Drug Abuse Treatment or Drug Treatment Abuse

By Maia Szalavitz, AlterNet. Posted July 25, 2001.

"I experienced five point restraint, sleep deprivation, denial of privacy, denial of my right to freely practice my religion, no contact with my family, peanut butter and jelly diets, urinating in milk jugs, being locked away in a private prison each night and the ever-dreaded relapse of 'thought.' There was a constant drive to discover the deepest darkest thoughts in my head and [make me] publicly confess them."

"They served fish and I told them that I was allergic to fish. They said I was lying. I was made to carry the fish around and eventually I was put on the floor in four-point restraint for several hours. They put the food in my mouth and my face became swollen, I started gagging, I could feel my throat closing up. They refused to take me to the hospital. They gave me Benadryl. For a while, I was unable to walk ... [Due to another medical condition] my abdomen became swollen. They told me it was intentional and made me wear a diaper when I could not [control my bodily functions At one point,] someone spat in my face and shoved a soiled diaper in my face."

"They slammed people so hard against a paneled wall, I could see it move from the other side. The guy had bruises all across his shoulders, all over his body. And they kept telling us, 'This is life, this is the boot camp of life.' I heard about a girl who had attempted suicide by drinking Quell shampoo [used for delousing] so I found a bottle. If this is what life was about, I didn't want to be a part of it. I drank half the bottle."

Are these stories from the Gulag? Extracts from accounts of prisoners of war? Tales of torture victims from repressive regimes?

No, they are stories of teenagers who were abused in mainstream American programs for troubled youth. Some of the programs are still in business; others have shut down.

Nancy Reagan’s "favorite," Straight Inc., was endorsed by the first Bush administration until state regulators and bad publicity finally closed its last official site in 1993. A founder of Straight Inc., Mel Sembler, has just been nominated by President Bush II to be ambassador to Italy in spite of the millions of dollars in judgments against his program for the tortures endured by some of its victims.

An affiliated program in New Jersey wasn't shuttered until 1998 and similar programs with many of the same staff are still up and running in Tennessee and Florida. Their methods have spread to the popular "boot camps" and "behavioral modification" programs which now treat thousands of children across the country, despite research showing that they are less effective than other treatments and despite some three dozen deaths in the last decade from things like dehydration, untreated medical problems and improper restraint.

The survivors' stories were told at a ground-breaking conference held in Bethesda, Maryland this weekend. Titled "Saving Our Children from Drug Treatment Abuse," it was sponsored by the Trebach Institute, a drug policy reform organization. About 50 people attended, mostly victims of abusive programs. It was the first time abusive treatment survivors from different programs and locations had met in person to organize towards protecting others from harm. A second conference is planned for December in Florida.

While the survivors told their stories, there was total silence in the generic hotel conference room. Three of the four speakers on the first panel broke into tears at some point while recalling what had been done to them.

Said Kimberly Fee, who entered a spin-off program of Straight Inc. in 1988, "I still have nightmares. I have friends that left these programs after spending 15 years in them. To know that this still goes on anywhere..."

She cried openly, then continued, "I have kids now, I can understand the desire to protect them at any cost. 'She has a booboo, oh my God.' If my kid was doing the things that I was doing, I would do whatever it takes to get help. We need to guide these parents in a better direction. They are just as much victims as we are."

In a second panel, Kamal Manoly, an Egyptian immigrant and father of two, was clearly anguished as he spoke. "I find it absolutely incredible that such programs could exist and thrive today in this 21st century, in the land of freedom that I fought to come to 32 years ago to escape from the tyranny I was subjected to under a totalitarian regime ... How could we be critical of human rights abuses practiced by third world nations, while we still allow organizations such as SAFE [the program his son attended] to destroy the very fabric of our society under the guise of helping our children?"

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