Parentectomy E-Book

Marty Gottesfeld

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

An engineer learns about the "troubled teen industry" when his girlfriend asks him to investigate the draconian residential treatment center her brother attends, Logan River Academy. He tries to resist getting involved in her family's matters at first, but when he uncovers the extent of the documented institutionalized abuse of children in America, he takes a technological approach to making a difference. 

Leseprobe

Marty Gottesfeld

Parentectomy

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Foreword – Welcome and Disclaimer – March 2016

Dear Reader,

By now, it’s very possible you’ve heard of me from the news and/or the United States Attorney’s Office. Whether you consider me a hero or a villain, I want you to remember what they did to Aaron Swartz, and to keep an open mind. One recurring theme in this book is that not everything is what it appears to be. To quote one of my heroes, “Villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.”

Everything that occurs in this book indeed occurred in the real world. Where possible, I have changed names to protect innocent, non-public figures. I am not able to change the names of public figures (even innocent ones,) as doing so would make it too difficult to verify factual statements.

However, I am writing this from a prison cell, without full access to my records. So I’ve pieced together the order of events using my recollection and some logic. It’s possible some events are out of order, especially near the beginning. I have taken some license to recreate dialogue which I don’t remember completely. The exact words are lost to time, but the critical parts are there, and nothing is embellished.

I should also warn you that this book deals with some dark topics. In particular child abuse and childhood suicide. I am by no means a softy, but I cry hard, and often for these kids. I am outraged by what befalls these children, and I will make no effort to shield you by masking the truth with euphemisms. If you choose to examine the sources I cite, prepare yourself and have tissues.

Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect,

Marty Gottesfeld

©2016 Martin Gottesfeld. All Rights Reserved.

This book is for everyone who has experienced institutional child abuse.

"Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman."

-Louis D. Brandeis

U.S. Supreme Court Justice from 1916-1939

Par∙ent∙ect∙omy (pâr'ənt-ěk'tə-mē) n., pl. –mies. 1. An aggressive legal-medical maneuver wherein one or both parents or guardians are torn from a child through the use of the legal system, coercion, and/or fraud, supposedly for the benefit and/or treatment of the child. 2. A specialty of both the troubled teen industry and Boston Children’s Hospital.

Chapter 1– Solitary Confinement – October 2013

Diana could tell I was disturbed. Almost immediately her expression mirrored mine of concern. “So?” She asked.

I puffed my cheeks, exhaled, sat down and put my hand on her knee. “Have you heard of solitary confinement?” I asked her.

“I’ve heard of it, but go on…” she replied. Diana had never known anyone who had done any time.

I told her, “Solitary confinement is when a person is put in a cell by themselves for days at a time.”

“Ok,” she said. She didn’t seem to understand the full reality.

I explained, “It might not sound like a big deal. In fact, that’s part of the reason the practice is allowed to continue. However, people subjected to extended periods of solitary confinement can lose their minds. A lot of human rights people consider it torture. It’s something they do to people in prisons. There’s a movement to abolish it.” I waited a bit before I went on, “It’s especially dangerous and cruel to use it on children. It serves no valid therapeutic purpose. Its only purpose is to punish, to dehumanize people.”

I paused for a brief moment before explaining, “I know of it from human rights articles and psychological and psychiatric studies I’ve read. The effects get worse the longer it goes on. In prison it’s usually used for weeks, maybe a month at a time.”

“Ok…” she said slowly, again with an inquisitive expression.

I looked her in the eye before pressing on, “I just read multiple, credible, accounts from previous Logan River Academy students who say they were in solitary there for months on end. One account went into the detail that he was stripped to his underwear before they put him in. I’m concerned because institutions do that to prevent people from strangling themselves with their clothing. A child may have at least attempted suicide in solitary there in the past.”

I paused briefly to collect my thoughts, and then continued, “In any case, Logan River Academy isn’t qualified to care for suicide risks. From what I can tell, they don’t have real medical doctors, let alone three shifts of them. I think you should ask your parents to take Mitch home immediately. I’m worried for his life.”

Her face had changed from one of morbid curiosity to one of terrified horror.

I continued, “There’s more. There is a whole industry of Logan Rivers out there. The government has investigated it. Some of the parents and former students have spoken out. Some of the kids don’t survive these places. Some die from physical abuse, but more take their own lives after they get out.”

Diana reminded me, “I already asked my parents to take him out over the summer. I said I’d go down there and bring him home myself. They wouldn’t let me. Then we offered to let him vacation with us in between schools and they refused.”

