Sunday, March 05, 2006
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
 A guest column submitted by Christine Flannery
On an ordinary late July day last year, while watching the television show Dateline, my life turned upside down all over again. I unexpectedly encountered a past that I spent so many years trying to forget. Little did I know at the time, I was about to completely fall apart. Dateline ran a piece on two children’s deaths caused by being restrained while in ‘treatment.’ Memories of seeing other children brutally restrained came flooding back uncontrollably. As I struggled to see my computer screen through my tears, I immediately typed a letter to Dateline. Two days later, I posted that same letter on an internet discussion site opposed to ABC’s Brat Camp. To my shock and disbelief, I then noticed a reference by another person as being a Straight, Inc. survivor. Turns out, I had accidentally stumbled on a forum full of Straight, Inc. survivors! As I read other survivor stories, I rapidly came unraveled as a flood of emotions overwhelmed me.
Over the next few weeks, I became increasingly dysfunctional as persistent and invasive memories of my time in Straight constantly interfered with my ability to concentrate at work and school. There were even times I would find myself crying while at work. Before long, it was impossible for me to function at work, in school, and in my personal life. Out of total desperation, I set aside my Straight, Inc. related fear of therapy, and sought help. So, in early September 2005, my therapist, who has a PhD in Psychology, diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder related to my time spent involved in Straight, Inc. 20 years earlier. I then started a 90-day medical leave of absence from work on September 21 and within two weeks, I had also stopped attending classes. Taking time off from my life and attending weekly therapy sessions was a necessity since severe depression, severe anxiety, Straight nightmares, memories and flashbacks and an avalanche of emotions overwhelmed me to the point I had become I utterly incapable of functioning in the real world.
As it turns out, I was essentially reliving all the emotions I suppressed while I was actually in Straight, Inc., which explains the avalanche of emotions, flashbacks, nightmares, etc. Suppressing real emotions was practically a necessity in Straight, Inc. If a child dared express fear, homesickness, that he/she felt confused about being in Straight, Inc., or simply voiced any unhappiness with the program, the ‘client’ would be harshly confronted by a group of angry teenagers. In therapy, I learned that suppression was my technique to survive Straight, Inc.’s extremely cruel and unbearable environment.
Once I understood that I was re-experiencing those suppressed emotions, I slowly was able to identify their specific sources. First, I was reliving all the shock, disbelief, confusion and fear I felt during the initial weeks of my captivity. Since I had never used drugs prior to Straight, Inc., it was extremely difficult to even understand why I was essentially being punished for something I never did. Being in Straight seemed very surreal to me. I remember thinking things like, “This can’t be real, this can’t be happening to me.” I prayed over and over again that Straight was just a bad nightmare and that I would wake up and Straight would be gone. On a certain level, I simply could not accept Straight as my reality. So, after a few short weeks of unanswered prayers, the rest of my time in Straight transformed into, for lack of a better expression, something of an out-of-body experience. In psychological terms, this phenomenon is known as dissociation.
At the same time that I was struggling understand the reasons for being in an essentially private jail, Straight, Inc.’s so-called ‘positive peer pressure’ traumatized me tremendously. I was utterly terrified by Straight’s brutal peer confrontation ‘therapy.’ The untrained teenage staff and teenage clients repeatedly confronted me for lying whenever I insisted that I never used drugs. Confrontation in Straight, Inc. was downright inhumane: teenagers repeatedly inflicted brutal verbal attacks, accusations, insults, name calling, yelling and screaming upon anyone deemed not being honest. As a result, every moment I was in the Straight warehouse, I constantly felt extreme fear that I would be confronted. That extreme fear of confrontation never left me: ever since leaving Straight, Inc., I have experienced numerous problems with anxiety and panic attacks in everyday life when this fear arises.
As I relived Straight, I also relived the nightmare of witnessing other children being violently abused for the smallest ‘infractions.’ For example, many untrained teenage clients would viciously restrain a ‘misbehaver ’who simply refused to ‘motivate.’ Before Straight Inc., I had never been exposed to violence and abuse. No words can convey how terrified I was, 24 hours a day, every day. Exposure to Straight’s violence and abusive punishments also made a lasting impression on me. This explains why I reacted so strongly to Dateline’s story regarding two teenage deaths caused by violent restraint.
