Suicide or Murder? page 2 of 2

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Suicides in the other Straights

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update 1/20/05 The Oakton Institute has been investigating the status of a former client from South Carolina who was in Straight-Atlanta. We are happy to report that we heard from this person who is alive and well--but is still troubled by Straight.

Lisa D. had been in Straight-Orlando in the late 1980s. An informant told this writer that she had been sexually abused by someone close to her before Straight. After Straight she got married and had three children. There were domestic problems and she left losing custody. On February 18, 2001 Lisa called all of her friends. She was sobbing because it was her son's birthday and she could not see him. My informant says that that night Lisa started breaking beer bottles and cutting herself. She hung herself on February 19, 2001 in a hotel in Deland, Florida.

Brian Bell was in Straight-Atlanta. Here he recalls the story of Jamie C. (last name withheld by author) in an eMail he sent me.  This report is un-substantiated.  Please write the author if you have any information on this at wes@wesfager.com . 

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In January 1993 Travis Stone, a student in Growing Together, a Sembler-based synanon still in operation in Lake Worth, Florida, told his peer counselors that he was feeling "depressed and overwhelmed," and would commit suicide if sent back to jail. But his unqualified counselors discounted him as only being manipulative. Six months later, perhaps afraid he would be turned in for having a girl friend, Mr. Stone committed suicide by placing a plastic bag over his head. The official state report says that a tragedy might have been avoided if program officials had acted upon Mr. Stone's earlier feelings.⁽²⁸⁾

The author has been corresponding with a man named John who had been in Straights in Texas and California from 1988 to 1990.  I have learned from him that Dan Brown, his host brother from Straight-Southern California,  committed suicide within a year of graduating from that program. 

Danny and Jeff. Danny [not his real name] will never forget the night of November 19, 1982 when his friend and junior staff member Jeff Leugers told him he would be Seventh Stepping. Both Danny and Jeff would go on to become President of their local Seventh Step Society in Cincinnati. Danny had been old for a Straightling.  Amazingly, he had breezed through Straight-Saint Pete in less than a year--and without a setback.  Danny feels that he did have a substance abuse problem and for almost 20 years he was grateful to Straight for turning his life around.  He even started a popular Internet discussion forum to reach out to former members of Straight,  and he started writing a  book on his memoirs on Straight.  But one day he had a flashback while writing and it suddenly dawned on him that he had carved on his body while in Straight.  Unexpectedly,  he started hearing  more and more stories of abuse at Straight on his own web forum.  It has taken a long time,  but Danny is beginning to understand that there was abuse at Straight and he is not happy about it.  Today he still feels grateful to Straight for giving him some tools like the 12 Steps and the Serenity Prayer to help him cope with addiction,  but beyond that he admits that an incident at Straight almost cost him his life.   Soon after his graduation from Straight Danny was an officer of  Straight's Seventh Step Society.   At that time he engaged in a one-time sexual encounter with an old high school sweet heart. He writes:

Meanwhile Danny's friend Jeff Leugers had a relapse and was sent down to Straight-St Pete where once again he Seventh Stepped. In fact, after Danny left, Jeff took over the job as President of Danny's local Seventh Step Society. It is believed that Jeff may have had some underlying mental health issues when growing up, but you wouldn't suspect it by looking at him. Jeff was a good looking blond hair guy with a full set of teeth. They say he was an all American boy. But like Danny, Jeff also had thoughts of killing himself. Only Jeff did it. One day he went home and wrapped himself up in a sheet to confine the mess. As he lay there he shot himself dead with a powerful handgun.
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The Oakton Institute is investigating the alleged suicide Rob H. who attended Straight Cincinnati and who allegedly committed suicide after Straight.  Rob had attended Anderson High School in Anderson, Indiana.  It is reported that he hung himself in his mother's backyard and that he mentioned Straight in a suicide note. 

The Oakton Institute is investigating the alleged suicide of Dane W. who attended Straight Cincinnati and who allegedly committed suicide after Straight.  It is reported that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning in his mother's garage and that he mentioned Straight in a suicide note.  Dane had attended Highland High School,  also in Anderson, Indiana,  however preliminary data does not indicate Dane's death and Rob's death occurred near enough together to be ruled a double suicide. 

The Oakton Institute is investigating the  alleged suicide of a former client from Straight - Cincinnati named Paul.  

Brian Neal, a Canadian,  was in Miller Newton's KIDS program in New Jersey before becoming a counselor at Alberta Adolescent Recovery Center (AARC)--a KIDS spin-off program. He left AARC and later  hung himself.  Dr. Dean Vause, who operates AARC,   spoke at Brian's funeral. 

