S3 E27 The Troubled Teen Industry: CEDU

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Cult Vault podcast, your dedicated
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(00:22):
may contain discussions on abuse, including graphic descriptions of abuse,
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(01:30):
Thank you again for your support and your listenership. Now
let's unlock the vault. Hello, Hello, Hello listeners, and welcome
back to another episode of the court worlt podcast. I'm
your host, Casey, and today we are revisiting the trouble
teen industry, which is a subject that I haven't been

(01:50):
covering for a while, but it's always something I like
to keep my eyes on and it's something very important
to me and the work that I do. So I'm
very happy to introduce you all to Hi carry I
thank you for saying.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
My name correctly.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
How are you today, I'm good.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
I'm good. It's a struggle, but I'm good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
It's a wild time over in America right now, and
we've just had a brief conversation about the difficulties over
there currently, and I have been trying to reach out
to all of my loved ones over there, and I
hope everybody is managing to somehow stay safe and sane.
But without going into the political landstate escape of the

(02:38):
United States of America. Can you introduce yourself to listeners?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Please carry HI.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
My name is Cary Burn. I went to a reform
school from nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety six called
CD which was in stood for Charles E. D. Drich University,
and he was the man who started the culture Sinner.
I was a part of a documentary that came out

(03:06):
on YouTube called Surviving CD. Once I'd seen it on YouTube,
these little clips that Liam Scheff had put out, I
contacted him and was interviewed, and my interview never came out.
I know that he also interviewed many other people from
c DO because when I started doing real interviews with
a film crew, they were telling me about it. So

(03:26):
this is kind of a continuation of work that Liam
did over fifteen years ago. And then two years ago
I was on a podcast called Straight out of BS
and it's it's my friend Jordan who's done over one
hundred and fifty close to two hundred interviews of survivors
just telling their story. They sit with him and they

(03:47):
have as much time as they want, you know, an
hour to four hours sometimes where they can just tell
their story. And it left so that people could go
and you know, visit there the people that they love,
you know, like people have watched my you know, my
stories over the last couple of years and they you know,
get to know me better. So it's it's I feel

(04:07):
like it's a very healthy way for the story to
be told because you know, you just go there for this.
But I've realized that because some of the schools that
are kind of the model for the whole trouble teen
industry to exist in the first place, like my school,
because we were so different from the schools like accounting

(04:29):
at Ivy Ridge or Castle by the Sea or a
Spring Creek Lodge, like all these WASPS schools that we
had to help them step it because I believe and
so because after I was on Jordan's podcast, I asked
my friends, Hey, can you please go on Jordan's podcast,
Like I think that Cedar is almost one of the

(04:49):
reasons this thing still happens because we're not talking out
about it because people kind of know that, like ce
Do was the best one, like it was we know
I ever got beat. We ate, Well, it wasn't. If
I had to choose again, if I knew I had
to go somewhere, I would still choose to do because
it was the least abusive out of all the places.

(05:11):
But it also was the most culty except for I
think Cascade and Hide. So yeah, yeah, but yeah, So
I've been making a documentary, you know. So when I
realized that people wouldn't go on Jordan's podcast, I was like, well,
I know that we have to fix this issue. And
I knew that I knew that this was a relevant subject,

(05:34):
you know what I mean, Like, I knew that this
was a fascinating subject. I knew that this was a
story that I've been wanting to tell my whole life,
and I have never been able to. I've always just
told people, oh, I'm weird because I went to a
culty reform school famous people's kids in the nineties. So
it's been something I've always wanted to explain. And I
found that other survivors of this are vastly embarrassed. This

(05:56):
is not something they've ever told anybody in their life.
So I was like, well, I don't mind talking about this,
like and there's a lot of people that are behind
me that I knew there or that it comes to
love me because they know that I'm doing this for
good reasons that support me because they don't feel comfortable
enough to be talking about this, like the way that

(06:17):
I'm able.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
To when you talk about Charles E.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Ddrich and him kind of almost being the he's like
the grandfather of the CD schools because we talk about
c DO as though it's one school, but it did
have like its cousins almost, you know.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Right, the first cousin grandfather. Yeah, so CEDAR was started
by mel Washerman and Bill Lane, and I wanted to
say that name because a lot of people don't know
Bill Lane is involved in all of this. Bill Yane,
I don't necessarily know, for I don't know if there's any
proof that Mel Washerman was in Synnon. You might have

(06:58):
been a lifestyle that was just kind of like on
the outside of it, but Bill Lane definitely was been
sent and on and he is only known as the
guy who had the escort services for all the trouble
cheam schools. He was the man who had the company
that would wake children up in the middle of the
night and say, you can come with this the easy
way of the hard way with handcuffs. That's Bill Lane.

(07:21):
We didn't when I was at c DO, we knew
Bill Lane as the escort service. When I opened the
box from nineteen ninety seven and found Bill Lane as
the owner of c DO, of all of the CEDU schools,
I was like, are you kidding me? And I know
that even to Bilane died a few years ago, but
I know that his daughter still runs schools in his name,

(07:45):
still like runs an escort service in his name, and
nobody really even fucking knows about it.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Wow, that's wild because earlier conversations I had would talk
about Mel Wasserman kind of like being the overseer of
the c DOU schools.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
And kind of saying, we think Bill Lane's.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Involved, but we don't know if his name's on any
of the paperwork.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
It's on all of the paperwork, it's not all the
paper for RMA, for CEED, for Boulder Creek Academy, bill
Lane was. Bill Lane was a much bigger part of
cd than even Bill Valentine. Now then yes, I know
that you know who Bill Valentine is. Bill Bill Valentine,
I could really own anything. Bill Lane was Bill Valentine's boss.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
So if Charles c Ddrich is the grandfather of the
ce DO schools, can you give the listeners who might
not be aware a quick overview of what Synanon is,
how that led to ce DO and how ce DO
and the cousins of c DO are part of the
trouble scene industry, but kind of in their own slice

(08:49):
of the TCI.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
You got it. Yeah, So Sinnanon were if you've ever
heard of the term today is the first day of
the rest of your life that I think a lot
of people think that came from AA, but it didn't.
It came from Sinnaa Synanon right when it started. Was
was kind of good. It was for back then, if
you were on Heroin you were considered thrown thrown away

(09:13):
like you were garbage, You were unsalvageable. So Synanon is
the thing for if you were on Heroin, you would
go to this house and other Heroin ex Heroin age
would sit on a couch with you while you got sober.
So it was like, you know, the first kind of
you know, you know, intervention kind of thing, but like
it was helpful and so but then my what I

(09:35):
think what happened is that mk Ultra got involved somehow
or but there there was a certain time where he
figured out that he didn't need LSD or hallucinogenic drugs
to have transformative experiences, and that's where the game came
out of. And like the trip, like there he would
do certain things to basically break people down and then

(10:00):
build them back up again. So people left. Like I've
actually met I interviewed somebody that had the choice to
go to Synanon or Seed and they had chosen c
do because it was by that time known that Synanon
was maybe a cult. So yeah, there was there was

(10:21):
a bunch of schools that kind of were derivative of Synanon.
I know, like the Seed is one of them, Seed
to is my school and pide in the Alone School
were also Synanon derivative. So my school started in nineteen
sixty seven. It had I believe I'm guessing at least

(10:42):
three to four people directly that worked for Senanon. In
the early seventies, we started to pick up the tactics
of st and primal scream and stuff like that, and
earlier on we would they would read the prophet by
Little Lebron almost like it was the Bible and the

(11:04):
profits in like the you know, in the early seventies,
they didn't have names or themes the way that they
did later on in the eighties and much more in
the nineties. So uh yeah, So we mel Wasserman slowly
would pick up little, you know, self help things from
weird movements over time, so it kind of became a

(11:27):
mishmash of all this stuff that he kind of made
his own self help religion. And so in the eighties,
I don't know, I don't know which came first, Cascade
or RNA. But at some point in the eighties staff
put sugar in the guess tanks of other staff at
Si Dou took a bunch of kids and moved them

(11:49):
to a different school called Cascade. It's kind of this
legendary story like we would hear about like yeah, like
rogue staff left SIDO and started their own school, like
they were not sister school somewhat related because sometimes we
would get people from Cascade coming to Sea Do. But
the first real sister school was Rocky Mountain Academy in

