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Family Foundation School, over 100 former students commited suicide


Rosalie

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‘It’s Like, Who’s Next?’: A Troubled School’s Alarming Death Rate (NY Times)

When four former students from the same school died within months of one another in 2015, it seemed random, a morbid coincidence. Then the number kept growing. At least seven more died the next year.

Their fellow alumni, feeling more anxious with each death, started to keep count. By the time a classmate in Ohio died of a heroin overdose in October, the toll had reached at least 87.

Three weeks later, another fatal overdose in New Jersey: 88. Three more weeks saw another, a schoolteacher in the Bronx found dead in the faculty restroom. Ten days later, No. 90, in Minnesota.

“Damn,” a friend of the last victim wrote on Facebook. “This is outta control.”

All of the dead were alumni of the Family Foundation School, a small boarding academy in rural Hancock, N.Y. Since its opening in the 1980s, the school was an option of last resort for parents who sought help for their teenagers troubled by drug and alcohol abuse or behavioral issues. The students ate and bunked together, were dressed down and punished together. Some attempted to escape together, dashing through the woods to the nearest town and hiding in a McDonald’s bathroom.

And now, alone and back at their respective homes, they were dying, largely of drug overdoses and suicide, their names joining classmates on the list. Again, together.

The school closed in 2014 after a drop in enrollment that followed a self-described truth campaign by alumni telling of abuses there: solitary confinement, so-called “blackouts” of silence and isolation from others, the restraining of unruly students by wrapping them in rugs and duct tape. There were reports of physical abuse in complaints to state officials and the police.

In 2015, a year after the school closed, at least four former students died. The next year, there were at least seven. In a recent Facebook post, a man remembered hanging out with two friends from the school in 2016, following the funeral of another. Both those friends have since died.

Former students sought to find someone to blame, their first target being the school, only to come to terms with a more likely truth, that their dead classmates had been overcome by the sources of despair and addiction that took seed in their youth and brought them to the school in the first place.

It is unclear how many students attended the Family Foundation School over its roughly 30 years in business. A 1986 newspaper article about the school puts its student population at 34. The next decade, a 1998 yearbook — roughly the halfway point in the school’s existence — refers to that year’s graduating class of 30 as its largest ever. The school grew some in the years to come, alumni said.

Emmanuel Argiros, the son of the school’s founders and its former president, declined to comment on the school’s history. “I’m trying to move on,” he said. He has had many conversations with angry former students, he said. “It’s painful to go through it over and over and over again.”

There is no clearinghouse for data regarding mortality rates among secondary schools. Robert M. Friedman, formerly with the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment, said he was familiar with the Family Foundation School and the push by alumni to close it down. He said the deaths of graduates are not typically tracked.

“Nobody knows how these kids have done, over all,” he said.

In recent months, many of the school’s former students have pivoted to a sort of social media suicide watch, urging alumni on Facebook to look out for one another. The effort is led by Elizabeth Ianelli, 39, an alumna of the school and a former police instructor, who has tallied the death count — now up to 101, all under the age of 50 and the vast majority under 40.

Ms. Ianelli, whose username is Survivor993 for the number of days she spent at the school, created a Facebook community page called ISeeYouSurvivor, and separately posted a video that she made in her home office in Carmel, N.Y.

“What I want you to know is that I see you,” she said, visibly shaken as she spoke. “I see you. I know what you go though and I’ve been there.” She added later, “Our best revenge is living a good life.”

