Surviving Cedu

Two Stories recently submitted from CEDU/RMA Survivors:

I went to RMA in 1984 and graduated in 86.  I was 16 at the time I went up there and had a decent idea what the program would be like from what my parents said.  Although, who could possibly have imagined that a place like that existed.  If you haven’t been in a place like that, you just can’t imagine it.

My parents took me to a high school placement counselor in Atlanta who told me she wasn’t sure she had found a place for me at that time.  Then a month More >

I was handed this by one of the regular posters here (thanks Bill);

Find below instructions for the older student tour guide, on welcoming new students. Duties include the warm and inviting strip search we all were provided upon being dropped off on the mountaintop, (or wherever your Cedu-type school is/was located).

“Knowing the cracks” indeed! (click on image to expand).

In what private, therapeutic boarding school that you know of, do adult men and women get to strip search incoming and returning students, and later get to cuddle with them, while sharing stories of hardship and sexual abuse?

Welcome to Cedu! These strip searches More >

(Thanks to Michael G. and others for bringing this to my attention).

Confession was the central plank of the program at the CEDU “emotional growth” boarding school. We were made to confess to sins, real and imagined, day or night, at the whim of staff. We faced reams of empty paper, on which we were instructed to write our lists – “dirt lists,” “cop outs,” and “disclosures.”

“The Truth Shall Set You Free,” we were told, again and again. We were never told that the process we were experiencing was a direct lift from the Communist thought reform programs of Maoist China. We More >

Students and staff talk about two of the most “powerful” staff at Cedu…

The Cedu Documentary project is having the intended consequence of starting a conversation about abuses of teens in Cedu-type ‘therapeutic’ reform/re-education boarding schools; from the Oregonian newspaper, reporting on an investigation into the practices Cedu survivors know all too well:

Former students have posted on MySpace and Facebook numerous complaints about the school, ranging from what they characterized as humiliating group therapy sessions to sleep deprivation. Judson DeVries, who left the school in 2007, told The Oregonian he was forced into “very embarrassing” role-playing games.

“Humiliation. Food deprivation. Overwork. Taking away school credits as part of the punishment. Dressing up in French maid costumes More >