(12:13):
Bonish Ferry, Idaho. And they also had in Idaho Ascent,
which was our wilderness camp. Like, if we didn't fall
in line at Sea Do, they were like, if if
you're not good, you're gonna get sent to a CENT.
So it was like a deterrent. But a lot of
people have told me that a cent was not bad
that like they would have rather stated assent the entire time,

(12:35):
because a lot of the people that are Scent knew
they would say like, oh, this isn't Sea Do like
they would They kind of knew that CEDU was culture
and they were different. But yeah, and then so Rocky
Mount Academy was a much more brutal school. It it
was advertised to be the same, but it really wasn't.
From what I've when I've actually interviewed people that were there,

(12:56):
I found that the people that graduated Sea Do and
the people that didn't graduate so you do. The people
that graduated she Do are happier as adults. The people
that didn't graduate, to you, I feel like, are much
more damaged. And and that's not and it's not a
diss it's just an observation, and I feel like that's

(13:17):
the opposite for Rocky Mount Academy. I think if you
graduated Rocky Mount Academy, you are more damage than if
you got out early. And I think it has something
to do with the programming. They did have a certain
for like science to the formula of what they did
was a she do and they fucked it up when
it got to other places. And I know that that

(13:38):
sounds crazy because we're talking about cults, but you know, uh,
what this comes down to is that when I was
looking into like all of the sex of the trouble
teen industry, like the different you know ways they run,
like the fundamental Baptists and the Mormon ones and the
non secular like I thought c DO was non secular,
and we are not. We are SCIENTI we when I

(14:02):
started to really look into scientology, and then I found
out that landmark in s really comes from scientology too.
That all of the breaking down ways that they would
they would like make us attack each other, or like
all the guided stuff or whatever, the mental manipulation, that's
scientology one oh one. It's like they siic bearbone scientology.

(14:26):
And I don't think that anyone's really even thought about
why when we watch scientology documentaries it feels so fucking familiar.
It's not because it's just also a cult. It's derivative.
We are derivative of that same cult of scientology.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
When you mentioned S and Landmark, for anybody that's that's
listening that might not know what those two things mean,
we're talking about large group awareness training. So you've recently
read a book by an author who.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Left Landmark she was working for She was working directly
with Werner Earhart, who's started the s seminars. The s
seminars training has changed, like the naming and ownership so
many times because it was clear that this was not
something that the man who invented it wanted to be

(15:24):
legally responsible for, because it's very destructive. I know somebody
that has researched and I've spoken with him many times before,
and they have a theory that what the el gats
are dangerous because what they do is they force a
hypermannic state on people, and they do it so many
times that afterwards they are You know, of course being

(15:48):
bipolar is not You can't make a completely sane person
be bipolar. Maybe not, but if there are those tendencies
you know in your family line. You know, if it
runs in your family, and if you go through Landmark
and you're into it, it's a very high profitability. You
afterwards will become bipolar. And when I spoke to him
and I told him that I was bipolar when I

(16:09):
was talking about my documentary, he was fascinated by that.
And even when I've told other people about his theory,
because I kind of had the same theory. I have
a poll on Facebook for survivors to like, you know,
ask like questions, and like I would guess, I would
think that even like fifty to sixty percent of the

(16:30):
survivors are autistic or on the autistic spectrum, and I
would say ninety to ninety five percent of us either
have add ADHD or bipolar. And I think that it's that,
like our experiences in these institutions are called forced those
things to become very you know, that much more extreme

(16:53):
than maybe if we weren't tortured psychologically as teenagers, maybe
we wouldn't have ended up like this.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
It gives us a brief kind of overview of synanon
into c DO and c DO being made up of
for like an amalgamation of large group awareness training influences
like Eston Landmark and also kind of like throwing in
the core principles of syn and on and also any
other little bits that Melosoman picked up along the way.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, and that's why it's so hard, because it's not
just one thing, right, because it's like we you know,
we kind of we would hear about like what we
thought we came from. And that's been my whole bag
is that when I saw the program and I saw
the tower that was wrapped in duct tape in the
second episode, I recognized that I think that that comes

(18:05):
from the I want to live profit, the pounding of
the pillows, and also comes from the I m me's
the Friday night of the fights. I think that they
combined or basteardized to you know, rituals that we had
to do. Because the thing was is that when I
when I when I'm my whole idea is I'm pretty

(18:25):
sure like when I spoke to Jordan, I heard about
the experiences that the kids at Spring Creek Lodge had
to go through. This like the seminars, right when we
would talk about specific things, they were the same thing
in my sizzle reel for my my documentary. It's just
two little interviews, and the second one is a man

(18:45):
named Rocky and he went to cast about the Sea
and Academy at Ivy Ridge. He was asked to be
in the program, but he wasn't ready for it. So
I made friends of them and I got him to
talk to me, and just because I had been very
kind to and a friends with him, and I'd asked
him without the seminars and he was like, oh, well,
there was this one where you just say, you know,

(19:06):
you live and you die. And I said, Rocky, are
you not the lifeboat? And he's like, oh, you know
about the lifeboat? And you can see him switching his
eyes to looking away from me because my friend Nick,
who I went to seed it with, was like across
the room back like making honorable gas because Rocky was
saying see the words, and so he was like, you

(19:29):
know this. So it's like this is all connected, and
it's all connected by the fucked up psychology that they
made us go through in the name of therapy. And
I knew that when we went through it was fucked up.
By the time it got to WASP, it was just torture.
There was no love in it, there was nothing helpful,
and it was still a cult, but it was more

(19:51):
like Guantanamo Bay, like we had summer camp compared to
a lot of the was schools. But it is still
the same. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Okay, So when we were talking earlier about Seado and
its cousins and that being kind of one slice of
the TTI.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, all of the other. Yeah. The other schools are Cascade,
which was not a sister school but a spinoff school,
and that was in I think that's in California, like
somewhere northern California, believe, I don't remember exactly. But then
there's Rocky Mountain Academy in Idaho, and then a cent

(20:31):
There was Northwest Academy that was also I think in Idaho,
and there was a riot there right after I graduated
in nineteen eighty six, and I think it closed for
a little while. There was also a Boulder Creek Academy
and Mount Bachelor Academy, and those schools were very different.

(20:53):
I made friends with a woman named Elizabeth Anerman who
was in Team Torture, Inc. She's in the third episode,
and she spoke she spoke about Mount Bachelor Academy and
teen George or Inc. Messed up so badly that if
I had known her, I would not have ever known
that she went to CEDU school. It made it look
like there was a whole other sect of schools, even

(21:14):
though she was talking about Mountchachelor Academy. It if I
didn't know her, I would never have known the HBO
talked about a CEEDU school. And so the reason why
I'm very open about, you know, the documentary is to
catch the people that are all finding that this is
a subject that's being you know, discussed, that this is

(21:34):
something that's trying to be talked about, and that like,
you have no idea how many people are just like
have not thought about this for thirty years, and they
turn on Netflix or they turn a HBO or they
turn and they're like, who's making money off of this?
First of all? Like this is my secret paint? Who
is making money after this? Why wasn't this done better? Why?

(21:57):
You know what I mean? There's all these there's there's
a lot of criticism because because this is scary for us,
this is also like ruining people's lives that had nothing
to do with it. Like I'll see posts on Facebook
where my friend Ryan was like, I just got out
of prison. I found out that you guys all made
some fucking documentary called The Program, and now I'm not

(22:18):
allowed to Thanksgiving or Christmas. What the fuck is going
up with these documentaries? And I was like, hey, dude,
be in mind, because that is a rightful fucking argument,
you know what I mean, Because you know this is
you know, we have to do something different in the
way that Michael Moore made documentaries where he changed people's
minds about something by making something that was so important

(22:40):
it became part of pop culture. That's what I'm trying
to do. And I know I can't do that on
my own, So I've been trying to be very public
to find the creative people who have been through these
experiences that want to make something great, because it cannot
be a handful of bad experiences. It can't be a
whole bunch of sad stories nobody wants to watch that

(23:02):
it's not consumable and it doesn't make people feel better.
And I know that that might sound bad, but we
have to make something that you know, empowers people to
know that they can bring on change and not just
make it seem like a helpless thing that nobody can
do anything about or that it's not in their backyard.

