Drug Free America Foundation, formerly known as Straight, Inc.

Betty Sembler elected to Florida Women's Hall of Shame, uh Fame

2009-01-07T19:48:00.000-08:00

It is not unusual for politicians to bestow honorary awards upon cult founders. In 2000 Florida Governor Jeb Bush declared August 8 Betty Sembler Day in all of Florida for her work at Straight, Inc., one of the most destructive juvenile drug rehabilitation programs ever. Over 40 former clients have committed suicide. Betty (wife of Ambassador Mel Sembler) was Jeb Bush's finance co-chairman and in return he joined the advisory board of Straight under its current name Drug Free America Foundation. (He afffectionally calls Betty Ms. Ambassadorable.)

On Monday, January 5, 2009, Florida Governor Charlie Crist inducted Betty into the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame for her work at Straight, Inc. and for her service on the board of the Florida Governor’s Mansion Foundation. Betty's son Brent, who is vice chairman of the Sembler Company, was Finance Co-Chairman for the campaign of state Senator Charlie Crist. He also served on committees for the election of Charlie Crist for Florida Education Commissioner, for Crist's bid for Florida’s Attorney General and for Crist's gubernatorial campaign. It was son Brent who inspired Mel and Betty to found Straight when, as a teenager, they placed him in The Seed (Straight's predecessor) which was accussed by the US Senate of brainwashing kids. There is even speculation that Charlie Crist was in The Seed with Brent.

Another inductee was Louise Courtelis, wife of former Straight board member-at-large Alec. P. Courtlelis. In all, Crist selected three women for induction, the third was Florida state senator Gwen Margolis. It is not known whether she is the mother of Joy Margolis, the former public information officer for Straight, Inc.

Crist made his selection from a list of 10 submitted to him by the Florida Commission on the Status of Women. Brent Sembler's wife Debbie is a former board member of the commission. Mel, Betty, Brent and Debbie, indeed all of the Semblers, have always given handsomely to the election campaigns of prominent Republican candidates like Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist. It's like family patriarch Mel Sembler says, "You pay a little more, you get a little more."

The Franklin Cover-up, Straight and Paul Bishop

2006-10-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

by Wes Fager

In all my life there is only one book I've read that had certain parts in it which I could not bring myself to read. That book is The Franklin Cover-up (TFC) by attorney and former Nebraska state Senator John DeCamp. The book is about a pedophile ring operating out of Omaha, Nebraska which has ties to Father Flannigan's Boy's Town and to George H. W. Bush's White House. [It was by reporting on this ring by Rev. Moon's Washington Times that the senior Bush became a loyal Moonie fan.] The first time I ever heard about the 1983 kidnapping of a Des Moines, Iowa paperboy named Johnny Gosch was from TFC. Now I'm hearing about Johnny Gosch again. Except now it's about George W. Bush, a former White House news reporter and Straight, Inc.

According to Tim Schmitt , in Educate-yourself, six months after Johnny Gosch was kidnapped a man named George Paul Bishop (often known just as Paul Bishop) showed up at Doreen Gosch's (Johnny's mother) home claiming he was a "CIA asset" and offered his assistance in finding Johnny. Subsequently Noreen Gosch received many phone calls from Paul Bishop. She claims the calls were coming from Sen. Charles Grassley's (Republican, Iowa) office in Washington, DC. But Paul Bishop suddenly dropped out of Noreen's life in 1985 and his phone number no longer worked. Then George Paul Bishop was arrested in Fairfax, Virginia on Feb. 4, 2005 after police allegedly found an explicit video of a 16 year old boy in his home. George Paul Bishop is now in prison (release date Mar. 3, 2008) and on Virginia's registered sex offender's list.

And now a California woman alleges that the same Paul Bishop was used to locate and retrieve her brother (and possibly several others) back to the destructive, Republican-backed Straight rehab treatment center in Springfield, Virginia. (See Rigorous Intuition.)

The top figure in the photo is from The Johnny Gosch Foundation web page. Noreen Gosch says the photo came from JacobsTales.com--a pedophile site no longer on-line. She says it is a photo of her son shortly after his abduction. The bottom figure is of former White House pool reporter James Guckert, an alleged male prostitute with the Secret Service-approved alias Jeff Gannon. According to The Law Party's web page, TFC author John DeCamp has stated, "I believe Johnny Gosch and Jeff Gannon are one and the same person--but I am not in a position to know positively."