Kimberely Fee recalls Ryan K. sitting passively in Group, not-motivating, because he really had nothing to motivate about. He was just a kid, without a sordid past, who wound up in Kids of North Jersey. Kim says that she thought of Ryan often because he simply did not belong in Kids, and yet, she feels, Kids made his parents believe he was such an awful child. "He was so scared and timid all the time," Kim writes in 2002. Ryan had been in and out of institutions and jail since he left Kids. In early 2002 Kim was informed that Ryan had hung himself. The Oakton Institute is investigating the death of Ryan K. If you have any information on this suicide, please let us know.

Phil Winograd was in Kids of Bergen County in the 1980s when he was transferred with 18 other clients to the new franchise in El Paso, Texas. At one point Phil and his family had been featured in an article in an El Paso newspaper which had praised Kids for bringing Phil's family back together. Phil graduated Kids and became a senior staffer before being sent back to the New Jersey program on a graduate refresher. Tragically, Phil later died of an overdose of prescription medications at his parent's home.  

The Oakton is investigating the suicide of Albert Perez, a former client of Miller Newton's expansion program--Kids of El Paso. Albert did not graduate Kids,  but he got a GED after leaving Kids. He resided in El Paso at the time of his death. 

The Oakton Institute is investigating the suicides of Ron Hill and of his father. The Hill's were from Indiana and were described by those who knew them as the ideal, all American family. But Mr. Hill committed suicide around 1996. And then two years later, his son Ron committed suicide in his car behind the pawn shop where he worked. It is believed that this death occurred in Glendale, Arizona.

The Oakton Institute is investigating the possible suicide of  Richard B.--probably formerly in Straight-Boston.

The Oakton Institute is investigating the possible suicide of Andy M. from South Carolina, formerly a client at Straight-Atlanta. 

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Jerry Vancil escaped from Straight around 1977 and got to a reporter of the Saint Petersburg Times and told of a  beating he had received in a timeout room by numerous old comers. The Times investigated and got statements from several of the alleged old comers who admitted that a confrontation had occurred but not like Jerry Vancil had stated. It was Jerry Vancil who had attempted to beat them all up so they had to protect themselves. State health official from Florida's HRS Robert G. Marshall investigated the matter and publicly stated that if the allegations proved to be true it would become a criminal matter and be given over to the State Attorney's office. And then Jerry Vancil just disappeared. Straight could have been closed down at that time based on Jerry Vancil's story and others beginning to emerge, but the state's star witness just disappeared. Bob Marshall said that without a witness there was no case. The state of Florida did not look for Jerry Vancil and as far as I know Jerry Vancil has never been seen again, dead or alive. Jerry Vancil is from Tennessee. If you have any information on Jerry Vancil, please contact me. If you have any information on these or any other suspicious deaths or suicide attempts involving students or former students of Straight-based synanons please contact the author. I will respect your confidentiality in these matters.
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Amazingly, in his 1995 book Adolescents: Guiding Youth Through the Perilous Ordeal, Father Doctor Miller Newton acknowledges that people can be addicted to violence! [p.145] In it he recognizes two basic causes of adolescent violence and aggression. His first cause is that many kids become violent in response to physical or psychological threat. This man, who placed thousands of kids in an environment where they were in constant threat of physical violence and psychological torture and where they had to administer physical violence and psychological pressures on others in order to advance themselves, admitting that that kids in such an environment can become addicted to violence.  The other cause, Dr. Newton writes, is based on personal power needs. "These teens  literally become 'violence addicts�", he writes, "as a result of subjective perception of a 'high' in the feelings of anger and rage."   I do  not discount for one moment the rush or high a person might feel bungi jumping, parachuting or even punching someone in the nose, but it is the Straights themselves that are teaching violent highs.  What kind of a clockwork orange is this man describing? 

One Friday evening when I was in the cult they were passing the microphone around to all us  parents to give us a chance to blast our  children. This one lady took the cordless mic and just barely got out the name Joey [name changed] when all of a sudden this big kid, I mean like about 230 pounds, solid, stood up and screamed to the top of his lungs:  "fuck you mother", "you bitch", "I hate you", "fuck you", "fuck you", "fuck you."  He was screaming violently.  Blood curdling screams.  He was filled with rage,  this huge boy. The student on his right tried to grab him, then the one on his left and the one behind him and in front of him. The fifth phasor guards around the perimeter moved in. Kids and even adult counselors started piling on, holding his arms and legs; hands over his mouth. In all,  a mass of about 15 kids had ganged-tackled him and sat in a pile on top of him. They could have subdued Mohammad Ali by the sheer weight of  boy-power. We parents were terrified. I mean the screams were really blood curdling. This kid, in my opinion, had he been alone with his mother at that time, would have beaten her to death with his bare hands. I later found out that that boy had been transferred to one of the special extension apartments run by kids down the block at Chelsea Square. A new sense of urgency came over all of us parents after that incident.  "Look what drug use had led this one kid to," we thought. Years later I tried contacting this child-man to tell him we didn't know. That had I known then what I now know I would have come to his aid in the free-for-all. That it had not been drugs that had led him to violence against his own mother, rather it had been Straight. But the child-man did not want to correspond with me. Later I learned that Straight had recognized his special abilities as an interrogator and had allegedly turned him into one of their "spitters." Today I know that this kid was so angry with his mother for having placed him into Straight where he was systematically abused that he could have killed her. I do believe he would have killed her had he been alone with her on that night. But suppose he had escaped. Suppose he learned to fake it and harbored all that hatred until the day he made phase so he could have been alone with her. Then what Mr. Sembler?
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The $ traights have been ripping families apart since 1976. Do you believe a child could be so upset with his parents for having placed him or her into a Straight that he could kill them? How about former Straight - Dallas student Timothy Nixon? In 1990 he took a baseball bat and beat his mother to death with it, spattering the walls and floor with her blood. He and his brother then wiped up the blood from the floor and walls and placed her bludgeoned body in the trunk of her car and rode around town asking his friends if they wanted to take a ride. He was planning the murder of his father when he was arrested. Timothy is now serving 99 years in a Texas prison.⁽³¹⁾