I pondered and said, “I want you to call your parents and just be distraught; screaming, crying, you’ve heard new information about Logan River Academy and you’re scared for your brother’s life. Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Diana steadied herself, grabbed her phone, and walked into our bedroom. Seconds later I heard screaming and crying coming from that direction. I could only hear bits and pieces of Diana’s half of the conversation. The words “solitary,” “suicide,” and “underwear” made it through the walls to my ears. Diana sounded terrified and hysterical. I would not have wanted to have been on the other side of that call.

A little while later Diana was screaming, “He can stay here!” I have never, before or since, heard her use a more anguished tone of voice. After what felt like a long time, Diana opened the bedroom door. Her phone was in her right hand, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her eyes were bloodshot.

“So?” I asked with a very concerned expression.

“My mom agreed to take him out by a week from Friday.”

I knew that battle had been hard fought, and that I had procrastinated doing the research, but now that I was aware of the dangers at Logan River Academy, anything but immediate action was unacceptable.

“We can’t wait that long. We know he’s tried to run away before. If he tries to again, they could kill him.”

“What can I do? They say that’s the soonest that’s possible.”

She went back into the bedroom and a little while later I could hear more hysterical shouting. The second call didn’t last as long as the first. Diana came back out and told me, “A week from Friday is the quickest they were willing to do.”

I said, “Bullshit,” and started thinking.

Diana informed me, “I offered to fly out to Utah and stay in a hotel with Mitch until Friday. He could go to classes, and only classes, during the day and stay with me at night. I’d make sure he’s safe, but they refused that too.”

Chapter 2 – Mitch Runs Away – September 2013

I ran through events again in my mind. It had been a month or so earlier when one day Diana mentioned her youngest brother, Mitch. Her parents had been gravely concerned by his behavior. He had been smoking pot, staying out late, drinking, and either getting in trouble at school or skipping it entirely.

This kind of behavior was all too familiar to me, and reminded me of my own educational career. Since he didn’t seem to like school, I asked Diana, “What does Mitch want to do?”

“He loves music. I think he just wants to smoke pot and play guitar all day. He’s really good. He plays all the time, every chance he gets.”

“That sounds like how I was with computers and technology when I was a teenager.”

“The Los Angeles school district paid for him to go to a private day school in town.”

This peaked my curiosity, “The public school system was paying his tuition at a private school?”

“It’s called an I.E.P or Individualized Education Plan, that’s how LA handles special education.”

I nodded and clarified, “Ok. Sounds like they don’t do integrated special education.”

“What do you mean?”

“Integrated special education means that, to the extent possible, all students attend the same school and classes. Students with learning challenges receive the resources they need, like aids, note takers, tutors, etc., but they aren’t separated from everybody else.” I asked, “What was Mitch diagnosed with?”

“ADD and maybe something else as well, I’m not sure.”

“Ok.”

“Well the year before this one, his day school asked my parents to make ‘other educational arrangements’ for Mitch for next year.”

It was easy to read between the lines, and I said, “The day school didn’t want to deal with him anymore.”

Diana nodded hesitantly and continued, “Well, he likes to talk back to teachers and make jokes. And he refused to go to school sometimes. My parents were concerned about his behavior, especially the pot. They worried he could end up in jail or worse.”

“Did they discipline him?”

“They try…It just never sticks. They’ve never been able to discipline either of my brothers. They’ll tell Mitch he’s grounded—”

Remembering my own teenage rambunctiousness, I completed her sentence, “But he’d sneak out anyway.”

“It’s always been like that. Since my brothers were really little.”

“Did your parents ever try to get help?”

Again she nodded and said, “My parents always sent them to special schools, including special boarding schools.”

I meant for in the home. Did your parents ever get help for dealing with the boys at home?”

She shrugged, “Um, when we were younger we did family therapy.”

I nodded my understanding and asked, “So, where is Mitch going to school now?”

Diana’s facial expression changed. She clearly wasn’t happy. She told me, “My mom and the school district agreed to send him to a boarding school in Utah called ‘Logan River Academy,’ again on an I.E.P with the school district paying. Mitch agreed to go because he thought it would be like the previous boarding school he attended…”

I established eye contact with Diana, whose thoughts suddenly seemed to be bringing her elsewhere, and said, “But…?”

Diana snapped back to the present, and continued, “Well, I hadn’t heard from him since before February, when he enrolled there. I didn’t think much of it, I figured we were both busy with school, and my parents were talking to him regularly.”

She went on, “My dad and I went out to Utah to visit him over the summer. He told me the staff at LRA are very violent.”