Related story:

Photographer tied to WH child sex-ring arrested after Thompson suicide by Tom Flocco

INFORMATION REQUEST: If you have any information on a PI named Paul Bishop who was allegedly used by Straight-Springfield to retrieve runaways, please send your information, in confidence, to wesfager@thestraights.com.

Pathway trying to expand

2006-10-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

Miller Newton's Kids of North Jersey was the first 2nd generation Straight to open expansion programs. Terri Nissley's Pathway Family Center is the second. Nissley founded Pathway a few miles from Straight-Detroit when that program closed and modeled Pathway after Straight. Later she opened a facility in Indianapolis. Now, just as in Straight, Pathway is claiming 20 -25 percent of the kids enrolled in its Indianapolis program are from Porter County so Pathway is seeking government money to open a center in Chesterton in Porter County, Indiana.

Just as in Straight there are horror stories that shame forever the reputation of children so that the program can grow. This time Julie Brown of Chesterton tells the world that one son was a "former Eagle Scout and a straight-A student", but then he turned to heroin and was sent to jail for selling drugs. Her family found salvation at Pathway but along the way she found another son was addicted to cold packets and he too is in Pathway. But now, she told a reporter, all three of her boys are doing well--implying to this reader that she was perhaps having problems with all three. Ms. Brown tells the reporter, "[Pathway] gave back my family."

Just like in Straight, Pathway has found a sympathertic Republican in Porter County Council member William Carmichael who has suggested using unallocated county income tax funds to build a Pathway faciltiy. And just like at Straight they've got a judge listening. Porter County Circuit Court Judge Mary Harper has stated that, "Pathway is a solid program." She has said she would support using $225,000 in unused funds for Pathway. Those unused funds had been set aside for housing expenses for juveniles ordered to the state correctional system. But county council president Dan Whitten, a Democrat, says he wants more information about Pathway.

Our report is based upon a story from The Chesterton Tribune by VICKI URBANIK. We urge our readers to contact the editor and Vicki Urbanik and tell them about the Straight model.

Contacts:

The Chesterton Tribune email: ctrib@go.com

Porter County Council
Web page http://www.porterco.org/?0/1100/1/20
EMail: council@porterco.org
Indiana AvenueSuite 207
Valparaiso, IN 46383
Telephone: (219) 465-3332

COUNCIL MEMBERS:
Dan Whitten, President - At large
Jim Burge, Vice President - At large
William Carmichael - At large
Bob Poparad - 1st District
Rita Stevenson - 2nd District
Al Steele - 3rd District
Laura Blaney - 4th District

Circuit Court Judge Mary R. Harper
16 Lincolnway Suite 313
Valparaiso, IN 46383
Telephone: (219) 465-3535Fax: (219) 465-3647
Email: d05@porterco.org

Porter County Commissioners
155 Indiana Avenue Suite 205
Valparaiso, IN 46383
(219) 465-3440(219) 465-3362
North DistrictJohn A. Evans(219) 465-3361 jevans@porterco.org
Center DistrictRobert P. Harper(219) 465-3354 bharper@porterco.org
South DistrictCarole Knoblock(219) 465-3349 cknobloc@porterco.org

Was a young Charlie Crist ever in a drug rehab?

2006-09-29T04:23:00.000-07:00

The Seed was a teen drug rehabilitation chain in Florida in the 1970s. The US Senate accused the program of using North Korean brainwashing methods on American kids. Ambassador Melvin Sembler patterned Straight, Inc. after The Seed. Mel Sembler's son Brent and Charlie Crist are childhood friends. Today Brent Sembler is Charlie Crist's finance chairman. Mel Sembler has disclosed, by deduction, that Brent Sembler was in The Seed. One recruitment method used by The Seed was to get kids already in the program to rat on their friends and siblings to get them in the cult too. Charlie Crist's dad was on The Seed's Advisory Board. Since The Seed and Straight had reputations for abuse and cult-like behavior, most adults associated with these cults (other than program employees) were parents who had a child in the program--parents like Mel Sembler who founded his own Seed-like treatment cult. So we ask the question. If you have any information on whether Florida's gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist was in The Seed, please send your confidential correspondence to wesfager@thestraights.com.

See related story.

Bradley Martin granted new sentencing trial, Bradbury / Fager may yet get to testify

2006-02-19T09:13:00.000-08:00

Bradley Martin was in Straight-Springfield from 1988 - 1990. Today Mr. Martin is on death row in Pennsylvania for the 1993 slaying of a Pennsylvania man. Ray Bradbury (the man who closed Straight) and Wes Fager (editor of thestraights dot com) traveled to Pennsylvania in 2002 in hopes of testifying in Mr. Martin's defense at his appeal. The judge did not allow their testimony then as they had no firsthand knowledge of Bradley Martin. We have been informed by the law firm of ReedSmith that the court has voted to grant a re-sentencing trial. It may be possible for Bradbury and Fager to testify in the new trial. See related story.

