, deep down I hated it. I think almost everyone did. I guess there was a point that I realized I was not getting out unless I completed the program so I just tried to do the best I could and get out of there. I did, and my parents I believe are still really proud of that accomplishment. It was really hard to have to go through it but in the end I believe it was worth it. I still think about the experience often and try to make the best out of what I learned from it. I think it made me much stronger as a person, and I have found value in the program as it relates to my life today. While it was really difficult being a student there it was even harder trying to find myself in society upon graduation. It took me a good two years to readjust to the world in general and it was obvious to people close to me that I was different after CEDU and in a weird way. Over the years however I have found a nice balance that works well for me, and I basically keep my CEDU experience to myself. I think it is great that you are putting together a documentary and if this becomes available to purchase I would be interested in obtaining a copy. If you are looking for more testimonials I would be willing to help out. Contact me anytime. To all the former students, I hope you are well and life is treating you right. Hopefully we will cross paths again in the future.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:50 PM
http://www.caic.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1243&Itemid=12
An interesting program about a related program, Landmark education.
November 17th, 2008 at 8:41 AM
I graduated in 1983….a long time ago…but I am amazed by the detail you have. Contact me if you need to…I’m on facebook too.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:38 PM
I went through the CEDU program from June 1992 – December 1994. After watching these video clips, I am extremely interested. I definitely was in CEDU during the height of the reign! I think it is so important that it is being exposed. Please feel free to contact me for any info. Sincerely Amanda C.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:22 AM
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27188079#27206055
A link to an old, but updated documentary on Jim Jone’s cult that moved to Guyana. They drank the kool aid 30 years ago today.
Also, a book that I’ve been reading lately that makes for some interesting points is THE NEW BELIEVERS , by David V. Barrett. There’s nothing about Synanon which is disappointing, but they do have a section on the Landmark Forum and some est branch off groups. Its also from the UK point of view which is why I think they have more on European groups and less of the American cults. Good resource.
RIP Congressman Leo Ryan and 900 other pour souls. :peace:
December 11th, 2008 at 11:04 AM
Hey there bro… I actually went to Rocky Mountain Academy circa 94-97 and wanted to touch base with you about your project. I watched through what you have compiled so far with the first hand experiences of your fellow classmates at CEDU and can say my experiences were quite similar at RMA…. Please drop me a line….
December 12th, 2008 at 1:11 PM
Child was at cedu–bad experiernce. Now my husband is trying to spirit him off to in balance ranch or gatehouse academy. any word on either of those?
I had been looking at Visions drug rehab or Oakley run by Aspen.
December 14th, 2008 at 9:29 PM
I’m non-the-better for my 8 months at Cedu Running Springs. Sometimes it really feels like something I survived.
I was luckier then most, I split two weeks before my 18th birthday.
The cast and crew of Running Springs truly didn’t give two shits about us. It really was about the money.
I can’t imagine the staff really believing that we were benefiting from their abuse. What in God’s name were they thinking.
Oh, and a Christmas F- YOU to Dan Earle. Couldn’t keep it zipped, could you a-hole. What a complete pervert.
I’d say f- you to other members of the CEDU kool-aid drinking staff, but luckily they are all dead.
Good job, Liam. Seriously, your doc. helped me a lot.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:33 AM
I think your documentary is great. I’ve tryed to explain what we went through to family and friends with no sucess. They all think I’m making up stuff. The one thing I can say about CEDU is that I came out of the place in fear. When I graduated I was so afraid of authority and thought everyone was talking behind my back. To tell you the truth, talking with people from CEDU is alittle scary for me. I remember the raps and things people said to me (and I said to others). I felt so small and afraid
December 18th, 2008 at 3:44 PM
Thanks man, I can’t wait to see the whole thing. I and buddy of mine are both convinced that we are suffering PTSD from our experiences with the CEDU Family of Services. The unfortunate thing is that most people, including professionals, don’t believe our stories about what went on; so it is refreshing to see this and I wish you the best of luck.
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:40 PM
I really appreciate you doing this. I feel it is important for people to learn what really went on at these places. As someone who has studied psychology I can not understand how the staff members believed in what they were doing. I was traumatized by my experiences at Cedu. It has taken a very long time to get over what happened at that dreadful place. Best of luck to you and I wish sucess on the documentary. -
December 27th, 2008 at 7:14 PM
I had a total flashback watching your video. It really brought me back….a real eeirrrre feeling. I hope too see some of the darker elements of being at a cedu school such as the extreme mental illness of some of the students, suicides, self mutilation, sexual enconters between staff and students, and the Roit in the late 90’s at NWA. I have an interesting story about a counsouler swingging on me in front of students; only to have me serously injure him. (I broke his ribs with a log that was duct tapped to my nalgaine water bottle as a punishment for forgetting my water bottle multiple times) They seperated us and tryied to manipulate the story so that I swung first; but to no avail. The students wouldn’t budge. I didnt get in trouble at all because they were scared of being sued.
I am intrested in the differences in the program over the years; Im excited to see the finished documentary thank you for your work.
December 31st, 2008 at 2:04 PM
For the past 12 years, I’ve struggled with the inability to vocalize how awful those 3 years were. Nobody understands it unless they’ve lived it- and it’s an experience that was so traumatizing for so many people that it needs to be talked about.
While I was at Cedu, I was tied to a person I didn’t get along with for 24 hours, made to shovel snow for an entire day in a t-shirt and shorts (because I kept forgetting my jacket in the dorms) and watched a staff member belittle a physically impaired student to the point of his running away and never being found.
It has taken time to forgive and it will take more time to forget- but I think that what you’re doing is wonderful. Thank you.
January 6th, 2009 at 5:36 PM
wow.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:37 PM
1987-1989
I just watched your first clip and I think I was the kid that chased you on your first night’s walk. I was in the peer group with Von, Elana, Atticus, Alex, Christopher and others. I was completely shell shocked my entire time there. I forgot all those things people were talking about in the clip. It is incredible how young minds can embrace an environment without question, irrespective of its merits. I was always the unemotional one who never cried and was told I was disrespecting others and was not trustworthy as a result. I feel so bad for all the things I did and said to others, although encouraged at the time. This is somewhat cathartic. Thank you for all the work you seem to have put into this.
John
January 17th, 2009 at 10:38 PM
Liam–
What film festivals will this documentary be shown at? I attended BCA in 2001-2002 and attended ASCENT twice. The posts I’ve read have brought back a flood of memories…I had forgotten/blocked out how bad the abuse was at these schools.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:11 PM
Liam,
I know that you and I lately have disagreed on some issues about the school, but I want to let you know that what you are doing is a wonderful thing. There is a phrase that I heard at Cedu out of all places “Those who fail to learn history tend to repeat it. I believe that by exposing what happened at Cedu and the general public will be able to see what damage was caused by this school, that steps will be taken so no one will have to ever go through the same events we did. My parents and I am sure many other parents were conned into believing that Cedu was this great Utopian society and they can fix everyone, yeah right. I was in a lot more trouble with people when I graduated becuase I did not know how to relate to people on a non-cedu level. It many years before I felt comfortable with others after Cedu. Cedu was like Camelot it was a great idea, but it just could not happen as there are those that want to take advantage of others for their own benefit
January 26th, 2009 at 4:40 PM
I was at CEDU from Jan-Oct 1994
I just found this site, and I have to say it’s brought back a lot of memories for me also.
I found a myspace page about CEDU a while back and it’s been prevelant on my mind ever since. I haven’t had much luck connecting with my peers there, I’d REALLY like to – as several people have stated, the experience of CEDU is not really one that you can talk to other people about. Even if you try to describe the things that went on there, they certainly can’t RELATE to such strange experiences.
Oddly enough, I was helping my mother go through some old boxes and found all the stuff she had from CEDU – brochures, enrollment application, medical authorizations, clothings lists I sent, copies of the stuff I’d bought from “the store” with the invoice for them to pay…and letters that I’d sent them, as well as some they had written to me, though if I ever got them I could not say. It was interesting to me that the underlying theme of their letters seemed to be “we hope they fix you so that you’ll love us again”, oh yes and my favorite…how my being there was so terribly difficult for them…for THEM! Oh golly! I could not even tell them the truth of what it was like, even after I left (I was pulled after 9 months due to lack of funding) because that would of course mean that I’d learned nothing…..
In the years following my rebellious teenage ways escalated far more than before I went, and how many times I heard “Didn’t you learn anything at CEDU?” Even a few times I responded “yep, sledge & wedge!” To them it was always a means to “fix” the broken child.
I’m relieved to learn that I’m not the only one who feels alienated in some fashion, with the need to identify with others who understand that alternate universe we were subjected to…
Liam – OMG I watched the clips and your comment “what you think you know about snot, you do not”….I almost fell off my chair laughing! How true is that! I am SO excited to get a copy of the finished product! I’d be happy to contribute anything I can.
There are many things that have come back to me…the dance studio, the farm…oh my god the farm…the pottery class…The dining hall with that god-forsaken slop they called food. The magically appearing kleenex pile…staff telling me what disclosures I SHOULD have, whether or not they actually occured was irrelevant to them…the stories of Walter Houstons wife buried under the heart-shaped stone in the pit…
Kari B. who posted not too long ago…I think we were dorm-mates…I recognize a few names of the other people who have posted too….I’d really like to get in touch…I’m on facebook, and I’ll check back here. I’m grateful I found this site…
February 15th, 2009 at 4:20 PM
Liam,
Well, that was an impressive and rather undesired trip down memory lane. I was sick today sitting home with my kid and somehow caught your videos on youtube while doing a related seach that actually had nothing to do w/ Cedu. I was a student at Cedu in the mid 1990’s and always felt strongly that there was something very wrong with the place, the message and the execution of a philosophy that was meant to save children…so we were told. Since graduting from college I have been a U.S. and world history teacher and have been totally convinced that the experiences we went through at Cedu were abusive at best. During the “Brothers Profeet” I was manipulated into nearly breaking a friend’s arm to the rockish sounds of a pretty bad Neil Diamond tune, (an act on the part of the staff I believe to be unforgivable).
I have, to some degeree unknowingly, harbored quite a lot of anger toward the folks on the mountain for around 15 years now but am very grateful the place has shut down and no more children can be put through that cult like lifestyle. I knew both Kari and Matt F. and feel terrible for the memories those names provoke as they were both good kids whoI can remember being treated horribly, (in my opinion) much as I did. Pam Abell was not a good person no matter how badly any of us wanted to believe it. Thank you for putting to words what I’m sure so many of us have felt for years. You did a good thing here.
February 15th, 2009 at 7:26 PM
Wow. So far the clips I’ve seen has hit the nail DEAD ON. I always swore this shit was borderline illegal that they did to us…and I still stay in contact with a few friends from the school 6 YEARS even after leaving. I guess I don’t want to lose contact from people because no one else could possibly understand what this was like or how we lived through it.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:28 AM
You should go to the library and find some Sunset magazines from 1989 or 1990 because Cedu used to advertise in the back. The ad had a picture of an angry kid and it said something about being a school for troubled teens. My parents pointed it out to me when they told me I was being sent there. The ad would make a good addition to your collection of materials. If you find it let me know, I’d like to see it again.
March 4th, 2009 at 8:24 PM
Thank you for making a film about what went on at the school. I was at the Running Springs campus from 1990-1993. The things I remember from the school are some of the most terrifying experiences I have ever had, but a few of the experiences were good. It is important that light be shed on this world. Thank you again.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:45 AM
I attended Cedu From 93-95 and I can say a lot of my problems now stem from there. I will say the actions that got me there were corrected, to an extent. Due to the fantasy world or as they called it “Camelot” and all the “agreements” I am somewhat of a social dud. I had a decent amount of friends going in but since I have had slim to none. I’m not going to ramble on as this would be pages. I will say I’m open if any body would like to contact me and talk more. Oh, I would like to find a copy of this film! Thanks!
March 10th, 2009 at 4:47 PM
Hello,
It has been years since my experiance at a cedu base school ( cascade). I havent the words to describe the damage it has done to people I know who were there including myself. I was older when I went and was able to see the forest for the trees. but as we all know I was powerless to do much due to the fact that the social structure make up at these places. I have whitnesses in the few years I was there everything from verbal abuse to physical and sexual abuse. My crime was my silence and tolerance of it. For that I am haunted in my dreams awake and asleep.
Not to draw a parallel to nazi war crimes but the definition of crimes against humanity do fit rather neatly. when loved ones are turned against each other and the animal comes out to just survive. that is a very serious crime. One that I am glad is finally being put in check.
In my home it is forbbiden for me to share the things that had happened, it hurts my loved ones too much. Understandably. I see a theripst and she wants to under stand and empithise but this is so out of line and in depth that I don’t realy think anything will help save acceptance that we did what we had to do to reduce harm and trama to our selfs. but i praddle on. thanks for the memories
March 16th, 2009 at 8:42 PM
Hi, I have a few friends that went to CEDU, thank you for helping me understand them a little better. It breaks my heart that any child would have to go through anything so inhumane. In addition to being friends with a few Alumi, I’m a public school teacher with a MA in Educational Administration, and I’m trained in a pretty good program called “Safe & Civil Schools.” As you well know, the CEDU tactics go against the findings of a lot of research about child development and psychology. Let me know if you ever need my help or expertise, I’d like to help put an end to this type of thing.
March 21st, 2009 at 9:09 PM
Liam (assuming that’s ur name). I really appreciate all that u r doing 2 bring awareness 2 these nightmares of places. I am a Rocky Mountain Academy (cedu sister school) survivor and I’ve been waiting 4 the day these institutions have their judgement day. Any help I can provide I would b much obliged. Thanx again 4 all ur doing. We need more attention brought to these money hungry institutions to save the poor kids still being forced 2 endure the tortures these programs commit. I also survived a couple wilderness programs which I also find despicable. I hope ur documentary goes gr8. Citokid
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:53 PM
I went to CEDU from 1997 to 1999, to hear similar stories was absolutly great. My girlfrend and I sat down last weekend and played each clip. I think its great to finally tell the truth about what went on up on the hill. Also to see Denis talk about his own colleges was great. Great Job.
Austin John Ramon
March 25th, 2009 at 3:30 PM
I just wanted to say that I love this site.
April 7th, 2009 at 11:37 AM
I graduated last year from a program directly developed by two CEDU graduates. This school is called the Monarch School it is located not 20 miles from RMA(idaho) and BCA(idaho) in Montana. The experiences described by everyone on this site and in the documentary clips are still being practiced today. Everthing though everything has a new name, they are still the same format as the originals and there has even been new exercises added. For example, the “I want to live phropheet” is now called the “Choices Insight”, why they did this I don’t know. My experience there was unforgettable. Both good and bad experiences occurred there but I was able to overcome the supposed “brainwashing” and take what I thought was useful from that program. I am still adjusting to the real world, even though it has almost been a year since I left. I still have nightmares about being “sent away” as us kids call it now. I was not taken the nice way.
I was “escorted” by two huge guys who hand-cuffed me outside my house at 4:30 in the morning, they took away my shoes and kept me hand-cuffed until I reached my wilderness program in Utah. Part of some of my punishments at the school were digging out massive stumps of trees from the ground, building miles of fencing and shoveling snow banks in 0 degree weather that were 8 feet high and almost 10 feet thick. Anyway I just want CEDU programs to be exposed and to have the truth out there. These programs are helpful but only if you and your family are very smart and level headed, thank god my mom and dad were otherwise I’d be a completely different person. Now a days, parents are using programs like these to cop out of being a parent. If I had one thing to say to any parent who reads this, love your children. They are yours and you must raise them, not a theraputic program meant to deal with people who have extreme emotional issues.
Some of my friends there ended up being bigger drug users and completely depressed individuals because of the experiences at these schools. Good kids who just need more help with life are ruined and corrupted by a philosophy that isn’t helpful and sometimes sends them in the complete opposite dirrection. I would love to further share my experience with anyone who wants to know, I feel so happy that there are people sharing there experiences with one another, sometimes there is no one who can understand what I have been through and that is something i have been searching for. Thank You Liam.
April 8th, 2009 at 3:43 PM
Patrick Stambusky… the founder of Monarch.
Alumni to CEDU, one of the people that actually BUILT RMA with his own hands, coming back as faculty at CEDU (during my time I will add) to later open Monarch…
April 9th, 2009 at 8:34 PM
I never understood the whole switch from Stambusky to McKenna. What was behind the name switch?
Not that any shady behavior is surprising from Patrick, but was there legal trouble perhaps?
April 14th, 2009 at 1:47 AM
Dear Liam,
Thank you. I went to RMA from 1996 to 1998…
At one point I began to compile all of the stories and tools I remember, only to discover that I had blacked out more than half, and only when my memory was triggered did any of them come back. It seems that people have a natural instinct to forget what is so painful to remember. I cant remember the run that Laura described so well; I am glad for this.
I am telling you this because I wish I could be brave enough to document this like you. I just couldn’t. I would always begin to cry or become overwhelmed, throwing my notes back into a box, and now I have rid myself of all of it except for my summit notebook.
I still read my own epitah on occasion, my version at 15 of why I deserved to die before I was ceremoniously ‘buried alive’.
I think this is such an amazing project because it demands that we distance ourselves enough to tell our stories, yet keep them close enough so they aren’t forgotten.
I always will be thankful that you have done this. For yourself, for us, and all of the other children that remain in cedu like programs.
THANK YOU.
April 15th, 2009 at 8:15 AM
Dear Liam,
I have informatiom as to these former CUDU Staff members and they are in control of children in copy cat programs right now.
I would like more specificts about certian persons. I have a loved one there and am very worried.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:52 AM
Liam the clips were great! It did bring alot of memories, some good but most horrid. I served my time at CEDU for those who don’t know from ‘92-’94. Chris D. I remember you man. I agree with you Chris, I had a decent amount of friends pre-Cedu and now I have a very difficult time getting along with people and have no friends right now. You know most people who never endured a Cedu experience say “Oh, that was so long ago just get over it.” I can only painfully laugh inside when my wife or someone says that they just do NOT f-Ing understand what we all went through at the “WTS” (Western Torture System) as I love to call it. Again, Liam very well done. I would love to see more clips, don’t know if you are working on more or not. To all Cedu survivors we all need to remember one very important thing however, and that is that we DID survive our experience and that only makes us that much stronger and unique! We are the few, the brave… You get the point.. Any one remember Abbott night watch?? That guy smelled like a chimney he smoked so freakin much… Well I guess that’s all for now… Take care all..
April 16th, 2009 at 1:49 PM
I just wanted to thank you for your documentary about the CEDU schools. I went to Monarch started by Timothy Earl. It was a very traumatizing and disturbing experience. Thank you for shedding light on the hell I went though.
April 18th, 2009 at 12:18 PM
Liam,
This letter went out yesterday to the ex-amity staff. Hopefully we will get a response prior to me talking you in may.
DJ
April 18, 2009
Dear: Marci Padgett, Michael Cruciano, Merv Maier,
I am writing you this letter in regards to my stay at the Amity School. I was a student there from 1989-1991. When my family was first presented the idea of me going to the Amity School my family was assured by both the educational consultant (Diane Albrecht) and the staff at Amity that the school was accredited. My reasons for being at Amity were due to poor grades and separating me from my existing friends. As well my family was never explained the truth about the therapy that Amity did and what it consisted of. There was definitely allot of deceit into getting my parents and myself to go along with the program. There was something really strange about being at Amity and know the staff members stories. Stories ranging from abuse to addicts and all sorts of other crazy stuff. With that being said, I would like to address some issues and concerns.
While at Amity I sat in numerous raps where I was screamed at by various staff members for trivial things. If you could please enlighten me and explain to me how that is healthy and therapeutic I am willing to listen. The type of therapy that was practiced while I was at Amity was both abusive and harmful. The synanon and life spring ways are outdated, prehistoric and have a consistent record of not working. As for the propheets and workshops, those were some of the most abusive experiences I have ever been through in my life.
One of the key things that I remember about the workshops and prophets was getting my ass reamed in the rap and emotionally beaten down. As well during the two workshops nearly collapsing from physical exhaustion. The crazy techniques that were used during these workshops have had harmful effects on thousands of people. Five years after I had gotten home from Amity I took the time to see both a licensed Psychologist and Psychiatrist. At that point in time my life was a complete mess. I was trying to live according to the Amity beliefs and ways and learning that it did not work in the real world. All Amity did was create a sense of fear to get students to conform to the methodologies of Amity.
When I got into the advanced school that was even more confusing for me. Having John Padgett ask me about my sexual relationship with Emily on a daily basis was quite uncomfortable. John would make suggestions on a regular basis on what I should do sexually to Emily. At the time, because I feared all of the staff I made it o.k. John was a very sick perverted man and he had no business in running a school. The number of times that I saw John with young female students on his lap while he was in a towel or a robe makes me sick. The fact that there was no level of accountability for his actions or the way he would yell at people was absolutely amazing.
John has to be the worst example of a human being that both my parents and I had ever met, god rest his soul. He did everything possible to work on destroying my relationship with my father. He would tell me regularly what failures my parents were and they had no clue on how to raise me. John even went to the extreme of having me call him Dad. Like an idiot I went along with it, this really put strain on my relationship with my father. How in god’s name did John get the position of Headmaster with no formal training to speak of? He had serious boundary issues and was a complete pervert to both the male and female students. How this went unnoticed to other staff members is completely puzzling to me. John had a crazy philosophy that it was his way or the highway, maybe in the end that was part of the fall of Amity.
Marci Padgett was someone I always feared while at Amity. All I remember about her is yelling at students at the top of her lungs over trivial things. As well I remember Marci always having a way of humiliating people whether it is in a rap or on the floor. Here is another example of a woman in an authority position that had absolutely no formal training or any credentials to speak of. Marci had a way of exploiting your deepest darkest secrets in raps. She always made the decision for students on whether or not they needed to talk about these guarded secrets. In all honesty I do not see anything that she has done as being healthy or appropriate.
Matthew , he was a piece of work. He was the wolf in sheeps clothing. Here is an ex-cedu student that once again has no training be put in charge of a group of students. Matthew had no formal training or credentials to speak of other than being in the navy. I cannot count the number of times I witnessed him borderline molesting peers in my family. As well I witnessed him on a couple of different occasions grabbing female’s breast while they were on his lap. I know I am not the only one that saw a red flag with him. The staff did not think it was strange that he was always with the same two or three females on the floor. I am aware of all of the sexual misconduct that Matthew did while employed at Amity. Once again this is another problem that the upper staff created, had they taken the time to hire somebody that is responsible with credentials the school might have been open a bit longer.
I know that Amity was run by a group and not just John. It is amazing to me that after all of the school closures (Cascade, Cedu, Amity) that the upper management did not see the flaws in there methodologies and practices. What worked well in the seventies and early eighties for ex-heroin addicts does not mean it will work well for young adults with very trivial and minor problems. Some of the most serious problems at Amity were kids getting kicked out of school and not listening to their parents. This is quite different than dealing with heroin addicts and ex-cons. What might have worked for synanon people did not necessarily work for Amity. What happened while I was at Amity was not o.k. I still to this day have bad dreams about both the place and the experiences. After having spoken to numerous professionals I now realize Amity was nothing more than a derivative of synanon. I do not know if any of you have taken the time to look on the internet and do searches regarding (Amity, Cedu, Cascade), there are literally thousands of scarred survivors. You can view some of the stories at:
http://www.liamscheff.com
http://www.fornits.com
http://www.struggelingteens.com
I cannot speak for the sixty ex-amity alumni that are in my facebook group. But what I can do is let you know that all of the lies, manipulation, cons, control, and abuse was not and is not o.k. I am quite sure that you would never treat your own children the way you treated me and the other students at Amity. At one point in my life I had such high regards for each of you, it was all a lie. The only positive thing I got out of Amity was my friends and travels. Hopefully being that it is twenty years later you have had the time to identify some of flaws at Amity that caused it to fail. The most common reason for a business to fail is poor management. John Padgett falls in that category. It is unfortunate that I have such ill will feelings toward my experience and the very people I once looked up to. Hopefully if you have a conscience you will see the mistakes and flaws that were made and feel somewhat apologetic.
Sicerely,
Ex-Amity Student
April 18th, 2009 at 2:26 PM
DJ and all,
I want to say a very heartfelt Thank You for all of these stories. It’s a revelation beyond my expectations to know that this little project is giving people room to talk and unearth some of what they experienced in these strange and often destructive programs. DJ – we’ll catch up in May, and talk some more.
bests,
Liam Scheff
April 18th, 2009 at 3:36 PM
I am hoping by posting my letter that others will take the time to hold these people accountable for there actions. I do not anticipate a response, what I hope is that people will start barraging these dirt bags with these type of letters. If anyone needs emails or addresses please let me know. The whole process of writing the letter and dropping it off at the post office was very therapeutic and releasing for me.
dj
April 21st, 2009 at 8:58 PM
Dear Liam,
My girlfriend was looking up my boarding school and stumbled on this site. At first I wanted to look at the documentary, but then the vocabulary and experiences brought back such bad memories I had to turn it off.
When I read that people were getting apologies from staff members, I definitely feel I am owed an apology, and that my parents are owed a refund! It would make me feel better about my experiences if I could be a part of your documentary.
I have many stories from my experience at boarding school and would gladly share them in person or camera. My company is willing to host your website and documentary.
I attended Northwest Academy for 1.5 yrs following a six week stay at Ascent Bootcamp. Ascent is not run the same as the boarding schools, but it is also managed by Cedu and all the food came from Northwest Academy. Both these facilities were located in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
I have five page report sharing some of the extremes I faced at the school and some of the more memorable stories. Please contact me by email!