(23:22):
You know. It's it's a very complicated issue too, because
a big secret is a friend of mine started working
at a trouble team school in close to me, and
I immediately was like, oh my god, you're gonna help
me get from the inside right. And then I found
out it's non abusive. There's no culty shit going on

(23:44):
in there. There's no like thought reform, there's no The
kids are allowed to call home twice a day unsupervised
for fifteen minutes, and that's just from the beginning. They're
allowed to go home like a couple of times, like
for at least a month or two over the like
year little over a year that they're there. It's very different.
But my friends think that this school is just like

(24:07):
the ones where we know kids are getting horrendously abused,
and it's like we have to be adult enough to
actually pick apart what's happening in these places and not
get so triggered that we can't actually look at what's
happening in these places because it's not all the same.
Some of them are helpful. These places exist for a reason,

(24:29):
but we have to pick apart the ones that have
culty practices in them, because that's something we can stop.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, that's tough. That's tough. It's like.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
It reminds me of being asked the question like, are
there any good cults. No, it's the answer to that
question by definition of the term cults. So you can
have benign cults and destructive cults dependent on the severity
of abuse and control happening within those groups. But even
a benign curt will have a level of control that

(25:02):
means that individuals within that environment do not have autonomy
over themselves. And I think it's now at the point
with the trouble teen industry where if there are schools
that are acting in a capacity that is non abusive,
that is true to its mission statement, that is, you know,
practicing legally as a reform placement, it can't really be

(25:29):
considered part of the trouble teen industry because the TTI
label is now associated with abusive schools that institutionally abuse children.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
That's how I would take it anyway.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
And I mean the program as a documentary.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Was quite successful over here in England, you know, it
wasn't really people were watching over there.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, it was like number one or in the top
ten for a couple of months, and I was having
a lot of conversation with people who were saying, I
can't believe this happens. It was almost like an introductory
documentary to the trouble teen industry. So it might be
great to have that, you know, as a as an introductory,

(26:13):
complimentary piece to your deeper dive documentary.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
And oh absolutely, what I'm doing is, yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
All of the media to come together. You know.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
People are like, oh, there's so many cult podcasts, how
do you make yours work? And I say, you know,
even if ten hosts of cult podcasts covered the same cult,
every episode would still be different.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
There. These things are so complex. They are so complex too.
I always knew that, Like, like I'd meet people and
they'd be like, when are you going to read a
book about your life? And I'm like, I couldn't because
it would need an encyclopedia first to explain CD that, like,
you know, the whole the story of what we went through,

(26:54):
Like you hadn't make balban On for hours talking about
this shit, and he could have told you at more
and he wasn't even there. Pasted I think a year
or something I think he was only there about a year,
maybe like a little over a year and a like
a year a couple of months, and I remember like
that stump that he had to go. He had he
had to dig this fucking stump, and it was like

(27:15):
he was on it for months, and it was like
I remember, like I like when I was when he
was talking, was like there was an even a time
that like he went to he got out and he
went to a stand you went to like a psych
hospital for a little while, like on vacation from studu.
And he came back and he wrote a song with
my other friend Cody, and they like sat around all

(27:36):
the house and sang the song that he wrote about
being the hospital. I remember that entire song, like I
remember all the words to it, you know what I mean.
Like it was very cool for me to like, you know,
hear my friend talking about you know, something like this
that was so secret and so you know, so shameful,
and he was brilliant. He was brilliant like that all

(27:59):
the band. I'm trying to find.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
You for very like time, why you him?

Speaker 4 (28:05):
And I'll ask him if no, and keep missing each
other because he's not on he's not on Facebook, and like,
so he was on your Pathic podcast, and then I
was on Jordan's podcast, and then he was on Jordan's podcast,
So like, we keep kind of missing each other.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
And it's the thing is is that this stuff is
so hard to think about, and because we have trauma
with each other where we were forced to do really
embarrassing shit, a lot of us are very scared to
talk to each other because we don't know what those
other people remember, or we don't know what those people
really thought us, or we were forced to be so

(28:42):
insecure about stuff. We still hold that and think that
that's how we are still seen by those people. But
Mike like it. He was brilliant, Like I could like
when he was talking to you, Like I could tell
that like he had prepared himself for a very long time.
And it is very true what you said about you know,

(29:02):
people talking to and like they'll take their interviews back
or they'll say like, oh, delete this and when they're
not ready. Because that happened to me and I feel
really bad about it because I interviewed for three days
in California and I met a survivor who had been
at Feud in the mid eighties, and she was just
she had just seen the program. She wanted to help.
She was like, you know, and she was just figuring

(29:24):
the shit out, and it's kind of we were talking.
We spent an entire day interviewing her, and you know,
she said brilliant stuff. And then when I was like,
can I use this for the Isle reels, She's like,
oh no, you know, you know, maybe if this comes
out and it's like you know, the synonyon Fixed or HBO. Yeah,
But and I was like, so I just wasted a
third of my you know what I mean? Like, no,

(29:46):
if you're not uncomfortable with her right now, you're not on.
I can't be editing and think that I'm gonna use
your footage and you're gonna take it out later, because
you know, you know, this is not a normal film production.
Because of how sensitive this subject is. I have not
made I have not made my own release forms for

(30:06):
people to sign it because I don't feel comfortable asking
people to sign Can I have artistic fucking control or
you know, over everything you say to make a movie
like that makes me very uncomfortable. Like the people have
told me that you can, you can use it, and
I'm still gonna wait until, like I really want to
wit until everything's done and then be like can we

(30:26):
still release this? You know, because it's so sensitive.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
It's either you risk having your time and some really
amazing material, you know, wasted, or you go through the
difficult process of asking people to sign things, and if
you don't, you might find yourself at a tricky spot
later on where you're trying to release things and people
then retract their permission.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
So you know you're gonna find Oh, I.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Know, I know that I'm messing with it up. I'm
very aware that I am screwing up left right and center,
like I like, and you know, it's made people like
you know, like on my team leave and call me
up being like Cary doesn't know how to deal with people,
Carrie does. Car needs to go to therapy so she
can continue this documentary. And I was like, uh, you know,
like I'm like, I'm just another broken person. I do

(31:18):
have a you know, my friend is a director. There
is the director. He has worked in film for you know,
over twenty years because he was on a reality show
and he's a musician, so he just kind of fell
into working in films. So when I, you know, knew
I want to make this documentary and I was flying
out to LA I was like, hey, can you help me.
I didn't realize he was going to show up with

(31:38):
one hundred K worth of equipment and do twelve people's
professionaling job for three days. Like he brought, you know,
an a game, like a level game I was not
prepared for. So I still have to keep rising to
the level of professionalism. And I've been rookie. I've never
done this before. I don't plan on doing this afterwards.
So but it's only because this is such a relevant issue.

(32:01):
Just this year that there's been health Camp, there's been
teen Torture Ink, there's been the Synonym six, you know
the program, There's like all these ones that just come
out in the last year, you know, So I mean this,
you know, like a friend of mine that went to Cascade,
she like met up with somebody who was the staff
that she knew at Cascade. She was brought in a

(32:23):
room full of people that still work in trouble teen
schools today who adjusting the program, and they were like,
talk to us about your trauma. We want to be
part of the solution. And like these were people that
run schools right now, because you know, like everyone doesn't
talk to each other, and the abuses that happened, a

(32:44):
lot of these schools are not known by people that
really have good intentions to help children. But we have
to be strong enough to pick apart and say these
schools are non abusive, These schools are very abusive because
it's not us black and white like these places just
for our reason. But what we do have to stop

(33:06):
is the whole idea of tough love and that if
your kids smokes pot one time or is addicted to
video games, there is no need to send them away
to a reform school where the brain is going to
develop on its own while it's wondering where the fuck
their parents are. It's never helpful. If there's any help
that needs to be had for a teenager should be
in the home with therapy and professionals. It should never

(33:29):
be done. You know where you don't know what's happening
to your children, because that's when bad stuff happens.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Right right or in a non abusive school, you know
that is that is following its son constitution and guidelines
that have been vetted, and you know that there are
third party organizations that have come in to certify the
school as you know, compliant with.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Most of those, I would get the most of those
awful bullshit though, Like I would say that like any
like you know, organization that says that, like they're the
ones that are credit like the schools. I don't trust that.
But like like if you know, if if if a
parent is wondering, like, oh, how do I tell the
difference if you can talk to your children multiple times

(34:15):
a day and it's not you know, supervised, that's okay.
It's all about these What these places do is make
it so that it's like there's the seclusion of like
you know, or like they they monitor phone calls, they
monitor conversations, you know, they don't want you to talk
about certain things. Then they lie to your parents. It's
that manipulation. If there's no element of that, then you're
probably okay. But if they're telling you that you can't