Museum event protested for ties to a hate group

2006-02-18T08:26:00.000-08:00

2-18-06 . On Saturday Feb. 25, 2006 Protesters picketed the annual awards banquet for the Florida Holocaust Museum for its ties, they say, to sponsors of a hate group (Straight, Inc.). [Photo. Samantha Monroe in a black dress with back to camera passes out fliers at the protest.]

Kids Helping Kids Cincy Protested

2006-02-10T06:05:00.000-08:00

A group protested Kids Helping Kids in Cincinnati this morning (Feb. 10, 2006). Beacon Radio, Cincinnati will cover the evening protest on their 3:30PM or 4 PM show. TV WCPO will cover the protest on TV tonight.

Why the United States Government should share in the liability for the damages caused to former Straight clients

2005-12-21T06:26:00.000-08:00

by Wes Fager

story permalink

Four studies suggest that Straight's quackery can lead to various post-Straight maladies--including suicide

2005-12-20T20:33:00.000-08:00

Study by British Medical Journal on body carving. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has long recognized that spectator animals, kept from their natural environment and confined in small cages become depressed, prone to sickness including mental illness, and many resort to self-mutilation in reaction to stress or boredom. Now a new study by The British Medical Journal (11-23-02) and opinions by American experts conclude that kids exposed to abuse or violence, have abused drugs, have impulsive behavior or kids who have low self-esteem can become so overwhelmed with emotions that they cannot express that they may resort to carving on their bodies as a form of self - expression. "It's a coping strategy to deal with intolerable pain, but it works for them so it's a way of surviving," says Wendy Lader, PhD. story1 story2 And here's a resource for help.

Lack of sunshine causes depression. Tell-tale signs are depression, lack of energy, sleeping too much, eating too much, and gaining weigh. The medical name is Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD and it is caused by lack of sunshine. The cure is good ole' summertime where days are longer. But suppose you are in Straight where you can not see the sun even in the summer. story Related story here.

Depressed teens and young adult suicide. A study done by Dr. Myrna Weissman of the New York State Psychiatric Institute found that teens who suffer depression are twice as likely to suffer depression as adults than teens who do not suffer depression. She also found that they are five times more likely to commit suicide in their high school to early adulthood Depressed adolescents grown up.

US Air Force determines that long stay in abusive captivity can lead to post release suicide. Washington Post related article1 related article2 related article3 related article4

Why the St. Pete Times won't cover the protest of a museum's awards banquet

2005-12-19T20:56:00.000-08:00

Straight was headquartered in St. Petersburg, Fl. Much of what we know of Straight's atrocities comes from the St. Petersburg Times. Bruce Epstein is a former writer for the Times who once recommended Straight in a Times' article as a resource to parents even though a Pinellas County jury had awarded a former Straight client $721,000 for being abused at Straight! Not only was Epstein a Straight board member, he was a founding board member of the Florida Holocaust Museum. When former Straight clients threatened to protest the museum, the museum responded by making Epstein its director. The St. Petersburg Times might not like the idea of a protest of a Holocaust museum any more than we do, but it is a newsworthy story. The protesters are not protesting the Holocaust, they are protesting one Holocaust museum for being in Mel Sembler's pockets and for hiding behind the museum's aprons. The Times needs to get out of Mel Sembler's pockets too and report on this upcoming protest. Read The ethics of naming rights for St. Pete Times Forum.

Museum Awards Banquet to be protested for ties to Straight

2005-12-19T18:54:00.000-08:00

The Nazi program for the extermination of European Jewry is the most vile, disgusting, horrific treatment of a people by another people in the 20th Century and probably in all of human history. The story of what the Nazis did must be told and retold forever in books, films, plays and Holocaust museums. Like the Nazis, Straight, Inc. was another great 20th Century violator of civil liberties and human rights. Over 40 former Straight clients have committed suicide.

Straight founder Melvin Sembler has enhanced his businesses and has received political protection from the crimes of Straight by buying powerful Republican politicians. Now Mel Sembler and former president of Straight Foundation Walter Loebenberg have teamed up to found the Florida Holocaust Museum. They say they are humanitarians and philanthropists trying to do good deeds. Many former Straight clients feel the museum is a ruse to further protect them from their reputations as officers at Straight. Lobenberg founded the museum and Mel and Betty Sembler were founding directors. But that's just for starters. Read now The case to protest the Florida Holocaust Museum.