A person has posted on our discussion forum that a former client at Straight - Cincinnati or Straight - Detroit left Straight and murdered his grandparents. The evidence clearly shows that Straight teaches kids to be ultra-violent and that the Straight experience, in some cases, can drive a person to kill himself or to kill his loved ones. But is Dr. Rosenberg right when he says that homicide might be suicidal depression turned outward? Can the Straight experience lead to out and out murder? Former Straight - Saint Petersburg client, 32 year-old Michael Gallagher, who had a long history of crime, had been on medication to control his sex drive when he followed a woman into the ladies room in a bar on Jul 10, 1995 and threatened to rape her at knife point, fled, tried to break into several nearby homes, charged a cop with a PVC pipe and was fatally shot.⁽³⁰⁾ Bradley Martin spent two years at Straight-Springfield never progressing beyond fourth phase. After he got out he allegedly went on a killing spree killing a man in Pennsylvania and another person in Utah. He was on the TV show America's Most Wanted. Today he is on death row in Pennsylvania for the 1993 slaying of a Pennsylvania man.⁽²⁹⁾ Richard Bradbury and I have been working with his appeals team in an effort to spare his life, asking the court to consider Bradley Martin's Straight experience.

In 1983, defending Straight's position on accompanying kids into bathrooms, Straight's national executive director Bill Oliver acknowledged that:

John Haven of Atlanta, Georgia was in Growing Together. He says that he was always contemplating "how to kill myself" when he was in there.^(32.1)  Suicide attempts are very commonplace at the Straights. Coincidentally Straight's national research director, pediatrician Dr. Richard Schwartz, conducted a NIDA funded study to determine why so many female teenagers were cutting on themselves. His results are published in the 1989 report "Self-Harm Behavior (Carving) in Female Adolescent Drug Abusers."⁽³³⁾ In sworn court deposition while he was Straight's national clinical director, Dr. Newton once stated:

Even Father Newton acknowledges that depression is the leading cause of suicides. In his 1995 book Adolescence: Guiding Youth Through the Perilous Ordeal, for which he received a Ph.D. in neuropsychology, Miller Newton acknowledges that, "Current standards in psychology and counseling fields state that depression is the primary cause of both suicide attempts and suicide completions" [p. 154] Further on in his book Newton talks about a 15 year-old girl named Peggy who had been suicidal and diagnosed as schizophrenic at a local county mental health hospital. During admission to his KIDS' program they discovered her primary problem was really drugs and alcohol. He writes that he had to wait out and extinguish her "hospital developed" behavior before treating her. At KIDS they worked on her "self esteem" and her "sexual excitement" associated with "drug use" image. Now she has graduated magna cum laude from college in music.[pp.211-213] The message is that Kids of North Jersey is also a treatment center for treating adolescent suicides!
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PANDAA is a tough love parent's association in Northern Virginia founded by former Straight parent Joyce Tobias in the early 1980s and staffed by many former Straight volunteer parents. The Virginia State Police is a frequent sponsor of PANDAA. PANDAA has worked hard to put pressure on county judges for stiffer sentencing in drug related offenses. Bill Burns, a Straight parent on President Reagan's staff, hosted STRAIGHT TALK, a weekly radio talk show on drugs which was advertised in PANDAA's newsletter PANDAA Besides promoting Straight and books for Straight's Dr. Robert DuPont and Dr. Miller Newton, PANDAA is chock full of articles by Straight's Bob DuPont, Harold Voth [affiliated with DFAF], Will Knisely and Richard Schwartz. The article above appeared in the June 1993 issue of PANDAA and is by Father Doctor Miller Newton. He writes, "Of course, some suicide attempts are 'non-serious.' That is, the attempts are ill-considered efforts to feel better about one's self by being the center of people's attention. Unfortunately, young people are neither pharmacologists or surgeons. Consequently, these 'non-serious' attempts sometimes result in accidental death." But then he also writes that 100,000 automobile accidents occur each year involving juveniles which don't involve other automobiles. "These accidents," he writes, "cannot be explained by road conditions, weather conditions, or mechanical failure. Although there is seldom a suicide note, these accidents should be considered as adolescent suicide attempts." Why that just does not make sense. If many kids die from apparent suicide attempts which were really just attention getting behaviors gone awry as Newton writes, then how can he say that all traffic accidents involving youths which can not otherwise be explained are suicide attempts. Why can't some of these also be just attention getting behaviors too?

