Introduction
This article is about a network of teen boot camps called W.W.A.S.P.S. (World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools), and a field of family therapy called C.R.T. (Coercive Restraint Therapy).
I have previously written about W.W.A.S.P.S.; in my February 2021 articles "Twenty-Two Real Child Sex Abuse and Trafficking Scandals That Indisputably Point to Government Complicity", and "Opinion: Israelis Probably Lying About Making Contact with Extraterrestrials".
Those articles can be read at the links provided below.
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2021/02/twenty-real-child-sex-abuse-and.html
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2021/02/opinion-israelis-probably-lying-about.html
I have previously written about C.R.T. as well; in my March 2021 article (and police report) titled "Second Statement to Police Regarding the Child Sexual Abuse Which I Endured at the Hands of My Father, Richard S. Kopsick, Between 1989 and 2000".
That article can be read at the link provided below.
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2021/03/second-statement-to-police-regarding.html
Some of the information from those articles has been reproduced in the article below.
W.W.A.S.P.S. (the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools)
When I was twenty years old - and living in Madison, Wisconsin - I met a young man from New Jersey. He liked to sing and play guitar on State Street for money. A month or two after meeting him, he taught me to hitch-hike.
This young man told me that, when he was a teenager living in New Jersey, he started smoking marijuana as a young teenager, and even developed a cocaine habit by the end of high school.
He told me that his mother enabled his cocaine habit, by allowing him to have sex with her friends, who were grown women, and usually overweight. She would allow her son to keep money from prostituting himself to her friends, and he would use the money to buy cocaine.
My friend's story was already sad enough.
But later on, he ended up in the care of his aunt.
And unfortunately, however, his aunt stumbled upon brochures for some teen boot camps. They happened to be pamphlets about W.W.A.S.P.S., a network of "specialty programs and schools" for troubled teens and juvenile delinquents.
These "schools" offer "tough love", and are actually boot camps. And they do not dispatch "tough love"; they inflict further psychological damage to the juvenile, and disguise it as something therapeutic.
To paraphrase what T.V. judge Greg Mathis once said about a strict uncle's disciplinary approach, these boot camps are all tough, but no love.
Remember the early 1990s, when Sally Jesse Raphael was still on television? She was one of the daytime "trash T.V." hosts who let troubled teens come on her show, only to be shouted at by drill sergeants who wanted them to go to boot camps.
http://www.vice.com/en/article/4w7579/sally-jessy-raphael-the-accidental-gay-icon
This "boot camp" phenomenon - and the related "Scared Straight program" trope - was so commonplace, in the 1990s, that it became a laughing matter on Chappelle's Show in the 2000s. Chris Rock did jokes about "Scared Straight programs", which were introduced to the public in the 1978 film Scared Straight!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scared_Straight!
In the mid-1990s, Joe Biden promoted boot camps as a supposedly less abusive alternative to prisons, when it comes to sentencing teenage delinquents and juvenile reprobates.
A 2019 article from The New York Times explains that Biden advocated boot camps for first-time offenders. The rationale was that boot camps were supposedly less abusive than prisons.
http://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/joe-biden-crime-laws.html
The C.E.O. of W.W.A.S.P.S. - Robert Lichfield - donated money to one of Mitt Romney's campaigns.
http://reason.com/2007/06/27/romney-torture-and-teens/
Knowing these facts, it's hard to deny the possibility that Romney, Biden, Sally Jesse Raphael, and/or other "trash T.V." hosts, might have been part of a secret conspiracy, between politicians and media, to push teen boot camps as a solution to the problems experienced by troubled and defiant teens.
W.W.A.S.P.S. has been accused of horrendous physical, emotional, and sexual abuse against its teenage victims. I first became aware of this organization in 2007, and I have now met two people who were detained at W.W.A.S.P.S. facilities, and conversed with several others over the internet.