“LRA?”

“Logan River Academy.”

“Ah, when I hear that it makes me think of a child army in Africa that also goes by ‘LRA.’”

“Oh, no. This is my brother’s school in Utah. The staff, kids, and parents call it that for short.”

“Ok, I’ll get used to that. So, the staff at LRA are violent?”

She nodded and kept going, “Mitch told me kids there get seriously hurt. He had a litany of issues: the showers are always cold, the food is barely edible, and then there’s ‘devo.’”

I asked, “Devo?”

She nodded and answered, “Apparently its short for ‘development.’ It’s the punishment they use at LRA. Kids have to sit with their backs straight in wooden chairs, looking straight ahead or reading these lame motivational books they have there from wake up till bed time, with only breaks for meals. Mitch told me if they speak, laugh, or even if their feet leave the area directly beneath the desk then the staff assign them more hours of devo.”

I was getting more curious, and said, “That sounds like a pretty antiquated approach for dealing with behavioral problems to me. Your parents knew about this before they sent him there?”

“My mom visited before they sent him. I don’t know what they tell prospective parents. They know now though and he’s still there.”

I bit my tongue, nodded, and said, “Ok.”

Diana continued, “One day, Mitch told me that he brought a moist towellette back to his dorm from the dining hall to clean his glasses. The staff saw him with it in the dorm, said it was ‘contraband,’ and gave him an absurd amount of devo time, like days of it. Mitch said he spends eighty percent of his time there and one of his friends got a thousand hours for a single offense.”

My eyebrows raised, and I confirmed, “A thousand hours?”

She nodded and said, “Uh huh.”

I thought for a second and inquired again, “Wow, and the school knows Mitch has ADD, right?”

Again, she nodded, and confirmed, “They give him his medication for it, so they know.”

I told her, “This devo sounds foolish at best. Forcing a child with ADD to sit still and quiet for hours is draconian. I mean, what purpose is that supposed to serve?”

“Logan River calls itself a ‘therapeutic boarding school.’ They call the strategy ‘behavior modification.’”

“Well I doubt it’s an effective strategy. It sounds like instead of treating conditions like ADD and ADHD they just punish kids for having them. Punishment is not treatment, it’s punishment.”

Diana nodded and added, “When I was in college, I took a course called ‘The Sociology of Disability’ and we talked about that and how society used to be... Also, while I was with Mitch, he told me he had walked past a pool of blood on the floor.”

That caught my attention, and reminded me of the allegations the staff were violent. I asked Diana, “What did you do when Mitch told you about all of this?”

She answered, “Well, when we met Mitch’s school therapist I asked him about everything. He said that they use devo to motivate the kids to behave properly, that they ‘push from both sides.’ They use positive reinforcement, like moving up the level system, and gaining privileges to encourage good behavior and devo to discourage negative behavior.”

I nodded, and added, “I still don’t think devo is going to be effective, especially when it is used as gratuitously as Mitch described to you, but I understand their theory. It’s outdated, but I get it. What about the violence and the pool of blood?”

She quickly responded, “The therapist told my dad and I that sometimes the staff have to use force when a kid is being dangerous to themselves or others. He said that as long as Mitch behaved, the staff wouldn’t have to use force on him.”

“Has Mitch ever been violent?”

She quickly answered in the negative, “No, never. Mitch isn’t a fighter.”

I nodded, and noted, “But now he’s in an environment with dangerous kids.”

Diana cringed a bit and told me, “My dad and I weren’t exactly thrilled ourselves, but what the therapist said seemed reasonable. When I heard it from Mitch, it seemed horrible and I didn’t want to leave him there, but the therapist explained away the worst concerns. My dad and I told Mitch to keep his head down, we encouraged him to get with the program and to obey.”

I had a similar reaction. The school’s program seemed outmoded and unscientific, but I didn’t want to get involved. I had never met Mitch, and had only met his parents once, over Diana’s college graduation weekend. However I did find the situation concerning, and I was starting to understand the difficult position Diana was in. I would have liked to ease her anxiety, but instead I had a duty to validate her apprehension.

I said, “In my opinion, subjecting your brother, or for that matter, any child, to such a harsh and overly punitive methodology is unlikely to succeed and could easily backfire, terribly. By doing so, your parents may find that Mitch only grows to resent them and it may cause him to entrench further against perceived authority. I’ve seen parents disowned by their children for less.”

This definitely wasn’t easy for Diana to hear, but I had to ensure I painted a full picture of what was at stake.