• According to statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics, in 1987 the Tampa Bay area (Hillsborough, Pasco, and Pinellas Counties) had the highest suicide rate in the country.⁽³⁵⁾ It's not just because of the large number of retirees there either. The juvenile suicide rate in Pinellas County rose 130% between 1980 and 1986.⁽³⁶⁾ A 1992 study found that 1 out of 4 girls in neighboring Pasco County attempted suicide in 1991 (national average was 10%).⁽³⁷⁾ And in neighboring Hillsborough County the juvenile suicide rate rose from 3 in 1980 to 9 by 1987.⁽³⁸⁾ 19 youths committed suicide in Pinellas/ Hillsborough Counties in 1989 [up to nine of these were gay.]⁽³⁹⁾ Straight operated its founding center, Straight-St Pete, in Saint Petersburg, Florida in Pinellas County from 1976 to 1993.

• In 1986 a Straight-like program called Outreach was opened in Cape Coral, Florida. Next year in 1987 a community task force was put together to find out why 19 youths aged 14 - 17 had attempted suicide. [I have no data whether any of these youths were at Outreach, nor do I have any data showing that Outreach was an "abusive" Straight-like program.]⁽⁴⁰⁾

• In 1988 the National Center for Disease Control launched a study on juvenile suicides in Cobb County, Georgia because its suicide rate of 14.7 for every 100,000 was 3 higher than the state average, and 2 times higher than the national average. Straight-Atlanta, operated in Marietta, Georgia in Cobb County.

• Dr. Richard Schwartz, medical research director for Straight-Springfield, noted in an article for Straight's newsletter EPIDEMIC , Vol 6, that suicide was the fifth ranked cause of death of American teenagers in 1964, third in 1978 and second in 1983. But Straight had started operating in late 1976 and had centers in Cincinnati, Springfield, Virginia, Saint Petersburg and Sarasota by 1983. Suspiciously, the rise in juvenile suicide rates coincide with the rise in the the number of Straights.

I think there is sufficient evidence for the federal government to launch a national-level study to determine the extent to which the Straights have caused an increase in juvenile suicides since 1976.  So what you can do to help?  Click here and help us make the National Center for Disease Control and the American Association of Suicidology aware of  our data.   They're the experts.  How will they know to investigate unless we tell them about the potential problem.
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In 1989 13-year-old Shawn David Wyke hung himself in his Lake Wales home in Polk County, Florida. One witness later testified in court that prior to the suicide she had witnessed Shawn Wyke in the bathroom at McLaughlin Junior High School where he tied a football jersey around his neck and tied the other end to the top of a bathroom stall. The witness testified that she told James Bryan, dean of students at the school, about the incident and that he promised to take care of it. The issue became one of in loco parentis or one of having responsibility over a minor under one's supervision. Carol Wyke, Shawn Wyke's mother, sued POLK COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD, Max Linton, individually and as Principal of McLaughlin Junior High School of Polk County, and James Butler, individually and as Vice-Principal of McLaughlin Junior High School of Polk County.

The suit was brought in federal court by Clay Rood, Ms. Wyke's attorney, on the grounds that the boy's civil rights had been violated arguing that the school district should have had a suicide prevention program. The case went to trial in 1995 but the judge threw out the civil rights violation part. That left a simple negligence case. Did school officials know that Shawn was suicidal and fail to do anything about it? School official James Bryan denied that he had been told of the prior suicide attempt at school. But the jury did not believe him and found for the plaintiff. Ms. Wyke was awarded $500,000. But in a strange quirk the jury found that Mrs. Wyke and Helen Schmidt, a "grandmother" figure in whose home the boy was living also shared in the blame. Thus they found the school, Ms. Wyke and Ms. Schmidt each equally liable for 33 1/3 % of the loss each and Ms. Wyke was awarded 1/3 of $500,000 or $165,000. The school board appealed but lost the appeal in November 1997 in the United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. Here is the appeal.^(40.1)

Straight-like programs insist on in loco parentis for all newcomers through third phase, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Abusive Straights drive kids to carve on themselves and to have suicidal ideations. Many Straight kids try to kill themselves and the Straights seldom tell their parents or state health officials. How many former students from a Straight-like program either tried to kill themselves or expressed a desire to like Leah Bright, but their parents were never informed and neither were state health officials as in the case of Travis Stone? How many of those, like Travis Stone, went on to kill themselves?