(34:38):
talk to your own children, you don't know what they're
going through, so that you can't be there for them afterwards,
that's you know, a big red flag. It's a huge
red flag. You should always be knowing what's going on
with your kids. If they're going through treatment, so.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Kind of talking about say DO as I and the
Cousins schools of c DO being kind of one slice.
You also mentioned WASP that's kind of like the more
Mormon based Utah based very similar to c DO but
also completely different, which is something we talked about before
we hit the record button. You know that these schools

(35:18):
are all the same but also completely different, which is
a really hard concept to try and describe to people
that aren't familiar with the trouble team industry. But you
also mentioned Liam Chef, and I think it's important for
people listening that aren't aware of the c DO schools
or who Liam Chef was, to kind of just give
an overview of Liam and his work before we go

(35:41):
into your experiences at c DO.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
So Liam was there, I believe in like nineteen eighty one.
He graduated, I believe, but from from the people that
I believe he was their very early nineties, maybe a
couple of years before I was there. He uh, almost
twenty years ago just you know, started filming his friends
and other people and talking about the really you know,

(36:05):
the the ce DO curriculum, like you know, the really
bare bones of why it was so weird like he
explained some of the profets. I think I think he
explained you know, raps, who was what Mel Wasserman. Uh,
Dennis Dostetner was brilliant in it. He was the one
staff that was in surviving c DO. Dennis was the
reason why we never were beat at c DO. I believe.

(36:28):
I believe that because Dennis had a music he had
a band camp, a music camp on that mountain, and
because he was kind of like you know, grandfathered in
to the CD curriculum, because you know, it was like
on his mountain. He was there, I believe to make
sure it didn't get too crazy. I think that, like

(36:50):
I have never met one person that has said that
Dennis dock Stetter was ever mean or hurtful once. Uh So,
you know, I believe that the man that was the
staff in Surviving c DO was the reason why our
school was non abusive. But uh yeah, Liam talked to

(37:10):
a bunch of people and it was very powerful. It
was the first time that anybody had really talked about
c DOU online and uh I contacted after it came out.
I contact him because I was like, I have a
very interesting story about CD because of two specific reasons.
The first is because when I got to c Do
after a month, my mother died and I had to

(37:32):
attend her funeral. I had to go to the hospital,
come back, and then go back for her funeral. And
I had to pretend that my entire family and friends
did not exist. I couldn't look at them, talk to them,
touch them. They couldn't do the same thing to me,
And so that was very you know, that's kind of ridiculous.
But because I had something to cry about at ce Do,

(37:54):
I got over it. It's not something that I cry about.
Oh you know, it's because Cida was, you know, that
made you cry about stuff all the time. I had
something to cry about that was real, so that stuff
is out of me. I was like, I'm okay with
the fact that my mother died was a Cito. It's
not painful for me anymore. It's just a fact. But

(38:14):
the other thing is is that I'm a pilot's daughter
and I'm from Connecticut and Pudo was in California, so
I used to fly for free, so I should go
back to visit to you Do all the time. And
one time I went back for a week and as
Dennis was driving me, up the mountain. He says, there's
this new girl. You know. Her name is Paris, and

(38:34):
she's refusing to do anything. She won't talk to anybody.
If she likes you, we would be her big sister
for the week that you're here. I was like, yeah,
so I was Paris Hilton's big sister for a fucking
week when I was seventeen. She was sixteen. And so
when she was the you know, when she got famous
and was acting fool, dance on the tables, whatever, I
was like, I kind of know why she's doing that.

(38:56):
You know, she's rebelling from what she went through. It's
you know, with these places. And she started being like
our advocate, you know. And then I met Jordan and
I was like, well, I could make a documentary. There's
no way she doesn't remember me. She wouldn't talk to anybody.
She don't eve been there a couple of weeks. And
then when I came there, I looked like her at

(39:17):
that age. We were both skinny, blonde girls, you know,
and I had makeup on she I just found out
had when she had to see to She dug a
hole to hide her fucking expensive makeup somewhere in the woods.
But so like when I got there, cause they were like,
if pars something likes you, you know, will you be her
big sister and try to tell her that Cedar's not
that bad because she keeps on fucking up and they're

(39:39):
gonna send her to Provo and she usually you don't
And like we knew about the other schools, like we
knew that if we had done somewhere else that was worse.
So you better go in line or you're gonna be
you know, you're gonna get some into a worse place.
So all I did was like, you know, tell her
my story, like have herte tell me her story, and
like kind of be like, girl, this place isn't that bad.

(40:01):
There's worst places you can go. If you just you know,
let it happen. You'll get out in a little time.
Your parents aren't gonna pull you out, you know. And
I have always felt very guilty for that, Like I
have felt like, you know, like, oh, does she remember
me as like you know, maybe like half staff or
you know what I mean? Does she remember me as
you know, a bad person or a good person? But

(40:23):
you know, so that was part of the thing. It
was like, you know, she would remember me if she
if we talked, she would remember me, because I was
there for a week. And when I realized, uh, you
know in June, when I had shown up to GC
to be a part of her Syca bill, because she
put out word that, you know, she wanted all her
survivor family to show up to be part of her
scre Sicka bill. And when I realized that she didn't

(40:46):
come and that there was that like when I told
her assistance, yeah, I'm the one that like I was,
Paris was, you know, big sister, and I'm afraid she's
gonna remember me badly, and they were like, oh, she
would never think of you that way. It wasn't that
I'm never gonna get to know. I'm never gonna get
to know if Paris Hilton remembers me. And that's the
whole thing, is that the drama of the survivor community

(41:07):
is so bad is because the most famous princess on
the planet has chosen to be our advocate and she
is not touchable by her own people. We are still
at her feet. We cannot find her, we cannot talk
to her. I actually got in touch with Gloria Allread,

(41:28):
you know, one of the most famous power female attorneys
on the planet, and I said, you know, I was like,
I'm making a documentary about the trouble teen industry. I
know that you were just in teen torture inc. With
some of the people that I'm working with. You know,
can you help us further this cause because you're part
of it? You know, will you help us write a
children's bill of rights? And Gloria Alread wrote back to me, Oh,

(41:49):
you know, I'm far too busy with my cases to
do something like this, but you may wish to contact
Paris Hilton. I didn't even write her back because it's
just so funny. It's like, you can't go ask for
help for something that's unbelievable by the most famous person
on the point it doesn't work. And so it's very
the survivoricing is sick because we all worship Paris Hilton,

(42:13):
who was never coming to help us. And so what
I've been trying to tell people is like, we don't
need her, Let's do something on her own. And it's
been controversial.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Sliamsha sadly passed away before his documentary was formally finished unreleased.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
Yes, we don't even really know, like he had told
me that like he felt that, like, you know, what
had come out was doing such a good job that like,
you know, he didn't feel like the need for it
to be finalized, I guess, or like, but he had
interviewed a lot of people I interviewed. I interviewed seven survivors,

(43:11):
and two or three of them I believe had been
interviewed by Liam specifically. And I actually didn't even really
realize it until they had told me that they had
realized they're do not disclose or do not you know, discuss,
like contract with him had far expired. So but yet
oh that I should tell the story about my friend.

(43:33):
So so yeah, so Liam stuff made this really great documentary.
It's just clips about little parts of sea doo. Uh
about when was seven years ago or maybe even closer
to ten. Somebody that was at she Do in like
around two thousand. He was taking a sociology class and

(43:53):
you know, the class was about brainwashing, and the professor
turned on a clip of Survivy c dou and I
think it was the RAPS episode and my friend who
I just met, his friend I just made friends with.
He ran out of the room and waited a little
while and came back and the entire class was still
waiting there because they were all like, so you went there, right,

(44:13):
And he was like, well yeah, and so it's you know,
because this is you know, slowly coming out and we
are the survivors of it. You know, it's very hard
for us to even look at this issue as it
stands today to be a part of the solution. Like
for example, like you know, when I'm trying to talk

(44:35):
when I got onto Anne's podcast and I started talking
to people about Landmark, you know, I talked to my
friends that you know, I started to with just my
friend Rocky, who went to Acadey at avy Ridge, who was,
you know, the only non SU survivor to be interviewed
so far. And I was like, you know, I'm starting
to look at Landmark and you know all this stuff,
and I'm like, have you looked into Landmark? And he's like,

(44:57):
I can't. And I'm like, oh, I'm like I get it.
You can't look at the sun, you know what I mean,
it's too painful for you guys to look at because
it's too close to what you went through. And he's like, yeah,
so a lot of times, you know, all these documentaries
are coming out. We haven't even watched them because it's
too hard for us to watch. So what I'm trying

(45:17):
to do is make it funny. I'm trying to make
my interviews and conversations that I have with people that
when the survivors watched it, they left their asses off
at parts that I'm not even aware of, but that
those public founds it just profound, you know what I mean,
Like they like because they'll be very sarcastic about certain
things because they've lived with this pain for so long.