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http://www.thefamilyschooltruth.com/

"I learned quickly how to speak the language of FFS for fear of getting punished the way I had seen my friends get punished so many times. I remember being told at one point early in my stay by several staff members, "FFS is a student run school." I later found out the school ran on the fear."    
- Emmett Katsh-Williams, Survivor of The Family Foundation School

"She always feels like she has failed us and is still not able to let go of her resentment and anger towards us for putting her there.  I feel as though it was the one decision in my life that I wish I could change...Instead of dealing with her, they made them worse and prolonged her recovery as well as ours."
- Camille E, Parent of a Family Foundation School Survivor


"The Family Foundation School had me convinced...I was worthless.  I wish I could let each of you who reads this feel for a few minutes what it feels like to fight such a horrible thought at every waking moment.  And worse yet...it is their mission statement"    
- Gregory Brajczewski, Survivor of The Family Foundation School

"The year that I was at the family school was the worst in my life...This place made me completely mentally unstable; trying to commit suicide for the first time. When you got up at the table they would tell you what a useless human you were"
- Rich Frati, Survivor of The Family Foundation School

"I was repeatedly told that I had caused my mother's cancer and father's divorce through my behavior; that I am a liar, cheat, manipulator, pervert, sinner, sex fiend, callous and evil. The FFS had other students address me as such and state their grievances against me." 
- Brianna Bernstein, Survivor of The Family Foundation School

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From the NYT article linked above:

Quote

Former students sought to find someone to blame, their first target being the school, only to come to terms with a more likely truth, that their dead classmates had been overcome by the sources of despair and addiction that took seed in their youth and brought them to the school in the first place.

Nice job of blaming the victims there, NYT.  Perhaps the high rate of suicide is due to the fact that many of the methods employed by the school were abusive instead of therapeutic.  Prior to 1999 many of the staff were not even required to be properly trained.  And not all the students were addicted to drugs - the school accepted a range of special needs.  

More useful links here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allynwood_Academy

https://www.facebook.com/FamilySchoolTRUTH

 

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I'm glad it shut down, but I think there need to be prosecutions.  Those students are not to blame, it sounds like the whole idea of the school was to humiliate and terrorize them.  How is that supposed to help with addictions and behavior issues?  All I see is extreme bullying and extreme abuse.  This is horrible.

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51 minutes ago, Palimpsest said:

From the NYT article linked above:

Nice job of blaming the victims there, NYT.  Perhaps the high rate of suicide is due to the fact that many of the methods employed by the school were abusive instead of therapeutic.  Prior to 1999 many of the staff were not even required to be properly trained.  And not all the students were addicted to drugs - the school accepted a range of special needs.  

More useful links here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allynwood_Academy

https://www.facebook.com/FamilySchoolTRUTH

 

I think the NYT has earned a protest mail. This sort of victim blaming and biased reporting is intolerable.

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1 hour ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

I think the NYT has earned a protest mail. This sort of victim blaming and biased reporting is intolerable.

I agree. I first read the story in a Norwegian newspaper, and it didn’t contain any victim blaming, and also a longer interview with the former student.

link to the Norwegian article (I think it’s not behind payment wall):  https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/de-tidligere-elevene-dor-n-etter-n---er-jeg-den-neste-skal-jeg-ogsa-do/70178789  You can translate with google etc, if interested.

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19 hours ago, Briefly said:

I'm glad it shut down, but I think there need to be prosecutions.  Those students are not to blame, it sounds like the whole idea of the school was to humiliate and terrorize them.  How is that supposed to help with addictions and behavior issues?  All I see is extreme bullying and extreme abuse.  This is horrible.

I fear that there are alot of shit hidden at quite a few of the private therapeutic boarding schools. And that the stories about FFS are just the tip of a very large iceberg.

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An old friend of mine was a graduate of this school. The stories of abuse and suffering were crazy and yet she'd tell me them while saying it WASN'T abuse. I will only say that Stockholm Syndrome is real... and that the owners of the school bred St. Bernards to find all of their runaways without police intervention (and be able to punish them once they were returned to the school.) 

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I don't think it's victim blaming to ask if the drug and/or mental health problems that got the kids sent to the school to the first place are contributing to later suicides and overdoses. Those problems aren't the fault of the people who have them, and the article isn't saying they are.