The 2006 Awards Banquet will be held at the A La Carte Event Pavilion, 4050 Dana Shores Drive, Tampa. Here is a map. Protesters should meet around 4:30 PM in the parking lot of the Golf Country Club across the street from the pavilion. They plan to picket until around 8:00 PM. They request that you bring your own signs. They will have a new flier to hand out but state that volunteers are welcome to make their own. The protest will be video taped and broadcast on the Internet later that evening.

Seventh Steppers renounce their Straight graduation status in droves

2005-12-14T19:52:00.000-08:00

12-10-05 Straight is a cult for many reasons including its use of destructive brainwashing methods and its use of deception. Another reason is because clients never really left. The few who never caught on and graduated quite often became staff at Straight. Whether they later worked for Straight or not, almost all graduates joined Straight's aftercare support group and fundraiser known as The Seventh Step Society.

Mel Sembler proudly displays an on-line picture album of his accomplishments on his company's web page. [See Mel's photos.] If you view his photo album, at bottom center is a photo of Mel receiving Nancy Reagan and Princess DI at the Straight camp in Springfield Virginia which later had its license revoked for abusing children. Beside that photo Mel writes:

Although best known as a leading shopping center developer, Sembler is also renowned for his activism in the anti-drug movement. In 1976, Sembler and his
wife Betty founded STRAIGHT, an adolescent drug treatment program. During its 17 years of existence, STRAIGHT successfully graduated more than 12,000 young
people nationwide from its remarkable program.

It is probably safe to assume that almost all of those graduates were Seventh Steppers. Unfortunately, among Sembler's 12,000 successful graduates were beautiful young people like Glen Steepleton and Christine Stottlemeyer who have committed suicide. Jeff Leugers was president of the Seventh Step Society in Ohio. He shot himself dead. Ray Bradbury is another of Sembler's successful graduates. In fact, Ray Bradbury was the national director for the Seventh Step Society! Today he has to take meds to get through the day. He is being sued by Mel and Betty for intentional infliction of emotional distress resulting, the Semblers allege, from Bradbury's attempt to sell Mel's penis pump on eBay.

Today, former Straight graduates are renouncing their graduate status from Straight in droves--and many have some choice words for Mel and Betty. Yet Mel Sembler says, next to his children, Straight is the greatest thing he and Betty ever did! Read now the comments by some of their successful graduates. LINK

Sir Walter Loebenberg is a self-proclaimed philanthrapist [sic]

2005-12-14T19:29:00.000-08:00

11-30-05 On July 10, 1998 Walter Loebenberg, formerly president of Straight Foundation, donated $200 to the campaign of T. M. "Tom" Woodruff who was running for state senate as a Republican. His occupation is listed as philanthrapist on the donation form. Since "philanthrapist" is not a word we assume he meant philanthropist (someone who makes charitable donations intended to increase human well-being) and not philanderer (a man who likes many women).

12-03-05 Walter ain't alone--a testimonial link

Reports and articles on Straight, Inc. AKA Drug Free America Foundation

2005-12-08T04:58:00.000-08:00

What killed Jesus Christ?

2005-11-22T16:18:00.000-08:00

I sit at a computer and research and write all day long. Years ago my body responded with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. In one stretch I sat before my machine for weeks, putting in 16 hour days. Sometimes holding my bathroom visits until I could not hold it any longer. My ankles starting filling with fluid. It started getting painful. Then one day it happened. My ankles were so swollen I could but barely walk. My wife and daughter talked me into going to the emergency room at our local hospital. The doctor gave me a powerful diuretic and I started eliminating a lot of fluid. Finally they let me go home, but gave me a prescription to see a battery of doctors as soon as possible. Heart doctor, pulmonary, vascular . . . They all said the same thing--get up frequently and take a walk or jog. My GP suggested I get a wireless keyboard so I could work from a lounge chair with my feet elevated, so I bought one--but it did not help [I never took it out of the box].

It was the vascular guy who made the impact. "You know what killed Jesus Christ don't you?" he had asked. I thought he was about to tell me a good joke. "The cross," I answered. "Yes, but what was actually the cause of death?" he responded. "Hanging there, upright, unable to move," he continued without waiting for a second reply, "his bodily fluids drained down to his lower extremities. This placed great strain on his heart and he had congestive heart failure." Well, I'd never heard that. I knew that position abuse was a powerful tool used in torture and brainwashing but I never knew it could be deadly!