(45:39):
So when the survivor hears it, they'd laugh, but like
other people, they're like, WHOA, that was brilliant. And that's
what I'm aiming for. I'm aiming for making something that
survivors can laugh at, but the public, you know, doesn't
find it gross or distasteful that that's happening, but they
just find what we did is brilliant. And so that's

(46:01):
the you know, I'm going to make sure that that's
the way it can be, because I don't want to
make the passion mistakes of the other documentaries, but I
don't think. But basically, mine is a sequel to all
the ones that come before, like I want to interview
at least one person that has been in every of
the docu, every single one of the documentaries about the

(46:22):
subject before mine comes out.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
It's kind of like tying everything together.

Speaker 4 (46:28):
You know.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
What I'm doing is like it's you know, it would
be tying the synonym fixed to the program. It's like,
what's in between the synonyon fix and the program. That's
what I'm trying to make. Well.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
We've kind of spent a lot of the of our
one hour slot talking about the historical elements of the
trouble teen industry and what ties all of these different
areas together in terms of schools and people and and
you know CEOs and you know, favorous people. What what

(47:09):
caused your parents to place you in cdo and how
did you arrive there?

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Were you gooned?

Speaker 1 (47:16):
You know, which is the expression that a lot of
survivors use for Bill Lane's transport company, basically kidnapping kids.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
No, that didn't happen to me, and I'm very lucky
for that. But they were like, oh, you know, you're
going to take a tour of the school that you
might go to. Let's go look at it. And so
when I was on the tour my dad drove away.
So yeah, there's that's you know, it's either usually.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
That or either Michael Esca remember his story being similar
to that, and I also believe that the Zach's story
was very similar to that as well.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Yes, dead.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Right here somewhere else. Here's his book, here's a book. Yeah,
his little brother from rm A is a big part
of my team. He's the first in my little clip
for my Kickstorter that completely failed, but we'll probably watch
it again maybe, But he's the first interview where he
talks about going to SUS the School of Urban Wilderness

(48:21):
Survival School, and the way he talks about it is
so funny. But yet a big reason, you know, why
he's on my team is because he's just he's very
smart about this stuff. But you know, when we met,
he's like, you know, my big brother from RMA was
Zach Bonnie. He's like our author. I was like, oh,
that's kind of great. And I've talked to Zach a

(48:42):
couple of times. He's a sweetheart. He looks like less clayful.
He's like, he's really really sweet. But I do know,
just based on talking to so many people from rm
the experience of at rm A and ce DOO were
there very different. It was you know, kids got beat

(49:03):
at army. There was physical you know. Uh, you know,
there was physical abuse sometimes on army like it was
you know, you would see staff throw kids across the
room every once in a while. That was unheard of,
that was unneeded, unnecessary, and she just didn't have another school.
So it makes it so that like we don't believe
each you know, like and I would only know that

(49:24):
was true because my older brother got sent to r
Anda and he specifically told me that, Yeah, when I
was an army a staff threw me across the room,
you know, So I know that there were physical there
was physical vinds. For the other of Cedar schools, it
was I do know of one instance from the interview
that a girl did get physically harmed at CEDO, but

(49:49):
it was the only time I've ever heard of it.
And but I'm also not going to count something else
that's very uncomforable talking about. But most of the time
it was not an abusive uh.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
Yeah, So the chou routine option for your family was
obviously something that they were aware of. If you and
your older sibling both got sent to one of these programs.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Yeah, I got. I was expelled out of eighth grade
and my dad went to like an educational consultant. I
believe that I almost got sent to Tranquility Bay because
I had my scuba diving license and I remember packing
up my scuba diving year to go to a school,
and then my dad did more research and then he's like, Oh,

(50:37):
you don't need your scuba diving stuff. You're going to
go to a different school. And from what I remember,
it was that when my dad called Tranquility Bay to
ask him about, oh, Carr Carrie has her patty scuba
diving license, does she need it for Tranquility Bay, Because
they had no clue what that fucking was. He knew
to not send me there, so he's like, Okay, maybe
I should look a little more into this, you know.

(50:58):
And so I think my dad, because if I had
gone to Tranquility Bay, I might have been one of
the many people that have a permanent white scar on
their chin because if you were on Tranquility Bay and
you were bad, you were forced to line the floor
on your face in a plank position for unknown amount
of hours in the hot sun in the cement, so
they have a permanent scar on their chin from that.

(51:20):
So I didn't you know, I didn't go through that,
you know, and I am thankful for that. But because
our pain is inside, because we inter use ourselves in
the name of self help, that pain, because it's never understood,
it's never recognized. Is because that's why my friend Jackson
from a C DO he came up with the word

(51:42):
ce do aside, like c e d u aside, like
because we you know, if you have an unrecognized pain
and you live with it and nobody's ever understood it,
that's what happens. We're never understood, you know. It's you know,
if you think about like rape victims, they're not believed.
That's very harmful for them, you know what I mean,

(52:03):
it's the same thing. So most of us, I believe
if our parents just recognized this happened, we would be
one hundred percent mentally better. That's all we wanted, that's
all we really want is for people to be like, yeah,
this happened, this was real. We're sorry that happened. You know,
it's not their fault they didn't know. They weren't the

(52:24):
ones that did. But the complete denial. Our parents are
in that this is a real problem, this ever happened,
that we're walking around the world like monsters because they
turned us into monsters, you know what I mean. Like,
it's not going to get better until people recognize that
this is real. And that's what the program did for us.
I you know, when the program came out, I would

(52:45):
slash on somebody post that there's some kind of trists
who they had not been in touch with for a
long time, had called them for an emergency session because
they sat and down and they're like, I just watched
the program. Every word you had told me for the
last fifteen years before, like I stopped seeing you, I
did not believe you. I never believed anything you said,
but now I do. So that's the thing, you know,

(53:07):
Like when I started the first time that I was
vlogging about you know how you know, I went to
c Do you know I know that there's a documentary
just came out called the program. He was totally different
than the law schools. I already know about that, you know,
And I started just vlogging my live reaction to watching
it so that I could explain how different it was,
but also the same because frankly, I have staff interviews.

(53:34):
There were two staff interviews that I did on zoom calls.
The one was an hour, one was an hour and
a half. And Randolph, which was he was like the
vice principal kind of at c DO. He's my boy,
Like he's the only adult that has apologized to me
for what happened at CEDOO, even though he worked directly
under Bill Valentine. He uh, from everyone I've talked to,

(53:58):
nobody can say that Randolph was ever or too harsh
or you know, ever like did anything abusive. He you know,
was a true flower child that like, you know, like
thought that he was, you know, in this for the
and he wasn't for the right reasons. So I adore
Randolph and I treasure him. And he does kind of
have the mind of a survivor. He does have the

(54:19):
tendencies that we have, but because he was an adult
choosing to go through these life experiences where the last
one is just the worshiping of John Lennon's best song,
the Imagine Prophet is just it's just an old master
to fucking John Lennon. Like when I actually read through
the script of the Imagine, it's it's so much more
than I remembered, Like we just worshiped John Lennon for

(54:41):
an entire twenty four hour period. But you know, it's uh,
you know, most people have forgotten about this stuff so
much they don't even remember these things, or like most
people have run away from this subject their entire lives.
So when they're like, you know, putting on TV, it's
fucking so trying amitizing. But when I when I talked

(55:03):
to Randoff and I was like, you know, I want
to make a documentary about see you And he's like, well,
what's it about. I'm like, Randolf, it was a cult,
you know, like what do you think? And he was like,
I was an adult. I was choosing to go through
these experiences. So you know, it worked for me. But
I've realized that you guys were children. Of course you
guys didn't like it. And he apologized. That's the only
apology I've gotten it. And I've gotten it from a

(55:24):
couple of staff, especially the staff that gave me the
box of documents from mel Washerman. They gave it to
me because they wanted to help tell this story. You know,
they were like, we feel you know, they felt horrible.
What happened to last October Like a little over a
year ago. I was thrown into a mental institution for
making this documentary and they were pretty much told me

(55:46):
that I was there for delusions of grandeur from making
a documentary about a school that did not exist. So
you know, I have a vested fucking interest in finishing
this shit, so that like to prove the people in
my life and I am not creating you know. So
uh but yeah, the but Liam, do.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
They think that you've just conspired with people like Zach Bonnie,
who's written a couple of memoirs about his experience in
the same place, right.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
No, that's the whole thing is that that like these
people aren't reading these books, like like, for example, like
Maya's book. I'm sure you've don't you know about this
book Helping in a Cost by Maya? Like you know,
my when I started to tell my dad, because my
dad's a psychiatrist, he's a he's a clinical social worker,
and he invented a therapeutic process that teaches people not
to be afraid of flying. He's a genius in his field.