The United States government has frequently considered cases of massive civil rights violations and human rights violations that occurred several years ago. Look at the case of American Indians for one; or that of Japanese American citizens interned in World War II for another. Internationally, look at German reparations to Jews after World War II. This web page has done a fair job already in showing that the Pinellas County Sheriff's Department, the Saint Petersburg Police Department and certain Pinellas county judges abetted Straight in its efforts to run a private jail for kids in violation of their civil and human rights. If you have any additional information, including precedent cases, of why the Straights should be held accountable for destruction it has caused please let the author know.

Straight kids are forced to verbally and/or physically brutalize other kids in the program as a condition of Seventh Stepping so that they can one day graduate--the same as their counter-parts in Chinese Seventh of May Schools. Their parents, usually clueless as to the real nature of the Straights, are grateful to the Straights for saving their child and are eager to pay back by doing volunteer work for the Straights and sometimes taking paid positions. These duped people should be exempted from any liabilities. But what about program clinicians who knew they were abusing children? What about program directors who ran the camps in spite of ever growing press of the abuses? What about board members whose names are in the the news who lend their names to these places so they can increase their revenues?
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This essay on Straight has documented numerous incidents of death attempts and deaths involving Straight students caused by negligence, cruelty and the psychological destruction of children's minds. Here are a some precedent cases where those responsible for the death--by suicide--of others have been prosecuted and sometimes convicted.

• On October 30, 1987 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida a trial by jury found Ms. Theresa Jackson guilty of child abuse resulting in the death by suicide of her 17 year-old daughter Tina Mancini. Ms. Jackson had forced her daughter to dance nude at a topless bar so the mother could live off the earnings. This was a third degree felony. Another applicable precedent set in this case is that Broward County Circuit Judge Arthur Franza allowed expert testimony as to "state of mind" of the dead girl to be entered into evidence when he allowed Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Jacobs to testify about his 'psychological autopsy" of the dead girl.⁽⁴¹⁾

• In 1989 in Dallas assistant district attorney Cecil Emerson looked into whether mind control can be blamed legally for contributing to the deaths over the past 12 years of 8 followers of Terri Hoffman, mystical leader of the Conscious Development of Body, Mind and Soul movement. Relatives of ex-followers had claimed in lawsuits that Hoffman influenced their kin to kill themselves after they had given her or willed her their possessions.⁽⁴²⁾

• In October 1996 a French court convicted Jean-Jacques Mazier, the former head of the Church of Scientology in France, of second degree murder and fraud for his role in the suicide of a member of that church.⁽⁴³⁾

Early next morning (August 12) Manson sought her out. She was to put on a straight dress, then take a message to . . . Sybil Brand[prison].
Prosecutor Bugliosi explaining why the state's star witness Linda Kasabian waited 3 days after the murders to flee Spahn Ranch [Helter Skelter, p. 389]

A world-renown thought reform specialist once stated: "You can convince anybody of anything if you just push it at them all of the time. They may not believe it 100 percent, but they will still draw opinions from it, especially if they have no other information to draw their opinions from." Do you know who that thought reform specialists is? It is Charles Manson speaking at his murder trial which began in June of 1970. Actually Charles Manson has a special place in our story. In August 1969 Charles Manson took his band of middle class and above white teenage boys and girls and young adults out for two evenings of brutal murder the likes of which the world had never seen.

The Establishment had long held that psychedelic drugs made kids disobedient and made them lust for sex--maybe even worse. And now our suspicions had finally been vilified. Drugs not only make kids lethargic and sex craved; drugs turn kids into cold- bloodied, ruthless killers capable of stabbing pregnant women and little babies. Exactly five days after the La Bianca murders and nearly 2,000 miles away, tens of thousands of "pot smoking" kids, "high on LSD" assembled for a rock n� roll concert in a place called Woodstock, New York Some of these kids were long-haired hippies. But then too, there were many from good high schools and colleges--all apparently using drugs! Two months later, after his daughter jumped out of a window to her death while high on LSD, television personality Art Linkletter was at the White House meeting with President Richard Nixon when he, Mr. Linkletter, agreed with the president�s summation that his [Art Linkletter�s] presence, "gives a lie to the idea that this is something that simply happens to the poor. It is moving to the upper middle-class and so forth." Art Linkletter told the president, "Diane was not a hippie . . . she was well educated . . . from a family . . . that has been straight."
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Six months after the Manson killings and 2000 miles away in Fort Bragg North Carolina an Army doctor named Captain Jeffrey MacDonald brutally murdered his wife and two young children and staged the crime scene to look as if drug crazed hippies were at it again. [Author: as a young Army intelligence officer I happened to move onto Castle Drive across the street from the crime scene six months after the murders.] The last of the Mansonites were apprehended by December 1969 and in the three months between December 26, 1969 and March 20, 1970 Time magazine and its popular subsidiary Life (a picture magazine, now People Magazine) ran a series of often seemingly unrelated, yet very disturbing articles about juvenile drug addiction in America. Further fuel was poured on by Reader�s Digest. Though Time-Life quoted drug abuse experts from around the country, by far the majority of its sources (and statistics) came from New York City and from three doctors in particular. [You�ll have to read my book to find out more.] In the spring of 1970 President Nixon called all the nations� governors together for an historic meeting in Washington D.C. where he told them that drugs were no longer just in the ghettos, but had spread to the middle class and were "no longer limited to any one region of the country."⁽⁴⁴⁾