The school is almost certainly a contributing factor in a lot of these cases, but the rates of suicide and overdose for kids who had severe mental health or drug problems as teenagers, and whose families felt they couldn't support them are high to start with.

It's clear that the school helped absolutely no one, and was seriously harmful to most, but to attribute every suicide or overdose among alumni to the school's actions alone is ridiculous. Particularly if this is happening years after they left - A number of these people are in their thirties. 

Suicide and drug problems are complex and multifactorial issues, and reducing things to "they committed suicide because of the school" is unhelpful. The causes of suicide and drug problems are individual and complicated, and many of the people who died will have had contributing factors that pre-dated attending FFS.

It's obvious that this was a horrifying and traumatising experience for almost everyone who attended, and that complaints weren't taken seriously. It's also likely that some of those who died might not have if they had got the right support as teenagers. That doesn't mean that all the deaths are due to the school.

 

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5 minutes ago, SoGladIWasCofE said:

I don't think it's victim blaming to ask if the drug and/or mental health problems that got the kids sent to the school to the first place are contributing to later suicides and overdoses. Those problems aren't the fault of the people who have them, and the article isn't saying they are.

 

For sure, majority of the kids went there with some issues.. but there was NO ONE there with the proper licenses or experience to deal with the behavioral issues these kids have. My friend said all of her "counselors" were previous graduates of the school who just continued the horrid cycle of abuse that they were brought up through. They took some traumatized kids and traumatized them even more. 

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56 minutes ago, SoGladIWasCofE said:

I don't think it's victim blaming to ask if the drug and/or mental health problems that got the kids sent to the school to the first place are contributing to later suicides and overdoses. Those problems aren't the fault of the people who have them, and the article isn't saying they are.

Bullshit. If you get pneumonia and at the hospital they pretend to cure you applying leeches and drawing blood you are going to die of pneumonia. But I wouldn't say that stating that you died of pneumonia would be accurate.

Those kids had mental health issues and instead of getting therapy they were abused. Then their mental health situation worsened to the point that they died. If you think that saying they died as a result of their issues is accurate you are definitely victim blaming.

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Just now, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Bullshit. If you get pneumonia and at the hospital they pretended to cure you applying leeches and drawing blood you are going to die of pneumonia. But I wouldn't say that stating that you died of pneumonia would be accurate.

Those kids had mental health issues and instead of getting therapy they were abused. Then their mental health situation worsened to the point that they died. If you think that saying they died as a result of their issues is accurate you are definitely victim blaming.

Dying of untreated pneumonia with bloodloss as a contributing factor would be the responsibility of the hospital. Death from pneumonia would still be accurate. Clearly the hospital needs to be shut down, and bear responsibility for the death. Someone dying in hospital from an untreated illness, and someone dying twenty years later from say, an illness they picked up in hospital that didn't get treated for decades are different.

Again, the school was likely a contributing factor in some of these deaths, and having no qualified counselors in an insitute for people with mental health problems is batshit. The effects of trauma can last a very long time.

But when someone who has had mental health issues or drug problems (which are not their fault) and commits suicide or overdoses twenty odd years later, pointing to the school (however abusive) is likely inaccurate. It's a situation where it's a bit tricky to examine excess deaths (i.e. how many more died compared to those who didn't attend the school) because there aren't good statistics. The article can't even say how many people attended the school over the years. Figuring that out is even trickier for a school like this, because lots of kids will be pulled out of their usual school mid year, or stay there only for a short while. So while the class could have been ~30 at all times, you might have an average of 60 kids subjected per year. It's complicated.

Talking about the multiple complex factors involved in any individual suicide or overdose is not victim blaming. For every death there will be multiple causes. Childhood trauma, neglect, or malnutrition. Genetic predispositions to certain mental illnesses. Situational factors as a child or teen that lead to drug use or worsening mental health. Being sent to this awful school to be abused instead of receiving support. Any race, gender or disability based discrimination people endured. The trauma of incarceration. Lifelong lack of access to mental health services or drug addiction support. Personal factors like bereavement or relationship breakup that worsened existing issues.