John
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:37 AM
Von, John, Alana, Atticus!!!!!!! I totally remember you!!!!
I missed playing basketball with you guys Although alana never played, lol!!! Does anyone remember Pablo???? AKA PabSmear???!!! He was pretty good on the court. So were you guys. It is so weird how everyone is finally connecting over this tramatic part of our lives. Hope all is well with you all. Contact me if you wish. I miss you too alana!!! Keep the faith.
surfkarmalove@yahoo.com
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:04 PM
Yeah… I remember Pablo… PabSmear!! and Alana, Atticus, John, Von… and of course Eric Ryan!!
It’s interesting how we are all connecting 20 years later… Kevin O’Keefe…. Thanks for your post… You are still a dear friend to me… and you were there for me when I was struggling to survive in a crazy society during my senior year of high school… We will always be friends…
trailstryder@yahoo.com
April 24th, 2009 at 8:46 PM
Whats up John Gilbert………Its Alan Milsaps from NWA…..hit me up asap I have a lot of conversations I’d like to have with you hit me up…………..billsaps@yahoo.com
would lve to hear from you, peace……………..
April 25th, 2009 at 9:06 PM
Watching these videos sent chills down my spine. What a nightmare that place was.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:49 AM
Liam,
I thought that I would share a relatively unknown Cedu story that, with the exception of those of us who participated at the time, no one really understood or cared about.
I attended Cedu HS in the mid 1990′ and like the majority of people who have chimed in on your site, had a terrible experience. I feel that the lack of professionalism, the abusive nature of the therapeutic interventions and the violation of personal boundaries was both sad and to some degree disgusting. However, this story concerns a different way in which Cedu hurt kids who attended the school. I will attempt, (though poorly) to be brief.
I had come to Cedu because I had generally lost respect for my parents hence losing respect for the rules of the house. I certainly was far from out of control but, to say I had an attitude, drank and smoked some pot on the weekends and got in a fist fight or two would be accurate. My real love in life was athletics, (played football, basketball and lacrosse) and upon arriving at Cedu I was devastated to learn the school had no athletic teams what so ever. Any chance I had at competing at the college level was gone and I was going to watch the one thing I felt talented in no longer have any meaning in my life. I was miserable.
After six months at Cedu, I sat down with at that time Head Master Bill Valentine and delivered a proposal for a High School Varsity basketball team. To my shock, Bill said he’d be interested to see how badly I wanted that to happen. He told me that if I contacted opposing high schools to schedule games, somehow participated in finding an on campus coach and generated enough student interest, a basketball team might be possible. Bill clearly thought I would not really move forward with the project due to all of the work involved, but what else was I going to do? My life sucked at Cedu and this at least gave me something to get up in the morning for.
I worked on this project every day. I contacted over 100 schools in the Inland Empire, asked staff daily if they would reconsider coaching us and generated student interest with relative ease as the prospect of routinely getting off campus to play basketball had obvious appeal. After one year Rob Lowe and Miles Porroco were hired as the varsity basketball coaches, an18 game schedule was made official and we had tryouts for a 12 man roster.
We ran every fucking day. Four in the morning to breakfast we would run. All over campus, up the microwave, down to the little school at the end of the road. We had to practice in the afternoon due to only having the one outside court, but we made do. There are lots oddities I could tell you about how hard we worked to prepare but this is getting long.
The bottom line is that for CIF 1A basetball we were good, really good. Because our blood was so thin from 6000 + feet of elevation and because we ran like we were a cross country team, (and for one reason or another we had a pretty talented group of kids) every team who played us got run off the floor. 63-10, 64-8, 77-45 were common scores for our games, (including at win over 9th ranked West LA Baptist at their place).
So, this is Cedu so as we all know, there is no way this story is going to end well. After qualifying for the Southern Section CIF playoffs Bill called me into his office. We had gone 16-4 earned the right to go the Long Beach for a first round match up. Even though one or two guys were going to be looked at my small colleges in the area, (eg U of Redlands) Bill had made the decision that the school had been too swept up in our season, we were not taking our emotional growth seriously enough and basketball season was over. Though I begged, pleaded and to my embarrassment cried Bill just sat there and told me, “we had taken the thing too far.” Bill made the announcement at the next house meeting and made us sound like a bunch of whiners who just needed to deal with all of our hard working being for nothing. We were beyond crushed.
“To dream the impossible dream,” a favorite lingo at Cedu. Well we dreamt it, worked it, and had it snatched right out of our hands by Family Heads and Bill. My father was so disgusted with the school I was pulled out two day later.
In any case, that is the story of why I will always be bitter toward Cedu HS. We had a good bunch of guys who worked very hard for something we were told we should go after and we had taken from us b/c it didn’t somehow feed the ego of the “treatment staff.” They never could stand the idea of the students experiencing success unless it somehow directly could be associated with them.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:52 AM
Ben, what a story.. thank you for writing it up and sharing it here. That’s the power the staff were given, to be sure, total, irrational, invasive, and without explanation.
Thank you again for sharing it.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:18 PM
Ha I played a couple games on that team. I fared better when Kurt got a wrestling,karate,judo and akido class. I loved that.
May 11th, 2009 at 5:19 PM
Hello Ben! Hello Chris! I too was on the CEDU “Varsity” basketball team and I think I played in one shift of one game. I was the typical whitey, no talent person that had no business on the court to begin with. I will never forget Matt Knight on that team, he may have been worse than me. One play sticks out in my mind more than any. Matt gets the ball, chucks a huge three pointer from WAY downtown, he launched the shot and started to run down the court with his hands up like “oh yeah baby, it’s goin’ in, nothin’ but net” only to have the ball bounce off the top of the glass and over the backboard. His hands went down and the look of disappointment and failure came across his face. I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard in my life. There was another Matt Knight play where he was under the basket and tried for the layup only to ricochet the ball off the bottom of the glass like a stray bullet. His moppy hair flailing all over the place. So freaking funny, I almost wet my pants. It’s sad to say that those were some of the moments that actually kept me sane while I was out there. It’s good to tell the war stories today, just to get it out and off our chests. Ben, Chris, feel free to get in touch with me anytime you want. Search for me on facebook. I’m there. Hope you all are well.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:30 PM
Lol my b-ball career ended when me and Mike Cosgrove botched a fastbreak, I thought everybody was gonna have a seizure lol.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:36 PM
the exciting thing about one of the unique sociological aspects of cedu, that i enjoyed.. was that i you would get to tear into someone , and tell them what you can see about them.. what you percieve critically .. in the spirit of enlighteing them and you could go deep and reveal a whole bunch of shit.. not really something we do in polite society… but it really fuled some major growth while you were there.. this was a tthe heart of things and my intention was allwyas pure,, not to hurt ..but to show.. show womebody something about themselves.. who does that for you now? confronts you on shit? no one. It would be seen as psycho and no one would trust you’re doing it for thier benefit, outside of a unique freindship or therapeutic situation..
at cedu this was allways assumed, you could call people out everyday, i can see that some people may have not been that pure in their intentions..staff.. manipulate and were mean.. this one staff guy told a buliimic girl that she was going to puke up her thanksgiving food so why eat it..at the dinner table outside of the raps this kind of talk is usually reserved for .. to get at the root of things supposedly..
May 13th, 2009 at 9:40 AM
95% of the time I was there people were not called out because of love or care for others. People were scared and didnt want to be yelled at themselfs so they would yell at anyone to keep the attension off of themslves. I also know that kids would make up issues just because staff pushed them and said there was more that they weren’t telling. That is in no wat theriputic it is abusive. I fell sorry for you if you still can not see that……
May 20th, 2009 at 10:15 AM
The terms used and the description of the raps sounds exactly like The Cascade School that I went to. Cascade was started by CEDU alumni. Someone mentioned Landmark – which had a main faculty member that went to CEDU then later worked at Cascade while I was there in the 90’s. So I am not too surprised they are similar.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:58 PM
I am a former student of Rocky Mountain Academy, the CEDU sister school in Bonners Ferry, ID, graduate of ‘88. It took me years to process my CEDU experience which I feel were both traumatizing and healing in many respects. It is important to validate the experiences of these former students, who were largely guinea pigs in this “therapeutic” milieu and to examine potential rights abuses or trauma that resulted from these programs.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:53 PM
Thanks Liam!
June 10th, 2009 at 11:52 AM
Thanks to all. 88-91 at RMA is somrthing i would like to talk about with students that went there during that time.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:08 AM
A thousand blessings on you and your home for helping to expose these criminals. I was a student at CEDU in the 1990’s, and I am willing to help if you need it.
July 6th, 2009 at 9:36 AM
Liam, this documentary needs to be seen!! Unknowing parents are still sending their children to these auwful places. I worked for the RMA and was horrified by the things I saw and was forced to be a part of. The scariest part of all is that there are soooo many spin off schools that continue to abuse kids in the ways the CEDU schools did for so many years.
I worked for RMA when a civil war of sorts broke out between the “old school” staff and the newer professionally trained staff. It was terrifying to go to work everyday, I feel sorry for the students that needed help and wanted it but were left to fend for themselves in a really dark dark place. Please keep up the good fight as parents out there need to see your movie.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:26 PM
Liam you should take a look at Benchmark
they just hired on of the former top staff from CEDU in CA
also the owner and few other top staff are former CEDU
July 14th, 2009 at 3:02 PM
dcinvestiations@roadrunner.com
there is an investigator on fornits looking for information on this very subjuect right now for monarch school
http://fornits.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26018&start=15
July 26th, 2009 at 7:09 PM
Hello Liam,
First I want to thank you with all my heart for what you are doing. I was a “student” at Cascade School in Whitemore CA, in 1999-2000. This school was created by the same people who created CEDU and was virtually identical in its practices yet very different in its marketing. I have great insight into the marketing/operating procedure of this school in particular thanks to information I have compiled from my parents as well as some staff. I would be greatly honored to participate in any way that could help better explain these schools for better or for worse. Please contact me through my email so we can talk further. Again, thank you very much for what you are doing.
Andrew H.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:07 PM
I was at CEDU High School in 1998 at the age of 15. I arrived there just before New Years Eve (Dec. 1997) and came by way of escort. I’d spent 6 weeks at Ascent Wilderness Program, and previous to that, a month in Juvenile Hall (my 9th time there). Starting at 12 years old, I had been at a boarding school in the mountains of Mendocino, an Army Navy Academy in San Diego, a group home, a mental institution, and multiple in and out-patient drug rehab facilities based on court orders and family issues. Out of all the places I was in before CEDU and all the places I went after, none affected me as negatively as CEDU did.
I had completely blocked out almost all of my experiences there until yesterday, July 15th 2009, when I googled CEDU because I was bored at work. I began reading all the posts initiated by your documentary and everything began flooding back to me. I spent 4 hours at work reading everyone’s posts and points of view, then went home and spent
two more hours reading and watching your documentary. I had forgotten about Raps, Full Time, and Bans. I had not forgotten about the Propheets. That was a horrible, horrible thing for any child to go through. When I read others’ accounts of their experiences in the Propheets, it was all brought back. The being forced to yell at your parents while hitting the pillow. The being forced to cry, or if you didn’t or couldn’t, being yelled at. The freezing cold room and the repetitive music. It was pure torture. Literal torture. I would not wish this on any child, man, or woman ever.
I try to explain my time there to my close friends, my wife, my parents, but no one can understand. When I speak the words it doesn’t do justice to the pain and void I feel when remembering my time there. I was only at CEDU for 6 months before I was kicked out, but it was the worst 6 months of my young life and nothing has ever compared since.
They had me on so many different medications for my “Oppositional Defiance Disorder” that at times I would be almost comatose, sitting and drooling on my self. I was on Depakote which is an anti-seizure/mood stabilizer, Zyprexa which is an antipsychotic, Remeron which is an antidepressant, and Accutane for my teenage skin which has a side
affect of depression. I WAS 15 YEARS OLD!!! No one should be on conflicting meds like that, even as an adult. I was later diagnosed with Bi-Polar Disorder and anyone who knows about this disease knows it does not turn out well when taking antidepressants.
I’m sure I was kicked out for a number of reasons, though I blocked out most of them. I believe the main reason for my early departure was for having sexual relations with a female I had grown attached to.
I did have some good memories there however, though all of them surround the “underground” society we created amongst the kids who secretly rebelled against the program. We would smuggle in food, sneak away to smoke cigarettes, plan our escape and huff what ever substance we could get our hands on. We listened to the one TuPac tape we had, wrestled in the dorms (until I got my nose broken and punched a huge hole in the wall), and even killed a rattle snake and skinned it. I gave myself tattoos with Indian ink and a needle and thread I stole from the art room, smoked weed, and even made alcohol with juice and yeast from the kitchen. My 2 close friends and I had learned the ins and outs of the “underground” from the upper classmen before they graduated and passed down the ONGC secrets. ONGC was what they had called their little crew. It was a joke and stood for One Nut Gangsta Crips. I don’t really know why.
I see no posts from any of the people that were there with me or close to me. I am friends with a few of them via MySpace and Facebook. It is amazing how quickly you can bond with people when you are both forced into such an awful situation.
After my experience there I went to a lockdown facility called Island View in Utah. It was bad, but not as bad as spending one more second at CEDU. After Island view I went home and proceeded to live a normal happy life.
I had a few bumps in the road, like anyone does, but I am now 26 years old, a very successful financial advisor with a large well known firm, and am married with 2 children. I have a wonderful relationship with my parents and all this research has sparked a lot of conversation between us about their take on CEDU. They had sent me there because the courts had said that either they pick a place for me or the courts would. My parents picked Ascent and then CEDU.
I spoke with me dad while writing this and he told me that after they visited me in CEDU, they realized there was not enough structure there and were ok with me leaving the program, especially when they found out how much trouble I had gotten in.
Well, this was my recount of my experiences at CEDU. I’d be happy to give anymore information or answer any questions from anyone. I have alot of pictures from CEDU, everything from standing in the pit to 1998 graduation. If you want them I could scan them and send them to you. I feel I have left so much out. I don’t really know why I wrote
all this, but it feels good to share with people who understand. Thank you.
-DVC
August 7th, 2009 at 7:15 AM
hey liam,
i have to tell you i am so happy that someone has stepped forward about these schools. you are a godsend!!! i truly mean that, because i think people need to know about how these schools really were. i was at BCA back in 96 for a year and went to Ascent 2x. I have a ton of stories. I finally got out when i ran away and stole 2 cars. But thats because the Idaho courts had to step in at that point.
I also lost my father while at that school and they werent going to let me go to the funeral, but i was able to convince my mom. but they gave me a tranquilizer which i didnt realize (because i was on so many meds) and insisted i have 2 female police officers with me at all times. they were nice enough to take of the handcuffs for the funeral.
i have been permenently traumatized by the things that i saw and went through at that place. not only by the brainwashing and meds they fed me but by the things these kids did while there. look forward to sharing my stories with you.
-melanie
August 7th, 2009 at 11:41 AM
I’m so thankful that you have done this documentary. When I left Amity, I swore I would do something to expose my seemingly unbelievable experience at Amity. Looking at the videos, all the similar experiences/feelings/stories are there, but this time along with wide-open advocacy that was selectively screened off back then. For some Amity might have been just what they needed, for me, I was misled into being there, my parents were misled into paying a fortune to keep me there. It was totally not right for me, took years to make sense of it and regain the trust, all around, that was lost.
Best,
Chandler
August 14th, 2009 at 11:38 AM
I’m trying to find anyone who remembers me from Ascent who was there in 1997 or 1998. I met a kid named Shea who probably saved me from going through many worse experiences and told me how the system worked. I went to Ascent once, was sent home, sent back, then tried to manipulate the system, which led me to be sent to RMA where I ran away after a week right before propheet and never came back. I was not going to let them take my soul too. I have tons of stories and would love to share and get in touch with other kids who were around those years. Email me at hood112297 [at] hotmail.com
August 20th, 2009 at 10:49 PM
You know i just watched you’re segment on Caroline and I think you should take a look at Russ Decker. Another RMA Grad who worked At CEDU while I was there. He had a lot of disturbing things in his past and was very much the sadistic manipulator
August 25th, 2009 at 11:05 AM
Thank you.
I have always wanted to tell people but could never articulate it.
If there is anything I can do to help let me know… anything at all.
Thank you for telling how it was.
August 27th, 2009 at 9:57 PM
I went to Cedu from 1981 until 1984. It has burnt into my psyche forvever. Still to this day I think about it and the good ,bad and ugly it has caused. As I go through life when I try to explain Cedu to people they look at me like I am crazy NO ONE understands Cedu excpet the people that went through it
August 28th, 2009 at 9:04 AM
My mom and Dad worked at CEDU for a number of years Leslie and Tommy, they really did care for the kids that they got to know. I always thought everyone there was a little off thier rocker. I think I met the girl with the glasses in your doc.
I was a little kid when my mom started thier she was one of the many kitchen supervisors. I met Rudy I think, he was from NY , tated sleaves right ?
Not all people who worked thier were bad, and most the people that worked there made min. wage so it was not about money cause I know my mom and dad got really nothing.
When I was 18 some girl stayed at our house I think she got into trouble, I don’t remember her name, I would love to know how she is. She ran from our house jumped out the bathroom window. lol I thought if she didn’t want to be there why make her.
August 30th, 2009 at 8:16 AM
Hi Katie,
Just wondering if your parents also ran Raps and Propheets while they were there or if they only did kitchen staff work? And if they did run Raps and Propheets, did they have much experience with therapy and counseling before arriving at CEDU?
When I went to RMA we had Carmen and Dan Earle there. They had a daughter named Nina who didn’t attend the program but instead lived on campus and went to a normal school in Bonners Ferry. I always thought it was evident that our education was poor because the staff sent their kids elsewhere to learn.
We had staff who worked in the kitchen who never did anything else. And we had a head chef who ended up in Raps and Propheets as a counselor. It just seemed strange to have someone whose job it is to cook food telling us how to deal with our emotions and feelings and life issues.
Most agree that there were good and bad staff. I think the ones who came to work at the school from Bonners Ferry were all generally kind and friendly. It tended to be the transplants from CEDU or who were hired from other states who were often the abusive ones. Especially anyone who had once been a student and was then made a staff member.
I couldn’t even imagine having to grow up in such a place. I think your comment about people being off their rocker suggests it wasn’t always easy for you to live in such a crazy environment.
August 30th, 2009 at 3:41 PM
ohhhh I never said i lived there. My mom worked in the kitchen for years then ended up doing night watch , my dad was the maintence sup.
They never did therapy for anyone. If you ever meet my mom and dad you would never forget them they would give you the shirt off their back to help you. I am just saying not all the people who worked there were assholes, just some .
August 31st, 2009 at 12:47 AM
Katie, my impression of the kitchen staff at CEDU was that they were not “bad” people. There was one man who had eyes that made many of the female students uncomfortable, but for the most part the kitchen staff kept to themselves and just did their jobs. I must say it was disappointing that no adult on the auxiliary staff took it upon themselves to report what they saw/heard to any authority. The abuse would have been apparent to anyone who was paying attention, and yet we remained isolated on the mountain with no help. The Good Samaritan of my fantasies never showed. As it turns out, people aren’t nearly as responsible, accountable or honorable as they’d like to believe they are. Now, in adulthood, I realize that this is the way of most of the world: don’t disturb the water, don’t bite the hand that feeds you and take care of your own tribe first.
Funny, I used to charge into battles in the name of compassion for complete strangers and I thought everyone else was the same as I. I was kind to a fault. Consequently, I’ve had to train that habit out of myself after discovering that most individuals only care for themselves and perhaps close friends/family. I learned over time that no one likes a martyr except the person who is receiving the benefit of the sacrifice. Once I ran the numbers on that equation I realized it pays heavily in my favor to be self-serving. So the kitchen staff wasn’t bad. They were just people, and most people simply don’t have the time or energy to be heroes and save a bunch of kids. They’re too busy trying to survive their own lives, get by and save themselves.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:25 PM
Angel , Well said. I can’t speak for all the people there just my mom and dad.
August 31st, 2009 at 6:25 PM
Angel,
Just wondering if you ever thought that going to CEDU helped make it so you didn’t see the world as it really was, thereby allowing you to fit in easier because CEDU presented a false sense of safety and the possibility you could actually go out in the world and just hug and smush and have raps to solve the worlds problems and your own?
I know of so many students who left RMA and CEDU in a daze. Arriving back home to major cities where they had once felt safe and normal, but now felt like outsiders looking in, trying to analyze everyone elses feelings and problems. Seeing how fake everyone was and maybe feeling a temporary sense of superiority that you could analyze everyone so easily and find reasons not to like them or want them around you…or maybe to try and be the hero and save them.
I used to keep things to myself a lot and not really in a bad way. There was just a time and a place for certain things. But after I left RMA, and even to this day, I find I speak my mind, saying far more than is needed about myself, rattling off my life story in minutes to total strangers…
I think we lost a lot of the survival skills we might have learned had we been home, in our familiar environments around people we trusted, in normal school settings with teens our age (Back then) doing things teens our age did.
It was strange coming home, not knowing the latest music, not knowing the latest fashion, not knowing the latest lingo… This might be trivial and superficial stuff, but you learn these things naturally when you are part of society and we were not for 2 to 3 years part of society. Teen years are development years. You are learning important social skills, starting to develop your sense of self and personal identity. And I think we lost that. I think many of us spent years, possibly late in to our 20’s, finding ourselves and being able to just live in the real world as normal people as we had before we got sent away.
What you wrote might seem sad to some people, having to no longer fully be kind but also to have survival skills and the ability to protect your own. But those were important skills to have learned and I think some of that happens in your late teens. I know teens who ten years ago had all sorts of high ideals. Now in their mid-20’s they have settled down. Reality took over. But I got to watch it happen for them as a normal process. I think CEDU tended to grossly extend how long we felt we could cure the world, well beyond what people with “normal” lives would have experienced.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:32 PM
Bill, thank you for your response. For starters, I NEVER felt safe at CEDU. When I was supposed to take care of my feelings in a rap, I faked it. Smushing horrified me, so would give backrubs to other girls on the floor every evening in order to avoid cuddling with them. I knew I had to outsmart the staff in order to hold on to myself. It was a giant chess game, but instead of pieces representing the royal court, pieces of my soul were at stake. I knew that my psychological losses would be too severe if I didn’t stay hyper vigilant at all times. I became very good at method acting, massage therapy and manipulation as the result. I also developed a deep loathing for all authority figures and for my peers, whom I viewed as merely average, hence, easily brainwashed.
I personally never fit in at CEDU or “got” the program, aka I never broke. I’ve always been able to self-analyze, so CEDU never gave me any magic powers for understanding the world on a deeply emotional level. CEDU just left me twisted and untrusting of everyone in the world — especially those with a great deal of money and/or power.
I was very disoriented when I finally got myself pulled from the program. It took me years to piece my life back together. Due to my experience at CEDU, a part of my psyche became stuck in a terrifying adolescence. People in the medical profession call that PTSD. For about 12 years I chased the dragon of my youth, trying to collect on the experience of my formative years retroactively, always thinking that it was my right to own the memories of such precious rituals, sweet sixteen and prom etc., and that the world owed me a sense of nostalgia to savor where I had none. I oscillated between asceticism and hedonism, desperately trying to fill in that aching void and turn off that stupid meat grinder in the pit of my stomach that always told me something was missing. About two years ago I finally realized that I was simply a casualty of institutionalized teen abuse, and that I would never regain those important growing years that everyone else took for granted. It was time to give up. I had to just grieve the loss. We all do. This documentary is very near to my heart for that reason: because we’ve all been brought together around this experience, we can mourn, and perhaps we can also heal.
As for my high level of sensitivity, I have come to believe that it was a spiritual gift that has atrophied due to the serial difficulties I’ve faced in life. I grew up in a broken home, fell victim to computer predator at a young age, got sent to CEDU and ended up homeless by age sixteen. And I’m still. Alive. One must develop coping mechanisms in order to function in this harsh world. That’s why they call people like us, “survivors.”
August 31st, 2009 at 7:41 PM
Bill,
Your perspective on the CEDU experience is interesting.
Mine are from the standpoint of an observer and sympathizer of the CEDU experience.
CEDU or non-CEDU, I have come to realize that only a few (irrespective of caste, creed or religion) have the inclination, stamina and the courage to find (him/her)Self, while the remaining vast majority are willing to lead the socially-acceptable “normal” lives.
Those who are leaders that lead the fight for global change, or rebels who fight the socially-accepted norm, are usually the ones that have had the courage to “find” themselves, and operate from some sort of a belief in the “Ideal”.
Are you suggesting that the CEDU experience, depending on the context, may have been a favorable one for nurturing idealists that have the potential to bring about positive change?
September 1st, 2009 at 11:59 AM
I wasn’t intended to suggest that CEDU had a favorable context of actual nurturing. I was trying to convey that due to the enormous amount of pressure exerted on the minds of young, developing teens from all angles, this may have had the effect of leaving them with false hopes and dreams, but no direction.
By false, I mean they weren’t necessarily our own dreams, or our own hopes or our own intuitive ideals. What was normal behavior or realistic goals, were torn from us during our development years and replaced with CEDU nonsense. We were not allowed to act normal, or to think normal, or to set normal goals. But what we were expected to think and feel, had no substance behind them, which is why when he left we had this vague feeling of being in control, having some kind of goal in mind, knowing we were supposed to be acting a certain way…but there was no real foundation. Which is why so many of us felt kind of lost afterward. CEDU made us think we had actual tools, actual experiences we could take in to the real world use. This feeling we could hug and smoosh our way to creating a better world. And we couldn’t! That we could constantly analyze everyone around us and somehow fix everything that was wrong. And some of us, I think, lost a lot of years of our lives having to readjust to reality. That normal survival instincts were replaced with CEDU survival tools, which didn’t work.