It would take a year before The Family by Ed Sanders was published and another three before Bugliosi�s Helter Skelter. They would have some answers as to how Charles Manson was able to persuade affluent American kids to murder for him. From Sanders and Bugliosi we learn that Manson was a murderer who used a variety of tools to get his people to do his biding. Sex and fear were two tools. Isolation, repetition, and religion were others. Drugs was another. According to Dr. Richard Blum, former director of the Psychopharmacology Project at Stanford University and a former consultant for the Center for Drug Abuse at the NIMH, writing for Look magazine in April 1970 "drugs don�t cause violence: people do. . . No drug can put murder in a man�s heart, but if murder is already there, the drug might help unleash it." [Look, 4-7-70, p. 59] Straight adopted many of Manson�s control mechanisms. Sex was a highly controlled activity in both the Manson cult and in the Straight cult. Both cults fostered violence. Both Charles Manson and Mel Sembler kept kids away from their parents. Isolation was used by both men. Bugliosi tells the story of a young woman leaving Manson�s cult who did not know that Richard Nixon had been elected president several months before so controlled was access to TV�s and newspapers. A woman has posted on our discussion forum that when she escaped from Straight-Orlando she did not know that George Bush had been elected president several months earlier. There were no clocks on Spahn Ranch and Straight treatment rooms allow no clocks either. Charles Manson was trying to start a war with the black race and Straight targeted the children of affluent white parents. I discuss Manson�s control devices at more length in my book, but for now I�ll simply say that Charles Manson�s followers killed because that�s what he wanted them to do just like many of Jim Jones followers voluntarily committed suicide because that�s what Jim Jones wanted them to do. But in June 1970 parents did not know that. In June 1970 they did not know that Jeffrey�s MacDonald�s family had not been murdered by "drug-crazed" hippies at all. It would be years before they learned that Kimberly and Kristern Macdonald had been slain by their own father. By then it would be too late.

From August 9, 1969 when the first Manson murders occurred until April 19, 1971 when Charles Manson, Susan Adkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel were sentenced to death for those murders, the American public and world public had been bombarded with news about these "drug-crazed" hippies who had committed those heinous acts. It had been the longest murder trial in American history and the most expensive. Of the 92 seats in the courtroom, including those reserved for the judge, DA, defense, and security, 55 were reserved for reporters. NBC and CBS television reporters were there as well as reporters from many American newspapers and magazines like The Washington Post, New York Post, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram, and Daily News. International reporters were there from La Stampa, Il Messaggereo, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, France Soir, Toronto Star, London Daily Express. Harold Frediani was covering for Harpers, the Village Voice and Der Spiegel. In the hallway outside the courtroom was a table with ten telephones some with direct hookups to newspapers. There was also a wire-service teletype machine with an operator at the ready to type of dispatches. [The Family by Ed Sanders, pp. 398 - 399.] The media hype began with the murders in August 1969 and continued hammering away at our daily lives, every day for the next year until reaching a crescendo in June 1970 when Charles Manson finally went to trial.

From August 1969 till June 1970 when the Mansonites finally went to trial, the press had told us nothing but that drugs make kids want to cut open pregnant women and stab their babies. In its last issue of 1969 (December 26) Time magazine ran an article called "Why Did Walter Die?". It was the tragic story of 12 year-old Walter Vandermeer from Harlem, "the youngest child on record to die from heroin in the city." He had been wearing a Snoopy sweatshirt bearing the words, "I wish I could bite somebody . . . I need a release from my inner tensions." A week later the January 1970 Reader�s Digest carried two articles back-to-back. I. Marijuana: How Dangerous Is It? which contained an insert article condensed from Life titled Should Marijuana Be Legalized (the answer was no). The second article was II. The Horrors of Heroin. The message from the titles alone was if you smoke marijuana then you�re flirting with heroin. In February the Reader�s Digest carried an article by Art Linkletter titled, "We Must Fight the Epidemic of Drug Abuse!," in which he wrote, "Today the shadow of the tragedy that struck us looms over every family regardless of education level, regardless of wealth or position, regardless of everything." On February 16, 1970 Time reported in an article titled "The Junior Junkie" that drug abuse was moving from ghetto kids to the children of the middle class and gave examples of kids as young as 11 and 12 selling and using heroin. Two years later Robert DuPont�s predecessor as Drug Czar Dr. Jerome Jaffee would say, "Along with the increased interest [in psychoactive substances], we have seen a phenomenal rise in the number of articles and books dealing with the topic--leading more than a few cynics to speculate that the public concern is due more to articles than the growing use of drugs.