These are all possibilities, and statistically every kid who attended this school will have at least one of these. Talking about them and their role in later deaths is not victim blaming. None of this is the fault of the person who died. It is relevant in determining to what degree the school is at fault.

The absolute best treatment centre for teenagers with these issues will still see a higher than death rate than the population standard, because mental health issues are often lifelong, and difficult to treat. For some people who were sent here, trauma for their abuse may have been the tipping point into drug addiction. For many it will just be one more thing on a list of terrible life experiences. A list of suicides isn't evidence that they are all the first type.

The spotlight effect is a real problem in reporting these kinds of cases. If a group of alumni (paticularly a group like this, who a) are a high risk group to start with and b) have a lot of contact with each other through support groups) starts tracking every death that happens, this kind of thing can look much bigger than it is.

Figuring out what's actually going on in terms of death rates is important - this kind of thinking is how you end up with bogus medical scare stories.

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I checked to be sure. Mister works for a small residential facility for treatment of drug abuse disorders, their numbers are small and comparable to those of said school, treating on average 30 people per year. The facility has been operating since the eighties too. They try to keep in contact with their former patients for statistics purposes and they do not number a hundred of deaths from suicide or overdose among them, not even close. And their patients aren't "troubled teens", but diagnosed addicts with at least a decade of drugs abuse behind them and in the vast majority of cases a co-morbidity with other mental illnesses and a history in jail. But you know, in mister's facility they actually TREAT them, not abuse them.

That school former students suicide numbers are appalling as is your willingness to diminish impact of abuse on the victims. Fuck you, really.

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Her parents were afraid with their daughter's drinking and promiscuous activities and thought this school would help. She was dragged out of her own bed in the middle of the night by two large men and wrapped in a blanket and duct taped in it like a straight jacket. She was tossed in the backseat and driven to the remote location of the FFS with no idea where she was. Her parents were told to throw out everything she owned and rearrange their entire house because her old life was gone. They weren't allowed to make contact for months.

Her "therapy" sessions at the school involved her being forced to retell the tales of her promiscuousness and sexual activity while being berated and called a slut and a whore. She was beaten and called a slut by her "elders" of the school if she so much as made eye contact with the opposite sex. They isolated her, wouldn't speak to her, took away electricity at times, and would constantly use their duct tape restraint tactics for minor occurrences. 

She was "lucky" in that her teenage rebellion didn't include too much mental illness. Majority of the students in that school did have a lot of untreated mental illness occurring. Their "treatment" gave them even more issues than they'll ever be able to deal with. Did the FFS commit their suicide on their behalf? No. Did the FFS knowingly take at risk youth with underlying, complex mental issues and beat and berate them until they lived in fear with absolutely zero coping mechanisms for the real world once they left the school? Yes. Could those complex issues contribute to suicidal thoughts and tendencies? Hell yes. They should be on the hook for every single death and every child they failed. 

 

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I’m 60. I have likely suffered from anxiety and depression my entire life. I was brought up to believe that I was not healed , of anything that ailed me,  because my faith was not strong enough. In addition to my mental health issues, I was sexually abused. Dark story here, with a pretty happy present.

All these years later, I may kill myself. I’m not in any danger, most days, but I have suicidal ideation when I’m depressed. I definitely blame my helpless fundy teachings, and teenage trauma.  I’m certain the trauma suffered by those children at the school plagued them, many years later. 

This is in no way scientific, but I am certain, based on my own dark thoughts. 

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11 minutes ago, jjmennonite said:

I’m 60. I have likely suffered from anxiety and depression my entire life. I was brought up to believe that I was not healed , of anything that ailed me,  because my faith was not strong enough. In addition to my mental health issues, I was sexually abused. Dark story here, with a pretty happy present.