Being able to analyze others is a useful took. Knowing when others are faking or whatever has some benefits. But you develop such instincts anyway. Some people stay naive longer than others. That’s just natural. But CEDU was unnatural. CEDU stopped the process of normal teen development and forced upon the teen their ideal of proper behavior. And it wasn’t proper. This is why we felt so self-conscious when we left. Why we were not immediately able to just step back in to society and fit in right away. Why we spent so many years on the outside, looking in, analyzing others rather than just jumping in and being a normal participant in society as we would have done, had we just had normal teen lives.
For me, it took years to feel safe again in society. A feeling that I belonged. That I was no longer on the outside. And having that feeling would have enabled me to live a normal life, or “save the world” had I been so inclined. So I guess for me, RMA wasn’t two horrible years of my life, it was more like fifteen.
September 1st, 2009 at 12:17 PM
One more thing.
Our parents were all told that each of us were one step away from dying in the streets with a needle in our arms. That all of us really needed to be saved from ourselves. And for some of us, that just wasn’t true. We would have survived, we have gone on to lead normal, fruitful lives. And this goes back to us all having to feel equally horrible about ourselves, but also factoring in our parents and their perceptions.
Our parents were preyed upon. Made to believe we were no longer normal and would never have survived without CEDU or RMA. And then we were made to feel that way too.
I will never forget the day of graduation having Tim Brace pull us all aside and say, “Now remember, you have made a lot of changes in yourself, but your parents don’t know that. You are going to have to go out there and prove to them that you have changed for the better because they haven’t had a chance to see that in you yet…”
So basically our parents were told we were all going to die, that we weren’t normal, and then were not updated at all during our stay on our progress. Maybe, had my parents known I had changed, they would not have told me a couple of hours later, when graduation was over, that I was not coming home and was not welcome home. Had they been told I was normal again, ready for the world, they would have been there for me 100% instead of standing on the outside, looking in at me, waiting to see the miracle at work that they had just paid for before committing themselves again, as they had been committed before I went to RMA.
I think for some of us, our parents lost out on a lot of years too.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:06 PM
Priya, on the contrary, the staff at CEDU always tried to “even the playing field” so to speak when a student exhibited extraordinary qualities. While other “average” students were expected to go way outside their emotional and physical comfort zones as a part of their therapy (singing, dancing, acting, expressing deep emotions, etc.), those with natural gifts were criticized for it. If someone was smart, it was attacked. One of the favorite punishments for people who displayed musical or artistic talent was bans from their preferred creative medium. Dancers were not allowed to stretch, exercise or practice because it allegedly could feed into actions associated with eating disorders and sex, or so the staff told us. Natural leaders were accused of arrogance and ripped apart in raps for their drive and initiative. Sports were limited to nonexistent because it supposedly distracted students from their emotional growth. And highly sensitive/intuitive people? They were told that they were mentally ill. Basically, anyone with outstanding qualities was told that they shouldn’t go on thinking they were special because it made other people feel bad about themselves. Ridiculous? Of course! That’s the Cedu way of life.
September 5th, 2009 at 6:17 AM
The parents. They were not prayed upon in my case, they really thought that by sending me to that place that they would erase my recollection of history as it was, when I got home they expected me to act t like a robot that came home from the repair shop. There can be any amount of excuses, but the parents are the ones who are to blame for this sick form of psychological abuse. My parents weren’t preyed upon, they wanted to discredit the truth, so they sent me to be tortured. Plain and simple.
September 5th, 2009 at 2:49 PM
JJ,
I agree a lot of parents made a horrible choice in sending their kids away to be “cured”. I guess from my own experience, my parents were at least trying to use professionals. I went to one shrink after another from age 13 to 16. But after a fight with my father, they snapped! They figured I was dangerous, when I wasn’t because they made the excuse that it was all my fault even though my father started the fight and was the only one aggressive. So in trying to find an alternative to my living at home, they allowed unscrupulous people recommend and even more unscrupulous cult for me to attend.
And as Angel was saying above, some of us weren’t quite as screwed up and had plenty of natural talents. Talents that perhaps our own parents failed to recognize and nurture. I got blown away endlessly for being an intellectual. A three hour rap for using the word circumnavigate in a sentence. Three straight hours of being yelled at with all 24 people taking their turns.
Anyway, I agree our parents were not blameless for what happened. But I do think in many cases they were preyed upon by being made to believe we were all about to die if we weren’t sent there. And I think because CEDU/RMA spent a lot of time playing the students off against their parents and creating a lack of trust, our parents were not ready to trust us completely again for many years. As a result, we lost good years with our parents and they lost them too.
Quick side question: Angel said nearly non-existent sports. When I was there, we formed a soccer team which ended up playing in the 1985 and 1986 soccer seasons against all the area teams including Spokane. Did that all go away? This was at RMA, so I don’t know what CEDU did for sports. But we had an actual team that got to leave campus now and then and play. It was probably the only thing I truly enjoyed while there.
September 6th, 2009 at 1:36 PM
There weren’t any organized sports when I was at NWA in 98. Honestly sports and academics were a joke when I attended. They had stupid activities like frisbie golf that were supposed to keep us amused for 2 and half years. I would try to get work assignments as to avoid having to participate in childish games that were age inapropriate. They would usually give us a choice between some crap like Thai bo and softball with wiffle bats or something equally as insulting. The only free time I remember was when I used to sneak off campus for hikes when everyone slept in on Sundays, with the only other person who wasn’t a rat sychophant. I remember there was a lot of talk about forming teams between RMA,BCA,and NWA but the staff was afraid that too much competition might cause our ego’s to inflate too much.
September 6th, 2009 at 2:29 PM
I too managed to find a couple of friends who would not sell out in raps or rat on me. I think that helped to keep me sane. It wasn’t always the case. The first bunch of months even those two would sell out on me in raps, allowing others to force them to indict me, in turn getting us all in trouble. But that eventually changed, and life was a whole lot better having at least a couple of people I could really trust. One of them became my girlfriend for several years after RMA, the other is my best friend to this day. Twenty five years of solid friendship. So when we talk about “mixed feelings”, I often wonder if I would have traded not knowing my best friend for 25 years in exchange for never having gone to RMA in the first place?
I am poorly informed about what happened to RMA later on. I left in 1986, but I understand it turned in to two or three campuses and that BCA or NWA might have been on the same property. That RMA turned in to three levels of school or something, with the old RMA being the “best” in terms of “normal” living, with the other two progressively worse and more abusive, with kids living in the freezing cold in tents or something. Basically they were trying to rent out every square inch of campus acreage to make a buck.
Yes, sports were important for me. We had to beg and plead to let us form a team, and they agreed, but only for older students. And it was just a team, we had nobody to play against. Because of the older student restriction, we only had 6 players who were actual soccer players, and we ended up recruiting five others who had a vague idea what soccer was. They had played football. Big ole Southern Boys.
We went in to Bonners Ferry one day to use the field at the local park to practice. At the end of practice some local kids showed up telling us it was their field and we had to leave. We thought they were possibly wanting to fight, but it turned out it was the Bonners Ferry 16-18 year old soccer team. Their coach met Ray Krieder (our coach) and five minutes later we had accepted their challenge to a scrimmage. We won 11-0. They were impressed, asked us how long we’d been playing together as a team, Ray looked at his watch and said “About four hours.” They invited us to joint the league which I think was called the Pacific Northwest League or something. So we did. None of us could believe RMA would let us play, but somehow they did. And we were the most feared team in the league. Mainly because our fullbacks were between 6′2 and 6′6 weighing on average 250 pounds, had never played soccer before, so explaining what a “slide tackle” is took a few games. They had played football. They understood the “tackle” part. I still feel sorry for Sandpoint’s team. Three of their players were on injured lists for a good long time. It was funny in a sad kind of way.
Without the sports, without two people I could trust, I would have left. I would have run out of sanity pretty quick.
September 6th, 2009 at 4:26 PM
There were almost no sports when I was at CEDU in 1994. One of my peers did manage to form a basketball team for a little while but it was disbanded when the counselors decided it was interfering with the emotional aspect of the program. Also, the girls were treated very differently than the boys in regards to sports while I was there. I arrived at CEDU in amazing physical condition and a little on the thin side, sure, but I was not dieing of starvation. It was a classic case of teen body dysmorphia, certainly nothing to justify the measures they took to pack 25 pounds of fat on my tiny frame. Even the damn school nurse got a bit worries when my blood work came back with cholesterol levels in the 230’s due to my special eating agreements: fu very much, Pam Abel.
I had to do all four races involving the butterfly for the swimming portion of the CEDU Olympics because I was the only one who knew the stroke on my team. That was not easy at such high altitudes, having only been on the mountain for a week, but I still placed in three of the four competitions, winning many points for my team. I felt pretty good about it, honestly. I was later ripped apart for “thinking I was hot shit” and “trying to seduce the boys” with my physical prowess. See, I stretched before I swam and didn’t know that being able to do the splits was a violation of the no-sex agreement. I was more or less banned from exercise from then onward. When I got into Challenge I managed to convince the staff to let me choreograph an ethnic dance with another girl in the peer group below me. We were later accused of Satan worship in a rap (yes, really) and both put on tables as punishment. I guess it was our fault: we did hang out too much and also wrote a song on the guitar with line about a burning fire in the lyrics.
September 8th, 2009 at 6:32 AM
Hi
I went to this horrid place and was there with you………I am so happy to know you are exposing with others this dreadful place that has haunted me since I was a fifteen yr old girl who had done nothing like some of the kids there, like many others following this time I got into drugs and terrible things after the fact. I think the abuse we all endured will forever be a part of us but at least we know the difference now and have realized what a horrible place these schools are. At first I rebelled but soon realized that to make it through you had to relent and just get through it almost like a prison sentence. That is how I describe what I went through from fifteen to seventeen………what a waste……….I’d love to hear from anyone about this, and hope that no parent would ever do this to their beloved child.
September 8th, 2009 at 6:22 PM
I remember at Halloween we had to dress up in costumes, which is really not too age appropriate at 17, but that was typical there.
Anyway, we knew a bunch of people were going to dress as barbarians or middle ages, so my buddy and me dressed up as monks. We just wrapped our navy blue bed sheets around us like robes and then another formed a kind of hood. We were accused of Satan worship as well. Blown away in raps by people who KNEW we were playing pious monks. You just couldn’t win!
I also did the Summer Olympics and had to swim because I had played water polo before going up there. That pond at RMA wasn’t exactly a healthy swimming environment, but oh well. I won the butterfly, free stroke, breast stroke and side stroke. All done one after another. Never been so tired. But what I remember most was the desire to win. It was not really set up to be team oriented. At least 70% of all the events had the same students, because not everyone was athletic. Considering all the psychobabble about being a family, the Olympics and Paul Bunyan Day were just very competitive. Completely opposite of what I thought they were trying to teach. Which goes to show, they really didn’t have much of a game plan beyond messing with our minds.
And that diet of all carbs certainly packed on the pounds. I watched a lot of students gain quite a bit of weight while I was there which certainly didn’t help with their self image. And any girl who was under 150 pounds was accused of being bulimic. Accused of throwing up every meal. Forced to have another girl watch them eat, watch them go to the bathroom to make sure they didn’t stick a finger in their mouth.
The abuse they heaped on the females while I was there was probably one of the hardest aspects for me about the schools. Virgin = Tease. Had sex = Slut. No positives. And Caroline Wolfe probably contributed the most to this systematic abuse. And if you tried to defend a girl, heaven help you. I would have given my left nut many times to have transformed in to a girl, walked across the room and beaten Caroline to within an inch of her life for the things she would say to girls. But alas, I was a guy and guys don’t hit girls, or at least not twice in my presence.
September 9th, 2009 at 4:57 PM
Ashley, were you at CEDU with Liam, or were we there together around ‘94-’95? I remember an Ashley in a peer group below mine on Pam’s team. Pam made that poor girl go to the in-house barber to have the pink streaks hacked out of her hair: it was too “imagy” you knnow. Heaven forbid anyone at CEDU have an identity.
September 11th, 2009 at 7:05 AM
Hi Angel,
I have read a lot of ur posts and no, i’m not that Ashley. I graduated in 90 so looks like i missed ya but feel free to contact me and talk anytime……..ofcourse the staff loved to take everyone’s identity and tell them they were bad or wrong……how horrible for young adults to endure……
September 18th, 2009 at 10:47 AM
being at that school in early 91 I felt like I had been raped over and over again – luckily I was smart enough to split. I still think about this place and have nightmares. I remember one rap we had a guy who was just outta control – we were in one of the front rooms of the main house facing out toward campus – the room we were in was a wall of windows – basically on the other side of the pit and fireplace. Well the guy went nuts – he was new and had no intention of staying there in hell – so he stood up in the middle of the rap and slammed his forearm through the window slicing his forearm and one of the main veins squirting blood everywhere. Well he was taken away in an ambulance while a handful of us got to get down our hands and knees and scrub his blood out of the floor and surrounding area. Jesus Christ – these memories will not ever die. Still… so painful.
September 19th, 2009 at 8:06 PM
Gina, it gets better, I promise. I don’t know that the scars of the experience will ever fade completely, but we can make our peace with it. Many of us are on that road right now, and having a safe forum to speak up about the trauma…well, that’s the first step.
September 24th, 2009 at 12:51 PM
Anyone seen this latest post on Fornits about the Aspen Group, which was taken to court by parents for not providing professional counseling, therapy and treatment for their child, as they advertised the would, admitting in court they did not, BECAUSE they don’t actually offer that. They admit they do not have the medically trained staff, and therefore do not claim to offer treatment or therapy of any kind. Yet reading their brochures you would never come away thinking that.
Here is the Fornits link.
http://fornits.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=28735
Welcome home Liam.
September 24th, 2009 at 12:55 PM
For those who didn’t know, Aspen Group includes a bunch of former CEDU/RMA spinoffs. Many of the staff who founded these schools came directly from CEDU and RMA. Thus one can argue that anything Aspen related is somewhat CEDU and RMA related. So if they are admitting they never were really offering actual therapy or treatment for mental illnesses or drug use, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that CEDU and RMA falsely claimed/advertised to be treating these as well.
That is the relevance to the above post to this site.
September 25th, 2009 at 7:55 AM
after finding this site and subsequently watching some of the documentary on youtube, seeing the ‘runaway part 1′ video and seeing the property again – I need to go back. I need to walk on that property, drive that long road that leads to the school, walk up to that main house, see the pit, look behind the house where the mountain just drops off, I need to see it – I need closure.
September 25th, 2009 at 4:13 PM
I went to CEDU after being at OnTrak, it’s sister wilderness program for a moth prior. I was there for 2 months shy of the completion of a 2 year program. I was kicked out, or asked to leave because I “didn’t have the mental capabilities to comply with the system.” I had been on restriction after restriction for the entirety of my stay for not becoming an android. They asked me to leave. I am so grateful to you for what you have done. And are continuing to do.
I left in 2004, and was sent to the program in Idaho, Milestones. I was there for a month, and then kicked out of there as well. I fought tooth and nail the conformity I didn’t believe was human for as long as I was in the captivity of the Brown Schools Corp. I dug out tree stumps with spoons all over the mountains, and I am truly grateful that the truth is finally being exposed. I was called a liar for too long. Let our voices out.
September 26th, 2009 at 8:57 AM
Hi Gina,
thanks for the note – it’s astounding to see how up-to-date this 20 year old CEDU story actually is… “Milestones,” huh? And a Brown School. Are any of these still in operation? How are you today? How are things going?
I just had a fantastic interview with Paul Morantz, an attorny, researcher and expert into the cults that became or influenced today’s ‘troubled teen programs.’ I’ll be posting some of that soon. Hope you find it as interesting as I did. The history is there to be discovered – have a read at Paul Morantz’s site:
http://paulmorantz.com/the_history_of_synanon_and_.html
I hope you’ll have a look. These programs didn’t emerge from a vacuum – they came from somewhere, and that history is worth knowing and considering, I think.
September 26th, 2009 at 9:00 AM
Wow, I just found this site – I was looking Cedu up to see if they were still in existence…you see I escaped from Cedu way back in 1977. In those days the kids were either court ordered (in the system) or from rich families (like mine) – and I can tell you that I was treated much differently than the system kids. When I refused to participate in what you refer to as raps, I would threaten leaving since by law, they could not stop me.
They backed off, I supposed because they would have lost the stream of revenue my being there produced. I took one of the boys who was a court ordered prisoner and we split one night. Some of those kids were severely traumatized to begin with and the staff at Cedu seemed to enjoy inflicting more trauma on these lost souls. In my case, it was my parents who needed the therapy, not me…yet I was sent to this bizarre place? Parents who send their kids to these types of places should be arrested for child endangerment.
I remember way back then they had little groups – first you start in Genesis and then progressed to the next level if they deemed you ready. I wanted to save all of those kids, but I only ended up being able to save one (Dean) in the process of saving myself.
My heart goes out to every child that had to endure their culty, crazy therapy methods….they should be sued.
September 27th, 2009 at 2:03 AM
Julie,
You say the first “family” as we came to know them as, was named Genesis? In my days at RMA the first was called Voyagers. But I was wondering if back then, in 1977, any of the other families had a biblical title? Just curious.
Glad you got out early.
September 27th, 2009 at 9:00 AM
Nice observation, Bill. It would be interesting to explore that, considering CEDU’s cultist roots in Charles E Dedrick’s “Church of Synanon” that Liam referred to in the above-posted link. Just imagine, as a teenager, being court ordered to go into a cult where the sentence is paid for with tax dollars. They had something similar when I was there in 1994, called NPS (non public school) funding. That program still exists today, meaning tax money is still being put into CEDU clones. Here is the link, which is from a website sponsored largely by CEDU clone programs. It gives instructions on how parents can manipulate the system to pay for their teenager’s “therapy” by getting crooked psychiatrists to sign off on disability paperwork because the young person is engaging in behavior like experimentation with sexuality, drinking/drug use, playing hooky from school, etc.
http://www.nationalyouth.com/nps.html
Gina, I too feel the need to revisit the campus. According to some other survivors, the current owners are very kind and have welcomed a number of former prisoners onto the property for the same reasons. Keep your chins up, friends. It gets better.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:42 AM
Kind of wondering who owns the RMA campus now? I had been up in that area about ten years ago, wanted to drop in, but I didn’t. Now I just look at it on googleearth.
As for religion in these programs, when I was there nobody was allowed to pursue their religious beliefs or encouraged to do so. However I just exchanged emails with a former staff member of a school he didn’t identify, though he says his brother went to RMA for 19 months before becoming a staff member himself. The topic was mainly about a place called CALO which I had never heard of. He said he thinks CALO is run by Mormons, so I assume it is in Utah which has lax laws for programs, but I also wondered if teens were encouraged to become Mormons or were indoctrinated in Mormon religious tenets? I could not even imagine adding a religious component to one of these so-called “therapy” programs. And to have it sort of forced upon you in a prison camp environment would be really unsettling.
I do find it interesting that Charles E. Dedritch went from running a simple treatment program to forming his own church. Did he view himself as the prophet to his new followers? What a power trip! No wonder Mel Wasserman acted the same way and was worshiped by staff. I am sure he encouraged such behavior and groveling.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:28 AM
Hi Bill,
Have a good look at the Synanon pages from Paul Morantz linked above – Synanon was never a “simple treatment program.” It was always something very very different…
For ex-students of CEDU, it’s worth reading about. Lots to tie it all together.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:28 PM
A good read Liam. You can clearly see the original inspiration for the raps and propheets in the history of Synanon. But just as clearly, you can really see the changes Deidritch went through. As I read, it seemed like originally he had good intentions. But as he became a guru, and went from a drunken bum to rehab God, he began to change. The power certainly went to his head.
All that reading in the library, he probably ran in to works on brainwashing. Because he wouldn’t have known– not deeply anyway– how that stuff really worked without a little study, and subsequent testing. Though sleep deprivation and isolation are the very basics of any torture and interrogation program. So he might not have researched too deeply.
But for the first several paragraphs, the similarities with CEDU were quite evident. That propheets used exhaustion and non-stop psychological barrages to induce a state of euphoria is known to us survivors. That raps and our telling our stories continuously generated a great deal of data about us for use against us throughout the program. And I like how Morantz specifically described that “The Game”, which became our raps, didn’t depend upon accusations being valid and true. Anything could be said to someone to rattle them. And for us, that was very true.
And in the end, the only way to keep someone cured was to keep them in Synanon. Like CEDU and RMA and all these other programs, whatever “cure” they profess to offer is so limited in scope and so temporary. Provided by hacks proclaiming themselves to be actual therapists and counselors, who probably genuinely believe that having personally used drugs or committed felonies, or lived truly poor lives themselves, they are somehow blessed with innate skills to successfully treat anyone’s problems in lieu of and without assistance from actual professionals.
As Aspen Group recently admitted in a court case, they now admit they don’t actually provide treatment or counseling, which would require licenses and professionals. And this demonstrates that hacks and charlatans who enjoy the power trip of having people under their control, forced to accept their bizarre philosophies and rantings as a form of gospel and cure is what these places are all about. Nothing more.
Glad Paul Morantz is still alive to be interviewed. His knowledge of the this unlicensed industry is invaluable and a powerful resource.
September 28th, 2009 at 7:21 PM
I’d recommend two books, a bit hard to find –
First, “Escape from Utopia” by David Gerstel, which paints a clearer picture of the inside of Synanon than anything I’ve read thus far,
Second, “The Tunnel Back,” by L.Yablonsky, which is, in many ways, a terrible book, in that it doesn’t understand what it’s cataloging – but, an immensely valuable book, because it catalogs it in the specific language used in the program. You get the Synanon “rap” and “house around the pit/lugs” and other major planks of the Synanon psychology in large, verbatim portions.
As to good intentions – well, I doubt it – or, I doubt that Dederich’s intentions were ever really even clear to him. He was, after all, trying to recreate his experience with LSD by stripping people of all normal boundaries, sleep, norms of societal treatment, etc.
What were his actual intentions? I doubt he knew. He was certainly driven forward with a fire and a mission though (and history is full of people with missions).
The books are interesting – great research, both historical and personal – for people who’ve experienced a ’son-of-synanon’ program. Try the biggest local library you can find, and photocopy the parts you want to re-read.
September 29th, 2009 at 1:04 PM
I recall reading that Dederich was kicked out of AA for his radical ideas and started Synanon (“Sinners” anonoymous) as the result of his being banned from his home group. Perhaps he, like so many people who go into the field of (pseudo)psychology, really needed help for his mental illnesses. It’s interesting to look at the traditions of AA and find places where Dederich would have had a problem with the system:
“An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, power and prestige divert us from our primary purpose (to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers).”
Money, power and prestige…these were the major driving forces behind Dederich’s tyrany, and the key motivating factors that kept CEDU going. The staff members lived for the stuff. Strange how some of these programs claim to be 12 step based when they violate all the traditions of the original AA program of recovery.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:03 PM
Over on Fornits someone asked the question many of us have asked ourselves; Did we need to be paid at RMA/CEDU for the labor we performed?
I decided to check the Department of Labor website under Child Labor Laws and found that the answer is YES!
A little background of my quest to find this answer…
First, I found that there were laws for schools and what are basically Work-Experience Programs. These are programs that have to be filed with the state by the school to be acceptable. There are also only certain areas of work students are allowed to do or train in. Additionally there are limits on hours worked on school days (3) and school weeks (18).
Work that is considered illegal generally related to work that is considered dangerous or hazardous, especially to a minor. One of the ones most here will cheer about is that anything related to logging or saw-milling was illegal for us to be performing before the age of 17. Possibly 18. Another group relates to kitchen work. Wood-fired stoves are a no-no. So are slicers and most food prep machines. Also, for those who unloaded the delivery truck, that too was illegal.
Under the list of FAQ’s requiring child labor, one question specifically asks; “Must young workers be paid the minimum wage?”
The answer was that in certain circumstances, no, the worker can be paid as low as 75% of the prevailing minimum wage, but in all circumstances the minor must be paid for work performed, including in school programs.
Now for the cool part. Under one of the sections is specifically states that the minor must sign an agreement, along with the parents and staff at the school. I don’t know about you, but I have no memory of signing anything!
Almost all of the work we performed had to be paid for and most of what we were asked to perform is considered illegal by the Department of Labor.
So you can now grin from ear to ear knowing you were indeed used for slave labor.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:38 PM
Bill,
I think that they somehow got around the “slave labor” issue, because of whatever the money we got each week. I don’t remember how much or why we got it, but I always remember buying candy before the movie night on the weekend. We were never allowed to actually have (hold) the money because of a run-risk probably either for us or if someone in our dorms knew we had money, etc. You know, so that they could make it as hard as possible for us to run. But we had money. I remember having this conversation while I was there.
Also, I do remember signing some sort of an agreement when we first got there. It was two to three pages long. I have no idea what it said or what I was signing but they did make you sign it. I remember sitting on a bench in the dining hall reading through it with a staff. It probably had something to do with giving up your rights or working unpaid, etc.
I was there in 2000 by the way, so this is how it went down then.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:05 PM
Bronwyn,
Sounds like things changed. When I was there in 84 to 86 there was no signed agreement, we did get the weekly allowance on Sunday’s, kids could choose between allowance which started at a dollar a week, or having cigarettes.