It all came to a head in June of 1970 the month Charles Manson went to trial. In May, just days before, Narconon, the bizarre drug treatment program affiliated with the Church of Scientology, was incorporated in Los Angles to service drug users. And in June 1970, the same month Charles Manson went to trial, a former comedian named Art Barker incorporated The Seed in Fort Lauderdale to service the kids there. Of course Straight grew out of The Seed and so a cult that had been created to keep affluent white kids from becoming drug-crazed, murderers wound up running a reign of terror that has out-lived the Manson cult 30 times over and is now may be responsible for causing many times the deaths as the Manson cult which had led to its creation in the first place!
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• On March 11, 1987 Lisa and Cheryl Burgess, Thomas Rizzo and Thomas Oltonfour, four teenagers from Bergen County, New Jersey committed suicide by automobile exhaust fumes. Exactly one month and one week later former Straightling Duane Rholfs and his friend Chris Kelley committed suicide by automobile exhaust fumes. Regarding the four deaths in New Jersey, Miller Newton, Melvin and Betty's former national clinical director at Straight, made an immediate press release blaming drugs even before the coroner's autopsy. Fair Oaks Hospital in New Jersey also called a press conference to sound the dangers of teen drug use, but the spokesperson was taken aback when a reporter asked him whether one of Fair Oak's former patients had not been one of the deceased kids. In fact, Thomas Olton had been a patient at Fair Oaks Hospital. The nation-wide drug rehabilitation program for the Fair Oaks was the brain child of Dr. Mark Gold. In the 1980s Fair Oaks ran a national-level TV ad advising us to call 1-800-COCAINE if you had a loved one in trouble. Turns out if you called in and had a good insurance plan you were referred to one of their hospitals at $1,000 a day, but if you did not you were given the number for your local city social services department. The front page of Straight's newsletter EPIDEMIC, Vol. 10 carried this statement by Arnold Washton, a psychopharmacologist at Fair Oaks. "Crack is the most addictive drug known to man right now. . . It is almost instantly addictive." That statement scared the hell out of Straight parents. [Washton had made a statement about the addictiveness of crack cocaine in the March 17, 1986 edition of Newsweek, the veracity of which has been in question.] Straight had two drug czars associated with it, another drug czar is apparently associated with Fair Oaks. Today Dr. Mark Gold is a director on Save Our Society (SOS), another Betty Sembler charitable organization, this one to save us form drug use.

• In 1983, in Plano Texas, over a short period of time five teenagers committed suicide. No Straight wasn't there in those days but Straight's national clinical director showed up to see what was happening. His inquiry led to the establishment of Straight-Dallas and within five years Timothy Nixon got out of that treatment camp and beat his mother to death with a baseball bat.

• Her disarming good looks play in her employer's favor as she meets with journalists to defend one wacky juvenile treatment program after another. This time it was the Lippman Family Center in Broward County, Florida run by another charity the Lutheran Services Florida. In July 2000 a 15 year old boy named Anthony Dumas tied a belt around his neck and hung himself from his bunk bed. Program officials walked in and saw him hanging there, still alive and just stared at him. Youth care specialist Sandra Trotter allegedly took six Polaroids of Dumas as he hung there dying and somebody called 911. The police arrived and cut him down. Today the boy is apparently brain dead. The attractive woman is Joy Margolis, spokesperson for Lutheran Services of Florida. "Taking pictures like that that is not our practice because nothing like this has ever happened there before", said Ms. Margolis. For years until it closed down under charges of child abuse, Joy Margolis had been Melvin and Betty's mouth piece for Straight, explaining off to newsmen one charge of child abuse after another.

So what are Mel and Betty up to these days to save America's youth from drugs. For one thing they still run Straight Foundation, Inc. (Straight's education arm) only now under the name the Drug Free America Foundation. George W. Bush and Barbara Bush have been actively involved with the charity. The DFAF claims that it is working to help develop drug policy for the incumbent president. Meanwhile Florida's governor Jeb Bush , whose finance co-chairman was Betty Sembler, has openly endorsed SAFE, a Sembler-based synanon in Orlando. In 2000 Governor Bush of Florida, who refers to Betty Sembler as Mrs. Ambassadorable, declared her birthday to be a special day in Florida, in part for her work with Straight. After laws were passed authorizing the government to give financial aid to programs which had established Employee Assistance Plans or EAPs, Straight's newsletter EPIDEMIC ran a big promotional article for EAPs. Today, Straight's former paid consultant Robert DuPont assists businesses in setting up EAPs from his offices in Maryland and Chicago. Even Straight now called the DFAF assists employers in the Tampa Bay region in setting up EAPs. Wood and Associates is a competing EAP services provider in Tampa which deals with "sexual identify" problems and crisis intervention such as suicide besides providing assistance for employees with drug and alcohol problems. Is the DFAF addressing "sexual identity" problems and suicide issues too?