All these years later, I may kill myself. I’m not in any danger, most days, but I have suicidal ideation when I’m depressed. I definitely blame my helpless fundy teachings, and teenage trauma.  I’m certain the trauma suffered by those children at the school plagued them, many years later. 

This is in no way scientific, but I am certain, based on my own dark thoughts. 

I  want to give you a big, big hug!! Maybe therapy helps? I’ve been through therapy myself (mainly psychoanalysis) and found that I feel much better now. Still not healthy but better. 

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1 minute ago, FluffySnowball said:

I  want to give you a big, big hug!! Maybe therapy helps? I’ve been through therapy myself (especially psychoanalysis) and found that I feel much better now. Still not healthy but better. 

Thanks. I have therapy, mostly, when I need it. I’m really not in danger of suicide, most of the time. I’m just certain that the kids tortured at this so called school can be suffering from this years later. 

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5 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

That school former students suicide numbers are appalling as is your willingness to diminish impact of abuse on the victims.

Yes, let's look at those statistics.  FFS started out very small with only 30 students in their first year, if the largest graduating class was around 30 and they were in existence for 30 years ...  I'll round it up to 1,000 graduates for simplicity. 

Over 100 graduates have died by suicide.  That is a 10+% suicide rate among graduates.  Minimally.  And that wouldn't count the people with drug addictions who accidentally over-dosed or died from other drug related causes.  It is just the suicides.

6 hours ago, SoGladIWasCofE said:

None of this is the fault of the person who died. It is relevant in determining to what degree the school is at fault.

The absolute best treatment centre for teenagers with these issues will still see a higher than death rate than the population standard, because mental health issues are often lifelong, and difficult to treat. For some people who were sent here, trauma for their abuse may have been the tipping point into drug addiction. For many it will just be one more thing on a list of terrible life experiences. A list of suicides isn't evidence that they are all the first type.

A list of suicides this long really suggests that the school was a contributing factor.  Just brushing it aside to say that suicide rates among the mentally ill are often higher than those in the general population is minimizing, victim-blaming, and down-right lazy.

I did a bit more reading than you.  Not all the students were there because they had been diagnosed with mental health or addiction issues.  Nor are all the survivors of the student body drug addicted today.   I would expect that conditions at the school exacerbated any existing mental health issues, and probably caused them in people with no known issues in the first place.

Note: some students were sent there because they needed the gay abused out of them, were thought difficult teens, or perhaps believed to be intractable teens, and so on.  And some were sent there because foster homes were unavailable.   

I only read a few of the testimonies on that site.  I also read the state investigator's report in full.  I suggest you do so too.  http://www.thefamilyschooltruth.com

I think it is obvious the school, and the documented abuse at the school, can and should be considered a contributing factor in those suicides.  I'd also be very interested in the PTSD rates among the survivors too.  The long-term effects on victims do need to be studied.

The tendency to blame the victims is huge, and that is what happens all too often in these cases.  The unregulated religious reform schools in the US are a national disgrace, and so is the so-called "therapy" provided at these schools.   Abusive schools should be closed and the perpetrators prosecuted.  Unfortunately this is hard to do in many states.

@Bethella, should we add this to our Fundie Hall of Shame.  We already have the Roloff Schools and Hephzibah House.  This was a Catholic Fundie School (with possible East Ridge cult connections) and I think it deserves to be added.

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6 minutes ago, Palimpsest said:

Note: some students were sent there because they needed the gay abused out of them, were thought difficult teens, or perhaps believed to be intractable teens, and so on.  And some were sent there because foster homes were unavailable.   

This. I left out a lot of details to not dox myself (though the friend I've posted about would be the only one who would recognize me) but we became friends in college; In her time at FFS, they really, really pushed this college on her as a "safe" place to go. It was a hardcore, strict, Catholic college. She went straight from FFS to this college, still never returning home. There were a handful of FFS alumni at our school, as well. I met a few through her, and the lasting effects of the trauma they endured was so evident. None of them were sent to the family school for anything more than I would call mild to moderate teenage rebellion that some individual and family group therapy could have fixed. 