So, I continued, “Another possibility is even scarier. LRA’s program could crush his will to live, and he could go through life with an amputated spirit, too timid to take necessary risks and too afraid of being judged inadequate to compose music, sing, dance, or find love. In my opinion, the type of program he’s in is more dangerous than simply allowing him to drop out of school and pursue his music.” I paused briefly, and then continued, “Modern science has provided more effective methods, positive methods without all the punishment and suffering.” I paused again, and then asked her, “Did your parents ever research and try anything like that?”

She shook her head and answered, “No.”

I reminded her about some facts from my younger years, “You know, when I was his age, I used to skip school and ‘experiment.’ No one had to crush my spirit in order for me to have a career and secure a good life.”

She smiled and nodded briefly, but then her expression turned sullen and she told me, “Mitch was home in California on a break from LRA last month. He ran away instead of going back. He was missing for a while, my parents were really worried. Eventually, they found him sleeping in a park near our house.”

Once again, I grew concerned and confirmed, “He ran away?”

She nodded and said, “Yep.”

That part definitely caught my attention. “So what happened when they found him?”

“Well, they brought him home and later on my mom packed a bag for him and hid it in the trunk of the car. She told him she was taking him to temple, so Mitch got in the car with her. He didn’t know they were really going to the airport.”

I nodded and frowned, asking, “She tricked him?”

Diana nodded and continued, “She tried to put him on a flight to Utah by himself, but the flight crew saw that he was really upset, so they took him off the plane before takeoff.”

I nodded again, and inquired, “What happened after that?”

“My mom bought them both tickets on a later flight, and brought him back to LRA herself.”

To say the least, I was concerned about the happenings in California and Utah. Still, the school didn’t seem like outright torture, and I didn’t want to get involved.

It stayed on Diana’s mind as time went by. I thought she might feel better if she spoke to Mitch, so I suggested to her, “How about you call Mitch and talk to him? See how he’s doing.”

She smiled and nodded and went online to look up the number. It was after typical school hours, even with the three hour time zone difference between our home in Boston and the west coast, so she gave it a call right then.

After a brief delay, she said, “Hello?...Hi I was hoping to speak to my brother. He’s a student…Ok, I guess I can do that…Mitch Bloom…Thank you…Hi Mr. Woodbury, this is Diana Bloom, we met over the summer. My dad and I came to visit my brother. I’m Mitch’s older sister. Anyways, I haven’t talked to him since the summer and I moved kind of far away. I’m hoping you can have him call me. My number is 617-555-0885. Ok, thanks, bye.”

She hung up, put her phone down, turned to me and recapped the call, “So, they told me students can only receive calls from their parents, but that I could leave a message for Mitch’s therapist, who might call me back.”

I thought for a second, nodded, and said, “Ok, that kind of makes sense. We can assume the school works with some difficult cases. Some of the kids there would probably use telephone calls to obtain drugs, either at the school, or for after they get home. The school has no way of instantly verifying you’re Mitch’s sister or that you’re not a contributor to his issues. An important part of some drug therapies is separating individuals from others they habitually use with.”

She nodded and said, “Ok.”

I reassured her, “I bet the therapist verifies who you are and arranges a call for you and Mitch. You’re a good influence in his life and it wouldn’t be very therapeutic to prevent Mitch from talking to you. In fact, it would be decidedly the opposite.”

Diana called the school five more times that week and was never able to speak to Mitch or his therapist. I filed this away as suspicious, but not sufficient for me to intervene. The next week Diana spoke with her parents about the situation and told me, “My dad suggested that I write Mitch a letter. I told him I would.”

Diana did write the letter. She encouraged him to hang in there, and temporarily conform until he turns eighteen:

Everyone goes through something bad/unpleasant in their high school and teenage years, whatever it may be, but when your 18 you will be your own person. You will get to make your decisions and live life the way you want. It’s important to remember that this hard chapter WILL come to a close. You just have to hang in there and get through it. Your spirit is probably taking a hit, but don’t let it extinguish, because you are such an amazing boy.

You are so sweet and compassionate and wise. I absolutely love talking to you because you have always been so full of insight and have funny and interesting things to say. But even if you weren’t any of those things, I’d still love you because you’re my lil bro.

However she never sent it. It sat in plain view in our living room for a week.

She had seen my abilities to find and verify information from the deepest corners of the web. Search engines like Google have advanced features anyone can use for free, but are largely unknown to the general public. Additionally, because of the way some sites are set up, there is content that cannot be found directly using search engines.

Diana asked me, “Can you look into Logan River Academy and confirm they are legitimate?”