Later you got a stipend. All of this was paid for and billed to the parents so technically it would not qualify as being paid for work. The stipends actually got up pretty high for some older students. I know one kid who was getting about a hundred or more a week. I got up to twelve dollars. So as the time passed, some kids could do without the cigarettes and get the stipend and have enough money for both candy and cigarettes and a lot of other stuff.
We got to keep the money. I remember having about ninety dollars in my foot locker at one point. But one thing I remember when I graduated was my parents being surprised at my lack of funds. They had calculated that had I spent only half of what I was supposed to have gotten I should still have had about fifteen hundred dollars. I thought they were nuts. I got twelve a week only inthe last couple of months I was there. I would say for at least a year I was in the five to eight dollar range. So I know they told the parents one thing and gave us something different.
But had we been paid even 75% of minimum wage, which was about $2 an hour back then, it would not have been $1 a week, but rather closer to $40. Which I never saw.
Another issue is rights. A minor cannot sign away their rights. A parent cannot sign away the rights of a child either as far as I know. Also a minor cannot engage in a binding contractual obligation. This isn’t to say they couldn’t force you to do this, but that is the point here. Had they forced you, it was then slave labor. No two ways about that. But none of it would have been legal, or legally binding.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:45 PM
I want to leave this comment for DVC and the rest of the former Cedu survivors. I too had quite an experience at CHS, terrible memories but good ones as well. The whole “ONGC” was something we created out of boredom but soon morphed into an animal of its own. The “One Nut Gangsta Crips” was supposed to be a parody of the documentary “Banging in Little Rock”. Wow we were young and stupid back then.
But our little underground group was what kept me sane for through the years I was there. From breaking into the walk-in, smoking cigerettes and pot, how can I not look back at those times and smile. We were dedicated in resisting their philosophy as well as the destruction of that place. The news from 2004 gives a little sense of redemption. Anyways DVC, when you left CHS you went out like a true friend. Never ratted us out and caused a little extra havoc on the way out.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:36 AM
this is amazing. i graduated RMA in ‘86. as weird as it was, i think it saved me from a life in the prison system. i did, however become a heroin addict 3 years after i left. the missing link was that they had no AA for kids who obviously needed help with addiction. i must get this dvd . how?
November 11th, 2009 at 3:19 AM
PLEASE HELP. DOES ANYONE HAVE A COPY OF ANY OF THE PROPHEET SCRIPTS AS SEEN IN THE VIDEO. I HAVE VERY LITTLE MEMORY OF MY RMA YEARS (84-86), AND IT WOULD REALLY HELP ME PUT THE PIECES BACK TOGETHER. THANKS!
November 12th, 2009 at 6:41 PM
Thank you Liam. This is a great tool. My parents never believed that I sent letters, or the stories I told. Validated….I am grateful to you.
November 14th, 2009 at 12:48 AM
Hey Luke, I remember you!
I am pretty sure actual propheet and workshop scripts would have to come from former staff as it would be rare for a student to have had them. I would think lawsuits might get access to them. I would certainly demand them in a lawsuit as evidence.
Sorry to hear about the heroin problem. I hope you are doing well today.
November 22nd, 2009 at 4:24 PM
Hi Liam.
I attended BCA, and was in peer group six back when the school was still somewhat new. I have not spoken with anyone in my peer group since leaving CEDU. I found many old friends through networking sites such as facebook, and it has been good to know that there where other survivors as well who were making the best out of life.
Seeing these clips has brought back memories that I have blacked out of my mind completely. I had too. CEDU ruined my life even after I left. I have spent many years recovering trying to find out who I really am. I would love to help out in anyway. I hope you can contact me back. I have a lot of documentation on my entire three and half year stay at BCA. Even stuff that dates back to before my being there. I would love to be able to help in anyway so that this doesn’t happen to more children. The experience may have been different for a lot of people. But No child should ever be put into the situations that we were thrown into.
And if anyone knows how to contact Natalie St. Clair. I would love to know. She was my only and best friend I truly had at CEDU. And since our graduation, I never saw her again.
November 27th, 2009 at 1:50 PM
Liam, are you aware of this:
DEATH ROW SERIAL MOLESTER CONNECTED TO CEDU
http://ficanetwork.net/death-row-serial-molester-connected-to-cedu/
November 27th, 2009 at 2:02 PM
This is truly disgusting. What makes it worse is that when kids used to split staff would tell us all at house around the pit that they were likely to get kidnapped off the street. But it looks like the real danger of that occurring was bc of the staff and former staff themselves! I hope parents are realizing what a dangerous situation they are choosing for their children.
November 27th, 2009 at 5:04 PM
Wow, not just a child molester but a serial killer as well. What sick and deranged people. The fact the psychologist later got in on it makes it doubly sick.
I could see where they would feel comfortable at CEDU. And any kid who might complain would be shut down quickly. The student punished and not the abusing staff member. What a perfect recipe for a molester.
So terribly sad that any child has been treated this way, whether at CEDU or anywhere.
And having access to an endless stream of already sexually abused kids, made to feel guilty about those abuses… what molester wouldn’t have a field day in such a setting?
December 17th, 2009 at 4:03 PM
lyrics from my song ‘brainwashed’
‘i want to live, i want to grow,
i want to know what minefields they have left inside my mind
that i still cannot find
i want to know myself
from before what they did to me
so that i can be free’
xxooo
December 25th, 2009 at 9:24 PM
Liam,
I have enjoyed watching the clips of your documentary. I stumbled across them last night and I cannot stop watching them. I did not realize how much I repressed from that period but I have always carried a bit of personal shame for having been there. Please keep up the good work. I want to suggest two areas that, in my opinion, would add to your documentary.
The first is cost of the program. Mel was minting money at Cedu and RMA. There was this huge façade of altruism that covered a sinister profit driven enterprise along the lines of Scientology. It might be tough to unearth but is there any way to find out what the profit margins were at the schools? I am sure they were obscene and you could contrast that with the financial hardships of many of the families. Where did $5,000 a month really go? I also remember hearing about these insane bills for trips to the doctor, clothing, and day trips. What was the mark up there? If you answer these questions it would be more damning than any student testimonial about the program.
The second issue to focus on is that the school utterly failed to prepare students for a successful transition. At RMA, there was a real anti-intellectual bent to the place. Granted there were a few staff that understood academics but the majority of the “program” staff did not. Spending extra time studying would get you a rap indictment for “hiding out” in academics. I actually got indicted in a rap when I passed over a ski trip to take the ACT for a second time. I feel that the way RMA sent people out the door with a diploma was criminal. Most students were not prepared in any meaningful way to continue their academic study. RMA did not care as soon as they left campus. They knew they had a low rate of success and it did not bother them.
RMA 89-91
December 26th, 2009 at 4:52 AM
I remember seeing some of the bills my father got. He had suggested one day we got to Yosemite and asked where my tent was? I said I didn’t own a tent and he said he paid $3,000 for one. I said RMA only owned about 12 of them. I later confirmed that other parents were also charged for a four-man tent. You figure 120 students, plus an additional 20 or so who arrived but left early, multiplied by $3,000 and you get a lot of extra funds.
There were also charges for laundry taken to town to be dry-cleaned and pressed. I know of no student who had this service performed, yet it was a weekly and even bi-weekly charge to our parents at $60 per trip, per student!!! Doctor visits were billed the same way, per student, suggesting that six or more students were routinely going to Bonners Ferry for checkups and physicals or whatever. Never happened, but you figure if they could charge for 120 parents for 4 town runs per month, at $60 a pop, that’s almost $30,000.
As for classes, I was sent to RMA for school-related performance and yet my parents never knew what classes I actually took. They assumed I was in Math, Science, English and History, Physical Education and a couple of electives. Yet I told them what a normal day was like. Hours of chopping wood, raps, smushing, cleaning. I sent them gifts of stuff I had weaved in my Basket Weaving course. And my Advanced Basket Weaving Course. And they never bothered to stop and ask…”You are taking Basket Weaving? What are your other courses?” My answer would have been, “History of Jazz, photography in nature, animal husbandry…”
Back then most states required you to have 220 units to graduate. I graduated RMA with 930 units. Because I cleaned dorms, made my bed, brushed my teeth, took showers, chopped wood. Life credits. A legal of way of saying, “We didn’t teach you anything.”
When I saw my transcripts a few years after graduation, they said math, science, English, history, physical education, home economics, wood shop and study class.
The whole industry is based on false promises, illusions, fraud and deception.
Also, in reference to the monthly tuition, all bills had a Misc section. Miscellaneous. A catch-all fee that could have anything bundled in to it. I imagine the wealthier the parents, the more they could get away with padding this since it could refer to anything and parents were made to understand that the tuition was just the base cost. I am sure they were billed for clothing we never got, trips we never took, sundries we never got. I also wonder how they billed for cigarettes? Isn’t it illegal and contributing to the delinquency of a minor to provide them with tobacco products? Couldn’t parents be charged for the same thing as they are knowingly paying for it? I know kids who smoked would have killed themselves and everyone around them if they were denied cigarettes, I am just asking if billing and providing them would be illegal and a paper trail?
December 27th, 2009 at 12:58 AM
I was the first new student at RMA in 1982. At the time I was 16. I was from New Orleans. After being at CEDU in Running Springs for two weeks. I drove up to Bonners Ferry, Idaho in a caravan to start the new school. I was there for two years. I “graduated” from there in 1984.
My parents paid quite a bit of money to an educational counselor in Atlanta. Her name was Pricilla Blake. She referred me to CEDU. I remember the last thing she said to me at her office at One Peach Tree Plaza in response to me asking her to send me to a coed boarding school instead of a military school. She said, “Honey, I wouldn’t send you anywhere but to a coed boarding school.” (Apparently, I found out later, she was getting kick backs to send kids to CEDU.) I had only smoked pot six times prior to attending CEDU.
Everyone of my friends who went through this “experience” with me have been permanently damaged. Many met untimely deaths. Everyone has had trouble coping with regular society.
No one should be allowed to destroy children’s minds and sense of well being the way these creeps did. The adults that perpetrated this therapy and bogus education on children should be held responsible. They are criminals of the worst sort.
Interestingly Dan Earle, former original director of RMA, has reinvented himself as an artist. This is as if Adolf Hitler was forgiven for his war atrocities and quietly retiring from the Nazi Party and posted a website selling his pottery.
These people need to be held accountable.
December 27th, 2009 at 9:14 AM
I probably knew you Chris. I was there for the graduation of the Original Seven. Now I just have to rack my brain to remember your last name.
Funny about Hitler. He did the art before the atrocities. Dan Earle did it after.
A lot of people felt RMA was better and more lax than CEDU was. And that RMA didn’t get bad until later years. But I think it is fairly evenly split from people I have heard from during out time period. The 80’s.
Basically it was all the same. RMA, CEDU, Mount Bachelor, Hilltop. And all the later spin off programs. All based on Mel Wasserman’s “vision”. So now matter the time period, it was all pretty much the same garbage concepts. Maybe it got refined somewhat over the years as new directors took charge, making up their own new junk, but it was all the same as far as I understand.
I asked my Mom at Christmas dinner how she was referred to the school, who referred her, and what effort she or my father placed in determining what the school was all about? I was seeing a shrink at the time, he referred her to book listing programs. She called a number and spoke, as far as she can recall, to Lon Woodbury, who was of course working out of an office on the RMA campus in 1984 when I got sent up there. All kick backs, all the way.
I don’t think any level of the program was honest. From the referrals, to your arrival and introduction, through the program and then graduation. Nothing was real. It was all just made up nonsense. Some argue nobody was really out to harm us, that it was all done with best intentions, and maybe that is true, but they sure seemed to be bilking parents for money with fraudulent billing, deliberately misleading updates on progress, and so on. I think a lot of thought, however misguided, went in to designing the programs to be the way they were, so it is hard to say with certainty that nobody had ill intentions. That nobody could have known this stuff was coercive, abusive and damaging or humiliating.
I agree about the deaths and coping part. I think it took a couple of years after graduation for things to really hit me and start damaging my life. We left that place with high ideals, or at least thinking we had ideals, and tools to work with. But I think most of us eventually realized we didn’t quite fit in to society any longer, that we had become abnormal thanks to the program. I know most of those who used drugs before going, used them again after. Those who abused alcohol did so again. For me, I also had a poor relationship with my parents and family and that continued for another twenty years. This documentary has helped with the healing as my mother and one sibling have now had a chance to get a better understanding of why I wasn’t “fixed” when I graduated.
The mind does heal itself. I think with time, and reflection, most of us have been able to become normal enough later in life. But I think many of us also wish we hadn’t lost so many years to the program. Both childhood and early adult years. Those places ended up costing a lot more than just money.
I notice again, like everyone else, you mention the friends you made there. And seem to have stayed in contact with some even to this day. You didn’t say that specifically, but that has been one recurring theme all these years. Everyone seems to have maintained long term relationships they made while there. I lost contact with most of my childhood friends, but the ones I was close to at RMA are still close today. Whether that is because we shared a similar experience to veterans of wars who shared fox holes together or not, this does seem to be one happy aspect of the programs. We got through it all with friends.
Glad you survived.
December 27th, 2009 at 8:58 PM
I was one of “the original seven”along with Chris , and although I agree with his general thesis , I think it would be fair to say that mel wasserman has the Hitler spot locked down and that dan earle is possibly Goring , with art substituting for morphine. But perhaps he was rudolf hess,and founding rma was his flight over the channel. After six months at cedu , being transfered to rma felt like a lux summer camp, albiet one that went on all year.
I think that kids whose parents bought “the program” hook line and sinker were at a disadvantage . Mine were somewhat skeptical and annoyed at the expence and so I never did a full time or work detail.Bill makes a good point that the friendships made there were intense and I wouldnt trade them for anything , not even a solid academic foundation.
December 28th, 2009 at 12:36 AM
Bill I really appreciated your comments and agree with you about the long term friendships made at RMA. The experience was so intensely unique that anyone who went through it has a lifetime experience that so excluded them from people in regular society that the only people you could really relate to after having gone through it was other people who had gone through the same thing. The come down from RMA’s total control was hard to face.
December 28th, 2009 at 3:39 AM
When I went to RMA in 1982 I was the first new student. There were only 6 of us that drove up from Running Springs. Everyone besides me were older students. I had only been at CEDU for two weeks.
[That said, I agree with Rob's depiction of Mel Wasserman as Adolf Hitler, but place Dan Earle seconding in the role of Josef Goebbels, German minister of propaganda.]
When I first arrived at RMA, Mel Wasserman, founder of CEDU and RMA, and his wife Briggeta were already there waiting for us. The school had no electricity or running water, except for Mel’s apartment which was extremely well appointed. He had a satellite dish and a wine cellar and an expensive library of first editions.
We, the students, had nothing. We built the school from the ground up. We used lanterns for light. The place had been a former survivalist school before Mel bought the property. It had no refrigeration. No plumbing. Rats scurried all night over the rafters two feet above our heads. Every once and while one of them would fall from the rafters and run across our blankets. The roof leaked profusely. For this our parents paid $2,500 a month back in 1982.
Dan Earle was the de facto leader. Him and his wife Carmen lived down the road from the main buildings at RMA at what later became the farm, in a fully electrified residence with indoor plumbing and accompanying satellite dish for entertainment.
But it was Mel Wasserman, there to make sure his newest investment got off on the right foot, who truly controlled the place.
Mel was lauded as being a saint along the lines of Gandhi by Dan Earle. On our week long ride to Northern Idaho Dan constantly related tales of the amazing perceptions of Mel in regards to helping troubled kids. Dan was a master orator and the picture he painted around campfires of Mel was one of a truly compassionate man who had given up everything to help change the world (and of course in the process make millions of dollars off the troubled children of the rich).
It was truly astonishing when I finally met Mel. He was nothing like the picture painted by his lackey Dan Earle.
Mel was a tall, obese man. He had balding hair, a mustache, wore glasses and was one of the most abusive men I have ever met.
My job upon arriving at RMA was trash detail. There was a huge hole dug in the earth behind the main lodge were Mel lived. My job was to separate the glass and the plastic and burn the rest of the combustibles. Everyday I had to empty Mel’s trash. It was quite extensive. The most astonishing thing was the amount of alcohol consumed daily by Mel, his wife and Dan and Carmen as they planned the structure of RMA behind closed doors in Mel’s living quarters. It wasn’t just the sheer amount of liquor, 8 to ten bottles of wine a day and scotch, but the quality level of the wine and liquor that was truly astonishing. Very expensive vintages of Chateau Lafitte Rothschild and various other rare Bordeauxs topped the wine list along with corked bottles of 18-year-old malted scotch.
I smashed the bottles with a rock in the garbage pit. Everyday the garbage can was overflowing with bottles.
Alcohol fueled the founder’s behavior. Mel Wasserman was an abusive drunk. (Kind of ironic when you consider his commitment to helping children who supposedly had problems with drugs and alcohol.)
He was at the school only during its foundation during the first six months of its establishment , but he would appear in the evenings when he was completely shitfaced to conduct impromptu meetings of abuse. Dan Earle would tell us to assemble in a circle around the staggering guru who would proceed to point out all of our inadequacies in a slurring voice replete with total disdain and sarcasm.
He accused us all of secretly hiding the fact that we were homosexuals, his favorite theme, and told us we were all
going to be dead in five years (another reoccurring theme at RMA/CEDU). His favorite joke was to ask someone who was new when his or her birthday was and when he or she told him, Mel would flippantly dismiss him or her with a wave of his hand rolling his eyes and say “Who gives a shit.” Dan Earle and the rest of the staff, themselves red-faced and drunk, would sit on the sidelines laughing at the abuse perpetrated by their employer on the children of the parents who paid their salaries.
These meetings with Mel were held around the light of kerosene lamps, since we still had no electricity where we lived.
Mel drove a blue Cadillac. He had boxes of frozen steaks delivered once a week through the mail. I mention these two facts to illustrate the total absence of any shred of Gandhi, supposedly his hero, from this fat abusive turd of a man.
The myth of the man was a farce. He cared nothing for anyone but himself and he actually hated the children that indirectly paid for his wine, Cadillac and food bill.
The house that Mel built was a horrible scary place that permanently damaged every child he intensely subjected to his dark vision of control and censorship. He labeled children prostitutes, future prisoners and losers for whom only the abysmal hope of the coffin awaited. (I had only smoked pot six times prior to my having been sent to CEDU.)
Fear ruled supreme at RMA/CEDU: The fear of confrontation, the fear of humiliation, the fear of being sent to a worse place (a place that probably didn’t exist), the fear of a secret being revealed that you had revealed that they held over your head.
During his 6 month tenure Mel even facilitated a no name propheet replete with numerous brakes for him to hit the bottle down in his plushly appointed pad. The propheet was a total joke. 24 hours of abuse. We yelled at empty chairs that were supposed to represent our parents which were funding Mel’s lavish lifestyle. All night long Mel kept hammering away that we were homosexuals who if we ran away would end up on Polk Street in San Francisco selling our asses to support ourselves. Whenever he said this the rest of the staff would laugh at our misery.
Mel was 54-years-old in 1982. Dan Earle was 44. Most of the kids were between the ages of 12 and 18. Many of the kids had done nothing more than smoke clove cigarettes and as punishment they were sent to the gulag and branded prostitutes and junkies and many other very negative attributes were applied to our young insecure personalities by these fully grown adult men. Keep in mind this occurred in repeated episodes of sleep deprivation with accompanying music played on loop tapes. It was child abuse of the worse sort, institutionalized with a profit motive.
Today I am 44-years-old, the same age as Dan Earle when he was the director of RMA and I was 16. I cannot picture myself being the age I am today and treating children the way he, his coworkers and Mel Wasserman did. Playing with the hearts and minds of people, especially children, is criminal. The only thing that makes it worse is the fact that no criminal charges have been filed and that the abuse bandied about by these men was done so for profit at the expense of the lives of children.
Some things last a long time.
December 28th, 2009 at 12:49 PM
And to think that from that start, it never got better. No surprise.
I remember meeting Mel a couple of times when he would show up to make sure his profit-center was running smoothly. The first time, Dan Earle, whom I had met only once before, arrived before one of Mel’s visits to coordinate his eminent arrival. In a brand new Jaguar I might add. He orchestrated us walking the length of the driveway to pick up sticks and tree droppings so a dirt road would look like…a red carpet? We cleaned and scrubbed everything in sight, and then he arrived. And I thought immediately…We did all this for this slob? His face was cherry red, and now I know why. He was probably half drunk. But Dan and Carmen sure made him out to be this grand, saint of a man. And he never smiled. He scowled. Everyone was in total fear of his presence. To me he looked like a cheap version of a mafia don. And from the moment he opened his mouth, I knew he wasn’t all that bright. He was a businessman through and through. Trying to sell a product to make a buck. His speeches around the pit sounded like sales pitches.
I never heard those stories before that you told about how it all started. All I knew was that originally there was only one lodge, not the two that were there when I arrived. And that it had once been a survival training place that taught wood chopping skills. Joe Sweeney had been a student there. I think it was called The Academy of the Rockies.
$2,500 a month to live by lanterns and build up Mel’s big Idaho Property Investment. You learn a lot about people’s trash. Glad you were willing to share what you found. How honored you must have felt to carry out the trash of The Messiah.
When I think back on all of it, the abusive rhetoric is just about all I can recall about the program. I just remember a lot of yelling, screaming, crying, fear and guilt. I have no memory of anything enlightening. I think the only thing I felt I got out of RMA was a sense of true friendship. But not because they really taught us about that. I think we learned that on our own. I think we were able to find those who were not too fake, who were just as horrified as we were, though far too scared to say so, and held on to them. Now that I look back, the smushing and holding seems more like my previous analogy of fox holes. As the bombs of abuse fell around us, we held each other. And somehow, most of us, survived it all.
When I arrived in the Summer of ‘84, things were more settled. But you guys were still there, briefly. Tim Brace ran the show. Dan and Carmen were gone. Carmen eventually returned for a while, not sure why. I resented her. Coming out of nowhere, assuming a role as a leader though nobody knew her, yet spewing the lingo around as though she had a right, not even knowing any of us at the time. I felt the same way as hired hands would be promoted to staff level. People who ran the kitchen, or watched us as we chopped wood, suddenly being promoted to little guru’s running raps and later propheets.
It was these propheets that started to open my eyes. Seeing new staff, who knew so little, yet running workshops. I knew then it was just a script. Nothing individual. It was never individual. Never one on one. Everything they did was canned and marketed as a one size fits all cure-all.
Today when I hear that people who graduated, and felt the program helped them, and who still maintain a connection to some staff members, I start to wonder if it was because at times staff would cuddle up to them and form some kind of bond? I know so many staff tried to sell themselves as parental figures and many of the students, myself included, had very fragile relationships with our parents. So perhaps any adult contact felt meaningful. Any adult showing an interest and approval of you might have felt good. I just never got that close. Staff to me, were people to fear. They made that clear early on. With their random, arbitrary punishments, putting friends on bans merely for spending time with each other, work details for the most mundane infractions. I just couldn’t get close to my jailers. I don’t know about anyone else, but when a group of people hold that much sway over my fate and future, I tend to become uneasy. And because I could see that all of them, every staff member, seemed, by their own admissions, to be complete failures in life, all around horrible people who had done all sorts of things I never would have, they simply scared me. But also humored me. Seeing Mel that first time, after all the build up, made me laugh. And a lot of other students as well. He just didn’t fit the picture of what they made him out to be. He seemed a pitiable man. And with the tools they provided us to spot fake people, it was ironic how easy it was to spot him as a fake.
The Hitler analogy comes back to me when I think of that day he arrived. Like our Fuhrer was coming to bless us with his presence and all the Gestapo and SS were running around diligently to make everything seem festive and grand. If Mel had been five feet tall with a funny little mustache, it would have been perfect. And you might not remember all the banners that each family had to make later on, which were hung from the decks, but thinking back, I can now smile and see them as giant red, black and white banners with a swastika on them.
Thanks for sharing Chris. And now that I have heard your last name, I do remember you.
December 28th, 2009 at 5:14 PM
Bill and Chris,
These last few insights are astounding. It really completes the puzzle for me.
So glad you found the site.
Justin, Cedu 89-91
December 29th, 2009 at 2:47 PM
One adult male staff member confessed to a room full of children that prior to working at RMA, while a student at Berkley where he had graduated two months prior to having taken a job at RMA, he had “Pushed two couches together, filled a plastic bag with Vasoline and had sex with a couch. I used banana peels and yogurt to masturbate, and I beat off in a bucket of soup to be served in a health food restaurant.” He had a big beard and longish hair and his delivery was monotone and Spocklike, completely devoid of emotion. This was in the fall of 1982 when the whole student body at RMA numbered 20. They held the propheet, The Truth Will Set You Free, in what later became a dorm down at the farm.
Of course when he revealed his secret to us it was nearly impossible not to laugh. It took ten to fifteen minutes for Dan and Carmen, who were facilitating this propheet to get us to stop laughing. Dan Earle kept yelling at us and telling us, “This man is trying to do something with his life and you’re laughing at him!” This only made it harder to stop laughing.
This led to Dan Earle confessing his dark secrets, which were much cooler than the food fouling new staffer. He said, “Before I got in touch with myself I used to fuck all kinds of women. I used so many women to make myself feel good when really I felt horrible. The more women I fucked, the bigger the void became until it was nearly impossible to feel anything at all. God, I can’t even remember all of the women I fucked. Hundreds of them. All because I felt so bad about myself. But I couldn’t stop. I can’t even remember most of their names much less the faces of the women I fucked.” (Was this really something that a group of children ages 12 to 18 needed to know about a 44-year-old adult?)