On June 16, 2004 Senator Richard Durbin addressed his colleagues on the floor of the US Senate to propose an amendment that would outlaw the use of "position abuse" and other tortures on Moslem detainees in US military prisons. He noted that the US Supreme Court ruled against "position abuse" as late as 2002 in a case called Hope v. Pelzer. According to the magazine American Progress, "Hope, a prisoner, was handcuffed to a "hitching post'' for seven hours in the sun and not allowed to use the bathroom. The Court held that this violated the 8th Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment." The Court ruled:

"The obvious cruelty inherent in this practice should have provided [the prison guards] with some notice that their alleged conduct violated Hope's constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Hope was treated in a way antithetical to human dignity--he was hitched to a post for an extended period of time in a position that was painful, and under circumstances that were both degrading and dangerous."

But Senator Durbin is not just against using "position abuse" on Gulf War detainees. He is against using any types of tortures, including sleep deprivation. He talked about the 1944 case of Ashcraft v. Tennessee which also made it to the US Supreme Court. In this case the Supreme Court held that "a confession obtained by depriving a suspect of sleep and continuously questioning him for 36 hours was involuntarily coerced." Justice Hugo Black , giving the majority opinion, wrote:

"It has been known since 1500 at least that deprivation of sleep is the most effective torture and certain to produce any confession desired [quoting the Wickersham Commission]. ..... We think a situation such as that here shown by uncontradicted evidence is so inherently coercive that its very existence is irreconcilable with the possession of mental freedom by a lone suspect against whom its full coercive force is brought to bear."

American Progress, quoting from Durbin's speech to the Senate, reported, "Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin wrote about his experience with sleep deprivation in a Soviet prison in the 1940s:

In the head of the interrogated prisoner a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep, to sleep just a little. ..... Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it. ..... I came across prisoners who signed what they were told to sign, only to get what the interrogator promised them ..... uninterrupted sleep!"

Position abuse and sleep deprivation are two tortures that were routinely employed at Mel and Betty Sembler's Straight program. Read what they did to Leigh Bright.

Leigh Bright was a Virginia teenager who was in Straight's re-education center in Saint Petersburg, Florida in 1982. Her story comes from her court testimony and from an accounting by Dr. Arnold Trebach in The Great Drug War. Ms Bright testified that she has arthritis and was having problems doing her exercises at Straight, Inc. in June 1982, so she was taken into a shower stall to exercise where she was marathoned [Bomb Squad] by staff and old comers who started pushing her around the stall. She testified that they picked her up and threw her to the floor. One girl pulled her up and down by the hair until her head was numb. She kept telling them she had to go to the bathroom, but they wouldn’t let her go. When they finally did, they kept trying to pull her off the commode as she was using it. When she had finished, she stated, a girl started twisting her arm until another girl told her to stop or she would break it. They made her use a paper towel to scoop her own feces out of the toilet.

After three hours of this she was forcefully taken to stand before the GROUP of 600 Straight kids where kids would stand up and say she was no good. One old comer yelled for the GROUP to leave her alone when Straight’s national clinical director, Reverend Doctor V. Miller Newton went over and started screaming at the girl. Two girls came up and put their hands over Leigh’s mouth so she couldn’t breathe. Dr Newton, who was an ordained minister, in front of 600 kids, grabbed Ms. Bright by her hair and threw her to the floor stating, "I want this girl the fuck out of my GROUP." She was taken into the intake room where Dr Newton told the old comers to keep her awake until Monday night. Since this occurred on a Saturday, Ms Bright was kept awoke for 80 hours, during which time girls would push her and make her stand for 12 hours at a time all the while calling her a whore. Finally on Monday night she was allowed 3 hours sleep.

On another occasion Ms Bright testified she had to stand through an entire rap with her back bent half-way to the GROUP. When she tried to bend her legs to relieve the ache five girls restrained her by putting her on the floor and sitting on her for over and hour.

Ms Bright testified that she had a bladder infection when she entered Straight in May but Straight wouldn’t let her go to a doctor. Finally in June Straight let her see a doctor because she had doubled over and started crying. The doctor gave her a prescription for a vaginal infection but Straight did not give her the medicine until July. On another occasion she reported she had excruciating pain in her ears whenever she opened her mouth but again Straight would not let her see a doctor. When Straight finally did let her see a doctor, he said she had a bone problem and needed to see an orthodontist. In the meantime he told her to eat soft foods. Straight did not give her soft foods nor they let her see an orthodontist.