Pinellas County Florida has a team called the JAC which is intended to serve as a "one-stop shop" for intake, assessment (including suicide assessment) and follow-up, of youth taken into custody by law enforcement officers. The planning team includes organizations like the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office; the Florida Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), The Pinellas County School Board; the State Attorney's Office and Operation PAR. Operation PAR had been setup by Republicans in 1970 to meet the 1970 drug threat that led to the formation of The Seed and of Narconon also in 1970. Where Straight tried to meet the needs of affluent white kids, Operation PAR serviced lower income blacks and was priced accordingly. Straight's former executive director Randy Ratliff went on to work for Operation PAR and Betty Sembler is now a director there. In 2000 when Florida's Governor Jeb Bush announced his $60-million drug control plan, he made the announcement at the Shirley D. Coletti Academy for Behavioral Change, a PAR residential treatment center for juvenile offenders. Rebecca Wade is a PAR's nurse educator. She has publicly commented that, "the lack of an education and jobs are what hold addicts back. It's a vicious cycle. It's hopelessness. . . [mothers] receive counseling and advice on sexual trauma. They also attend classes on depression "⁽⁴⁶⁾

According to writer Shelly Sigo of Bizjournals.com/tampabay, besides his keen business acumen one of the reasons for Mel Sembler winning the "prestigious" Florida Enterprise Medal from the Merchants Association of Florida Inc. in 1999 is because Mel Sembler is known as a "drug warrior". Mel Sembler joins good company with the winners of that medal too. Take for example fellow multi-millionaire John Sykes of Sykes Enterprises Inc. in Tampa. In 2000 John and Susan Sykes gave $36,000 to Republicans and Mel and Betty Sembler only gave $35,000. The Crisis Center of Tampa Bay is a charity dedicated to mental wellness and suicide intervention in the Tampa Bay area. It's building was donated by John and Susan Sykes.
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.A Call for Action. Through the years the Straight's have been expert at dodging state criminal investigations, often voluntarily closing down amidst criminal investigations in many states. And the politically connected Straights have often enjoyed special relationships with state prosecutors. Pinellas County Florida prosecutor James T. Russell may have been forced by public pressure and Congressional inquiry to investigate Straight on numerous occasions but he never once prosecuted Straight except for the one counselor he sent to prison for sexual molestation of minors. And yet his counter-part in neighboring Sarasota County was prepared to indict them there when they decided to voluntarily close. Prosecutor Russell had invited The Seed to Florida and, Allen Alweiss, one of his principal assistant states attorneys was on Straight's board. When Straight's former national education director Dr. George Ross was criminally prosecuted in Kentucky for charges relating to his own program called Possibilities Unlimited, Ross was successfully represented by former Commonwealth of Kentucky attorney for Fayette County Larry Roberts. Which brings us to the man in the photo. He is Robert F. Horan, Jr.,  Commonwealth Attorney for Fairfax County, Virginia. I have been told by a Fairfax County police detective that Straight was under criminal investigation when it voluntarily closed in Fairfax County and hopped over the state line into Maryland to setup operations there without bothering to get a license. I was told that someone on high in Fairfax County had said that the state had decided not to prosecute because the main thing was that "we got them out of Virginia." To me, if that 's true, it's like saying to Straight, if you want to abuse Virginia kids then take them over to Maryland, but we'll prosecute if you abuse one more Virginian in Virginia!
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What you can do.  Professionals who study suicide and prosecutors who investigate mysterious deaths need to be apprised of our findings.  Click here if you want to help. 

28.1 SPT 4-27-1993, p. 3B, Section Tampa Bay and State

28.2 , SPT 8-10-92

32.1 Richard Bowman as quoted in the Sun-Sentinel, March 26, 1990, Section B. The article identifies Richard Bowman as a Growing Together parent from Jupiter, Florida. Micky Bowman, executive director of Growing Together, is also from Jupiter, Florida.

40.1 Saint Petersburg Times, 5-10-95, Dateline Tampa, pp. 1B, 5B

44. Ladies Home Journal, May 1970, p. 112.

45. New York Post, AMERICA'S GULAG FOR CHILDREN by Daniel Jeffrey, 12-19-2000.

46. Saint Petersburg Times Online by Bill Maxwell, 5-21-2000