It didn’t stop there. Later after we had all been yelled at, confessed, cried, listened to shitty 70’s music on loop tapes and been deprived of sleep we were told that we had one more exercise to do before we attained our new level of enlightenment. Dan Earle then informed of us that we were going to go around the room and leave something in the room that we really felt bad about. We were told that we had to sit Indian-style in front of each person in the semi-circle, look them in the eyes and tell them one thing we felt bad about. This exercise, we were told, would allow us to be free of our dark secret.
Dan Earle demonstrated by going around the room first looking each child in the eye and revealing once again how badly he felt about having formerly been a stud. He would sit front of each student and say “I used to fuck all kinds of women….”
I really dreaded this exercise because the staffer who made his startling confession of “beating off in a bucket o soup to be served in a health food restaurant” was next and the student sitting next to me was hitting me on the leg in anticipation of the staffer’s confession, making it nearly impossible not to laugh.
I thought maybe he wouldn’t share the same thing to leave in the room as he had earlier, but when he sat Indian-style in front of a 14-year-old girl who was first in the semi-circle and looked her in the eyes, he repeated verbatim in the same monotone, “I pushed two couches together, filled a plastic bag with Vasoline and had sex with a couch. I used banana peels and yogurt to masturbate, and I beat off in a bucket of soup to be served in a health food restaurant.” Then he took a deep breath and moved onto the next kid.
As he got closer and closer to me, I bit my lip until it bled so I wouldn’t laugh when he finally reached me. I managed to barely make it through his confession without laughing, looked him in the eyes and quickly nodded my approval of acceptance.
However, when he reached the next person, the next kid broke out into peels of laughter and it took nearly an hour for the staffer to make it around the room while Dan Earle admonished us for laughing.
The next day after the propheet an impromptu house meeting was called. We were told that the unwitting staff member in question was, as Dan Earle put it, “Going to be returning to Berkley to pursue his graduate studies.”
Me and a few other students watched from the balcony of what then was the only building as the sad staffer strapped his kayak back on the roof of his Subaru station wagon, put his golden retriever in the front sit of the car beside him and rode off down the long dirt road and through the gates of the school.
What I find odd years later when thinking about this incident is how it was okay for Joe Sweeny to fuck the whole farm and Tim Brace, who loved to initiate smush piles with groups of boys, to confess to secretly having hundreds of homosexual experiences while in the navy and married to his wife, but it was not okay to beat off in a bucket of soup that was to be served in health food restaurant.
What I find even more astonishing is Dan Earle and Mel Wasserman encouraging grown men and women to repeatedly reveal dark sexual secrets to children, then encouraging these same men and women tp lay around in smush piles with the kids had to listen to their startling confessions.
How is it that the state of Idaho and California have brought no criminal charges against self-admitted stud
Dan Earle and his cronies? My life has certainly been effected, as I am sure all of the children who attended CEDU/RMA have.
Stay strong,
Chris
December 29th, 2009 at 3:24 PM
It is a cliche’, knee jerk, cheap shot to say that someone was as bad as Hitler and his crew, yet it is fun ,a guilty pleasure. I’ll cop to it; the truth shall set you free. And to be truthful, I doubt if our time there was as unpleasant as the death camps. Read Victor Frankel’s “Mans search for Meaning”for a glimps into that world. A large sign at the gate of austiwitch? said “work will set you free” and we were taught work was our ” love made visible”.
Does this does sound a bit the same, like so many slogans from the prophet could have a few words juggled around and it would still be obscure and poetic and mean more or less the same thing?. It was a weird place , the love gulag, the mind camp [Our Struggle] get it ?
I think we were all little Hitlers, just as we were slowly broken on the wheel of raps and profeets, so we were complecent in the braking of others, tearing into them like starving dogs after raw meat. It wasnt pretty and to survive I had to treat it all like a charade. And it was.
December 29th, 2009 at 6:25 PM
I fully agree that Hitler and Nazi is used way too often to describe things. But it so often works too. It is a picture most can relate to. That said…
I wasn’t able to get on board with doing it to others. My very first rap I found such an unusual experience that I couldn’t believe I was going to have to endure it again and again, three times a week, for two years.
I remember a young red head girl named Amy who had this high pitched voice, and though it appeared she had no connection to the person she was screaming at, claiming they were dirty and unsafe and had all sorts of lies, I realized that didn’t seem to matter. You could scream and yell at anyone for any reason, and it was encouraged.
I think it was Liam who pointed out that the whole purpose was to make people show emotion and cry, and that somehow that was the victorious moment. But for whom? The person yelled at or the others in the room? Group therapy became group sadism. I hated crying, and I rarely cry. Mainly because I just don’t find many reasons that compel me to do so, but I did my best not to, for any reason, because I knew if you cried, you were going to get held and hugged and forced to later spend all evening smushing with people to keep the emotion going. And usually when I did cry, it was because of something that popped in to my head, not fully related to what was being said, but just a sad memory that came to me. But nobody in the room knew that, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to say my mind was wandering, so I had to let them think it was because they had found some hidden dark secret and got me to open up. Everything was just a lie. And as I sat in rap after rap for two years, I started to see this. And suspected most knew it was all a lie, yet nobody talked about it. But I also didn’t want fake affection directed at me either. I think to me that was worse. It’s one thing to cry because people are yelling at you, or because you thought of something from childhood that was unrelated to anything at RMA. But to have people then hug and kiss and hold you, didn’t sit well with me. I am not opposed to affection, but if it is directed at me, I want it based on real things, not fake. I think this is also why I never liked being touched by staff members. I didn’t get the feeling that the affection was real. Like telling a prostitute you love them. Or the prostitute telling you the same thing.
In my Truth Propheet, we had an older student in there who I think served the same role as the banana peel guy. Someone who served as our peer, to show us how to open up the RMA Way. We had several circles, not just one, and he was in mine. And as we went around the circle divulging the evils we had done in our lives, I was copping to stealing 150 Star Wars figures in 1977, and he was rattling off Joe Sweeney stuff, fucking every animal in the entire animal kingdom. And I kept thinking to myself…was any of this actually true? Could this student really have found the time, alone, unwatched, to have had sex with dozens of animals while at RMA? Or did he learn that he had to have worse and worse things to cop to in order to be approved by staff? The worse you copped to, the more affection was lauded upon you, the better person you were. I eventually came to suspect that students copped to stuff, that never happened. I just remember that after five or six rounds, I was done. I had nothing more to cop to. Yet they were trying to get me to regurgitate more. But this guy, and a couple of others kept going and going and going. There was no end. The staff actually had to tell them to write the rest down later so we could move on. And they nodded, enthusiastically, as if looking forward to the chance to tell more. I was embarrassed enough with my Star Wars gig. They were wanting to come up with more. I just couldn’t imagine how or why anyone would want to divulge such personal issues. But where I literally could not come up with more than five or six things I felt bad about, that others would agree were “bad”, though not horrible, these few were able to come up with a hundred. Each. And I just don’t think that was real. I think they lied, knowing if they did so, they would be rewarded by a system that made lying the method of survival.
Look Good was the term we all knew and understood. Looking good meant you lied really well. You were a professional faker who could cry at the drop of a dime. You could spew the lingo in raps, took part in every indictment for three hours, every rap, every week. You always needed space to take care of your feelings and dirt, even if it meant a work detail, because the rewards for doing so were greater than the punishments. I even remember one look good voluntarily placing himself on a work detail. Not by staff. He basically demanded it. And we all knew who was a look good. We knew they were lying. Did we let them get away with it because we knew on some level, we all looked good, just enough to survive and be left alone?
I also think that when you hear Tim Brace, Dan Earle, Joe Sweeney and other staff copping to some horrible and truly sickening stuff, I can see where some students would wonder if they needed to do the same. True or not. The odds of being in a school of 100 students and finding twenty five that are hard core beastiality enthusiasts, has got to be remote at best. But I do believe that Mel Wasserman sought out such horrible people to be staff members. People who would know how to keep secrets, not rock the boat or ever report abuse.
In the Documentary you have the two girls describing their first impressions and asking themselves, “Whoa, am I going to have to be doing this same stuff?” And realizing the answer was yes. And they eventually did. We all did. But our gut instincts told us this was strange, weird and wrong. But when you are abandoned, alone in the middle of Idaho or a California back woods location, your only chance for survival is to go along with it. And we did.
My closest friend to this day walked out of the I Want to Live, and was punished for it. He couldn’t take the cold, the sleep deprivation, the fact he actually felt more alive than ever in his life and was being told instead to feel close to death. He just had had enough. So he walked out. We were forced to participate and knew the consequences for not going along with everything. Where he was brave, we all thought he was stupid brave. So we kept quiet, knowing what was in store for him, and even though he was our peer and friend, we had to condemn him for choosing death instead of life.
We were forced to lie to ourselves and to each other for years. We had to scream at each other in raps even when we had no need to because they forced us to. I cannot even remember how many times I had nothing to say, yet staff and even other students would scream at me to indict a friend, to yell at them and tell them how horrible they were. And I know everyone else had the same done to them.
I am glad my best friend walked out of the I Want to Live. By doing so he got pushed so far back in the program, he wasn’t there when I had to tell my friends they didn’t get a life boat. And I didn’t have to look in to his eyes when he came to me, wondering if he would tell me I lived or died. In fact, he finished the program having never been through the I and Me or the Summit. I envy him.
The reason Hitler and Nazi analogies work, is that we can relate to it in so many ways. CEDU and RMA worked on the same system of fear. A whole country stood quietly and said nothing as brutality was meted out upon others. Many actively participated, others just went along, heads down. I think we had that same situation for two years of our lives. Our guts told us it was wrong. When we lied, we knew it. When we screamed at others, knowing what we were saying was 90% bullshit, we still did it. Again and again. So the analogy works. The Nazi’s played music too. Meant to induce emotions and memories. Played again and again. They “educated” the people to be patriotic with slogans and catch phrases. We had our lingo too. Our slogans. Banners were regularly put up to inspire us. And we participated in atrocities and were subjected to them as well. It may not be the perfect analogy, but it does work.
December 29th, 2009 at 8:17 PM
It has been pointed out that my last post had an apolegist tone , that I was a devils advocate. I have to admit that I remember Dan Earle to be the most charming and affible person I have ever met. It was the best kool aid I’ve ever had ;quick I need that deck of queen of diamonds[Mancharian Canidate] Just kidding, Dan was and still is a clever , charismatic fraud. His art is slick, calculated to sell and get him laid, derivitive,a bit creepy and perverse, slightly souless ,and at the same time showing great talent. Just like he was back then. He always kepted the “look good” going. I recall along with feeling shame about being such a stud , he felt terrible about not having thick wrists and about beating the hell out of mexicans while growing up in chico.Carman seemed to take this stoicly, much more so then when this smokin hot 14 year old named Ruby who soon ran away, gave him a grinding ,squating on his back massage in the sauna. I remember him grinning away in his speedo, 44 years of pure california hedonism.Carman reemed her with such fury that it must have stirred up the latent cancer cells. If anyone wants to see a stunning disconnect to this sites viewpoint ,google mel wasserman, tribute , by dan earle when mel died.oh here I go again…its a classic example of the big lie theory.
December 29th, 2009 at 8:21 PM
CEDU really sounds like every bad cult practice of the 60’s and 70’s synthesized into one larger and more unhealthy whole.
My question: does the environment that these children were exposed to constitute criminal abuse? If the parents of these kids subjected their children to the same abuse would that be actionable by CPS? Does the hire of these proxies eliminate the guilt of parents and place the blame solely on CEDU?
Close friends of mine have recently been made aware of the documentary and closure of CEDU – the 20 million dollar question is: is anyone suing via class action or otherwise, the estate of Mel Wasserman/ Dan Neale/corporate entity or beneficiary of the above?
I have heard that some ex-students actually enjoyed CEDU. This, of course, can be attributed to Stockholm syndrome. These ex-students desperately need to be deprogrammed and getting some money from the child abusers at CEDU would be a great start in the process of recovery. The photos and testimony I have seen in the documentary are pretty damning, and paint a hellish portrait of rampant minor abuse as well as criminal physical and mental coercion.
I personally know 3 victims of CEDU/Wasserman/Neale and company – if anyone knows of a class action lawsuit they can join please advise …
Yours in recovery,
Ed
December 29th, 2009 at 8:58 PM
TRIBUTE TO MEL WASSERMAN
By Dan Earle
[Dan Earle participated in the Cedu Schools from 1975 to 1990. During this time he held many positions including the founding headmaster of Rocky Mountain Academy, headmaster of the Cedu School and Co-President of the Cedu Schools. Mel Wasserman, Founder of Cedu Education, passed away the night of April 28th, 2002.]
How does one even begin to pay tribute to Mel Wasserman, the Founder of Cedu Education? As I write, thousands of others like myself all over the United States, Canada and beyond are reflecting on the contribution he made to their individual lives as educators, parents, students. His imprint is “here forever”!
I can say without question that my life and my career took a radical departure in 1975 when I joined the Cedu School tucked away in the mountains of Southern California. I had joined Cedu to implement my thesis for a masters degree in education designed to integrate wilderness adventure into a therapeutic program.
During my internship interview, I was struck by the sense that something extraordinary was stirring in this tranquil place. I was well versed in Dewey’s contribution to education, and recently had been studying Kurt Hahn, the founder of the International Outward Bound movement. However, their influence could only touch me through books. Then with the introduction to Mel, I found myself swept into the center of a river of educational ideas that were moving at “life speed” (Mel’s term).
Mel was an imposing figure and the imprint of his ideas and philosophy of education was in evidence everywhere in the cultural environment of Cedu. The story of Mel and his wife Brigitte having started Cedu in their home in Palm Springs, California in 1967 was already a legend in the school’s history.
Monday evenings we would gather, ALL students and ALL faculty, to hear him speak. The room was always filled with a certain electricity and anticipation of how our individual and school life might change as he revealed his latest insights. Change and growth was something I was just beginning to comprehend.
In those days a requirement for any new faculty member was full participation in the Cedu program of personal growth. Little did I realize this agreement would launch me on the most dramatic, challenging and rewarding journey of my life.
I had yet to read Emerson’s essay on Self-reliance where he states: “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which has been given to him to till”. But under Mel’s guidance I was to discover the meaning of these profound words.
Mel was actively tilling and planting an educational philosophy that would years later become a movement. Long before the world would become familiar with the phrase “the child within”, Mel was creating an education whose core was dedicated to, in his words, “the liberation of the child within” all of us. Three decades before the term “Emotional Quotient” would appear acknowledging the importance of emotions, Mel was pioneering the creation of an educational approach that would address equally the development of the individual’s emotional knowledge, as well as one’s intellectual capacity, civic participation, and personal responsibility. “To know oneself”, to have the freedom to dream and the tools to achieve those dreams were an integral part of the education he felt everyone deserved.
Ironically, Mel was proud to state that he was a self-educated man and he encouraged faculty, regardless of their credentials to become self-educated as well. To live or work at Cedu was to grow, and the education was not just for the students. He often reminded us that, “You are not the teacher, you are the LESSON!” In group training sessions he would inquire of us individually “what are you teaching?”, “who are you?”, “where are you going?”, and “how are you going to get there?”
During the 70’s Mel spoke of a “Golden Age of Education”, and that each of us had an opportunity to make a contribution to the collective knowledge of this “age”. He would state “at this moment we are at the white hot center of the development of a philosophy and approach to education that will live long after our own individual experience”.
During this “golden age”, the idea of a holistic, integral education was born. It is one that addressed the foundation of self- understanding through an emotional growth curriculum running parallel to an academic, civic and wilderness curriculum grounded in experience, of which Dewey and Hahn would both have approved.
The development and application of an “emotional growth curriculum” based on the sequence of a child’s development created an opportunity for adolescents to review their past in developmental stages and complete missed tasks, thus leading them to a solid sense of self.
Having already been in alternative education for 14 years before joining Cedu, I was overwhelmed with excitement to be able to be a part of Mel’s dream. He became my mentor, a living inspiration demonstrating that there is a “giant” within each of us seeking expression in the light of day.
The contributions he and Brigitte made to the hundreds of faculty, staff, and thousands of students, parents, families, and schools cannot be spelled out in these few, wanting, words of tribute.
Great men and women are soon forgotten by the masses, however the words, ideas, philosophy and institutions created by them remain.
The impact of Mel Wasserman’s revolutionary contribution to education lives on in the lives of the individuals and the schools that bear his imprint. If there was ever a book worthy of writing, it would be “A Golden Age – Mel Wasserman’s Cedu Education”.
On behalf of those touched by your life, thank you Mel for the GIFT!
December 29th, 2009 at 9:20 PM
Dan Earle has a Masters Degree? That’s a new one on me. Maybe it’s like on of those honorary Bill Cosby type of degrees. Can anybody find out by this? I’m pretty sure he’s lying about this (see Mel Wasserman tribute for advance degree claim). When I went to RMA I had to listen to hours of Dan Earle speeches which were mainly about Dan Earle and I definitely know all of Dan Earle’s resume and I can say with almost certainty that he never had a Masters Degree.
Does anyone know how to check on this?
December 29th, 2009 at 9:57 PM
That’s kind of funny. He dies, Dan says these words of praise, the schools promptly get shut down in a torrent of lawsuits.
Thanks for posting this Chris. It shows how deeply the staff were taken in by Mel’s big, wet, dream.
I notice Dan didn’t feel compelled to remind everyone of his past experiences as he did during the Truth. I am sure praising Mel for saving him from a life as a philandering womanizer would have gone really far at the funeral. And he could have arranged the other staff to divulge their pasts as well, and how they were all saved too. In some ways, it seems the emotional growth schools were designed more for these weak willed staff members than for the kids who got sent there.
He mentioned Outward Bound. Here’s what Wikipedia says about their system. Notice it is also one-size-fits-all as every program seems to be. And never mentions needing anyone actually trained in anything. And it’s a recipe. Follow instruction, get results.
Outward Bound courses follow a kind of recipe or formula, termed the Outward Bound Process Model which is well described by Walsh and Golins (1976)[8] as:
1. Taking a ready, motivated learner
2. into a prescribed, unfamiliar physical environment,
3. along with a small group of people
4. who are faced with a series of incremental, inter-related problem-solving tasks
5. which creates in the individual a state of dissonance requiring adaptive coping and
6. leads to a sense of mastery or competence when equilibrium is managed.
7. The cumulative effect of these experiences leads to a reorganization of the self-conceptions and information the learner holds about him/herself.
8. The learner will then continue to be positively oriented to further learning and development experiences (transfer).
I love #1 and #5 the most. We were not willing learners. And a state of dissonance requiring adaptive coping. Well, dissonance means your actions and beliefs are in conflict. So you are going to learn to adapt and cope with this until some kind of equilibrium/balance is reached? If you are in a state of dissonance, one would argue you’ve already managed to adapt and cope with it. And add in #6… A sense of mastery. Not actual mastery, just a sense of it. A temporary, fleeting sense to be sure. Like when you graduate RMA or CEDU and have this “sense” that you are cured and have all the tools you need to “master” your life. Only to find, of course, that none of it was real. #8 should have ended with “We hope.”
This philosophy seems long on big words and short on anything meaningful. Much like CEDU/RMA and Mel’s grand vision. Did Mel choose anything to create CEDU with that any real professional would have approved of? And Dan was apparently in college studying “alternative education” systems. Sounds more like anything besides learning and getting educated. What I like to call, “The easy way.” Why learn and study when you can just make it up as you go along? As Mel clearly did.
Then there is the use of Holistic methods being focused upon by Dan with him praising them as being part of the Golden Age. Holistic means to treat the whole as opposed to treating different parts separately. This is similar to the one-size-fits-all method I find these programs focus on. With no effort or attention placed on the individual. Holistic means to treat the mind and the body. But this concept is either too deep or too shallow depending on how you look at it. On how you define the mind and the body. But my understanding, based on how programs work, is that the focus is all on the mind, not on the body. Fill a staff member with enough mumbo jumbo and cool, jingoistic lingo to throw around and they feel they can solve anyone’s mind problems and therefore, in their minds, any problem. I think they ignore the body. I think they ignore anything related to studying these concepts so they understand them well enough to begin with.
But more specifically, I want to show how they focus on everything, rather than individuals, or individual problems. In raps, we had to “get it all out”. In Propheets, we had to “get it all out in the open.” Divulge everything. All our problems and fears. But none were addressed individually, so how were any going to be cured, or dealt with? They weren’t going to be and so what changed? The staff, or Mel if you will, believed that simply divulging a torrent of bad stuff is somehow going to produce a cure. Without dealing with any of it one on one. That someone says they stole Star Wars Figures and fucked every animal at the farm, and slept with hundreds of women, and used drugs and abused alcohol… And then what? We’re done! All cured. No questions about why they stole, why they fuck animals, why they slept with hundreds of women? So where Holistic is supposed to cure everything at once, in the RMA/CEDU model, it just gets everything out at once. It doesn’t focus or cure or address anything specific. And my argument is that, because it is never individual, never one on one, never staying focused on one issue until it is dealt with and then moving on to the next issue, nothing gets solved, nothing gets cured. We left with what we arrived with. Plus some cool friends. Funny, they say money can’t buy you friends, but in this case, our parents paid and we made friends. But whatever cure they were paying for…? Nope.
When Dr. Nikki Bush appeared in the Documentary, here was a woman who had actual education and training with a real degree, took one look at what was going on and said it was wrong. This is why, even when programs hire people with real psychology degrees, they don’t give them any access to the program itself. Their office is elsewhere. Because anyone who had real training would spot the cult aspects and unproven techniques, even dangerous techniques employed. Because there is no such thing as a come-one-come-all, one-size-fits-all, miracle cure-all for anything. If you believe there is, P.T. Barnum would have loved you. Because there really are suckers born every minute.
December 29th, 2009 at 10:36 PM
You guys are writing a chapter of my book for me. I’m gonna credit you, of course, but, wow. Great memories on you three. Rob, Bill, Chris.
December 29th, 2009 at 10:50 PM
Sure beats Fornits. I love discussing this stuff, but on Fornits you have to deal with industry trolls and a lot of nonsense. Here we can just write it how we saw it. How we felt it. We can bring in outside material and discuss it. Makes a huge difference. And I like how this is mainly focusing on how it all began, Mel, Dan, the founding of RMA. The differences between 1982 and 1984, just two years and how much had changed, and not changed.
We’re really looking at the first moments of one of these programs being created, and a bit of insight in to the passing of the torch from Mel the Visionary, to Dan Earle, the Mel version 2.0.
And that speech by Dan Earle tells us a little more of the philosophy Mel had, how Dan Earle interpreted it, and the experience of students who had to experience it as a new school was being created. Just one more piece of the puzzle to help us better understand it all.
Seeing how Dan really bought in to it all, what he was buying in to. What they were selling to us. And then there was also Mel version 3.0 which was Tim Brace. How he interpreted Mel’s vision and implemented it, coming straight from CEDU as he did to run the new show up in Idaho. And how Dan and Tim and all the others truly worshiped this misguided, uneducated slob of a man and really believed he had something worthwhile to share.
How could any parent today read and learn about this history and then say they’d do it all over again, sending us to those places, to these people?
December 30th, 2009 at 12:22 AM
On that note, I just had such a conversation with a parent of a kid who was there in my era. She wrote me, having heard of the project, and seemed to want to know something about why people were so upset at the place.
I wrote back asking her to read the material on the site, and also, if she understood or had researched the historical origins of the Cedu-type programs in the Synanon heroin-cure church/cult.
She responded that she had always thought Cedu was grand, but maybe she’d see what her son thought.
Haven’t heard back from the woman.
December 30th, 2009 at 12:30 AM
RE: the Eulogy for MW.
So weird the idea of saying nothing tangible or logical, yet at the same time appear to believe in it so very much. What precisely is the GIFT, Dan?
December 30th, 2009 at 12:45 AM
My parents were the same way. Mainly because I never said anything negative about it, in their minds anyway. I think it was hard for parents to send their kids away to have others raise them and then to later learn the place was an abusive cult may be far more difficult to accept.
Once anyone delves deeper in to the history and methods used, few can come away thinking it was positive.
I hope this parent does get back with you. Or is willing to take the time to learn more. There are plenty of survivors who still think it was just as grand as she describes. Many don’t really consider the tactics of abuse and humiliation they were subjected to. Which is why most, who say it was a positive experience, when pressed, really just admit they made some good friends and nothing more. Get in deeper about raps, propheets, crime and punishment and all the other chapters the Documentary covers and I think the perception is changed. But even deeper, learning the history and where all these methods spawned from and the number of places being shut down as more and more learn that they are abusive cults, derived from abusive cults, the picture becomes clearer.
If she asks her son about specific things, she doesn’t need to have him decide if it was bad for her to make up her own mind about it. And I hope that is the case. I hope she takes the time, on her own, to make up her own mind. I would hope any parents or survivor or person in general could set aside previous perceptions and really delve in deep and decide.
And it isn’t just the programs. It’s the history, the type of people who founded and ran and staffed these places, their mentalities, backgrounds, credentials, motives. It’s all a huge picture that seems blurred until you step back and look at it all and see it. The charlatans, the lack of experienced staff, people with criminal backgrounds, drug abuse issues, alcoholics, sex addicts, child molesters. People like this should not be forming programs or anywhere near teens.