The organization has - or formerly maintained - facilities in Utah, Montana, South Carolina, New York, Baja California, and possibly other locations in and outside of the U.S..
http://www.edweek.org/leadership/oversight-sought-for-behavior-altering-schools/2004/11
http://wwaspsurvivors.com/wwasp-programs/spring-creek-lodge/
My friend from New Jersey spent about a year and a half at the W.W.A.S.P.S. location in Baja California, Mexico. That facility was called Casa by the Sea, and is located in the resort town of Ensenada.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_by_the_Sea
The other person I met, who went through W.W.A.S.P.S., was detained at the Montana location, and knew my friend from New Jersey. Both of them suffered heroin addictions during their lives; and my friend from New Jersey sadly died of a heroin overdose several years ago.
While detained in Casa by the Sea for those eighteen months, my friend was forced to speak only Spanish. He told me that the boys were separated from the girls, and all of them were expected to stay in unsanitary conditions.
Their living quarters contained mostly hard, flat surfaces. The intense heat, at that latitude, made the children's designated time outdoors into a sunburned nightmare.
My friend told me that he heard stories about people getting molested by guards, while there, as well as beaten. My friend told me, before he died, that he knew the names of specific guards who molested people.
My friend told me that the W.W.A.S.P.S. facilitators lied to his aunt and uncle, telling them to ignore all of their nephew's attempts to write letters home, pleading to be rescued. The people at W.W.A.S.P.S. tell the parents of their detainees that the children are exaggerating, and/or lying to them.
W.W.A.S.P.S. directly exposed children to severe danger. That is why most or all of them have been shut down. It's possible that secret facilities remain, though, due to the nature of Joe Biden's and Mitt Romney's special interest in their activities.
The reports of beatings, rape, and molestation, at the hands of the agents of W.W.A.S.P.S., are tough to swallow. For the purposes of this article, the aspect of W.W.A.S.P.S.'s activities, on which I wish to focus, is the so-called "psychological therapy" which it dispensed to children.
That "therapy", according to my friend who was at Casa by the Sea, included instructing the teens to scream - in Spanish - at the other teens. This was part of a "survival game", in which the teens must choose which of the other participants "lives", and which of them "dies", based on the person's treatment of them, and their skills. To put it directly, my friend was instructed to say "you live" to his friends, and scream "You die!" in Spanish to people in the program whom he didn't like.
That is absolutely not therapy; that is psychological and emotional torture. It subjects teenagers to further trauma, when they are all living in dirty, hot cells, and many of them have already been traumatized, due to problems with crime, drugs, or maybe even physical or sexual abuse. There is nothing about instructing teenagers to scream at each other, and take sides against their peers (even if it's supposedly just as part of a "game"), which could possibly help a person become a better or more functional person. Such a thing could only have increased my friend's level of panic, worry, fear of social interaction, fear of being betrayed, and fear of death.
This is not "tough love". The guards beat the shit out of kids, screamed at them, and made them scream at each other. Once you have someone in your care screaming all the time, it is very easy to justify screaming back, and disciplining them due to that screaming.
I imagine that the detainees at W.W.A.S.P.S. facilities received a lot of "mixed signals" like these. There is nothing that our abusers want more, than for us to be drug-addicted, homeless, and hopeless, and screaming. They like to provoke and incite us into screaming, to make us look crazy.
There is little about W.W.A.S.P.S.'s track record which would appear to suggest that they had interest in doing anything other than that.
If you think about it, W.W.A.S.P.S. essentially operated a racketeering operation; that is, an operation that claims to solve a problem, but only solves half of it, and makes you dependent on them.
W.W.A.S.P.S. treated juvenile delinquents with "therapy" that traumatized them further, so that they would need more therapy that didn't actually help them. And W.W.A.S.P.S. was right there, to make a profit at every turn.
The goal was profit all along. If not secretive child abuse as well.
It should be plain to see, from these facts, that just because W.W.A.S.P.S. facilities were marketed as "specialty programs", as "schools", and as "therapeutic", that is not necessarily an indication that "boot camps" are any less prone to abuse and assault, than prisons.