 

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8 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

I checked to be sure. Mister works for a small residential facility for treatment of drug abuse disorders, their numbers are small and comparable to those of said school, treating on average 30 people per year. The facility has been operating since the eighties too. They try to keep in contact with their former patients for statistics purposes and they do not number a hundred of deaths from suicide or overdose among them, not even close. And their patients aren't "troubled teens", but diagnosed addicts with at least a decade of drugs abuse behind them and in the vast majority of cases a co-morbidity with other mental illnesses and a history in jail. But you know, in mister's facility they actually TREAT them, not abuse them.

That school former students suicide numbers are appalling as is your willingness to diminish impact of abuse on the victims. Fuck you, really.

Statistics from a comparable school is useful data, thank you. That's actually useful information. It's not quite like to like obviously, but that's the first I've heard that this is higher than the base rate expected from the population. There are still a huge number of potential confounding variables - are people who get sent to abusive shittholes like this different to the people who get to go to better treatment centers (eg. abusive and unsupportive religious family members), but it's much better than the nothing information provided in the article.

I'm not diminishing the impact the abuse had - it's horrific and clearly very severe, and that kind of trauma has lasting impact. I'm not in any way denying that. What I'm saying is that if someone has had a lifetime of drug and or mental health issues, and commits suicide or overdoses decades after the trauma, it's likely that there are other things going on in their life too. 

Saying that there are likely other factors is not victim blaming. Even if it's 100% wrong and literally every single one of these suicides was 100% caused by abuse at this incident, and every person who left this facility went on to have a stable family situation, access to mental health care and psychiatric medication and had no other traumas before or after (unlikely, IMO) saying that there are likely other factors is still not victim blaming. None of that in any way implies that any of this is the fault of the victims.

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18 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

Yes, let's look at those statistics.  FFS started out very small with only 30 students in their first year, if the largest graduating class was around 30 and they were in existence for 30 years ...  I'll round it up to 1,000 graduates for simplicity. 

Not necessarily - it's a school where people are pulled in and out, so as I said earlier, it could be much higher. 30 at any given point, but there could easily be twice as many per year overall. We don't know, that's the point. 

Over 100 graduates have died by suicide.  That is a 10+% suicide rate among graduates.  Minimally.  And that wouldn't count the people with drug addictions who accidentally over-dosed or died from other drug related causes.  It is just the suicides.

The impression I got from the article was that they were conflating suicide and overdose deaths, partly because it can sometimes be difficult to tell those apart. 10% is very high, I'm not denying that.

A list of suicides this long really suggests that the school was a contributing factor.  Just brushing it aside to say that suicide rates among the mentally ill are often higher than those in the general population is minimizing, victim-blaming, and down-right lazy.

I have said repeatedly that the school is likely a contributing factor in at least some of these deaths. Please, please actually read what I'm saying instead of putting words in my mouth. Talking about other causes of suicide is not victim blaming! I have never, ever said that any of this was the fault of the victims! Not the abuse, not the deaths, nothing. Please stop describing me as victim blaming. It's a flat out lie. 

Wanting a level of rigour in journalism is not lazy.

I did a bit more reading than you.  Not all the students were there because they had been diagnosed with mental health or addiction issues.  Nor are all the survivors of the student body drug addicted today.   I would expect that conditions at the school exacerbated any existing mental health issues, and probably caused them in people with no known issues in the first place.

Look, statistics and analysing claims like this was a major part of my degree. This is a misleading claim. I agree with your last sentence, I always have, that's what I've been saying!

Note: some students were sent there because they needed the gay abused out of them, were thought difficult teens, or perhaps believed to be intractable teens, and so on.  And some were sent there because foster homes were unavailable. 

