CEDU Staff, Students, and Alumni Support

Did anyone see the special last night on NBC regarding the Brown Schools? If you did, can you give your thoughts on the program?

I did see the program. I was not privy to the first death. It happened either at the time Brown Schools purchased CEDU or prior to the purchase. I did know/hear about the second death. Both were awful, traumatic for the families. On Tracks eventually closed. Texas may have the same legal guidelines as California, but they are obviously not monitored as well as California, if at all. Brown schools were a travisty based upon corporate greed and controled by a Pal Alto Asset Management Firm that publically professed to draw the good from mankind, but privately worshipped the almighty dollar above human life.

I missed the Dateline episode. Did anyone see it?

I just wonder how many people committed suicide or became extremely depressed due to that hypercritical "therapy" they used there. I know of several from the time I was at CEDU.

I didn't see if either, Sabro. I wish we had known ahead of time

I'm new here and am happy to see some insightful posts as opposed to the name calling and insults seen on various CEDU forums. I am the parent of a son who successfully completed an Idaho CEDU program and is overall doing well now. He is living at home, catching up on academics with tutoring and is registering at a local JC in the fall.

Long story short, I have mixed emotions about having sent him there, but we are all moving forward. I read the CEDU websites (he doesn't and has no interest in them) and see alot of pain and bitterness in them. It's hard to sum up my feelings and experience in a couple of paragraphs... maybe more later.

You can probably contact Dateline NBC for the transcripts of the program. I missed a little bit of the beginning. A friend of mine called me and told me to watch. The focus was on the hospitals in Texas and On Tracks, also in Texas. Both kids were killed do to inapporiate restraints. The first one was in 1998, right about the time Brown Schools was purchasing CEDU. The you man was in the hospital after suffering traumatic brain injury. They had him in a straight jacket and I believe he suffered a severe asthma attack and died. The attorney in the first case who worked for Brown Schools and settled the first case out of court, sent his own son to On Tracks several years later. His son was restrained by three couselors, vomited (due to inappropriate restraint techniques)and suffocated. It was very sad, very tragic for both families. Both deaths were needless losses of life and could have easily been prevented by proper CPI or PAR training and far more experienced staff. There was a death in Georgia recently at another program, also due to improper restraint.
A few years ago a young girl was killed at the home of an Evergreen "therapist" (I use the term loosely). She was going through holding and rebirth therapy. It was all on video tape. She was begging to be released and said she thought she was dying, but the mother and two "therapists" refused to release her. Holding therapy has now been outlawed in several states. It seems the life of child is often considered to be less than that of an adult. It disgusts me.

Greetings,
I taught @ CEDU for approx. 4 years in the mid 80's as they were getting accredited. I am just checking in now but will offer my observations later when I have more time. I had the good fortune to participate in the Emotional Growth Program much as a student did: the Propheets, in order, with one Peer Group-all but the Summit, for which I was unable to allocate time. I look forward to more communication here - albeit there's pros & cons, being a staffer at CEDU when I did was a positive life-changing experience. My best to all on this thread-more later.

Not that I know anything about "Holding" or other therapies of that sort, but at CEDU/RMA during the 1980's there was an exercise in the "I Want To Live" Propheet that involved 5 people piling on top of one student, as that student tries to "Fight for his/her life" by rising to his/her feet. I personally fond the exercise deeply traumatic. Others came out of that Propheet with many bruises. (leaving students who -hadn't- been through the propheet, and were not allowed to know what goes on in one, very frightened.)

I never went through the Summit workshop, but have had the entire 7 day session explained to me by my best friend, who did. Above & beyond the extended sleep depravation, the exercise called "The Lifeboat", where the students are taken step by step through a lengthy story about a boat ride, and then told the boat is sinking, and the three chairs in the middle of the room are the only lifeboats, and the 15 to 20 students have to fight for those three seats.

In my opinion, that's not right. Kids suffering from sleep depravation, led by the hand through the illusion of the boat ride & the certainty of death if they are not in that chair. Glad I was considered "Not Ready" to go through with my peer group.

Oh, after the three get to keep their seats, the others are told they have 5 minutes to say what the want to the three "Survivors" before hypothermia kills them. Most asked the survivors to take messages to family & loved ones. According to my friend this was quite traumatic for those 3 "Survivors".

(why the quotes? after the exercise they are told even the three in the "lifeboat" die. Neat, huh?)

The types of physical "exercises" that you are speaking of, such as the "dogpile on the student" in the IWTL, the (particularly odd and grueling) towel-biting in the I & Me, the shoving match/"circle jerk" from the brothers keeper, and all of that pillow punching from trust counseling, were what the CEDU/RMA staff called "bioenergetics." This word appears to be pretty loaded term, because it's meaning can pretty much run the gamut when it comes to types of physical or emotional therapies. (Just run a google search and you'll see what I'm talking about.)