Who knows how many children were sent to similar camps, when what they really needed was someone to listen to them, or a little less strictness, or even just something productive or social or physical to do after school?
A little bit of tenderness goes a long way. Especially with innocent children, whose problems with crime and drugs usually begin - or at least escalate - through a parent's bad example, or enabling (as my friend's problems escalated).
President Biden should apologize for his promotion of boot camps in the early 1990s. If he does not, then the Democrats must never again be allowed to pretend that they care about children (aside from whether they can exploit children's need for health insurance coverage for political gain).
W.W.A.S.P.S. facilities have been located in Utah,
Montana, South Carolina, New York, and Baja California. American Samoa may have also hosted a W.W.A.S.P.S. at one point.
You can click on the links below to learn more about W.W.A.S.P.S., and to get connected with survivors of its programs.
http://www.wwaspsurvivors.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/wwaspsurvivors/
C.R.T. (Coercive Restraint Therapy) and Dr. Neil Feinberg
In a very literal sense, it is a tragedy that the "attitude problems" of W.W.A.S.P.S. detainees were treated with screaming. But the next story is every bit as tragic.
In the 1980s, child psychiatrists - trying to cure "Reactive Attachment Disorder" - stooped to subjecting children to unwanted touching by their foster parents and by the psychologists. This was done in order to "cure them" of their inability to form trusting relationships with their new foster parents.
In many cases, the reason the child was up for adoption - and had trust issues, and didn't like to be touched - was (as you probably could have guessed) because they had been molested by their biological parents.
That's right; some psychiatrists subjected child molestation victims to unwanted touching by strangers. But that doesn't even begin to describe the nature of the abuse.
Coercive Restraint Therapy is extremely confrontational, as well as physical.
Take a look, for yourself, at Dr. Feinberg's "therapy", if you can stomach it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNoIIwO3uIk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJLGcNlBIEc&list=PL60B879CA086B7B37
http://www.childrenintherapy.org/proponents/feinberg.html
http://anchoredinknowledge.com/attachment-therapy-a-so-called-re-birthing-experience/
You can see, from the videos linked above, that Dr. Feinberg's "therapy" for children experiencing "Reactive Attachment Disorder", consists of at least six main tactics which are potentially traumatizing to the child:
1) intense staring in the eyes;
2) the adult (in this case, the psychologist) shouting at the child directly into his face;
3) telling the child that he must respond directly and quickly (and "snappy");
4) subjecting the child to intense poking and prodding and close unwanted touching;
5)
telling the child that he must be fun to be around and “bring
something to the table” socially if he expects to deserve good
treatment; and
6) daring -
and essentially ordering -
the child to admit that he or she hates the parent (or psychologist).
It is disturbing to note the similarity between #6 - ordering the child to admit he hates the adult - and what my friend experienced in the "group survival game" (when he was expected to scream "you die" at people he distrusted).
This is very problematic and dangerous.
Aside from being vulnerable - needing adults' protection and guidance to stay safe and make wise decisions - children are very suggestible. If psychologists and adults are free to direct children to say "I hate you", then the child would be disobeying the instruction, if he failed to verbalize the supposed hatred towards the adult in question.
This sets a very dangerous precedent. It allows adults to get away with traumatizing children - in order to make the child hate the traumatizer on purpose - in order to make damn sure that those feelings of hatred for the adult are in the child.
The traumatizer - whether it's a quack psychologist, or a parent who's trying to get away with abuse - can, quite literally, poke and prod, and incite and provoke, all he or she wants. And the child is not free to object, nor resist. Because this form of "attachment therapy" tells us that unwanted touching is something that it's OK to expose children to, without regard to whether it makes them uncomfortable.
This set of circumstances, in turn, might even create a situation in which children are scarcely able to communicate their discomfort at all. This results in a situation in which it is extremely easy to get away with abusing the child, or with continuing to abuse it.