Having parents who'd send you to an abusive hellhole for being gay, or being in foster care are major risk factors for mental health problems. Seriously, kids in foster care end up with mental health problems and situational problems (like homelessness) at horrifying rates. Again, because apparently I have to say this since you're determined to accuse me of blaming children for having mental health problems, that's not their fault. That's the fault of the system. It's still true, and likely a factor in later deaths, because strong family relationships are preventative against suicide, and PTSD and other mental health problems, as well as lack of safety net as an adult is endemic to the foster care system.

I only read a few of the testimonies on that site.  I also read the state investigator's report in full.  I suggest you do so too.  http://www.thefamilyschooltruth.com

I think it is obvious the school, and the documented abuse at the school, can and should be considered a contributing factor in those suicides.  I'd also be very interested in the PTSD rates among the survivors too.  The long-term effects on victims do need to be studied.

I am in no way diminishing the horror of what these people went through - I have been talking about the effects of trauma, why are you so convinced I haven't been?? "It wasn't that bad" is NOT MY POSITION. Please stop pretending it is. I'm saying it is not the SOLE CAUSE of suicides TWENTY YEARS LATER. Suicide rates for PTSD alone are not usually that high - other things are going on too. Again, a number of these deaths were decades later. Are you seriously saying that there was nothing in the victims current living situations that contributed to these deaths?

The tendency to blame the victims is huge, and that is what happens all too often in these cases.  The unregulated religious reform schools in the US are a national disgrace, and so is the so-called "therapy" provided at these schools.   Abusive schools should be closed and the perpetrators prosecuted.  Unfortunately this is hard to do in many states.

@Bethella, should we add this to our Fundie Hall of Shame.  We already have the Roloff Schools and Hephzibah House.  This was a Catholic Fundie School (with possible East Ridge cult connections) and I think it deserves to be added.

 

It's one thing to disagree with the argument I'm making on psychological or statistical grounds. It's another to accuse me of victim blaming, or saying that the abuse was ok/not a big deal which I am NOT DOING.

It is really, really upsetting to be accused of that because it's not true. That's not what I'm arguing.

I'm coming at this from a background in psychology, statistics and critical analysis, and looking at the claim, which I think is dubious.

Evidence of suicides as a direct result of treatment is not needed to shut down the centre (that happened before this) or to say that the abuse was appalling and had negative effects on the victims.

Suing for PTSD or further therapy costs is a reasonable step for a lot of the victims, and making dubious claims like this that would never hold up under reasonable examination doesn't help that at all. These claims would never hold up in court, and it's misleading to attribute all of them to decades old abuse. This could have been an article focusing on the long term effects of abuse in this place without making dubious claims.

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3 hours ago, SoGladIWasCofE said:

This could have been an article focusing on the long term effects of abuse in this place without making dubious claims.

Yeah except this is the only dubious claim. A claim you did your best to defend without any actual fact to back it up. Quoting from the article: "Former students sought to find someone to blame, their first target being the school, only to come to terms with a more likely truth, that their dead classmates had been overcome by the sources of despair and addiction that took seed in their youth and brought them to the school in the first place."

Let me translate that bit: it wasn't the school's fault cos those kids were already fucked up and they just brought their fucked up-ness with them in their adult life. Never mind the abuse, nothing to see there.

It's not like being so severely istitutionally abused is a big risk factor for anything right? It's not like PTSD from TORTURE (cos much of what those kids went through would constitute torture in a different context) can be a risk factor for suicide right?

As someone who works with mentally ill patients, I hate hate hate when effects of abuse or simply of bad quality therapy are overlooked because "oh well, they were mentally ill, how do you know it wasn't their illness?".

How is it that if you die of any physical and curable illness as a consequence of bad medical practices nobody feels the need to point out that's the curable physical illness that actually killed you?