Strange as the rugby scrum pile was in the IWTL, it doesn't sound as horrid as what some of these kids went through at some of these other brown schools in Texas, based on the reports which I have read. I certainly don't want to belittle any disturbing feelings one might have from their experiences at RMA/CEDU, (I know I sure did, and it took me a while to get over. 2 and a half years in a David Lynch film is not my idea of fun, but you grow up and move on, you know?) but some of what I've been reading about what happened at these texas schools seemed a lot more intense in terms of how they restrained these children. And of course, the context seems different. These Texas places appear more to be like lock-ups, from what I've read. Restraint at those places are used to enforce compliance with the rules. The physical exercises at RMA/CEDU were used to break down resistance to make students more susceptible and receptive to the school's ideologies and dogma.

Regardless, the one thing in common is that they are both varying degrees of abusive models of behavior modification and indoctrination. I found it interesting that Brown Schools Inc. would be so receptive to adding CEDU's method of therapies into their already large network of behavior modification schools. (and their controlling interest in duncan hines cake mixes. What the hell is that all about?)

In addition, nobody, (to my knowledge, at least) died, or came close to dying in the I Want to Live propheet. (Although wouldn't it be ironic if they had?) That certainly doesn't erase the possibility that there might have been the potential for that to have happened, but according to my memory of it, I don't recall the situation being "hard-core" enough to allow that kind of thing to occur. I could be totally wrong on this, though. My memory from those times are fuzzy in some places. Like I said before, that certainly does not erase the fact that the experience was disturbing, (as well as rather silly and cliche in its use of metaphor, as were most of the propheets) in addition to being a rather ineffective method of therapy, but that is a whole other argument.

Also, I didn't mean to imply, Geoff, that you were stating that someone could have died from that experience, either. I mainly read it for what it was, that you felt it was an extremely strange and disturbing experience, and I agree with you. I was simply entertaining the hypotheticals, here.

However, I do feel that there were some more potentially life-threatening problems than the propheets in the RMA/CEDU structure while I was there in the 80s. The main one was the lack of proper medical care. (Actually, I'm not sure about CEDU, I was at RMA.) The medical resources for the students were minimal, at best. I recall a classmate of mine who suddenly became incredibly ill, and was in bed for what seemed like a really long time. (I wish I could remember the specifics, but it felt like close to two weeks. I could be TOTALLY off on this, though. I just remember it felt like a really really long time.) The staff simply dismissed her illness as the flu or some bug. She finally became so sick that she was rushed to the doctor at the very last possible minute, and it was discovered that her thyroid condition had become full-blown diabetes. A lot of the diabetic students were kind of left holding the bag at school, from my perspective, at least. (I could be wrong. I guess you would have to check with the diabetic alumni to know for sure.) While they had access to their insulin and medicine like they should, (they were allowed to keep it with them at all times) when they had a diabetic attack in the middle of the night, or went into insulin shock, the staff seemed woefully unprepared to come up with a solution or even know what was going on, and it was normally up to the other dormmates or students who were diabetic who held the answer as to what to do. (Such as, how to *distinguish* between a diabetic attack and insulin shock, for instance.) It was a miracle that there weren't more mishaps. (Thank god there weren't.) The only time during my stay there that I ever saw an ambulance on campus was when one of my classmates broke his neck diving into the pond. And it was his friend, thank god, who had the brains to know exactly how to deal with him and position his body in the water until the ambulance arrived. (It was so strange, too, because all of the students reacted to the ambulance like we had never seen one before. That's how sheltered we had become. Wow, an ambulance. How bizarre to see something like that up here.)

It's so strange to be writing about all of this after so long. I almost never talk or think about RMA, except for once in a great while, like maybe every few years, and then last week was the first time I found out about the closings, and the lawsuits, as well as all of the bizarre stuff that happened at the schools n the 90s. (Like the riots.) And craziness about staff alum, like Richard brutalizing Twila. (He was my Voyageurs counselor, and she was my Quest counselor.) And the fact that he's not even going to go to jail over it.

I even remember what led me to find out about all of this, too. I was flipping channels and I caught a few minutes of that silly "Brat Camp" show! And I was like "Hey! That looks like the Owyhee Desert from my wilderness challenge!" So I went online to the abc.com website to find out where the show was based, to see if it was in the Owyhee. (It wasn't.) And then I thought, "I wonder what's up with RMA these days, anyway?" So I did an online search for it, and dug up all of this.

So yeah, it's been a while since I've actually thought about all of this again, and I really wasn't going to post anywhere about it, either. I'm not sure why I decided to post here, though. I guess it's because I'm kind of re-processing some of this intellectually since I've found out about all the new info, so I thought I'd respond to what some of the people were saying here.

And P.S. Geoff... You didn't miss anything by not going through the Summit (Lifespring + 1). The only day that was even remotely enjoyable or funny was the costume party. (Unless you got stuck playing Raggedy Andy.) And even that they made you play until exhaustion. It was all very manic and silly.

Imagine my surprise when I saw Dr. Phil making people play the Red/Green game on national TV one day! The minute I saw that I was like "Oh, now I know he must be full of shit if he's using THAT!"