Just having a parent watch the “I want to Live” portion of the Documentary paints a pretty good picture. Nowadays programs have changed the names from Propheet to workshop, to all sorts of names, but from what I have been reading, the same Propheets are used in other programs and have remained fairly much the same. And in that chapter of the Documentary you listen to the former student reading from the Propheet scroll and his own journal and it is just nonsensical and bizarre and hard to follow. You really hear the cult language, with things like sculpting and so on which would not make much sense to outsiders. And when you explain to parents and survivors that sleep deprivation, hot and cold temperature changes to make kids freeze or sweat, with loud, blaring and repetitive music played, the endless screaming and how this is all well established as basic methods of torture and interrogation, who can argue that it wasn’t abusive? And that it was designed as such. That the people who created these programs didn’t make this stuff up themselves. They studied up on it all enough to have some basic idea of what they were doing. Maybe not the staff who came in to the programs later on, who maybe assumed it was all normal and proper. But those who founded the original programs, Synanon, EST, LifeSpring, CEDU, they knew.
We know Mel Wasserman had been a part of those earlier programs and learned from them and created CEDU based on them and his own strange additions. None of this was random. A system of control and dominance, coercion and humiliation. And systems work on groups. Less on individuals. I suspect it is much easier to dominate a group than a single person. This is again why all programs are group oriented and not focused on individuals.
Anyway, if she takes the time to research on her own and gets back with you I’d love to hear what she has learned as well. And if possible to learn what she was told about the program when she sent her child there, how she felt about the lack of communication allowed between parent and child. All of it.
December 30th, 2009 at 2:27 AM
Thank you Bill, Rob H., Ed for your insightful input. (Bill you are totally on top of it! Rob H. you were there as well and know the truth. Ed thank you for your concern and understanding of the horrors even though you were lucky enough to have not been in attendance.) Also, Liam thank you so much for taking the large amount of time and energy to devote to the illumination of this particular place of abuse and torment. Your documentary is long overdue. There is nothing better than bringing this crap to life and getting it off of our chest in order to free ourselves of its debilitating hooks. For so long no one has understood, and how could they. The Dan Earle’s and Mel Wasserman’s of this cult have spun Walt Disney rhetoric to teachers, health professional and parents, to name but a few, for what can only be termed a nightmare in Duetchland to the children who were subjected to their vision of what it means to lead a successful life.
Once again, the truth shall set you free.
Chris
First new student at RMA 1982-1984
December 30th, 2009 at 2:49 AM
A Dan Earle experiential education episode:
In November of 1982, roughly two months after having arrived at CEDU/RMA, the 15 to 20 students in attendance were told to assemble at the farm for an impromptu experiential. The whether was very cold. Northern Idaho. 20 degrees. At that time what later became the dorm known as Walden were Dan and Carmen’s electrified residence with hot running water. In the desolate field outside their residence there was a bucket filled with plumbing pipes about 12 inches in length. Dan informed us that we needed to really go for broke and not question the process of what we were doing. He then told us to remove our gloves and select a pipe from the bucket. He told us to clasp the freezing pipe in our bare hands. The pipe was very cold and my hands quickly became numb and turned red, a stinging sensation ran from the palm of my hands down to the tips of my fingers.
When I tried to sit the metal pipe down on the ground because the pain was unbearable Dan and Carmen yelled at me and the other students who were experiencing extreme discomfort. This went on for another ten minutes. People were crying, yelling, some even refusing to “go for broke.”
Finally we were told to put the pipes on the ground. There was a wash bin filled with freezing water, filled prior to our experiential assembly and sitting outside Dan and Carmen’s house.
We were told to submerge our frozen hands in the water. It was funny but the cold water felt warm against my skin compared to the cold metal of the pipe combined with the chilling wind. They had us soak our hands for about five minutes.
We were all very uncomfortable. It was late afternoon. Dusk turning to night in the cold Northern Idaho autumn. I felt like I had frostbite in the tips of my fingers. My hands, along with the rest of the student’s hands, were numb and blue.
We were told not to give into negative thinking. To go for broke. We were very uncomfortable. Then Dan told us to remove our submerged hands from the chilling water and unbutton our coats. This was difficult because my fingers were frozen. I removed my coat and then we were told to take off our flannel shirts and long underwear down to our T-shirts.
We were then instructed to lay down on the cold ground. Dan once again reiterated that we were to keep in mind that this was a growth experience, that we needed to stay focused and not engage in negative thinking. We lay on the ground shivering for about ten minutes, all the while being admonished for wanting to give up and resist the experiential education we were receiving.
My body became numb and weak. Some people cursed and tried to go inside. Dan and Carmen told the people who were being resistive they were copping out, not even trying to trust what was happening.
At the end of five to ten minutes, we were told to grab our jackets and gloves and go into the duplex and sit on the ground in a semicircle. I was blue. My hands and fingers hurt and stung badly as they thawed. We were all shivering profusely. The warmth inside the room made our skin ache. Our teeth chattered.
Inside Dan and Carmen’s living room there was macrame hanging on the walls. Some potted plants. A golden retriever named Ishi spread out comfortably on the carpet. The room was very nicely appointed.
The only furniture in the room were two overstuffed chairs in which Dan and Carmen presided. All of us sat strewn around the floor at their feet. They sipped hot tea from mugs and said nothing for the first few minutes of our thawing.
Then the dialog began. It was angry and confrontational. Dan Earle began talking about how easily we all gave up, how we were unable to remain focused, how we were easily given over to negativity and let this thinking affect
every aspect of our lives.
Someone complained that we were being brainwashed. Dan answered with his usual canned response, “Your brain could use some washing!”
From there it all broke down into a confrontational blur. Carmen could match Dan for loudness and intensity. She sat on the edge of her chair and spewed invective:
“Each and everyone of you shit on your innerchild child everyday! You cover him with lies and mistrust when all he wanted to do is play and have fun. That little boy or girl had no sense of mistrust, but look at how you mistrust this exercise. You do this everyday to yourself and everyone around you….” etc.
Perhaps this is what Dan was referring to in his eulogy to Mel:
“The development and application of an ‘emotional growth curriculum’ based on the sequence of a child’s development created an opportunity for adolescents to review their past in developmental stages and complete missed tasks, thus leading them to a solid sense of self.”
Chris
First new student at RMA 1982-1984
December 30th, 2009 at 1:38 PM
Bill ~ Did you say you were at CEDU beginning the Summer of 1984? I was taken there (tricked by a parent as most probably were) in July 1984 and split in late October of that same year. Although only there for a season, the comments have brought back so many memories. I have wondered what happened to some folks that attended with me.
Liam ~ Thank you for your anticipated documentary. I kept a diary through my stay and now that I am adult, am more horrified that CEDU continued for so many years after. A small group of us used to say to eachother “when I split this place, I swear I am going to bust CEDU wide open.” Thank you for do just that with your work. It’s funny, I don’t recall most of the names of the staff except for Lori (in Genesis) another guy who was quite popular as a leader of Genesis – had a little hotdog/dochshund dog who followed him everywhere. The two heads I never got to know left shortly after I got there. Remember having to scrub their large bathtub one day which I resented deeply. There was a piece-of-work husband and wife team that would lead (separately) the raps… think they were heads of Quest?
They were terrible and confessed former thiefs. As far as the students, I was fortunate enough to reconnect with my friend Danny Taylor once back in LA – just a fluke that we connected through mutual friends in a band. He was my only anchor there-truly. The only one I could count on and would not “crack” under CEDU influence – very tough and genuine. I don’t know where he is now. I remember the “new guy” who came in from AZ – and I let him down when he found out about my plans to split with “metal chick” Cathy – endearing term as she was once a great friend too. I really to this day, feel bad about that because he was an amazingly great guy. Eventually, Cathy chose to go her own way and our “split contract” was busted wide open in a rap. Danny, Eric and I made a plan to escape at 2:20 a.m. on Sunday.
Sundays were sleep in days so figured we would all well be down the mountain by daybreak. Only when I snuck outside to our meeting place with my dinner knife and by box of cornflakes, there was no Danny or Eric. It was “do or die” and I decided to make the trek myself. I hitched 1 ride to the base of the mountain/gas station, checked out a map and hitched two more rides to Anaheim….. anyways…. mother still wanted me to return to CEDU and I split once more from home and then she got the drift that in no circumstances would I be returning to that place. Something in me knew it was inheritantly wrong. Extremely difficult to keep your own mind.
My kindergarten friend, Ann Swepston (sp?) showed up at CEDU when I was there – wonder what happend to her. She was very nice, and not part of the “underground.” Marcy with her guitar and plans for Europe. Sharon “the narc” (a few groups ahead of us)…. Drina Diniro (my designated older sister – before she moved to the other campus)….. Thank you for all your stories posted here. ~ Michele
December 30th, 2009 at 2:36 PM
Dear Chris,
Words just aren’t adequate to express to you our joy that you are doing so well. I knew that you were going to “get your life back”and wondered every day if this would be the day. Chris, I read your Dad’s email after he had sent it to you and I want to give you my thoughts on his comments about looking back and especially about Cedu. He was always conflicted about Cedu-RMA and wished that we had been more informed about it. It was very difficult, emotionallly, for us to send you there and we were constantly second guessing the situation – he was very often angry so I was always trying to put a positive spin on it even though I was very scared and confused also. Please don’t ever think that we took lightly that you were so far away from us because we missed you terribly and we hoped that it would be a good, positive experience for you. I have a tendancy to look back and say “what if” and for many years dad and mom’s divorce was a source of hurt and anger that I couldn’t shake. I finally stopped dwelling on it because I can’t change the past but I can live fully and optimistically daily. However, if it is helpful for you to look back on your CEDU years I hope you will try to do so with the goal of healing and maybe even realizing that it was an experience that maybe, in the final analysis, has made you a stronger more interesting person. I think that is the best we can do with our lives. Please, please be as positive as possible and look forward. You are still young and very bright so from now on make the most of your life! I love you, mom
Forward
December 30th, 2009 at 4:45 PM
My parents speak almost exactly the same way, when I ask them what they knew, or what they felt about RMA. Positive spin. I blame them for a lot, but I know these programs prey on parents and they are good at it. Thirty to forty years, you get pretty decent at something.
This makes me wonder how most kids arrived at RMA and CEDU? I for one, was not really told anything. Just that I was going to Idaho to attend a new school. Nothing about therapy was mentioned. But it wasn’t a huge surprise. I was in juvenile hall for three weeks, they had me leaving three times a week to see a “family” psychologist, who had never worked with kids before, but my parents had used him, so nobody questioned this. And during my visits, they made it clear from day one I was not coming home. That I would have to plead guilty in court, then accept this out of state placement. And that I would be in Idaho till my 18th birthday or graduation. But in three weeks, I had no input on where I was going. I wasn’t told it would be therapeutic. Only that they had no homework assignments. This was my parents issue. I was not doing all of my homework, so they wanted a place where they thought I could get a High School diploma.
Secret Harbor and Provo Canyon were the other two choices, but they weren’t clear about academics so RMA was the choice. CEDU was discarded because they felt I would possibly have run away if I was in the state of California. As though the extra six hundred miles from Idaho would have deterred me.
I just get the feeling my parents didn’t know much about the therapeutic aspects of the program, and probably didn’t care really. I wasn’t being sent for drug use, alcohol use or partying or doing anything wild. Just for grades and homework. And I bet that RMA told them what they wanted to hear.
I have read through some of the correspondence my parents sent back and forth with the school while I was there and all of it focused on what classes I was taking, what my attendance record was, completion of assignments. Nothing else. When RMA was asking if I could go on ski trips or get a mountain bike, my parents didn’t think any of this was useful to passing classes. So I am pretty sure the therapy stuff was not discussed. And during visits, school was all they were interested in hearing about.
In the Documentary, many kids didn’t know what the school was going to be like either. They may have known they were going, or thought they were just going to tour a campus, with the choice of saying no a possibility. For me, I don’t think my parents had any clue about what was really going to be happening up there. They had one goal in mind, a diploma, and anything else was fine so long as it led to that goal.
I think this is why when I talk to them about it today and question what they knew, it all seems vague to them, unclear, because they weren’t focused on therapy. Yet, when I graduated with a diploma, it wasn’t enough. I didn’t get to come home, go to the college a block away as my other siblings did, a JC that has an automatic transfer program to UC Berkeley, they were done with me. They told me on graduation day, good luck, you’re on your own. So to this day, I get the impression RMA didn’t send glowing appraisals and updates. I think my parents believe I barely got my diploma, nearly failing and that the few disciplinary actions against me were blown out of proportion and left them with the sense that I was still some horrible person. For missing homework assignments. And that clearly college was out of the question, well beyond my intellectual capacity. So if healing was supposed to have taken place, from my parents perspective, it didn’t. And therefore from my perspective, it didn’t. Ironic, considering I pretty much got straight A’s at RMA.
Chris, your parents both sounded conflicted. Your mother may have hid that better than your father, but obviously something didn’t quite sit right with them. I think this is why they were able to get parents to send their kids there. They told them the program was whatever they needed it to be. Sold it to them as a last chance. Death or jail being the only other options for you. And that once in, the lack of communication and positive updates helped to keep you there. Reading my parents letters to RMA, I got the sense they were begging for information. My mothers letters specifically would say things like, “This is the fifth letter I am writing in regards to getting information on the class work of my son…” So they weren’t being told much. They had to pry information out of the school.
So perhaps we weren’t told where we were going because our parents weren’t quite sure either. And because we all probably weren’t quite sure what to tell them, during the program and after, shell-shocked as we were from the experience and full of a false belief we actually had been a part of something profound…our parents had to assume for years afterward that we had been cured. That somehow all the money they spent, even with a lack of communication and information, all worked out. I know that I didn’t begin discussing RMA until at least a decade after my graduation. Which is why my parents always believed it worked. Just not enough for me to have come home.
December 30th, 2009 at 5:14 PM
After have been told countless times over the years about a staff member at the Cedu farm center for wayward kids, i journeyed over to this staff members’ web site and was surprised to see such a prolific fine artist.
My friend was a recovering mind camper previously stationed at the Cedu farm in Idaho when i met him. Now and again my friend would tell me tales from some picturesque snow globe of a landscape that hosted the Cudu compound. Often my mind would wonder over to that camp, trying to recreate the drama as my friend began to untie the the bits and pieces of trauma he experienced at the hands of the camps’ overlords that were knotted up inside him. This was hard to do because it all sounded so unbelievable, good thing my friend shared his history at the Cedu mind farm with such clever detail to me to keep me engaged and unable to forget his experiences. I don’t fully think my friend believed his own senses as we laughed over the techniques used by said adult instructors.
So i looked up one of this camps’ former officers web site (dan-earle.com) and would like to offer a brief account of what i find to be behind the veneer of his harmless looking facade by looking at his art.
“A counselor once said that he is the kind of person that can walk into crowded room and within a short time grasp the emotional tenor of the people both as individuals and as a symphony.” states the opening paragraph of his web site biography. I find this an interesting statement because this is something Albert Speer has said about his fuhrer when writing his biography in that tiny prison cell for twenty odd years.
I will focus only on the bronze cast sculptures, these are clearly his best works, and are accompanied with text. His drawings and paintings are at best student work, and have not reached any level of interesting ideas that i might note except for some minute hints at symbolism.
I don’t want to rip on the guy so i will let him do it for me. Take a look at the sculpture called Epiphany. A woman has entered a symbolic portal of womanhood/puberty, disrobed, ready to experience the joy of her new body with us as voyeurs. She is her own woman where taboos, culture and parents are abandoned. She is ready and willing to take on whomever she wants and abandon any missionary styled mentality, baring it all and barely legal. Lets just hope she doesn’t return through that door and tell her parents.
Now look at The Journey. This piece is a hand above another hand, both severed at the wrist. Historically the hand on the top is represented as giving, and is always the owner of the hand on the bottom. From my perspective, the hand on the bottom is a child while the other is adult. Here are his words to sum up the situation: “The Journey is our life. The hands represent all those that we have touched, reached out to, been influenced by and loved by. They reflect tender moments of connection by these powerfully expressive human tools.” What do you think he meant by “touched” and “connection”, being a Cedu representative?
Now take a lookie at the piece named “Naked Knowledge”. Here we find a man sitting nude on a large book. Whenever we find a book that dwarfs the human we must assume the book is of importance, representing authority and law. We find the artist sitting on this book smudging the pages with his backside. Do we see a man who is against the social norms and acceptable behavior of his peers? Someone who wants to write his own rules?
Lastly lets scroll over to “Amazing Grace”. Technically very good, but why did he have to start spitting out words to try and convince us he is not a racist? Answer: Because he probably is.
I see someone in these artworks who is angry, and against everything that is a barring the artist from his pleasures. Despite the humanistic, touchy-feely, way these pieces were modeled, I see an attitude of arrogance against the viewer and everything the viewer ignorantly represents. I see an individualist who fears the crowd unless he is conducting its movements. He is a great fan of the sculptor Rodan and shows some influence in his works, even praising him. Rodan said that the vulgar is masked behind the pretty, and someone who is afraid to face the ugly, and the truth is in fact the vulgar.
December 30th, 2009 at 7:37 PM
Good insight Aaron.
When you consider the earlier posts regarding Dan Earle’s womanizing, it is somewhat revealing he focuses a lot on nude females. And many of those involve faceless women. With all of the blurred imagery in some many pieces, kind of makes you wonder if all those women are just a blur as well.
Clearly he does not possess any natural artistic talents, stealing from those who came before him like Rodan. Much as his mentor, Mel Wasserman did. And he didn’t feel compelled to go to an actual art school but instead taught himself. This makes me wonder if he ever got that Masters degree or just pretends.
I definitely see where he is obsessed with women and obsessive about sexual imagery. The casting off of inhibitions and exploration of their sexuality. How very 1960’s. He tries to hard to describe everything he does as being very deep and bold, yet I only see nude woman. And knowing who Dan is, that doesn’t surprise me.
I love your insights in each piece. They seem spot on to me.
December 30th, 2009 at 8:41 PM
Well, I wouldn’t say he doesn’t have talent. He’s got artistic talent and skill, and I don’t find his sculptures offensive. I don’t mind nudes, or even sexually explicit art. You can’t steal talent. He might be a poopcicle, but, you know, talent is talent.
And if he’s a perv, then it’s better that he do it in clay and stone, instead of to teenagers. That said, there should be a criminal case for of what he actually did.
Try to keep it focused, if you can, on that stuff, although I do understand the need to stretch out, and I think you’re all writing some great great stuff.
December 30th, 2009 at 8:42 PM
I mean, if it’s any consolation, Hitler had a little talent. Does it redeem him?
December 30th, 2009 at 9:18 PM
I think a lot of people wish Hitler had stuck with the art thing and didn’t pursue the politics thing. Or that Mel had stayed a furniture salesman.
I think the anger comes from knowing what Dan did to so many kids for so many years, what he was an integral part of for so long, and to see him quietly enjoying a retirement after all the pain he caused so many, irks some of us. I for one would rather his retirement be spent in an 8×10 cell. They let you paint in prison too.
December 31st, 2009 at 12:19 PM
First of all, this is going to come off sounding cheesy, but here goes…
I watched Gone Baby Gone last night (I know, I know…)
In the end, Casey Affleck’s character has to make a tough choice about the former retired Boston Chief of Police (Morgan Freeman’s character). After all the good he’s done for the city and the area and the personal suffering he went through; his daughter being the victim of rape, kidnap and murder, does he deserve to do something wrong if its ultimately for “the greater good”? This is the main motivator of the chain of events throughout the movie, although its not revealed til the end.
If you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t spoil it for you, but I think that I would have to come down on the side of Casey’s character and say he made the right choice, even if it had bad consequences. Where does justification take you? How much good does it take to outweigh the bad?
I wrestle with this daily. My past is full of tough choices and things I have had to get past, including Cedu, a genocidal warzone and being attacked by a psychotic.
I believe that people must pay the consequences for their bad actions.
I also believe that forgiveness is a big part of spiritual transformation, and maybe just becoming an adult in our society. I’ve had to dig deep in that well to be where I’m at now, a Friend in the Hands of God. A Quaker, in laymen’s terms. It’s really hard to let go of that hate and vengeful thinking, but it just eats you up otherwise and keeps you from moving on to the good things. Its also tougher to find the commonality that binds us rather than that which divides us, but in the end, that’s what keeps our humanity intact.
December 31st, 2009 at 2:52 PM
It is my hope that we could positively pursue avenues to see that the people who perpetrated this emotional and physical abuse against children could have charges bought against them for their past actions. That would certainly be a positive step towards healing and a major stepping stone to keeping all of our humanity intact. Otherwise these clone programs will just keep popping up with their half-baked replication inflicting their therapy for an extreme profit motive and the further determent to children’s lives.
Chris
CEDU/RMA 82-84
December 31st, 2009 at 3:55 PM
Chris, Indeed! Well said.
Rob, beautifully expressed and thoughtful, as always. On “Gone, Baby Gone,” I thought it was a good movie, myself. I’ll have to see it again to recall the finale; praise be to Ben Affleck (!) who directed a fine and troubling film.
December 31st, 2009 at 7:46 PM
I agree also that it would be nice to see justice happen so that these programs find it hard, if not impossible to remain open if similar program methods are employed.
I am not against therapy, but I think most of us agree that what we went through was not therapy. If a program opened up that offered legitimate help to kids without any abuse, humiliation or guilt, that might be a good thing.
The two topics are justice and forgiveness so I will address both. Forgiveness is a tough one for me. My mother is a Quaker and has never seemed to have forgiven me for my youth so I am not sure it is part of their religion. I have always believed forgiveness is an individual thing. Each person must decide if they will forgive on their own. Many survivors I have heard from make the statement that they don’t feel any of the staff were out to “intentionally” cause us harm, therefore what they did wasn’t quite so bad. I can agree with the concept that someone who intentionally seeks to cause harm is not as bad as someone who does it inadvertently, however I can’t accept that none of these adults didn’t have some inkling that what they were doing to us wasn’t good. That all of them didn’t know any better. As kids, our first reactions said something was up and it didn’t feel right. I find it hard to believe no staff member had the same questioning going on inside them.
Just take a propheet for instance. Don’t most parents have a natural tendency to over react when it comes to protecting their children? They won’t let you go outside when it is cold without a coat or sweater, right? So how could all of these adults turn down the heat, open the doors and windows to make the room freezing, and then calmly collect our warm clothes and make them vanish in to another room, specifically to make us cold and uncomfortable and not know that was wrong? Not know precisely what they were doing?
Or take sleep. Most parents when they see their child sitting in front of a television set at 2am with their child nodding, trying to stay awake will say, “I think it is time for bed.” They shut the TV off and make you go upstairs and sleep. They don’t try and keep you awake longer. I cannot picture any normal parents sending you to your room without supper, turning off the heat, opening doors and windows and then forcing you to stay awake all night. That would be absolutely bizarre. So I think adults would have to come in to a situation like this knowing that it was wrong.
And food. Most parents would sense that their child is hungry. Or know when they last ate a full meal. They wouldn’t deny it to them unless I suppose it was meant as a punishment, such as go to your room without supper. Nor would a parent likely deny a child access to the bathroom if the child said they had to go. And also, if their child was crying and saying they were really, really hungry, most parents would back down and give them the supper. Because the punishment is meant as a lesson, not to damage.
So even setting aside the blaring and repetitive music, the psychological trauma that took place, the cold, the sleep deprivation, the food denial, the bathroom denial… Most adults would know these were wrong. Thus this perception that they didn’t do harm to us intentionally, is bogus. They knew, just as we knew when our guts told us the smushing with adults, the raps, the forced labor didn’t sit right. We knew, and they knew. And as adults, we expect they have a better sense of judgment than we kids would have.
And then consider explaining these methods to a program parents. “We’re going to take your kid in to a room late at night, with no warning, when they would normally think they were about to go to sleep. We are going to turn down the heat and open the doors and windows so it gets really cold, and remove their warm clothing from their possession so they will shiver and be very uncomfortable. Because it is late at night and they will be exhausted after a full day of hard labor, we are going to help keep them awake using loud and repetitive music, we will be screaming at them and keeping them involved. Their energy levels will eventually deplete because of the exhaustion, and oh, did we mention we won’t be feeding them all night so they continue to lack energy…?”
What parent wouldn’t have pulled their kid then and there?
So there was a need to for this stuff to be kept a secret from the parents. And if they knew they needed to keep it a secret, they knew it was wrong. So again, the claim they didn’t set out to intentionally cause harm falls apart.
So forgiveness, for me at least, is difficult to give when I consider it was done intentionally and that they knew.
As for justice, I feel there’s two versions. Justice in seeing staff, current or former, charged with crimes. We cannot, as a society, allow child abuse to go unpunished. The other version relates to the programs. They need to be brought to justice, shut down if using these same kinds of tactics, and real regulations put in place to prevent similar programs from opening up or remaining in business. And oversight. We never saw Child Protective Services at RMA or CEDU, and I think we should have. At least one visit a year would have been realistic. But the justice is seeing these places shut down, charges being brought against staff and parent companies. I don’t want to see these huge conglomerates or their directors get off either. You try and make a buck abusing kids, you go to jail. I will forgive you later if I am in the mood. Do the time first, then we’ll talk.
January 1st, 2010 at 6:07 AM
In the fall of 1982 during the one impromptu propheet that Mel Wasserman facilitated along with Dan and Carmen Earle an interesting incident involving my grandfather occurred.
I didn’t find this out until after the Mel Wasserman propheet, but I wondered why, as all of us did, the Bonners Ferry police department had arrived in the early afternoon in the middle of the propheet and was snooping around the property.
Apparently, at some time before noon while we were being yelled at, and were being encouraged to yell at empty chairs of our parents to let the invisible specter of our parents know how much we hated them, my grandfather from Baton Rouge, Louisiana arrived in his truck to visit me. He was very into hunting and he had lived in Alberta, Canada for a number of years in the 70’s after retiring.
My grandfather was perhaps the only person who ever stood up to the RMA/Cedu double speak while I was in attendance at the school.