Remember, the children who are most at risk of kidnapping while away from their parents, are the children whom the kidnapper notices are the most isolated. Abusing a child - whether physically, sexually, emotionally, or psychologically - predisposes that child to being alone (because nobody can understand their problems or their deep pain), thus perpetuating a cycle of loneliness and vulnerability.
"Dr." Neil Feinberg's controversial form of "attachment therapy" - dubbed "Coercive Restraint Therapy" - is just that; coercive. It is designed to coax, pressure, and threaten children into assenting and submitting to more unwanted touching. An adult might take advantage of the leeway that this form of "therapy" allows him, to justify trying to brainwash and trick the child into thinking that the child is "asking for it", or else acting in a way that the adult instructed them was going to result in more unwanted touching.
"Coercive Restraint Therapy" literally teaches adults how to groom children for pedophile abuse. Coercive Restraint Therapy is pedophile grooming. C.R.T. gives potential abusers all the tools they need, to get away with disguising their child abuse as "therapeutic", "bonding", and/or "discipline", should they choose to use Feinberg's techniques to touch a child's genitals as part of the unwanted touching which they were recommended to try.
I should add that it was especially disturbing to discover what Dr. Neil Feinberg's attachment treatment involved, given what I experienced as a child. I experienced all six of Feinberg's main problematic techniques, at the hands of my father, but to a lesser degree, or in a slightly different way.
I do not say this to compare my suffering to that of Feinberg's patients, but to articulate a set of circumstances which may be more relatable to the reader, and which is informed by my personal experience.
1)
While Feinberg made kids stare into his eyes at close-range, my
father occasionally instructed me to look him directly in the eyes
while he was lecturing me. This made me extremely uncomfortable, to
such an extent that, in my early twenties, I noticed myself being
afraid to look directly at other
people's eyes
as well, including trusted family members. Somewhere around age 18 or
20, my half-sister suggested that I might have Asperger's syndrome.
Many people with Asperger's find looking directly at someone's eyes
to be too intense to handle for prolonged periods of time. It can
even elicit fear in some people who have autism spectrum disorders.
2) While Feinberg shouted directly into kids' faces, and
made them shout back, my father was not quite as confrontational.
However, he did come into my room, and tower-over me and my brother
with his arms folded, shouting at us at the top of his lungs (usually
for minor behavioral problems), when we were as young as five and
three years old.
3) While Feinberg would order kids to respond in a
"snappy" way, my father's approach was more subtle. He
would sometimes ask me multiple questions, and expect me to answer
them very quickly. He wouldn't say "make it snappy";
instead, he would simply start talking over me, when it seemed to him
like I wasn't going to get out what I had to say, within the space of
about three seconds. I have felt, in the past, like my father was
trying to accelerate the conversation into a state of confusion and
agitation, through making the questions and answers go faster and
faster.
4) Feinberg subjected kids to intense poking, prodding,
and close unwanted touching. My father molested me multiple times in
our basement, when I was eight and nine years old, poking and
prodding all over my ribcage. He also gouged his fingers into my
armpits while molesting me, and would sometimes stick his fingers
into my collarbone when we were hanging around the living room
together. He knew it made me uncomfortable, and he did it anyway. He
has convinced himself that it is nothing to be embarrassed about; and
probably also that nothing is
anything to be embarrassed about. That's because my father is a child
molester and a psychopath (in addition to being a narcissist), and
child molesters and psychopaths have a diminished ability to feel
embarrassment and remorse.
5) Feinberg told kids to "bring something to the
table". My father used this exact same phrase, when he
criticized both me and my mother for being shy at social functions.
He would say "You don't bring anything to the table". He
said that to me after I sort of snuck into a chair on his patio, and
sat next to my aunt. The fact that I did it without announcing that I
had arrived, and without drawing a lot of attention to myself, was
apparently an indication of "antisociality" or "asociality"
to my father. My father also exerted some unwanted pressure to be
"fun to be around", in the form of instructing me to play
music. I believe that my father's inability to be as patient and
polite and quiet as necessary, when listening to me play music -
after the molestation I had suffered, which caused me Post-Traumatic
symptoms - contributed to my loss of interest in playing guitar, and
to the growing feeling that the guitar is a trigger for me, because
it reminds me of my father, and the way he has discreetly mocked me
for failing to become a professional musician.
