Ok my wife got me into the show. She watches it to help her sleep because she has seen it thousands of times. I love the characters, writing and acting. But there is one thing that constantly upsets me...
I live in CT. How can they have the geography of the state so wrong?! Let's start with Richard and Emily's home. They are supposed to live in Hartford. Maybe MAYBE West Hartford which is a separate town, but upper middle class at least. That said it would make more since for them to be in Fairfield County, namely Greenwich or New Canaan. That is the right area for those kind of homes and old money. Stars Hollow is fictional but all the area towns are real. They are 20miles from Yale. That puts it a little south of Naugatuck. Woodbridge is near enough to be on the Eastern boarder as indicated by the pickles episode, but supposedly some of it is 20 miles away as per the kennel Lorilei said was in Woodbridge. Woodbridge isn't big enough for that. My money would bet the real Stars Hollow is actually Beacon Falls. Beacon Falls is small enough that it really fits the feel of Stars Hollow. Other options would be the Derby/Shelton area which is more directly West of Woodbridge. That said it's not close enough to Hartford. Not counting traffic Beacon Falls is 40min from even West Hartford nevermind regular Hartford. A CTTransit bus doesn't get across state in 40 min. I used to take the bus from Waterbury to Hartford in the 2000-2010 era, it would take minimum 3 hours. That route only ran 2x a day. Otherwise it would take 8 hours. On top of that most small towns don't have busses, and the ones they do have only run to the closest major city which would be Waterbury. Also Luke had to have had like a 30min commute assuming he lived right next to an on ramp for Route 8 when he moved to Litchfield. No wonder he stayed in his old place during that time. đ
Also NOONE in CT calls it Southern Connecticut State University! It's either Southern or SCSU! Mostly the former.
Several top government officials completely failed to respond to Congressman Millerâs extensive requests for an investigation despite the widespread incidences of kids being abused, tortured, and placed in dog cages. Dog kennels wasnât the worst of it and yet, when it came down to small isolation cells in WWASPSâ Samoan program called Paradise Cove, we still couldnât and havenât received any oversight or intervention to hold the residential industry to any substantial standards.
The worst incident I experienced in Utah began was when I was put face-first against a wall for over ten hours and then told to stand on my tip-toes to reach a dot taped to the wall with my nose. The verbal taunting, enjoyment of this staff member, and the aggravation of not being able to do anything but stare at a wall led me to turn the corner and there I had two men that grabbed me and threw me in the isolation room again. This time they jumped me, put me in a painful police like lock position with my arms behind my back while they bashed my head into the floor causing significant and a large visible facial laceration.
They then proceeded to sit on me to so I couldnât breathe and after gasping several times for air and pleading for my life, I became speechless. I was certain they would kill me, and they could get away with it. No one would of known about it because they were able to do all this other abuse, why wouldnât they get away with killing me? There was no one there to stop them, and maybe no one cared. It wasnât like I received any mail except a postcard from Bali at the time and a letter from my future college roommate that I couldnât respond to.
So as I became asphyxiated and unable to save myself, the young staff member they had put in charge of me to make sure I didnât try to leave looked completely shocked, and it was perhaps that look of shock that saved my life. Not all kids are that fortunate. About a dozen kids die every year in programs from abuse or torture like compression suffocation.
When I came out of isolation my face would twitch oddly, not like an eye twitch, but a full muscle spasm. It continued so much that I became worried that people would see and think I was weird. I also frequently lost control of my bladder; unfortunately, we had to ask permission to use the bathroom and only use it at designated times. Since some of the staff was annoyed we needed to use the restrooms they started to limit the amount of water we could drink.
Later I read an account by a parent saying her daughter was given Haldol, a medication given to people with schizophrenia, which wasnât prescribed to her. I looked up the medication to see if there were any side effects such as facial twitching, and sure enough this was one of the major side effects. A girl with schizophrenia, named Emily, had left the program not much earlier than when I got there. She later committed suicide after being subjected to more frequent, but similar types of abuse including sexual abuse.
In my case, the Haldol could easily have been slipped into food before I received it in isolation. The side effects would explain my difficulty focusing and facial twitches. When Emily was part of the program her and another friend were woken up frequently in the middle of the night. Itâs something that occurred in other WWASPS programs in order to sleep deprive and break the subject into submission.