(56:32):
He's very very he's very very smart. And when I
was telling him about Studo. He was like, well, I
want a two sided opinion. I want to don't just
leave me bullshit of the people that had a bad time.
I want, you know, I want to hear both sides.
And even in Maya's book it says how the troubled
teen industry cons parents and hurts kids. So my dad's
never going to read this because if he read that,

(56:54):
that means that he's already been lied to and he's stupid,
do you know what I mean? So he would never
read this. So the whole point of my documentary was
to tell both sides, to talk to the people that
maybe weren't as damaged and talk about their experience and
the people that were. So the idea is that the hardest,
the hardest interviews would be to get first would be staff.

(57:17):
So that's what I did first. So when the program
came out and I knew those people are monsters, I
texted the people that I'd interviewed in my staff with
the friends. Then I'm still you know, the staff that
I still talk to. I said, if people come and
pitchforks to your house with fucking torches like they want
to burn your house down, that you can call me.

(57:37):
Because you were not a part of this problem. You
were going to be a part of the solution, and
so I don't want you to be afraid of talking
to me. I don't want you to think that you know,
I'm talking shit about you, saying that you are the
same as the Lichfields at rand WASP. You guys were
fucking different, And because you want to be a part
of the solution, it makes you even more different. So

(57:59):
it's a it's very complicated.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Such it's it's it sounds like it's got a lot
of different layers.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
I mean, we haven't had much of a chance to
speak about your past.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
Yeah, I didn't get used to meet a lot of
brilliant questions.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
It's okay.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
I think what we I think what we can do
is sort of wrap up the conversation today talking about
the logistics of the documentary and what we can expect
and when, and then perhaps we can invite you back
on once the documentary is aired, to do a follow
up and a bit of kind of promotional.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Oh, the documentari is probably I can't imagine it's going
to take less than a couple of years. So I'd
like to come out of China before. Most of what
I would like to do is to go through some
of the box that I have and to I would
I mean, I didn't you know I would. I would
like to someday, you know, talk about the actual profies

(58:55):
with somebody, you know, like it's new to them, so
that it can be explained to that because a lot
of what happens is the kids that didn't get to
go through these experiences as adults, they have a longing
for that. They want to know what that was. And
so I want to debunk a lot of the myths

(59:16):
about it and kind of explain what happens so that
it's more understood, but also so that the people that
when they you know, when they're in their nightmares and
they that's when the only time they think about this stuff,
When they see that it's been written down word for word,
that their nightmares are written down word for word. It
makes it so it doesn't have to be just remembered

(59:36):
in their sleep anymore. It's the only time that I've
gotten over what I've been through is reading the profit
scripts because this was all scripted. This was not ad
libbed like what the staff said to us, you know,
in the middle of the night at fucking high volume
wall like all these songs were playing. It was written down.

(59:57):
You know, this was a formula and you know, even
if you want move like things like the Stanford prison
experiment where you are you see what happens when people
are put in control positions and you know there's power.
It's the same thing. It's like the Lord of the
Flies Stanford Prison experiment, and like shinin On all happened

(01:00:17):
in one place, and so these things are very hard
to explain, and it's there. It there's very you know,
big and small differences when it gets to different facilities,
like for example, the first tool of the Truth proffy
is the truth shall set you free at the Hide School,

(01:00:38):
which is like I think the Hide School is like
a worst version of ce Doo. It's like Seede on
the Brown Asher the Second Night of Woodstock is how
I describe them. So the Hide School, they had the
truth south set you free, but first it will make
you miserable. So like you know, we had something kind
of positive. The truth still sets you free, but there's

(01:00:59):
it's like the truth all set you're free, but first
it's gonna make you miserable, like they flipped everything and
made it really dark, and like when I talked to
Jordan about Spring Creek Lodge, like the tools that they
had are what you fear, you create. Therefore, everything in
your life that you're afraid of is your own fault.

(01:01:20):
So the things that they would have to be using
to get better were not helpful. They were just making
it so that like that you were only there because
it's your fault, and it wasn't good. Like one of
the best tools that we had at CETO was turn
your fear into excitement. That was from the I want
to live profit. I have lived my life by that.
I'm afraid of spiders, yet I kind of get off

(01:01:42):
looking at fucking pictures of spiders because I get that excitement.
So it's like, you know, if you know, if you're
afraid of something, it's so easy to turn that fear
into an excitement. And I've lived off that. But that's
not a very good thing for an eighteen year old
girl to have, because I used to driving my car
like one hundred miles down the road or like I've

(01:02:04):
you know, I've lived with no fear, and you know,
that's not a healthy thing for people to have. The
here's there for a reason. You just to don't you know,
do stupid shit. But it you know, there was something
about see do that. If you graduated in you know,
the late eighties early nineties era and you you know,
did the full program, it was like having the entire

(01:02:27):
course of scientology in your mind when you're like seventeen,
It's like you have There are questions that I asked
survivors to see do, like how long does it take
for you to make a stranger cry? And that is
the They laugh so hard because they're like, I can't
believe you get them. I'm like, yeah. We were so

(01:02:49):
used to picking apart people's insecurities that if we're in
a room of strangers and somebody's pittsing us off, we
will say two words and they will go ballistic because
we can look at people, know what they're insecure about,
and call them out on it. A lot of us
were sent away for violent reasons, and we've never had
to be violent afterwards, but if we were, we'd black out.

(01:03:12):
There's a common thing to seeing people that like if
we have to be violent afterwards, we don't remember what happened,
where like we just know that we won, and I
don't know what that is either, Like we we had
some sort of mental training that is not normal. And
when I realized that, it was very different than what

(01:03:34):
the other kids had, uh, it's yeah, it's it's Our
school was the cultiest of all of the cult schools.
Like Tranquility Day wasn't a cult. It was torture. It
was just child and torture. There wasn't an element of
like thought reform or like you know, I mean, it

(01:03:54):
was just torture. It was going Tanamo Bay for children,
you know. Uh, I would say that, like you know,
the counting at eyed Ridge and Spring Creek Lodge were
culfie but and they had culty elements because of the
thought reform part of it. But there was no like
you know, giving yourself up to something. There wasn't like

(01:04:16):
I don't know, there wasn't like a worshiping of a
higher being and that's we did have that. It wasn't
like we worshiped and Melasserman. It wasn't like he was
our god. But like we were told that we were
special and that we had a special knowledge that was
gonna make us better people. That was like we were
more evolved. No one was ever going to understand us. Therefore,

(01:04:37):
the friendships that you made at seed It were gonna
be the best friendships you've ever had, and they're never
going away. And that is true. The people that I
loved at sea do. A girl that I the girl
that I went to visit Paris Hilton with when we went.
Her name was Jackie Mendel. We graduated together. She called
me the other day and we talked for like over
like two hours, and it was like no time gone by,

(01:05:00):
you know, or like people will call me and they'll say, Wow,
I haven't talked, you know, to anybody from cd from
like in like thirty years, but like, this is the
first time I haven't had a censor what I'm saying
to somebody, Like this is the first time that like
I feel like I'm talking the same language to somebody,
like and it's it's kind of it's a hard thing
for the other people in our lives because, like, you know,

(01:05:24):
it's very kind of the other people in our lives
are like, Oh, you're gonna get ups talking about CIDO again,
or you're gonna get you know, or oh, I can't
talk to you for because somebody from CDU just called.
You know you're gonna be on, you know you're gonna
be out for you know, four hours or whatever, you know,
And it's because, you know, this has been on our
mind for heavily, for so long, it's never been recognized,
and now this is the time that it's like, you know,

(01:05:46):
one of the survivors that found me, he's a brilliant musician,
like have you heard of nine inch Nails or Marilyn Manson?
That's Sesame Street to this guy like it's the most brutal,
hard pain music that I've ever heard. And he went
to Rocking Outain Academy, and you know when he found me,
he was it was because he was working at his

(01:06:09):
job and it was the program was water cooler talking
the lunch room at his job, like, oh have you
seen the programs? You know what the school is. And
this friend, this new friend that I have, he's just
shaking his head and being like, I don't know what
you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about
because he hadn't thought about it in thirty something years.
And so for these documentaries to come out, it's making
people remember shit they aren't prepared to remember. And you know,

(01:06:32):
it's it's hard. So it's you know, it's it's the
reason you know why I'm so public is to catch
those people that are mad and so that we can
make something that changes people of mind that includes all
the past documentaries. Doesn't make the past the mistakes of
the past ones by having a handful of interviews and
calling it a day, because it does not show the

(01:06:53):
gambit of all the experiences. You have to have people
that did have somewhat positive outcomes too, so that they
can talk about it too. And you understand, it has
to be a full documentary. A lot of people criticize
the program because it was one sided. It only showed
the survivors making the documentary. It didn't kind of show
what a good school is, you know what I mean.