He was a no nonsense person. From a different generation. Not hip or even remotely confused by the hollow lingo of California pop psychology
He told me years later, he passed away a few years ago, that he arrived at the gates of the property to RMA in his truck. He had been in Canada for two months hunting moose and he had their carcasses strapped over the roof of his camper shell wrapped in packing to prevent the meat from spoiling.
My grandfather said upon arriving at the gate of the school he found the gate shut and blocked with big rocks so that no one could enter the property. He said he rolled some of the rocks away and nudged the gate open with the bumper of the truck.
I had no idea that my grandfather was on the property.
The staff noticed the intruding vehicle driving up the long road to the lodge and sent down 450-pound Neal Wesson, who had been one of the Little Rascals back in the early to mid 30’s and had worked for Mel since the early 70’s, to deal with the situation.
My grandfather told me, after the fact, “Some big fat guy came down and told me that you were in a very special experience and that if I bothered you right then it would disturb the growth you were experiencing and might negatively impact the very special experience you were having. He told me I could come back the next day and see you. I said, ‘That’s my grandson in there, and I just came all the way from Louisiana and I’ve got moose on the truck that are going to go bad. I came way out of my way to see my grandson and you better let me see him.’”
My grandfather told me that the fat man then told him that it was impossible, so my grandfather told him that he had a shotgun in the truck and that if they harmed one hair on my head he would blow his head off.
At this point, still unbeknown to me, Neal went upstairs where we were engaged in our propheet and pulled Dan Earle and Mel Wasserman to the side and explained to them the situation.
The way my grandfather told it, “The first one didn’t work, so after I scared him, he went inside and got this real slick talking fellow (Dan Earle). He thought he was real smooth and was a little more convincing. He told me I could come back tomorrow, said something again about a real special experience. I, once again, told him that I had only a short amount of time, that I couldn’t wait until the next day. But he refused to let me see you.
“I didn’t know what to do. I’d never heard of a place that would deny a family member access to their grandchild. So I drove into Bonners Ferry and went directly to the sheriffs and explained to them that there was this place in the woods, not far from town, that was keeping my grandson from seeing me. I told them they were doing something strange and I could hear loud music coming out of the building and the sound of people crying. I told them that I was worried about the welfare of my grandson and I asked them if they had any information about this place Rocky Mountain Academy.
“They told me that they had never heard of it before. They said they had no idea that there was a boarding school for troubled children operating near Bonners Ferry. They said this was the first they had been told of its existence.”
My grandfather said he gave them the location and told them he thought it was some kind of a cult. The sheriffs promised they would immediately go and check into the place.
I could see through the large windows that overlooked the main lodge when multiple police cars arrived on the property. Mel called Dan over and in hushed tones said something. Dan and Carmen went downstairs and talked with the police.
We were told that we could take a two hour brake and were instructed to be polite to the police if they said anything to us and told to remember we weren’t allowed to discuss the experience we were going through with anyone who had not sat in it with us. Mel quickly ran through a generalized speech about the police and how some of us had old tapes regarding our dealings with them and that we needed to refrain from any conversation with them that was anything other than polite because the police were no longer our enemies. Then Mel disappeared through the back door down to his residence not to reappear again until some four hours later when the propheet was over and the cops were gone.
In the meantime, the deputy sheriffs made their way all over campus accompanied by a very congenial Dan and Carmen Earle (everywhere, that is, except for Mel’s residence).
I was smoking a cigarette on the porch and at one point they passed me and Dan said, “Here’s one of our students” and I smiled and introduced myself. I was a bit taken aback by the police’s suspicious demeanor, but I figured it didn’t have anything to do with me.
In fact the tour took so long, the smoothing over of the edges, that the propheet was cut short.
That day we were never told why the police were there.
It wasn’t until the next day that I was informed by Dan Earle that my grandfather had been on the campus the previous day and had been the cause of all the police activity due to his complaint at the sheriffs department. Dan made it seem as though it was really no big deal, and told me that my grandfather was just older and his generation just didn’t understand the kind of beautiful experience we were going through.
I was shocked and sad. I couldn’t believe I missed my grandfather, that he had been tricked by the spin doctors at RMA. I secretly wondered what would have happened if he would have seen me, and, sadly, I fantasized for many months after that he might return and take me away from that horrible place.
But it didn’t stop there.
The sheriffs department must have felt something strange was happening in the woods near Bonners Ferry, Idaho. They returned the next evening and had a look around the school again.
In fact they returned nearly every week for a month, and even ate dinner with us on several occasions, until Dan and Carmen finally convinced them that what was happening was not odd or out of the ordinary.
After that, the staff always laughed and told the house the funny story of when my grandfather had gotten them in hot water with the local authorities.
Dan Earle said my grandfather was responsible for initiating there public relations campaign with the Bonners Ferry Sheriffs Department.
For years after I graduated from RMA my grandfather would have me tell the story to family members, many of whom felt he had overstepped his bounds. He would say, “You know your grandfather loves you. I went right to the sheriffs and told them those people wouldn’t let me see my grandson and something wasn’t right and they had never even heard of that place before.”
This was in the fall of 1982 during the first few months of RMA’s opening.
It sure would be interesting to see that police report.
Chris Sims
RMA 82-84
January 1st, 2010 at 11:29 AM
That is an awesome story! I wish the cops had kept prying a little further, maybe even sent in a younger looking plant/informer with fake parents.
It would’ve saved some kids from years of trauma. Oh well.
January 1st, 2010 at 11:58 AM
I see that my point has been twisted a bit. To be expected, I guess, with so many emotions being dealt with.
First of all, Bill, forgiving is not necessarily forgetting, somethings can’t be forgotten, but hopefully you can still move on a bit from them and live your life.
I would never say what they did was right, nor were they above justice. Just because some time has passed, schools have closed and some have been brought to justice, doesn’t mean that justice has been fully won. I agree with you.
You’re preaching to the choir. Really, stop trying to convince me. Ask Liam, ask Heather. I’m all about what CAFETY is doing. I hope more regulation can be brought to bear, and if they insist on taking away kids rights, and can’t operate within regulations and safety of the children they’re entrusted with, they need to be shut down.
On a personal level, yes, I needed to let go to move on. If you feel that you can’t let go, that’s your choice you will live with. I just happen to feel that it’s a disproportionate amount of energy that I don’t want to waste anymore. I don’t want to HATE anybody or anything and I don’t want to teach that to my daughter.
As far as your mother goes, I don’t know that there’s any one document that states you MUST forgive in the Quaker faith, but it seems pretty inherent in the spirit of the religion. But, there are many different interpretations of how you can live your life in the faith, just as in Christianity as a whole. I really don’t have an answer for you on that one, because I can’t imagine rejecting hate, violence, aggression and other such ill feelings and still justifying holding on to a grudge; not being able to forgive your own son. That is not congruent with the faith as I understand it, so I’m at a loss as to what her deal is. I could see how this could cloud your perception and cause you to feel the way you do.
It may be confusing, but…
I don’t think everything that happened at Cedu/RMA should just be swept under the rug and forgotten, nor can I devote venomous energy to pursuing them and wishing them harm. So, I approve what Liam is doing because its something I can’t do. It brings the whole sordid history to light and exposes all the dirty secrets. It lets people make up their own minds about what happened, why it happened and if it should continue to happen elsewhere.
Hopefully, this clears up where I’m coming from.
January 1st, 2010 at 4:51 PM
There does seem to be alot of chatter about bringing the evil doers to justice , along with alot of hyperventelating and loud violin music playing the background.[Though it beats John Lennon anytime.] If the goal is A. some kind of monitary payment.or B. an 8 by 10 cell for the evildoers , how do we really get there? Is evidence in the form of stories going to cut it?
January 1st, 2010 at 5:41 PM
Not that a good pity party isn’t worthwhile in itself. Sadly, my view of things was formed by my own culpibility in the process of how I got to cedu. Pracilla Blake and dr buchalottio recomended only Anaawakee for me . During my parents tour of the facilities they were not allowed to inspect the inside of one building and my mother decided that was a deal breaker. I was told that I had to go somewhere [I was very unmotivated/depressed]My mother and I toured Desisto in Florida and we mutualy agreed after seeing a girl led about on a rope with a sign on her that read ‘I am a whore’ that this wasn’t the place. Cedu really fooled me at first glance , A big ski lodge with a fine library and happy, hugging people every where. I knew it wasnt as bad as those other places and indeed Anaawakee was closed down for the staff sodamising the inmates. 20 victims recieved half a million apiece. So I envy those who were kidnapped in the middle of the night, they can blame others.I have no one to blame but myself.
January 1st, 2010 at 6:04 PM
Telling the story is a very important aspect. Without the story there is nothing. It is the only thing that matters. The story takes precedent over everything else.
I am in total agreement that definitive steps need to be taken, and, as for myself, I have plenty of time and energy to devote to this purpose. It, as I’m sure with everyone who went through this experience and who is currently having it visited upon them, is tantamount to my emotional health and sanity.
There is a tendency to say lets move on and live our lives and quit dwelling in the past. I totally understand this.
But reducing this experience, which is often embarrassing and difficult to revisit, to trivialities is dangerous. We are all grown now and many of us have children of our own
and what happened when we were children sometimes seems like incidents very distant and long ago – incidents that need to be resolved internally so we can move on with our lives and quit dwelling in the past, crying over spilled milk so to speak.
To a degree this is true. We can not let ourselves become embittered, which for many years I was, by what happened at CEDU/RMA. But expressing opinions and memories about what happened at that particular time when we were all students at CEDU/RMA is anything but wallowing in our misery. Anyone who takes the time to add to this totem in regards to his or her experience is taking a step in the direction which leads to understanding and sorting through this mess.
In short you can not expect everyone to be willing to move on and bury these experience in an embracing of happiness and joy in their present day lives. There are many different levels of damage that young people experienced at this school and its clones, and, once again, lets not forget that these places are still in operation in one form or another.
The new year is upon us and I think we are all moving in the right direction. It is important not to quibble about the way in which certain feelings about this place are represented. What is important is that we remain consistent in our need to express these things so that places like CEDU/RMA become exactly that: a historical curiosity from some time in the distant past.
How do we get there is a very important question.
Chris Sims
CEDU/RMA 82-84
January 1st, 2010 at 9:27 PM
I am sorry Robert A. if you thought I was preaching to you or trying to convince you, personally, of anything. I was merely commenting on what you wrote and how I interpreted it. We seem to agree on a lot of points, that these programs are harmful, that we wish we could shut them down, that some justice would be nice.
One purpose of this site and the documentary is to communicate. To tell our stories, get it out there so others can get a sense of what we went through and hopefully get some of these related programs shut down. Everyone gets to interpret what they see here and come to their own conclusions.
When I responded to your Gone Baby Gone post, I was mostly trying to bring my reply around to the subjects I hear so often, which is that a lot of survivors seem to give staff a free ride by saying they didn’t do it to us intentionally, and how I believe they did. That they had to have known.
And you had discussed forgiving and forgetting, and Quakers, and I commented that my own mother is a Quaker and hadn’t forgiven me for events of 25 years ago. In fact, as recently as 2002 I located my birth family. I am adopted. Within a few months, my adopted family, Quaker mother included, were trying to convince (With great success) my birth family that I was still a horrible person because I missed some homework assignments when I was 12. I am 41 years old now. My point was that it would be nice for forgiveness to take place. The lack of it certainly damaged my relationship with my birth family. Holding grudges and anger for twenty five years hasn’t helped things obviously. In fact, the damage they caused to my relationship with my birth family had brought on even more anger.
Whereas time can heal wounds, it doesn’t help when the wounds are agitated further. In my case, twenty five years later, it was all coming out again. It is hard for me to move on and forgive when it is not in the past, but still in the present. And I blame the program for that. They did not update my parents when I was there about my positive developments, so when I graduated, my parents still thought I was worthless. And held that position from 1986 till 2002. I actually thought I was paranoid these last twenty five years, thinking my parents thought poorly of me, until 2002 came around. And that’s when I decided to hire a real psychologist, to help me figure out a way to change all that. And it is working.
It is damn hard for me to forgive what they did. My birth mother hasn’t spoken to me in six years and neither has my birth father. But whereas members of my adopted family held these views for so long, healing is taking place. Those relationships are now moving in a more positive direction. Whatever perceptions they once held, are being left in the past and they are starting to deal with me as the man I am today, not as a child. But it is still hard for me to know I have a birth mother out there that won’t speak to me, thinks I am a delusional crazy kid who might harm her. I know who put those thoughts in her head and forgiving those people is not easy because the problem still exists.
I know forgetting is next to impossible. Perhaps when I am ninety and senile that might be possible.
I guess what I am trying to say is that forgiveness is not needed for progress to be made. Moving on, moving forward isn’t the same as forgiving. I have managed to move on from some of the events of 2002. I have managed to change the relationships I have to a more positive heading. I didn’t need to forgive what was done.
In that same context, I have moved on from Rocky Mountain Academy. What was done to me then doesn’t really have much bearing or impact on me today. But I haven’t forgiven what was done mainly because those same things are still being done today to other kids. And I certainly cannot forget what they did to us either. For me the positive change would be to get places like these shut down. Not forgive and forget. To shine a light on what staff former and current have done and are still doing, so others who have the authority to investigate and take action, do so.
So being able to move on and live my life today I don’t think requires me to forgive anyone. Rocky Mountain Academy doesn’t hold me back. I actually find it quite a healing experience to discuss what happened and how we can stop it from continuing to happen to others.
January 1st, 2010 at 9:41 PM
Chris,
That story about your grandfather arriving at RMA is too cool. It just goes to show that they had a vested interest in maintaining secrecy about the program. Keeping your grandfather out and not letting him see what was going on. Coddling the police so they would think everything was wonderful.
Your grandfather knew immediately something was up. He knew that a school that denies contact between parents and their kids has to be wrong. He heard the loud music and crying and didn’t hesitate.
I am surprised the police did not force the school to allow your grandfather to see you, just to calm him and let him see you were alright. But considering how many students ran away each year and how the police never seemed to be too curious about why so many kids from such a small school would run away, I guess in hindsight it can’t be too surprising.
That the staff had to admonish all of you not to speak about what went on in the Propheet, while at the same time shutting the Propheet down immediately so the police could not observe, is very revealing. If nothing bad was taking place, why the need for secrecy? If this was all good and healthy, why not advertise that by showing everyone?
By the way, were you old enough to be legally smoking? I always wondered why nobody acted on the fact that all of these kids were smoking despite it being illegal for most of them to be doing so. I understand why the school provided cigarettes, I just think a police officer watching dozens of kids smoking would be a little curious and want to possibly ask a few how old they were. How did they get away with that from a legal standpoint?
Great story. Happy New Year!
January 1st, 2010 at 11:02 PM
I’m just wondering…
Briefly does anyone know of any attempts to contact the Bonners Ferry’s DA or Running Spring’s DA in regards to holding those in charge of this debacle responsible for their actions? I don’t believe there is a statute of limitations in regards to child abuse. This would certainly be a positive step in the right direction.
I also remember the San Jose Mercury News had an article in the paper ten years ago that indicated an education at CEDU was as expensive as Stanford. Perhaps they would be interested in a followup piece regarding the truth about these places and the impact on the children who went there.
Chris Sims
CEDU/RMA
82-84
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:40 AM
My favorite memory about Mel Wasserman was the time he was verbaly abusing this big southern boy,a young man I should say , he was in his early 20s and was a former herion addict and as he was digging on a building site Mel yelled at the top of his lungs “C’mon put your back into it or your gonna be dead within 5 years” . Southern boy tossed the shovel over at Mel and said , Why don’t you show me how its done , fat boy.” A real cool hand luke moment. He disapeared a few days later and my instincts tell me it was not good . I like to think that it worked out for him though, he had some real balls. Other strange but true events ,during one of Mels drunken last lights he hypnotized those who were willing, just for fun. One boy went pretty far under and so Mel focused on him and had him being a chicken , then a monkey ,ect, ect. The kid remembered none of it. ALso there was this character that had been at cedu for over ten years and thought Mel was a god, he was related to the russian royal family and was from switzerland and very rich. He was in his late forties and was excused from all labor and raps and propheets. He would spend all morning in the big bathroom washing his hands over and over and grooming his hair and beard. Whomever was on house crew was instructed just to go around him. Thanks Liam ,Chris , Bill ,everone,I haven’t thought about this stuff in a long time.If you guys hadn’t lived too ,I’m sure it would seem unbelievible.
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:36 AM
http://www.teenliberty.org/RMA.htm
I started perusing the above archive of articles about CEDU which appeared in the SPOKESMAN-REVIEW, a local rag in the Bonners Ferry area.
Check out the articles on Armstrong. What a sweet heart. Except that one article where he had to pay a settlement to the female employee he drug-raped. Ouch. Just the kind of worker you want to have around at RMA in 1982. Ouch. (Armstrong an “intervention specialist” who delivers kids to private behavioral schools and camps in North Idaho was ordered by a federal jury to pay a former employee $164,595 for allegedly drugging and raping her.)
With CEDU – with this highly lucrative industry in general: “… the bullshit piles up so quickly at CEDU you need wings to stay above it … ”
Where are we going to find a Law Firm with the balls to go after this bunch of creeps? The amount of money these companies bring in is staggering. The amount these companies have paid out to the privileged few is outrageous. It is time to compensate the victims of these greedy jerks. It is time that “the child within” Chris and Rob and a thousand other adults be compensated for the quackery that was committed upon them.
January 2nd, 2010 at 8:19 AM
“Billy Jack,” the strangely horrible 1971 independent film starring ex-marine turned independent filmmaker Tom Laughlin, was a very integral part of the program at CEDU/RMA. I watched it no less than eight times in the two years I was in attendance at the school from 1982 to 1984.
Whereas “The Prophet” by Kahil Gabran was the bible of CEDU/RMA, “Billy Jack” was its adopted celluloid representation of its dogma much the same as Eisenstien’s silent classic “Intolerence” was to the Russian communist revolution or Leni Refinstahl’s cinematic masterpiece “Triumph of the Will” was to the Nazi Party. The only difference was that the two Russian and German tyrannies actually produced the two startlingly brilliant films themselves whereas CEDU/RMA merely lifted their propaganda piece from a shoddy B movie.
It wasn’t enough to just watch the crappy film. We actually had to have a house meeting every time before it was shown and listen to different staffers testimonials as to the deep meaning the film represented to themselves as well as the important historical aspects it represented in regards to the origins of CEDU.
I remember Dan Earle giving an impassioned speech, replete with tears in his eyes, about how shocked he was the first time he saw the film because as he put it “It was almost like they had made a documentary about CEDU. It was really unbelievable that someone who knew nothing about CEDU was able to make a film about a similar place without having even heard about the school before. Many people are on the same page with CEDU. This proves that you don’t necessarily have to have gone to CEDU to be in touch with the deeper meanings of life, which of course are really the deeper universal meanings known since the dawn of time to people who know themselves.”
The song “One Tin Soldier,” the film’s opening theme performed by Coven (a group which interestingly enough prior to their having performed the opening title to “Billy Jack” had put out one other album featuring the three members on the cover in black and red robes entitled “Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls”) was also a very important propheet song which popped up in numerous propheets. It was played over and over again as a musical accompaniment to our misery in understanding how poorly we were living our lives prior to arriving at the for-profit promised land of CEDU/RMA.
During Christmas of 1981, roughly seven months prior to being sent to CEDU/RMA, I remember being in Hattiesburg, Mississippi for the annual extended family get together. After the large turkey dinner, as was the tradition, all of the relatives gathered in my great aunt’s large living room to let their dinners settle and see if there was something interesting on television to watch collectively. For some reason “Billy Jack,” hardly a yuletide film, was on TV. Someone turned it on and everyone was mesmerized.
My family was comprised of four uncles who were lawyers, my father, who was a chemical engineers, etc., and myself, a fifteen-year-old teenager.
The film was so bad that it was fascinating. My dad and uncles were roaring at the absurdity of its plot line and the poor amateurish quality of the acting. It was kind of like the “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Every time Jean from the Freedom School, Billy Jack’s girlfriend, would appear on the screen someone in the room would inevitably blurt out “Put some makeup on!” There were numerous impressions and jabs made at the flat acting and poorly delivered lines of the film. One scene, when Jean from the Freedom School narrates Billy Jack’s spiritual path of enlightenment, was particularly memorable: “Billy will be bit by a rattlesnake. If he lives he will be a blood brother to a rattlesnake. If he does not he will be dead.” The flatly delivered lines are followed by an abrupt jump cut of the sun rising with Billy Jack in the foreground wearing an indian head dress holding the rattlesnake in both hands above his head to accompanying dramatic music. I remember someone in my family commenting, “Well, I guess that means he’s a blood brother to a rattlesnake,” and we all laughed until tears ran down our cheeks. The movie was so bad that the participation with my family at Christmas watching it collectively, happily poking fun at it’s shoddiness, marks it as one of the fondest memories I’ve ever had of viewing a film.
But it wasn’t just that the movie was so bad that made it so good. It was, as one of my relatives put it, that it represented the burned out flaky, self important culture of the late 60’s/early 70’s hippie culture and the burgeoning Me Generation that everyone outside of California hated about California, even though the film took place near an indian reservation in Arizona.
(Of course at that time I had no idea the importance this would serve during the next few years of my life.)
I often wonder now when thinking about “Billy Jack.” What it was about the film that so captured the attention of Mel Wasserman and the staff at CEDU. Which characters in the film did the various staff identify with? Did Mel Wasserman see himself as a male version of Jean from the Freedom School? Did Dan Earle cast himself in the role of Billy Jack stridently defending the image and sanctity of CEDU from outside evildoers? Neither the property of CEDU nor RMA were situated on an indian reservation, and most, if not all of the staff, with the exception of Carmen Earle, were white. Similarly CEDU/RMA were certainly not Freedom Schools in name or action. They restricted and made unacceptable almost every freedom imaginable. So what was it about “Billy Jack” that made those in charge of CEDU and RMA see themselves reflected in the characters and plot of the film?
Maybe it was the idea of some outside evil entity, i.e. parents, euphemistically slaughtering the students inner childs prior to our having arrived at CEDU/RMA, that bore in the minds of the staff a resembelance to the evil townspeople slaughtering wild mustangs in the film’s opening credits? Perhaps when Billy Jack was forced to take action against the townspeople who harassed the children as they tried to buy ice cream Mel and his staff saw all of the difficulty they had in selling themselves to the small towns near the remote locations where they had chosen to locate their cults? Who knows for sure? Maybe it was just a cathartic release seeing Billy Jack physically subdue the townspeople in such a way that Mel and Dan and the other staff would have secretly like to have done themselves if the law would have allowed?
I remember during one of my last viewings of the film, a few months prior to my graduating. The whole house assembled for the semi-quarterly viewing of “Billy Jack.” It started with the usual accompanying propagandizing speech by Dan Earle with the standard references of its importance to CEDU/RMA from a historical perspective.
When they showed the film though the desired effect was lost. All of the students in the house laughed and made comments. Once again the film was so bad it was good.
The staff that were supervising nervously tried to subdue us. But it was no use. After all, it was just a movie. From the opening to the end everyone joined in ridiculing the silly film. It was just as fun as it was in Hattiesburg, Mississippi a few years earlier all over again.
After the movie was over, a staff member approached me and three or four older students. He tried to tell us that we were out of line. He said this was a very important film to him. He suggested we were laughing at him and everything the school stood for when we laughed at “Billy Jack.” I remember telling him, “It’s only a movie, Bob. For chrissakes.” And he responded, “Maybe to you it’s only a movie.”
I have to admit upon arriving at CEDU, for the two weeks I was there,prior to driving in a caravan to Bonners Ferry to start RMA, my first impression of the school was that it reminded me of “Billy Jack.” In fact years later one of my friends back home used to always say “I can’t understand why your parents sent you to that Billy Jack school.”
I guess in the final synopsis I was just confused as to why my parents had turned me over to such a horrible B movie version of the world and had allowed its fans to be in control of my life for two years.
I thought they knew that movie sucked.
Chris
CEDU/RMA 82-84
January 3rd, 2010 at 4:31 AM
I was wondering if the buildings at CEDU were mostly houses? At RMA, all of the buildings that went up seemed to be houses that served as dorms while we were there, but I always had this feeling the intent was to later subdivide the property as family housing.
I later heard that the schools were also a property investment of Wasserman’s, so this suggests to me that buildings were houses since they would sell better. I don’t think actual dormitory buildings or the typical school buildings would sell. Even the giant Denali lodge was house-shaped.
In what little I saw of CEDU in the documentary, some of the buildings looked like houses. And at RMA, in the field they built the “Field House” and later I think they put up a second one. And not just any old place, but perfectly lined up with the first one, like a housing project.
January 3rd, 2010 at 12:35 PM
At CEDU there was a main lodge poised on the side of the cliff overlooking San Bernadino. It was built in the late 30’s by film actor Walter Houston, star of the “Treasure of the Sierra Madrea” and father of director John Houston and grandfather of actress Angelica Houston. It had a huge stone fireplace in the living room, and there was a swimming pool in front of the lodge. There were smaller residual buildings of a prefabricated type, which were used as dormitories, scattered around the property.
Chris
RMA/CEDU
82-84
January 4th, 2010 at 12:41 PM
Just reconsidering my comments regarding violins, pity parties , my own culpibility, and middle of the night kidnappings. Perhaps I was being a little harsh on all of us. I wouldn’t be so facinated with this site if I were really over it. Like a lot of us, my parents waffled between overindulgence and apathy in regards to me. When things got tough, call in the experts and, upon their recomendation , have the problem sent off to a special place.In my family, on my mothers watch, it became a brutal rite of passage that all three of her children had to undergo.[Though I think the Stockbridge school that my sister went to was kind of soft.] But for us there was no other way, we were off track, what else was to be done?