6) My father dared me to "admit" that I hated
him, in basically the same way that Dr. Neil Feinberg directed kids
in his care to "admit" that they hated Dr. Feinberg and
their biological parents who had abused them. As I alluded to above,
the first step is to remind the child of the previous abuse they
suffered, the second step is to confront the child about it in a
provocative way that incites them to anger, and the third step is to
use the child's anger against him after it has been verbalized. My
father said to me, on numerous occasions, "You think I'm just a
big fuckin' asshole." I don't think he even followed it up with
"don't you?". I think he just blindly asserted that I think
he's an asshole. He would also say "You blame me for all of your
problems." This began shortly after I turned 13 years old and
began to disagree with him and question him openly. The fact that I
had ever criticized him once, was used against me the second time I
criticized him, and from that point on, my father built a pyramid out
of times that I had rightfully criticized the way he was overreacting
to my moderate bouts of misbehavior. My father made sure to turn that
moderate behavior into pure hatred, elicit it at will by screaming at
me for unreasonable things, and citing the fact that I screamed back,
as evidence that I hate him. He made sure that my mother noticed any
and all behavior in me which was even slightly objectionable, and at
every possible opportunity, he has attempted to convince her that he
was correct to discipline me as harshly as he did. Eventually, a
few times, I caved, and followed my father's orders, admitting that
he is the cause of many of my problems, because of the inordinate
amount of control he was continuing to exert over my life at the
time. How could I take responsibility for "my" decisions, when he was the one who had the final say on most of those decisions? My father made sure that I had plenty of reasons to hate him. If you can make yourself impossible not to hate, then you will have a very easy time accusing people of hating you, and daring them to admit it. My father made it so normal to be vindictive, growing up, that I now look vindictive when I am actually just rationally concerned about the possibility that my father is going to continue to mistreat me. He has conditioned me to expect so much mistreatment out of him, that I am now surprised whenever he is not screaming at me or assailing me with barrages of lies and denials.
If the way Neil Feinberg treated children, isn't relatable, then maybe some of my experiences are.
If you think about it, it's easy to see how Coercive Restraint Therapy could be "watered-down" and passed off as an instruction manual to subject children to such extreme levels of stress, and panic due to unwanted touching, that they submit, and have their wills broken.
Considering what happened to me as a child and a teen, it's hard to tell whether my father's "disciplinary approach" was "just" extremely harsh, critical, and confrontational parenting, and father developed these bad ideas and habits himself; or whether what he did was so similar to Feinberg's Coercive Restraint Therapy, that he must have learned these "parenting techniques" somewhere.
Maybe that sounds crazy.
But that possibility is perhaps not as crazy, as the people who are eager to capitalize on how crazy we look, may want us to think it is.
That's because this sort of "attachment therapy" extends beyond solely the bounds of Dr. Neil Feinberg, Coercive Restraint Therapy, and the Attachment Center in the Evergreen Psychotherapy College in Evergreen, Colorado.
Coercive Restraint Therapy is also known as corrective attachment therapy, dyadic synchronous bonding, holding therapy, rage reduction therapy, and Z-therapy. Related forms of therapy include “re-birthing” and “re-birthing breathwork”, developed by Leonard Orr. Another related method is “psychic driving”.