(01:07:14):
So it's, you know, it's that's the whole thing is
I'm trying to show everything. And because this is an
unbelievable subject and it's you know, involved cults and crazy shit,
the only way that I feel like it's gonna get
made is being puzzled about it. And it's making my
director very, very mad.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
So you've started tying the story together. You've got a team,
You've done some interviews, you have an idea of the direction,
a possible kind of two year window of when the
documentary might be finished. What are some things that the
survivor community can help you with, like before we finish

(01:08:13):
up today, what are some calls to action that you
might be asking for in your public space.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
You know, this is hard to say, right there are
the survivor community is disgusting. The people that have been
in this community for a really long time have figured
out ways to monetize this, so in this scene they
are not helpful. There are there's basically organizations that I'm

(01:08:41):
not going to name because I don't want you to
get hated on, but there are people amongst us that basically,
like a survivor died a couple of days ago, and
I am pretty fucking sure that I'm waiting for this
one organization to start, getting her parents to be giving
funds to this one organization among stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
You know, those kind of like other pockets of activism aside.
I mean, you're working with the survivor community to make
the documentary.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
No, I'm not. I'm actually really not, because the survivor
community is toxic as fuck. It's it's really disgusting. It's
pretty much what you said, Like the people are very
attacking each other and they feel like they're right because
it's in the name of activism.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
There's definitely a lot of inviting.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
So yeah, so I'm just trying to do my own thing.
I'm not involved in any organizations or anything.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
Are not involved in, Like I think I'm kind of
like not wording what I'm trying to say, Oh, in
the right way. So you're interviewing survivors for this for
this documentary, I mean kind of like not the survivor
community as in one entity or one organization, I mean
kind of as a whole. You know, like on the

(01:09:56):
Trouble Team subreddit, there's a lot of people that are
doing really good work. There's a lot of people involved
in lawsuits and closing down schools on the legal side
of things, that are not involved in any of these
organizations or charities or or kind of n g.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
Os or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
If there were some for example, like if Michael Barbour
was listening, or if there were some survivors of CD
or related programs or even staff members listening, and they
might be able to get involved in help.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
In some way.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
What would there be anything you would like to say
to those people, like not the survivor.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
So difficult.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
I'm out there unfindable. You can easily find me. You know.
I have the same number of my entire life.

Speaker 4 (01:10:40):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
Uh, yeah, you know I've had that. You know, I
thought this. I have an AOL email, you know what
I mean? You know, so you know my my my
email is bun Town at AOL that coms my last
name town. You know. Uh, like like this was going
to take a lot of you know, information to you know,

(01:11:02):
solve this problem. Like I would like to talk to
specifically people that went to Rudy Bents sister schools. Rudy
Bence was a staff who left right when I got there.
He was there. I was there for maybe two weeks
with him, and he left. And I think you started
Swift River Academy. I don't, or I don't. He started
a couple of schools, and uh, you know, I want

(01:11:25):
to talk you know, I want to talk about, you know,
the the roots of the trouble cheen industry, like the
people that were there, you know, like when it was
just starting and like I still haven't really talked to
very many people from the Seed. I still haven't talked
to very many people from like straight Ink or the Family.
I haven't really talked to but I have talked to

(01:11:45):
a lot of people from Tranquility Bay Academy at I'd
Ridge cast them by the Sea, Cross Creek, you know,
Spring Creek Lodge. Uh, you know all the feeder schools,
you know. I still I would really like to talk
to people for Hide. I know that Hide because it
is still active that it is kind of the scariest one,

(01:12:09):
but uh yeah, it's I would like to talk to
as many people as I can, but especially I would
like to talk to people working in this industry today,
if you are a part if you had just left
a job, or if you are working anywhere in the industry.
I'm an adult. I'm not going to attack you or

(01:12:30):
try to call you out for anything. This is a
very tricky issue, and you know, we cannot be children.
Just assuming that everybody that you know, like works at
a facility for trouble teens does not mean that it's
a culty trouble team industry school, you know. So you know,
because it's starting to come around that because the program's

(01:12:53):
just still in Singing on Netflix for a year that
other people are waking up to this, Like the real
world is like, oh shit, is this me? Is this
my school? Wait a minute, it's not my school. But
what can I do to help? And that's the best, Like,
you know, we can you know, I can find survivors
all over Facebook, but like it's the people that might
be afraid that I want to find, Like, you know,

(01:13:14):
I want to talk to if you were going to
if you work at a school, or if you did
work at a school, please talk to me, you know,
like tell me what you saw. You know it's not
you know that you know you could totally be you know, confidential.
I don't write shit down when I talk to people
because I don't want people to hear a pen scratch
when you know, like then thinking that like I'm going
to come back and use something against them, because this

(01:13:35):
stuff is so sensitive. So you know, I understand that,
you know, confidentially is a really really big thing. You know,
I wouldn't you know, I am not going to get
sued when this comes out. That's the whole goal. I
don't want to get sued when the shit comes out.
So I'm going to make sure that like everything is
handled as well as it can be when it's when
it comes out like you know, if you I don't

(01:13:56):
want anyone to be like, I don't like the way
I was seeing, I don't like you know, what I
said or ever. I don't want any of that, you know.
But I also don't want people to feel left out.
I don't I want this documentary to be something that
if you are aware that all these come out and
you feel like you want to be seen, please contact
me because one of the things that I really want

(01:14:16):
to do is I want to have over one hundred
survivors in the same place and ask them yes or
no questions like were you were you only acting out
because you were suffering an abuse at home? Are you autistic?
Do you the ADHD? Are you bipolar? Did you witness homophobia?
Did you witness transphobia? Did you witness you know, sexual assault?

(01:14:39):
Did you experience sexual assault?

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
You know, there's all these different levels.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
Sent out a survey to the survivor community and ask
them to write down the name of the program they
were in and the answers.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
To you right, because it's really interesting. What's fascinating though,
is that like the things that I didn't think other
schools would have in common. Like I wrote, do you
have a sub statement? Example, my summit statement was I
am courageous and responsible And all these people from like
Cross Creek were like, oh, I have a summit statement

(01:15:09):
and they told me what it was, and they're like,
I didn't even remember that, you know what I mean.
And we thought that these schools had nothing in common
like that, you know, so that there are things that
are in common, and it's the weird shit that they
made us say or do to each other or like
a lot. It's the character stretch is a very big
thing in cults that have you seen Midsommer, You know

(01:15:33):
when she does the Mayfair dance and she did she
does that whole thing and then they lift her up
in the sky. That is the character stretch. That's essentially
in all cult culture. They like there's some point where
they make they give you a character that usually make
the men dress up in drag, but they make you
act out something so that and then after you act

(01:15:54):
up to a certain level, they raise you up to
make you feel good. And it's like in all cult
it's like cult. It's like it's just as I've found
the character with some version of the character stretch in everything.
It's yeah, but there was a big part of studio
character stretches also in like freemason stuff. It's it's it's

(01:16:16):
like a thing that they use like your tactic to
It's almost like leverage, you know, because they'll take pictures
of you. So if you go against that cult, we
got a picture of a man in Dragon, we can
use that against you. Collateral, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
They're using it as bribery materials. So yeah, there's something
very very common in many cults, you know, making people
complicit in actual crimes like trafficking or theft or kidnapping
or sexual abuse or.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
Criminal damage, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
And Keith Ranieri and Nexian was notorious for collecting collaterals.
So that was an actual physical version of him telling
people to say him things that he could use as
blackmailing the two. That stream version is found in a
lot of you know, less destructive cults that are still
you know, severe in nature, but perhaps not to that

(01:17:13):
particular degree. And that's why he got a one hundred
and twenty year sentence, you know, unprecedented not not too
many years ago, but Buntown at AOL dot com I'll
put your email address in the episode description if you're
comfortable with that.