In this case you have well documented bad medical practices TORTURE and an extremely high suicide rate among former patients (let's not forget that the school was presented as a place where the kids would undergo therapy). In front of such data, affirming that the former patients death rates aren't attributable to any fault on the school's part but only to the patients illnesses and baseline vulnerability is textbook victim blaming.

3 hours ago, SoGladIWasCofE said:

It's another to accuse me of victim blaming, or saying that the abuse was ok/not a big deal which I am NOT DOING.

Except that saying that the abuse was not a big deal is EXACTLY what you did when you stated that the article excerpt I quoted above is not victim blamey.

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Thanks @laPapessaGiovanna.  I saw that post this morning and was too annoyed to respond.  I'm not sure I'm not still too annoyed.  

5 hours ago, SoGladIWasCofE said:

I'm coming at this from a background in psychology, statistics and critical analysis, and looking at the claim, which I think is dubious.

Well, lah-dee-bloody-dah.   Is that supposed to end the argument.  We come from a lot of different backgrounds here.  Some of us ignorant FJers are quite well educated in these issues too, thanks.

 @SoGladIWasCofE, you are apparently fixed on this.   Yes, we get it.  You think that all the former students' claims are "dubious."  Their stories are to be doubted because they were all mentally ill drug addicts.  (They weren't.) The sky-high rates of suicide among them are all explained by their mental illness and drug addiction.  (I doubt it.  And you should be willing to consider the possibility.)  There is no connection to any abuse at the school because they were all sick puppies who sank under their mental illnesses and substance abuse.  (Some were actually very successful and some are still battling demons.) In fact you implied in your first post on this thread that the former students are all plotting on social media to bring down the school because of some kind of mass hysteria. 

Their claims are "dubious."  You think there is no connection (or even correlation let alone causation) between child abuse and suicide.  (Actually there is.) And they will never prove it in a court of law.

As I said, we get it.  You can stop now.

Apparently @SoGladIWasCofE is from the UK, so I'll put it into that context.  Is it "blaming the victim" or is it dismissing victim's stories out of hand.  "Experts" like SGIWCoE know they can't be trusted because they are mentally impaired.  Untrustworthy.  Were delinquents.  And they probably would have killed themselves anyway.

It is thinking like this that allowed Jimmy Saville to assault generations of children.  It is thinking like this that buried the Jillings Report for 2 decades.  It is thinking like this that allowed the abuse in Scottish children's homes to go on for even more decades.  Only now is there a proper inquiry and in-depth investigation into the facts - and arrests being made - because no-one believed the claims made of abuse in by numerous survivors of those children's homes and schools.

All those claims were thought "dubious" in their time.   The survivors of FFS need a full investigation and are due respect even if their case can't be proven to SGIWCoE;s satisfaction.  This would at least validate their experiences and might help to pay for what I'm sure is much needed ongoing therapy.

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On 9/16/2018 at 9:38 PM, Palimpsest said:

This was a Catholic Fundie School (with possible EastRidge cult connections) a

Do you have link to sources about the East Ridge cult? I tried to Google but it's a name too common.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 9/16/2018 at 3:21 PM, jjmennonite said:

I’m 60. I have likely suffered from anxiety and depression my entire life. I was brought up to believe that I was not healed , of anything that ailed me,  because my faith was not strong enough. In addition to my mental health issues, I was sexually abused. Dark story here, with a pretty happy present.

All these years later, I may kill myself. I’m not in any danger, most days, but I have suicidal ideation when I’m depressed. I definitely blame my helpless fundy teachings, and teenage trauma.  I’m certain the trauma suffered by those children at the school plagued them, many years later. 

This is in no way scientific, but I am certain, based on my own dark thoughts. 

Please have a plan in place for someone to call (pereferably a counselor or prevention hotline) when these ideations hit. You are worthy of living and the feelings of despair will pass, even though it may not feel like it at the time. You are a person who deserves to live.

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