A highlight of WWASPS programs is behavior modification. For parents who donât really know what that means, it sound great; however, if they had done more research about what was really involved and the results of such experimentation I suspect many parents may not have signed their kids up. As a result of various abuses many kids have suffered from borderline personality disorder and PTSD. In the worst cases some kids are disabled for life and there have been suicides.
There are still staff currently at CCM that were employed when I attended. One, employed shortly before my departure seemed neither harmful nor helpful, but complacent. The other, the manager, sent my mom away when she came to investigate why my school packets never arrived. It so happened that her visit was the same day I received serious lacerations to my face, she was told that visiting me would interrupt the process. The manager, and many employees were talented at manipulating people, often through emotion, especially guilt.
Keeping this story short has been trying, and forcing myself not to live these things over and over has proven vexing. Iâve realized I was suffering most of the symptoms of post trauma and have since overcome my fear of therapists and received several years of ongoing therapy. Iâve been active in advocating for community issues and have found CAFETY, the Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth, a resource of inspiration.
In my professional life and personal life, I create prevention and help people deal with trauma. The great thing Iâve found through the process of my own recovery is that people donât think fighting for human rights and protection is crazy, but rather something that has a rich cultural history of its own called âadvocacy.â
Iâve met a lot of survivors online and in person from different programs. One even moved in and became a part of my family. However, survivors really struggle with relationship issues. Some of them experienced being raped at WWASP facilities. Others witnessed children being raped and sodomized. I guess you could say being in these programs is such a strange experience that it can leave people feeling mixed up and isolated whether in their professional lives theyâve become lawyers or raised families.
Survivors often feel an instant connection; itâs refreshing to speak to someone else about these facilities without parrying assumptions that we were âout of controlâ. A lot of people never trust therapists again, never seek help, or share their story with other people because of the embarrassment, distrust, and initial pressure they feel to fit in, but there are several thousand of us just within a small percentage of online social groups. Iâd imagine there are easily hundreds of thousands of people that have experienced some form of residential abuse.
The real issue lies within the lack of oversight and false marketing that exists in thousands of programs across the States and beyond. Politicians for years have rallied against any legislation that could interfere with their âCash for Kidsâ profits. In some states, they wonât even require faith based programs to be licensed, which doesnât even begin to make people eligible to work with kids in the first place; it simply allows there to have been some initial form of contact with a state department. Itâs known too that the faith based programs tend to be also very abusive taking parts of the Bible literally into beating children with rods and pipes. This practice has resulted in kids being beaten to death.
It was a common practice in the Roloff schools that President Bush helped to stay afloat. Bush as Governor of Texas at the time, overturned legislation allowing the Roloff schools to not have to be licensed despite, the apparent severe abuse coming out in court cases. Pastor Roloff in turn, helped his campaign financially as well as through his evangelical radio shows. Roloff eventually killed a bunch of orphans flying his plane into the ground while ignoring the weather warnings.
Where the industry is huge in the fundamentally religious state of Utah, Mitt Romney also profited off these programs and chose Bob Litchfield, the owner of WWASPS, as his financial co-chairman for his presidential candidacy in 08. Romney wanted Double the Guanatanamo, so he picked, Mel Sembler as another financial co-chairman, the owner of the abusive Straight programs.
I leave you with this from a Mother Jones article âHorror Stories from Tough Love Teen Homes,â â In March 2010, the House passed the Keeping All Students Safe Act, a bill that would have banned the use of seclusion and physical or chemical restraints by any school that benefits from federal education money. (It, too, died in the Senate.) Andy Kopsa, who covers abusive homes in her blog, Off the Record, noted that GOP members whose districts host tough-love schools rallied against the act. They included former Indiana Rep. Mark Souder (Hephzibah House), Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt (Reclamation Ranch, Rachel Academy), and North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx (King Family Ministries), who testified: "This bill is not needed...The states and the localities can handle these situations. They will look after the children."
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http://www.wyff4.com/news/24956710/detail.html#ixzz1W4worVr6 The remains of more than 70 animal remains were found on the Due West property in varying states of decay on Lichfieldâs property where the abusive and now closed Carolina Springs academy existed.
Read more: "Child welfare has evolved over the last four centuries. It finds its roots in empirical systems based on property and material value, not human values."Roch Longueepee
http://restoringdignitycampaign.blogspot.com/2007/02/systems-of-control-global-legacy-of.html