January 4th, 2010 at 5:18 PM
My parents had a way of making decision without involving me in the process. I loved the ritual of going to yet another shrink who was already told by my parents ahead of time what my problems were. So no need for the shrink to take the time to ask me any questions, figure out on their own if my parents were correct about me, or really take the time to get to know me personally. Kind of like RMA.
They loved tests, and I always do well on tests, so the result was they were baffled why I could score so high, yet perform so poorly in school. Boredom never seemed to be an answer. As such, none came to any conclusions my parents accepted, so I was eventually sent to yet another shink to get the answer my parents wanted. Eventually RMA was the solution. I think they felt they did all they could. In fact, I know it.
Both my parents worked, and not just an eight hour day, but more like twelve. There was no time, no energy and no apparent desire to work with a problem teen. Society says to send them to shrinks, so they do. RMA sold themselves as the ultimate cure-all. A lot of people fall for false advertising. I don’t think they considered the ramifications if this cure-all didn’t work as advertised. The long term effects of two years of slow poison.
January 8th, 2010 at 12:00 AM
ahahha Great story Chris
January 10th, 2010 at 10:41 AM
After spending a year at RMA, I received my dating privileges.
Michael Parr, the original teenage bounty hunter (meaning a grown man who hunts teenagers of the rich), who later opened his own for profit child behavior modification school in Colorado, only to have it shut down by the authorities for physically abusing the kids, captured my future girlfriend for $10,000 from a crash pad in San Francisco and plopped her down on a couch in Northern Idaho just as she was crashing on speed.
I was vacuuming the floor in the main lodge of the building when I first saw her. There were only 12 students at RMA. It had been in operation for two months. Only three out of the 12 were girls. The prospects for romance were slim. You had to be there a year in order to receive your dating privileges.
The teenage bounty hunter had bought her to the school sometime in the middle of the previous night. I remember immediately being drawn to her. She was completely oblivious to her surroundings, sleeping soundly. Her hair was blue. It stuck out stiffly in all directions from an application of gelatin. Black mascara ran down her cheeks. But I think it was what was written on her sneaker that really attracted me to her–”Glom, glom, glom, glom, conglomerate” all the way around her shoe ending in a frowning smiley face. As I vacuumed around her sleeping form passed out on the couch, it was this statement, coupled with her punk rock aesthetic that drew me to her.
A day later when I repeated my chore, she was still sleeping on the couch in the living room. But then she started stirring and finally awoke. She sat up from her slumber like some methed-out version of Nosferatu, and asked me “Where the fuck am I?”
“In Northern Idaho.”
“Where?”
“Bonners Ferry, Idaho.”
“What?”
“15 miles from the border of Canada.”
“What the fuck am I doing in fucking Idaho?”
I explained to her that Michael Parr had bought her there from San Francisco. She fell back to sleep.
It was sort of like love at first sight. The possibilities for companionship were slim. But still there was some hope. It was nearly a year before I was granted the right to touch her with the blessing of staff approval.
At that time Carmen Earle was in charge of all dating. Any and everything to do with dating privileges went through her.
Once I had made a decision during my first months of being at RMA to follow their agreements no matter the difficulty those agreements placed upon my personal autonomy, I was given a lot of freedom and responsibility within those restrictive constraints: I was a dorm head. I was in charge of ordering all of the commissary items for the student store. I was the leader of a work crew. I was in charge of Saturday night entertainment. All of these responsible actions, combined with me having sat through the last of the seven propheets, Imagine, led to the final reward of me being allowed to request the possibility of receiving my dating privileges.
Luckily my prospective girlfriend had taken a similar path of responsibility, and since we were both into punk rock music, which we couldn’t talk about, we shared a mutual flowering attraction for one another.
I remember trying to gain an audience with Carmen to discuss my request to be allowed to date. It was difficult. She was very busy. It took me nearly a week of pestering her. Then finally she agreed to meet with me on a Sunday afternoon.
I was 17 at the time and my prospective love interest was 16. You could actually receive your fucking privileges, but you both had to be eighteen. I knew that was out of the question. Besides when it came to dating privileges, it was just like anything at RMA, you had to slowly obtain each level of the privilege, which if you handled appropriately, would lead to another level of the privilege which summarily would build one on top of the other gaining in scope and freedom. But I knew that we would never receive our fucking privileges. She was too young. When we graduated she would only be 17.
There were four levels to the dating scene at RMA: kissing privileges, breast touching privileges, heavy petting privileges, fucking privileges. Each one could only be granted after close review and scrutiny by Carmen Earle. (If you did not stick with the program and tried to jump from one privilege to the other without first getting permission you would lose your dating privileges forever and wind up doing a full time.)
When I finally met with Carmen, a 45-year-old woman with a fiery temperament, it was very awkward and difficult to explain my request. I remember saying, “Carmen, you know, I feel like I have grown so much during the last year at RMA. I mean, so many doors are opening for me. I’ve gotten in touch with so many feelings. I’ve taken on lots of responsibility. I’m learning new things about myself everyday. Can I have my dating privileges?” Then I quickly told her the name of the girl I was interested in dating.
Carmen looked out of the window, put two fingers to her lips, and paused a moment in deep reflection. Then finally she said, “Yes, Chris, I think you a ready for your dating privileges.”
I was elated. Finally after a year, a year of habitual masturbation and total abstinence, I was going to be allowed to grope the object of my desire.
Carmen told me she was going to talk with my perspective girlfriend and see if she felt the same way about me. But first she told me the agreements surrounding being granted my dating privileges. “You must make sure you run a very clean program. Don’t cut corners. Only engage in dating privileges that you have been approved for. In your case that is kissing. At first you may only kiss. You must not go any further than kissing until you receive further approval. Is that understood?”
I eagerly nodded in agreement. Kissing seemed worlds beyond the general isolation of Western Family Lotion and the palm of my hand.
“Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, you must leave the property to go on your date. No dating must ever be done on campus. That is very important. You don’t want one of the younger students stumbling over you on your date while you are kissing. You would make them very jealous. You are one of only four people at RMA who have their dating privileges. If you are caught on campus dating, your privileges will be taken away forever.
“Thirdly you are not allowed to discuss your dating privileges with anyone other than the person you are dating and me. Do I make myself clear?”
I told her that I understood completely the importance and need for discretion.
She asked when I was thinking about going on my first date. I told her I wanted to go see a movie with my prospective girlfriend the following Saturday.
She spoke with the girl. Everything was in place. We went into Bonners Ferry to see the film “Footloose.”
I don’t remember the movie. Just lots of impassioned kissing in the squeaky seats. We left the movie early and continued kissing next to a dumpster by the theater exit. After a while we moved down a side street and kissed more. Then there was more kissing near some railroad tracks. Then back to the secluded space between the dumpster and the exit of the movie theater for yet a little more kissing.
Soon it was three hours later and we had to return to RMA. I was in love, and very frustrated.
A couple of weeks passed, and a few more dates. It was the same each time. We ended up next to the dumpster, etc. The problem was the whole experience was totally frustrating, and we had nowhere to go.
Still, I was determined to reach the next level of groping. Once again, I began soliciting Carmen for an interview. She agreed to speak with me later that day.
It was the same thing all over again. Except this time she debriefed me on the dates, how they were going, and any problems I might be having. I informed her everything was going extremely well. I let her know that I was totally in control of my hormones. I said, that despite the extreme desire to go further, we had remained in agreement and had only kissed. Then I launched into a general overview of my performance at RMA again, my positive experiences, achievements and contributions. Then I ended my assessment abruptly and asked “Can I have my breast touching privileges?” My cheeks were flushed. My heart beat quickly.
Carmen paused and leaned back in her chair. She seemed to be thinking deeply, turning my request over in her mind, as she looked out of the second floor window down onto a field of students sawing wood. “Chris,” she finally said,”it is true, you have grown a great deal. You have stayed in agreement and been a real leader around RMA. You participate actively in raps and prophets. You are doing fantastically well. You are a dorm head and organize Saturday entertainment. Yes, Chris, you can have your breast touching privileges.”
I was elated! Things seemed to be going very well. I couldn’t have been happier. I really was doing well! Now, I had moved onto the next level! I could stay in agreement and touch breasts!
Of course, Carmen had to first speak with my companion and ask her if she wanted her breasts touched. She had to debrief her on the current state of our dating and make certain that we were all on the same page.
I had already discussed my plan with my love interest prior to my latest meeting with Carmine. We both were in agreement that we wanted this. We both felt mature enough to handle this situation. We were almost adults. After all, this is one of the things that young people in love approaching adulthood did together.
As I left the office Carmen noticed the girl I was dating having a conversation in the dinning room area of the main lodge and she called her into the office to discuss the matter with her.
I hung around for a minute talking about the weather with the cook Kindra. I could see Carmen’s hands moving animatedly through the window of the office. She seemed to be saying quite a lot. I hoped the girl that I was dating wouldn’t blow it. I hoped she would just say whatever they wanted to hear so I could fondle her breasts in and around Bonners Ferry, Idaho.
But the suspense was killing me. It was taking too long. So I finally went outside and took a walk down to the pond and waited for my girlfriend (this was our designated meeting spot).
About thirty minutes passed. It seemed like three years. Then finally she came running down from the path to the pond. I could tell by the elated way she was running that our request had been granted: l could touch her breasts. We both embraced joyously.
I said, “She said yes? Right?” She nodded in agreement and then we hugged again.
It was Monday. The dating usually occurred on the weekends. That was four days away. I didn’t want to seem too eager, but I also didn’t want to wait that long either. We had our privileges and we wanted to use them as quickly as possible. I remember trying to come up with a reason to go into town mid-week. But alas I was not able to fabricate a reason and had to wait until the following weekend to implement my concession.
In the meantime I was falling more and more deeply in love with my girlfriend. It was the only form of escapism in the otherwise dreary reality of daily life at RMA. We constantly found opportunities to meet with one another and go on walks, but we didn’t dare “date” on campus due to not wanting to have anything jeopardize the small amount of freedom we were enjoying.
To my surprise I received approval for a mid-week bike ride off of the property with my girlfriend. We were excused from Wednesday raps, which afforded a few hours to explore our sensual desires before dinner.
At the appointed time we rode our bikes off of the property, pretty much just outside the gates of the school. We hid our bikes under some branches and leaves, then hiked a quarter of a mile into the woods where we feverishly fell upon each other.
It was better than I imagined it would be. I touched, pinched, jiggled, and kneaded my girlfriend’s breasts with wild abandon. We kissed and rolled around on the ground. Then there was more groping. Then there was more kissing. We were covered in dirt and leaves.
Three hours passed in what seemed like five minutes. We made sure to follow the agreements, doing nothing more than we were allowed. Then it was time to go back and I helped her put her bra back on. We dusted each other off, smoothed out the rough edges, then found our bikes and peddled back up the road to RMA.
On Friday and Saturday we went to see movies. Our love was really blossoming. We watched about one minute of the movies then left through the emergency exit to our favorite spot next to the dumpster. We moved around to the usual various rendezvous exploring our love.
This went on for two weeks.
But then I was feeling very frustrated. Like I said earlier, due to our age differential, I knew we would never get our fucking privileges, and this in and of itself was very frustrating, but even more frustrating than that was that the wall of exploration was not being pushed forward with what at first seemed like a privilege: breast touching. At first it had been fantastically fun and exciting. I thought about them all the time. They seemed to dominate my young imagination: their pendulous sway was fantastic. But very quickly admiration turned to provocation and we both agreed that we needed more. We needed to go to the next level. We were ready.
Four weeks had lapsed since we first received our dating privileges. Now I had to return to Carmine again and try to convince her that we deserved to have our heavy petting privileges. (We both agreed we needed the release that this privilege would provide.)
I was dreading speaking with her. I was beginning to feel like a pervert. Was my carnal appetite too rapacious? Would it be possible to ask for my heavy petting privileges without seeming lecherous and overly horny? I was scared, but me and my girlfriend discussed it and decided that it was an important level of growth and development we both had to experience together in order to move that much closer to becoming responsible, well adjusted adults.
The next day I waited around for Carmine to get out of a staff meeting. I stood around the office looking busy, ordering supplies for the commissary, waiting for her to emerge so I could schedule a meeting with her. Finally a little bit before lunch she came out of her office, walking briskly in the opposite direction of me. I could have sworn she was avoiding me. But I followed her and told her I needed to speak with her when she had the time. I wanted to reach the next plateau. I was feeling very bold.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’ll only take a minute.”
“Can it wait until later?”
“I promise it’s quick.”
“You’re sure it can’t wait?”
“Two minutes.”
We made our way to her office. Very quickly, I once again reviewed my past achievements, then, despite my sudden embarrassment, I blurted it out, “Can we have our heavy petting privileges?”
“And this couldn’t wait, Chris?” I knew I was in trouble.
“I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“Chris, you are doing wonderfully, but you’re moving too fast.”
“It’s been a month.”
“First you get your kissing privilege, then two weeks later you get your breast touching privileges. This is unprecedented.”
“I’m just asking because I wasn’t aware that there was a fixed time for any of these privileges.”
“I understand. There is nothing written in stone about dating privileges because it is up to the discretion of the staff member in charge.”
“How long do you think is an acceptable amount of time to wait to ask for my heavy petting privileges?”
“That is uncertain. You are very young.”
“I’m 17 and very responsible.”
“She’s very young.”
“16,” I said. “That’s about the age that things of this sort happen isn’t it?”
“You are going too fast.”
“I think we’re both ready for this,” I pleaded.
“Why don’t we just keep things the way they are now?”
“Maybe in a month or two?” I pressed.
“Chris, I don’t know if I ever see you getting your heavy petting privileges.”
“I mean I can understand we are both under 18 and we can’t…”
“This is the end of this discussion. You are lucky to be able to kiss and touch breasts. Don’t press the issue. Most people at RMA can only touch themselves.”
“Sure.”
There were more dates. It was all the same. More kissing. More touching. A little dry humping in and around Bonners Ferry. But there was no cathartic release. There was no satisfaction. Each time there was just more fodder for my fantasies that led to more and more self groping.
The bad thing was my maturity level for handling this relationship within the restrictive confines of RMA was very low. I never broke the agreements. I always stopped just short of heavy petting. And the more frustrated I became, the more I perceived frustration as love.
My outlook on the future of my relationship was somewhere in the clouds. I imagined myself living with my girlfriend for the rest of our lives.
But then there was this trip to Europe. There were 6 students chosen to go. Me and my girlfriend were amongst the chosen few. It was 4 weeks in Europe. Everyone was very excited. But unfortunately my father refused to pay any more money beyond tuition for this extracurricular activity. My spot was forfeited to another student and I had to stay behind.
Apparently my girlfriend fell for my replacement while overseas. It was bound to happen: Paris, Berlin, Rome. I knew it before it even happened. I didn’t stand a chance.
When they returned from Europe, my girlfriend and I were finished. I was devastated.
I remember sitting up in the living room of the old lodge ordering supplies for the student store with my best friend and coworker. At that time all of the girl’s dorms were underneath the living room on the backside of the building.
You could hear the muffled sounds of voices coming up from the floorboards beneath our feet.
Much to my chagrin, I could hear the voices of my girlfriend and her new boyfriend spilling through the floorboards. It was clearly audible.
They were not following the agreements.
Boy, I sure felt like an idiot for having followed the rules so closely.
Two weeks later I graduated.
January 10th, 2010 at 9:24 PM
I can vouch that this is all true as I was there. I did know about the 2nd base privilages, we were” older students”and had some leeway as to the boundries, at least conversationly. It was a vicarious thrill to hear about these exploits on the one hand and while envious at the time , I feel very lucky that my early dating was done on my own terms. What I have to question is , was this a set up, an almost impossible situation for a boy of that age? Wouldn’t Carman expect Chris to go too far and then break one of the two though cross examination? The end result, full time and perhaps another six months/15,0001984$On the other hand ,it may have been just a little extra mental torture.The third option , that it may have been in the best intrests of Chris’s emotional development, well, I’ll pass on that one.
January 10th, 2010 at 11:24 PM
Great story Chris -
I find it hard to believe that you were fooled into playing by the rules. Also the insanity of having to ask a 45 year old woman if you could jam it into maryjane rottencrotch … Well, it just seems weird.
Anyways, I hav been searching high and low to find a law firm that will take on CEDU/Wasserman/et al, I think most attorneys are pretty gun shy after the failed Brown Schools case in Austin, where Brown schools filed for chapter 11 instead of paying some pretty trivial judgments (considering Brown Schools brought in $76 million a year).
We will get there though eventually. We’ll make ‘em pay.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:55 PM
I woke up this morning thinking about the “I Want to Live” Propheet. My first thought had to do with John Denver and how much I hated his Muppet-like, happy-go-lucky, John Lennon spectacle-adorned persona. His stupid blond, shoulder length hair and user friendly Roy Rogers face somehow disturbs my aesthetic sensibilities beyond reason. The fucked-up thing is the fact that John Denver has any sort of influence in my life at all. He was loved by millions precisely because of his non-intrusive image: seeming somewhere between a Muppet and a man, much the same as a fish seems halfway between a plant and a pet He was completely forgettable to the public at large, and that is what made him lovable to America. But due to my experiences at CEDU/RMA I’m not normal. Thanks to Mel’s robotic schlock masters implanting permanent seeds of schmaltz, I have an unreasonable amount of disdain for this chortling, eco-friendly bard of the touchy-feely. Instead of waking up and hearing the birds and seeing the sunshine and the blue sky out of my window and feeling blessed to be alive and experiencing the glory of life I’m thinking about John Denver and his song and an experience I had 27 years ago. My soul is programmed and imprinted with the stamp of CEDU/RMA’s Birkenstock boot stomp. The experiences they imposed have flowered into a constant source of reflection.
Of course music in general was important at CEDU/RMA. Those in charge were very aware of its power. They banned it and controlled it to such a degree that most of it was considered unacceptable. Ultimately it was a powerful therapeutic tool used to subjugate us to their rule. The staff seemed hellbent on destroying any taste or love for music we had as students.
Their taste in music was dated even in 1982. It seemed hopelessly lost in the early to mid-70’s. John Lennon, Neil Diamond, and John Denver all had Propheets named after and themed around their turgid hits: “Imagine,” “He Aint Heavy (He’s My Brother),” and “I Want to Live.” It was a Logins and Messina nightmare, laced with seeds of Joni Mitchell and Kenny Rodgers, and the music was used to reduce us to gibbering sobbing fools, then conversely it was used to put us back together again and inspire confidence. In fact Mel and company used music much the same as the FBI used it torture the Branch Davidians in Waco before they burned them alive. I remember every Propheet, they had a stereo in place and there was a cassette tape suitcase filled with tapes that had the same song recorded over and over on them to provide a soundtrack to the therapeutic nightmare as it unfolded.
But thoughts of John Denver and the Propheet I Want to Live always lead to yet another artist Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix was not even in the same realm as John Denver. He was perhaps the most interesting electric guitarist to have ever lived. His death at the age of 27 was truly tragic (interestingly John Denver’s death at the age of 47 in a plane crash off the coast of Carmel, California barely registered as a blip on the radar of cultural significance). When Jimi Hendrix died the world truly lost a unique voice. Even mentioning him in the same sentence with John Denver is almost criminal, yet the program at CEDU/RMA made such vapid comparisons possible.
Deprived of sleep and crying over our total failings as human beings, as the sun came in through the windows in the early morning hours, I remember Carmine and Dan Earle telling us they were going to take us back to the streets. They said they were going to let us know how low we had sunk before arriving at CEDU. They said, “Look at the crap you put in your heads! Look at the shit you thought was cool! Listen to the confusion and negativity and see where it takes you. See where it leads you back to. Remember how it faced you in the direction of life instead of death.” Then they played it, “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix. I remember it was the first real music I had heard in six months. But in the world of CEDU Jimi Hendrix was so bad that his whole discography was completely unacceptable. In fact even talking about it would wind you up on a fulltime throwing rocks from on pile into another or digging holes and filling them up for at least a week.
“Purple haze all through my brain/ Lately days don’t seem the same.” Some of my fellow students in my peer group seemed to go with it. Their sobbing increased steadily while Dan and Carmine continued to point out that it had been a soundtrack to our own slow suicides prior to our arrivals at CEDU/RMA.
But it had an opposite effect on me and some of the other students. We actually liked the song and my best friend actually became very angry. When they finished playing the song and asked him where he was at. He said he resented Dan and Carmine for playing the song of an artist he loved and respected. He said, “What am I supposed to do, drool like one of Pavlov’s dogs whenever I hear this song in the future?”
“Look at how you still cling to negative thinking and the garbage of the past,” was Dan Earle’s response. There was no room for discourse that was of a contrary opinion.
I think John Denver, the good one, and Jimi Hendrix, his evil nemesis, clearly illustrates the mindset of those in charge. On the one hand you had dated kitsch and on the other total genius. We were expected to embrace the inferior artistic achievements of John Denver over the creative angst of a truly compelling artist like Jimi Hendrix.
I just wonder if CEDU/RMA ever paid any royalties to John Lennon, Neil Diamond, or John Denver for having used their songs repeatedly as musical accompaniment to their profit making therapy venture? I’m certain they never paid the estate of Jimi Hendrix a dime.
Chris Sims
CEDU/RMA
82-84
January 14th, 2010 at 10:10 AM
Chris,
Neil Diamond’s son Jesse went to Cedu 86-88. Think about how crummy it would be to listen to those songs (while at cedu) and dealing with all of that and they are playing music by your father?
For me, “I Need You” by America and “You needed me” by Anne Murray are two songs that if I hear them in a grocery store, I still go nuts like a Pavlovian dog 20 years later. I am a huge collector of music and respect all types. However, it is still hard for me to appreciate some of the stuff we were tortured with. The memories just come flooding back to a room of 20 kids crying at the top of their lungs snotting to the floor with tissue all over the place.
I actually had a cedu dream last week. I have come to the conclusion it will never go away…
January 15th, 2010 at 2:09 AM
As per Edwards post, if you find an attorney to try to dole out some justice please post back here to let us know! I for one, would love to get even with Brown Schools..
As per Michael’s post above:
DEATH ROW SERIAL MOLESTER CONNECTED TO CEDU
http://ficanetwork.net/death-row-serial-molester-connected-to-cedu/
This is insane. I personally knew Jonathan Inman from the article above. I was at CEDU then. I remember staff telling us he ran down the backside. Then weeks or months later at a house around the pit they told us his remains had been found on the backside. To think now that he possibly was abducted and raped/murdered blows my mind. This is yet a further outrage to me that any kid should ever have been sent there or to any place with the same practices such as CEDU.. I do not remember the animals mentioned in the linked article above. The fact that such people were @ CEDU dealing with kids which in and of itself (CEDU) was such a mind warping fuck zone is utterly morose to me. I am so f*&^%ng pissed to have just read this article. Sick..
Liam, great job on all you do once again! Please do let me know how I could obtain a copy of the final product.
I hope everyone on here had a wonderful holiday and I hope you all have a safe prosperous New Year! God Bless..
Oh yeah, Johnny Propheet, trust me I still have the dreams too! A couple of times a month at least. Some are extremely vivid, whilst others are more vague. I personally think we have all been mentally stained with the sick shit we all went through at these schools. Hopefully one day the dreams will cease, yet it seems unlikely at least for now! For me when I have a CEDU dream the next day I smoke like a chimney drink coffee like there’s no tomorrow and do what I can to mentally bitch-slap myself so that I remember “It”s okay, it’s okay it was just a dream. You are not there anymore! You can do whatever you damn well please today!” Then I feel better!
Till next time….
Ian Z.
CEDU (Feb. 92-Apr. 94)
RMA (Apr. 94-Jun. 94)
January 15th, 2010 at 10:13 AM
Interesting that CEDU really stood for Charles E. Dederich University, after the founder of Synanon. We were always told that it stood for “You are what you do, not what you say you do.” The acronym CEDU, according to false legend of reinvented folklore, was painted on the mail box of the school by some hippie kid who loved the school for saving him from a lifetime of addiction. At least this is what Dan and Carmen Earle and Mel Wassermen were putting forth as the orgins of the name. I guess by 1982 they were already embarrassed, or afraid to have any association with the hero of their program.
Also, Johnny that was compelling information, about Mr. Diamonds son. Talk about the Twilight Zone.
Chris
82-84
January 15th, 2010 at 5:31 PM
What’s up with Montana, Tim Earle, Pat Stambuski? I was at RMA from the beginning. I can’t believe Pat Stambuski would ever be involved in any sort of “educational” program. He seemed more the construction worker type.
Tim Earle? I guess he’s just following in the old man’s footsteps. I went into Bonners Ferry and saw him appear in a play at Bonners Ferry High School back in 1983. We were both 17. The only difference was that his father, the director of RMA, thought it was more important that he receive an education at the local public high school, and my dad was bamboozled into believing that RMA was providing us with a decent education.
Anyway, my point is what’s up with Montana? And I guess these two clowns, Pat Stambuski (for some reason changed his name to Patrick McKenna) and Tim Earle, have teamed up to continue the unique form of torture known as RMA/CEDU. (See Monarch School of Montana. Funny how they relate a carnivorous program of attack therapy dedicated to ruining childrens’ lives to a gentle butterfly which feeds upon a poisonous herb milkweed, or maybe they are referring to a power mad king.)
Montana must be the last wild frontier of child abuse.
Chris Sims
First new student at RMA
82-84