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):
Oh yeah, that's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
If people also.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
Want to email me and ask to be put in
touch with Yukari, I can do that as well. I'm
going to put a link to Liam Chef's stuff into
the episode description as well, which has some some you know,
great footage. It is difficult to watch, so it probably

(01:17:51):
comes with a trigger warning.

Speaker 3 (01:17:53):
Yeah, it just shows, like you know, it shows the campus.
He shows he works around the campus when it was
still around, when he was able to film that. We
can't do that anymore. But he was able to get
a lot of stuff that wasn't you know, wouldn't we
wouldn't have been able to do now. And I thought this,
saying that, like when the program came out, a lot
of the staff interviews, there's no way I would have

(01:18:13):
been able to get those now, And so yeah, that's
it's uh, but no, Liam, Liam was just sweetheart. Did
you know him? Did you? Or did you?

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
Are you just aware of the I didn't. I know
that he's highly regarded in the survivor community.

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
I know that it hit the community very hard when
he took his own life.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
I feel like if he was, if he had been
around when the program came out, he would have been
able to really finish his work. And because he's not around,
that's kind of what I've been trying to do. And
it's also gotten me a lot of hatred from the
people that were in Surviving studio because they think that
that was all Liam was trying to do. I don't
think they were really aware that, like Liam was, you know,

(01:18:56):
still filming other interviews and talking to other people in
that work wasn't done because you know, it stands alone.
You know, people be like, oh, what about that other
staeodocumentary Surviving see them like that's not finished, Like you
guys think that that's finished. It's like it's not done,
Like I mean, there was just a it's like a clip.
It's like a you know, it's a teaser trailer, it's
a civil reel. You know, it's not it's never finished.

(01:19:17):
So but it was so good for the people that
went to see through that. It's sometimes it's sometimes seen
as a finished product, but it is not.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
Yeah, I think, yeah, that's that's definitely an important an
important detail to know. And I'll put the links in
the episode description to to Liam's work as well. And
I'm glad that I was able to word what I
was trying to say before about your cause to action
for survivors contacting you, or staff members or former staff

(01:19:49):
members contacting you to potentially become involved in your project.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
So that kind of just takes us to the end.

Speaker 3 (01:19:57):
Did you say yes, Yes, Thank you so much for
having me on. I would love to come on again.
And also, like if you're an outsider and this interests
you and you know something, or you live in a
town or what of these schools are and you want
to help, that's also very valuable because we can't be

(01:20:18):
just a bunch of really damaged people trying to do
this on our own. It takes people that are not crazy,
that don't have damage, such as yourself, to help this
issue be seen, you know what I mean. Like, and
that's why people like you are important, is that you know,
you're you know, you're just trying to, you know, like
make people aware of this problem. Broken people can't really

(01:20:40):
do this very well, you know, because there is no
therapy for what we went through, and it's all about
you know, we're making something. You try to be believed
and it's not therapeutic. This is not fucking fun. You know,
this has not been like, you know, a healing journey whatsoever.
I feel slightly better. I don't have complex post roma
ex stress disordered nightmares anymore. But even when I saw

(01:21:04):
I went to my friend Liz iyan Ellie's documentary premiere
and hers is called the Kids are Not all Right
and then the Q and A. She said, you know,
she was talking about what she's like, just so you know,
I don't feel better. She's like, I've worked on this
documentary for like close to nine years, I wrote a book,
and today it's not any better than ten years ago.

(01:21:25):
I still am hurt. It doesn't feel any better. And
that was very fucking important for her to have told me,
because there's not gonna be some cathartic like, oh it's
all over now after my documentary comes out. It's not
going to feel like that. The struggle is still ongoing
until this is over, and I don't think it's probably
gonna be over in my lifetime. But we can start

(01:21:47):
the motion, but it has to be the survivors looking
at the facilities today and pointing out abusive practices, because
we are the only ones who can really see it.
So we have to be adult enough to actually look
and ask the right questions and not attack the adults.
This is not oh, you are in the wrong, you

(01:22:09):
should be prosecuted. No, that does not solve any problem.
That does not make it so people want to come
out and help. We are adults trying to figure out
how to stop abusive culty practices on children in America today,
and that's it. This is not about I'm not getting
involved in lawsuits or lawyers. Man, I'm just trying to
fucking make a movie and like, you know, call it
a day. The subject is so complicated that like just

(01:22:34):
getting you know, just me going to d C to
be involved in the Paris Hilton nonsenses like cost me
fucking almost eight months, you know, my life because it's
just been so crazy. But you know, so I'm just
sticking in my lane. I'm just trying to do this
one thing. And it's you know, it's just like almost
like you know, a study of what it is like
of the adult survivors, Like we're all very alike in

(01:22:56):
different ways based on our experiences.

Speaker 1 (01:23:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, I think a lot of
survivors have different motives when speaking out and coming forward and.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
Showing their experiences.

Speaker 1 (01:23:12):
I do also understand people that were physically harmed, sexually harmed,
psychologically abused in these programs to ask for accountability. And
I think that any human rights violations or crimes that
were committed should be people should be held accountable. I'm

(01:23:32):
not saying that that's what this project should do, or
that's what you should be focusing on, but I think
it goes back to what I mentioned earlier about how
you know, there's a whole puzzle and there's lots of
different pieces that need to go in that puzzle to
tell the whole story and to cure the entire environments.
So one of those things is accountability. And one of

(01:23:53):
those things is you know, making media that raises the
educational understanding of everybody. People that went to CD, people
that went to other TTI programs, parents that sent their kids,
their educational consultants that referred children into the programs, judges
that sent children to the programs, and people like me
in England that had never heard of the trouble teen

(01:24:14):
industry before I started doing this work. You know, I
think all of this stuff all comes together to create change.
So you know, just because that's not what this project
focuses on doesn't mean that that isn't something that other
survivors might.

Speaker 3 (01:24:30):
Oh. No, Like I have a friend, like one of
my friends, she's like, we're talking to a lawyer about
a class actional lawsuit against the you know, cdo for
all the high school diplomas that we don't have. You know,
like I'm contact with a lot of people who are
working on other things. I just, yeah, I'm one person,
so like I can't you know, like just with statute
of limitations in all this different states that all these

(01:24:51):
places are in. I'm friends with the boy, or I'm
with the man. I'm friend of the trans man. And
he is from the DC area. He gets to a
school in Utah. He's twenty two, and he still is
in Utah because he can't make enough money to leave Utah.
So essentially he's been trafficked to Mormon Land since he

(01:25:11):
was a teenager and he's still there right now. And
you know, it is a big, a big part of
my documents, like helping people like that, like he needs
help and he's I feel horrible all the time that
he's been there since I met him a long time ago,
and you know, he's you know, like there's there's people
that need help as adults, and this is a huge issue.

(01:25:32):
But all I could do is just try to make
something that wakes people up to it. They feel empowered
to do more, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
I absolutely yeah, it is on the subject, might get
the ball rolling on other projects and so on and
so forth, and then before you know it, there's more momentum,
there's more change, there's more support and place for people
like your friend in Utah, and and it kind of
just snowballs and that's that's what you hope for when
you do. You know, I said earlier, it's just a

(01:26:00):
drop in the ocean, but you know, you throw enough
pebbles in there, it's gonna make you know, it's gonna
make a big splash. So that's what we're hoping for.
And I'll put all this information in the episode description
and wait for you to wait for you to contact
me about updates on the project and just to see
how you're getting on car.

Speaker 3 (01:26:17):
Thank you, Yes, yes, I would like you to come in.
And again, really, since we didn't even touch any of
the questions, which I was pretty sure it was going
to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):
They're all they're all here, you know, in this, in
this document for another day, and maybe you can come
back on in a few months time and update us
or where you are with the project, if there's anything
particular this five community can help you with. And yeah,
and maybe talk a little bit about your personal experiences
at ce DO.

Speaker 2 (01:26:46):
But thank you so much for your time to Thank
you Sean much for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:26:49):
Thank you from across the fund.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
Take care stay safe over there.

Speaker 3 (01:26:53):
I well, thank you so much. Sometimes thank you

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