By now, you are probably wondering what my story has to do with Kids Helping Kids (KHK). It has everything to do with KHK! Sharing my experience about my Straight related PTSD is extremely important, since KHK uses the exact same ‘treatment’ methods, same ‘disciplinary’ tactics, same phase structure, same forms of extreme humiliation, degradation, and verbal assault, same rules, same untrained ‘peer staff’ concept. In fact the only significant difference between Straight, Inc. and KHK is the name of the program. For example, a side-by-side comparison of Straight, Inc. and KHK documents reveal that both programs are virtually identical. “KHK [was also] co-founded by [a] former Straight officer George Ross.” In addition, Maia Szalavitz reveals in Help at Any Cost, that “…former Straight staffers still run Straight-like programs across the U.S. in Ohio (Kids Helping Kids)….”1
My PTSD diagnosis, related to my time in Straight, Inc., does not seem to be isolated or unique since survivors of Straight descendant/copy-cat programs have also been diagnosed with PTSD. Former Straight, Inc. National Director, Miller Newton, founded one such Straight descendant program, KIDS of New Jersey (KIDS). At least two former KIDS clients have been afflicted with PTSD related to their time spent in KIDS. As of April 2000, “Lulu Corter, [who] had been held in….KIDS for thirteen years: from age thirteen to age twenty-six, had been seeing a therapist for post-traumatic stress disorder.”2 Expert testimony verified Lulu’s condition: “there is…no question in my mind that she…suffers from PTSD from the ordeal of trying to survive the KIDS program.”3 “Donald*, now a banker, [testified that] …[h]e had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his KIDS experience.”4 Kids Helping Kids is yet another Straight, Inc. spin-off program. Two former KHK clients have reported to ISAC that they suffer from PTSD, which is related to their KHK experience.
These documented Straight, Inc., KIDS, and KHK related PTSD cases all raise disturbing questions: How many other former clients of Kids Helping Kids are afflicted with this disorder as a result of their ‘treatment’ in KHK? How many undiagnosed cases exist? How many diagnosed KHK related PTSD cases are simply unreported? Should we as a society tolerate any program where some of its survivors are reporting diagnosed PTSD related to their time in such program?
I do not assert that every child subjected to Straight-like programs, including KHK, will automatically become afflicted with PTSD as a result of the program. I do stress however, that I believe that there is a certain level of risk that some children subjected to Straight, Inc. descendant/copy-cat programs such as Kids Helping Kids, may develop PTSD. Admittedly, some children may be more vulnerable than others. For instance, Straight-like programs “are most likely to harm the kind of people who do not need “rehabilitation” – i.e., people with a strong conscience, people who are highly empathetic, who are eager to please others, and who feel shame at not measuring up to their own standards of goodness.”5 This by the way, describes me perfectly as a teenager. I do not claim to know which types of kids are likely to develop KHK related PTSD solely based on my experience. However, Ms. Szalavitz raises just one possible PTSD risk factor that is worthy of public debate and expert psychological analysis.
Psychiatrist Dr.Jay Kurdis recently explained how PTSD can be related to a child’s experience in a Straight-like, descendant/copycat program. Dr. Kurdis provided expert testimony in the 2003 civil trial against Miller Newton (former Straight, Inc. National Director), which revealed that:
…post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur when someone is confronted by ‘an overwhelmingly scary, actual real threat to life and limb, or to something as important as that, and in the face of that threat, [finds himself] helpless to do anything about it. The diagnosis was first introduced in relation to Vietnam veterans, some of whom had had terrifying combat or prisoner-of-war experiences that left them anxious, depressed, paranoid, overreactive to loud noises, and susceptible to vivid nightmares and flashbacks of the traumatic situation. Research shows that the longer that people feel helpless in frightening situations, and the less control they feel they have, the more likely they are to develop PTSD.’6
In all Straights and Straight, Inc. descendant programs, such as Kids Helping Kids, KIDS of New Jersey (KIDS), etc.…“the whole program was deliberately designed to make participants feel powerless.”7
In my opinion, any program that runs the risk of causing any emotional, mental, or psychological damage, including PTSD to a child is too risky to even exist in the first place. I don’t object to treatment when absolutely necessary. I do however, strongly object to any program, including KHK, that uses the Straight, Inc. so-called ‘treatment model.’ I oppose any program, including KHK that uses confrontational ‘peer pressure.’ Speaking from my personal horrifying experience with the Straight, Inc. ‘treatment model,’ which nearly destroyed me, I believe that any program that closely follows the Straight, Inc. model could be dangerous to a child’s well being. I again stress that the Straight Inc. treatment model IS currently being used by KHK. I strongly advise parents of a child struggling with drug addiction to avoid Kids Helping Kids and seek help for your child elsewhere.
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1 Maia Szalavitz, Help at Any Cost: How The Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (New York: The Penguin Group, 2006), 60.
2 Maia Szalavitz, Help at Any Cost, 190 & 193.
3 Maia Szalavitz, Help at Any Cost, 222.
4 Maia Szalavitz, Help at Any Cost, 205.
5 Maia Szalavitz, Help at Any Cost, 73.
6 Maia Szalavitz, Help at Any Cost, 221.
7 Ibid.
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