HuffPo article: I Spent 16 Months Of My Childhood Locked In A Warehouse

[FM123]

(An incredibly disturbing article, lengthy but worth the read)

When I was a kid, my mother locked me in a warehouse and left me there. For 16 months. Her husband had been beating and molesting me, but then I hit puberty and started fighting back ― and nobody wants to deal with a loud, angry teenager.

The warehouse was occupied by a “tough love” program called Straight Inc. Straight branded itself as a drug rehab for kids. The American Civil Liberties Union called it “a concentration camp for throwaway teens.” Straight opened in 1976 with a single facility in Florida; over the years it would branch out to include operations in California, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Texas and Virginia. My stint began in one of the more brutal branches in Springfield, Virginia; I finished my time in the Stoughton, Massachusetts, warehouse.

snip

t’s a time-tested, proven method for behavior modification. A congressional investigation of The Seed, the program from which Straight Inc. was a spinoff, compared it to the brainwashing techniques used in Communist North Korean prisoner of war camps.

Straight used torture techniques taken right out of the POW handbook ― isolation, starvation, sleep deprivation, humiliation ― and updated them for American teenagers, giving them v. cute names.

Read More:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/straight-inc_n_5c76a914e4b062b30eba021e

[vlyons]

1. I'm so sorry that you had to endure such dreadful circumstances

I hope that you are able to transform your experience into compassion for others, who suffer cruelty.

[FM123]

6. The author was Cyndy Etler not me - but we all as fellow humans thank you for your kind words.

[malaise]

2. They also had a few of them here in rural Jamaica

for American kids - they were exposed and shut down

[AlexSFCA]

3. horrifying, never heard of this before

[Scurrilous]

4. The Seed operated in Miami when I was in High School.

It's where you went when you took too many Quaaludes and scared your parents.

[Demovictory9]

5. i read every word of that article. it was disturbing

[Bluesaph]

7. My mom put my youngest siblings in Straight

They spent about two weeks in there while my dad fought for custody of them. The program would not allow my dad to remove them without a judges order. My mom did it because she didn’t want to give them to my dad and couldn’t handle them herself.

[Duppers]

8. Omg. 😲

So sorry. Are they fairly okay now? They must carry such scars.

[Bluesaph]

10. My mom still a whacko

Married a religious zealot and follows him around as he gains a following. The kids were finally released to my dad and had a normal rest of their childhood. Now they are adults and married. My sister joined a cult herself. The Jehovahs Witnesses and didn’t have children because she has been expecting the end to come for the last 20+ years.

But they have never spoken much about their experience in Straight. We heard about it in the beginning and then they moved on. They were the lucky ones with a large family who knew they didn’t belong there and we didn’t stop fighting until we got them out.

[progressoid]

9. ...