"Re-birthing breathwork" became controversial after a young girl, Candace Newmaker, was smothered to death with sheets and pillows during one of these “re-birthing breathwork” sessions. These sessions are supposed to simulate the child's birth again, to help form a bond with their parents. Sadly, "stimulating the child's birth again" through "re-birthing breathwork" involves depriving children of air for periods of time. Newmaker vomited and moved her bowels while being suffocated under sheets, contributing to her lack of ability to breathe quality air. She died after being left alone for five minutes, while in the care of unlicensed psychologists Connell Watkins and Julie Ponder, and her "therapeutic foster parents" Brita St. Clair and Jack McDaniel. Newmaker warned the adults, who crushed her body with theirs, that she was going to die, eleven times. To this, Julie Ponder responded "Go ahead, die right now for real. For real." Candace Newmaker was only ten years old when she died.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candace_Newmaker
It was very
shocking to discover this information.
C.B.S.'s 48 Hours once showed clips of children being
rolled up in mats in therapists' offices - almost as if they had just been
murdered by the Mafia and were about to be thrown over a bridge - and
to think this was passed off as “therapy” for the children just twenty-six years ago! This was in season 8, episode 21, titled "Afraid of Our Children". That episode was broadcast in 1995.
View the videos linked below, to see what I'm talking about. You can clearly hear some of the children shouting that the adults are hurting them. The adults are in denial, though; they have convinced themselves that, when the child says "you're hurting me", they are simply "re-enacting the past abuse" which they suffered, which they are supposedly now getting over, by laying down screaming while adults compress parts of his body against the floor.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nhoio
http://www.instagram.com/p/CGYu9S0l_7J/
http://www.instagram.com/p/CGYv6bSlMip/
The particular "therapeutic" technique seen here, is called "re-parenting".
Insane, isn't it!?
The medical article linked below, confirms the fear I articulated above; that there is a "type of parenting" associated with Coercive Restraint Therapy, which is recognized by the psychiatric community, and has had an initialization for at least 16 years.
That "parenting style" is called C.R.T.P., which stands for "Coercive Restraint Therapy".
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1681667/
Presumably, so-called “attachment therapists” - whether licensed or not - taught parents that these "strict" techniques were acceptable, and that the appropriate way to discipline children and to
induce bonds with them through direct touching and coercion. It is not.
The bond which Feinberg is
promoting is nothing but a trauma bond. This is not healthy. C.R.T.
and C.R.T. Parenting are not therapy, nor are they forms of parenting. They
are forms of child abuse, and C.R.T.P. imparts instructions to parents who want to commit acts of child abuse.
Forced
touching normalizes more forced touching, by getting the child
accustomed to unwanted touching. Forced touching makes children
susceptible to loneliness, and to someone noticing they're lonely
(including, possibly, someone who might want to molest or kidnap
them).
This
form of “parenting” could have gotten me kidnapped or even
killed.
My father, and the psychiatric community, have obviously failed to recognize the harmful and pervasive nature of Coercive Restraint Therapy and related "therapies".
Just as a negligent parent will be too negligent to recognize that they've been a negligent parent, you usually have to be actively looking for signs of child abuse, in order to find them.
That may sound like a lot to ask, but any parent with a sense of morality should understand that protecting children is an honor and a privilege, not a burden.
If a child is often lonely, cannot relate to others, seems sad or frowns a lot, can't stay happy for a long time, doesn't have a lot of friends, has dark circles around his eyes, touches himself too much, engages in sexual play with friends or pets, or refuses to talk about their problems, then you might want to ask whether your child has been sexually abused.
Make sure they know the difference between "good touch" and "bad touch", and find out who might have traumatized them.
Take it from me; child sexual abuse (i.e., molestation) can creep into a family situation so subtly, that even the most attentive of parents will fail to notice.
When I was a small child, between the ages of about five and eight, my
grandmother would sit me in her lap, and draw a
circle on my chest with her finger. She would chant, “Make a round
circle, color it purple, somebody... tap,
tap, tap!”
Then she would tap against my chest repeatedly until I laughed. I did
not have any problem with this when she did it.
However,
my father did the same thing to me, shortly after my grandmother
began doing it. I remember that my father poked my chest too hard,
and that there was something I didn't like about the way he did it.
I suspect that my father may have gotten ideas about how to molest me and get away with it, by observing my grandmother (my mother's mother) playing with me.
It is difficult enough to tell whether a child has been sexually abused. Having a calm talk with them - in which other trustworthy adults are present, and you inform the child that they're not in trouble - can do a lot, in terms of getting to the bottom of things.
Ask the child whether anyone in their life scares them, screams at them, or touches them. Do not ignore red flags, such as the child insisting something bad about a person, which you seem to "know" is not true.
Children do have wild imaginations sometimes. But a child who is reporting sexual abuse is usually not making it up. That's because of how difficult it would be to make up a story about a sexual encounter, when you have no knowledge of the subject.
Conclusion
These abuses by psychiatrists and parents are too horrifying, tragic, and sad to bear.
Psychiatrists, psychologists, parents, and anyone who might become a parent, needs to know this: If your child needs help, listen to what kind of help they are saying they need. Do not, under any circumstances, insist that they need a certain kind of help. You can make gentle suggestions, but do not use pressure or coercion. All people - especially innocent children - have the right to be free from manipulation, intimidation, and aggression, while others are talking to them.
If children can be intimidated at will - and ordered to scream words of hate at others, at the threat of punishment - then they can be placed in a circumstance in which they cannot be trusted to make sound judgments or tell the truth. That's because Coercive Restraint Therapy, and W.W.A.S.P.S.'s techniques, placed children into states of duress.
And, in case another reminder is necessary, these were already minor children, whom were therefore already in a state of reduced ability to make sound judgments, and to give consent (by the virtue of their being children).
To those who might still argue that these techniques may be therapeutic - at least for truly insane and/or violent children who cannot be stopped from harming others - I'll admit that that could be a valid argument.
The 1992 documentary Child of Rage introduced the world to Beth Thomas, a six-year-old girl who stabbed and sexually abused her little brother. Beth was diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder (R.A.D.).
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/kids/stunning-transformation-of-beth-thomas-tvs-child-of-rage-psychopath/news-story/2e8658abcd295a768b4d9d8a73845537
It could be argued that children as violent as Beth, could benefit from some forms of attachment therapy. It's difficult to say, however, which forms. That's because they all seem to involve either unwanted touching, or other potentially traumatizing activities, and even activities that rightfully cause a child to fear for their life. And that is the admitted goal of "re-birthing breathwork" and related therapies. [Note: It's also a goal of "born-again" Christianity, but the extent of that correlation is a different topic for a different article.]
I wouldn't advise any of the techniques involving unwanted touching, anyway. Not in Beth's case, nor in cases similar to hers.
That's because, as News.Com.au reported in the article linked above, "It emerged that Beth had grown up neglected, and been sexually abused by her biological father until she was 19 months old."
Read that again if you have to: "until she was 19 months old." That means she was sexually abused numerous times before the age of just one year and seven months.
If I had been molested numerous times before the age of two, I would probably be in too severe and constant a state of trauma and panic, to do anything but scream and try to kill things that are smaller than I am.
When it comes to disciplining children, more child abuse is never the answer. The fact that that has to be stated, should prompt serious concern, about how lax our society has been about children's well-being over the last forty years.
Places like the Attachment Center, and W.W.A.S.P.S. facilities, must never be allowed to exist in this country. We've done the unethical experimentation with unwanted touching of children as a potential therapy for child abuse. It failed. It doesn't work. It makes things worse.
If we do not stop subjecting child abuse victims to child abuse, then we will find ourselves drugging people for coming to therapists with drug addiction problems. We will find ourselves drugging victims of abuse and neglect, with the kinds of supposedly "antipsychotic" neurotranquilizing sedatives which are prescribed to juvenile delinquents, when they come forward saying they remember incidents of abuse as children.
That's all the better for the abusers, as the children will scarcely be able to remember their childhoods, when they're struggling to speak and think clearly, due to negative side effects associated with Abilify and other drugs.
In fact, that has already begun.
I feel another article coming on...
Edited and Expanded on March 11th, 2021
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