Ms Bright remembered another girl who was not allowed to see an orthodontist. That girl, Ms. Bright reported, had such a bad problem with her braces that she went around with the entire wire sticking out of her mouth! [In an unannounced site visit by officials from Virginia’s Department of Mental Health conducted on February 14-15, 1990 client interviewee # 3 reported that she had had orthodonal surgery just prior to entering Straight and usually sees an orthodontist once a month, but had not seen an orthodontists in four months at Straight. Her teeth bleed when brushing, she reported, because she did not have a special toothbrush to use with braces. She reported to authorities that she believed she could not see an orthodontist until she made Phase 2.]

One day, Ms. Bright says, she related to her old comer that she wanted to commit suicide [not surprisingly]. Later, her old comer stood her up in front of GROUP and announced that Leigh wanted to commit suicide, whereupon GROUP started mocking her. After that, for almost a week, she was made to wear a blue shirt with he words PSYCHOTIC written on it. Whenever parents were around like at Open Meeting, Straight would make her take the shirt off. After that, Ms Bright estified, she never talked about suicidal thoughts to anyone.

Dr. Newton has written a sworn statement acknowledging that he did once restrain Ms. Bright, but only because she had become "physically vicious". "I used only recognized restraint techniques, including a grip on the hair, which causes a person to release anything she is holding or biting," Newton declared.[1] Read here the log of complaints against Dr. Newton when he fled Florida in 1983. Read here about Dr. Newton's $11 million in settlements with former clients for abusing them in New Jersey. A watchdog group for abusive priests of the Orthodox Catholic Church of America lists Father Cassian (formerly known at Straight and Kids as Reverend Doctor Doctor V. Miller Newton).

Last month, in a PumpGate court deposition, Betty Sembler made this incredible statement about Miller Newton, "[Miller Newton is] a very close and dear friend and a valued one." Then she calls him "an outstanding individual." Mr. Newton is even a participant on the International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse, a front group for Betty's Drug Free America Foundation.

In his June speech, Senator Durbin reminded the gathered Senators that, "Eleanor Roosevelt was the Chair of the U.N. Commission that produced the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948. The Universal Declaration states unequivocally, "No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.'' " Just six months later on December 10, 2004 on the occasion of Human Rights Day, Ambassador Melvin Sembler, AO wrote an Op-Ed for La Nazione/Il Resto del Carlino/IL Giorno in which he stated, "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a revolutionary document when the United Nations passed it in 1948. It remains so today. Americans take a justifiable pride in the central role that Eleanor Roosevelt played in its drafting and passage." He continued, " Its opening words resonate around the world in 2004 with the same force they did in the wake of World War II, and bear repeating: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equality and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.”

Menachem Begin had been tortured before the UN Declaration, Leigh Bright after. How dare Mr. Sembler make such a hypocrtical, public statement in opposition to torture!!!

FOOTNOTES
1 St. Petersburg Times, 1-30-83, p. 1B.

The Late Great Straight Holocaust and starvation by peanut butter

2005-11-15T17:49:00.000-08:00

Just one example this time--Starvation. An important part of Thought Reform is food deprivation. In Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pot's Cambodia, Sadam's Iraq and Amen's Uganda federal authorities were able to starve people because they did not have to answer to anyone. The dictator was the law. But food deprivation of a minor in a democracy presents a problem, since it is illegal. So how do you legally starve a child in a democracy?

[The Church of Scientology(TM) has a program called the Rehabilitative Project Force that its adult parishioners may attend. Church critics say it is a brainwashing center. But brainwashing requires starvation and RPF folks are feed all the beans and water they can eat. Now beans are a leguminous plant chocked full of protein. One thing about eating leguminous plants -- they give off gas. The gas expands in one's stomach and can give a bloated feeling of being more filled that one really is. But the greater issue is this: I love Navy beans. But if you give them to me for breakfast, lunch and dinner, for several days there will come a point that I'll tell you, give me one more bowl of beans and I'll vomit. I'll stop eating. And I'll lose weight. ]

How did Straight implement food deprivation? Peanut butter -- that's how. Peanuts are a leguminous bean plant full of protein. And what kid does not like peanut butter? It bloats one full of gas. Straight gave many kids what they called peanut butter choker sandwiches. Sandwiches thich with peanut butter. But after a few days of nothing but peanut butter, a child becomes tired of that. Give me another thick peanut butter sandwich and I'll be sick. The kid doesn't eat and so loses weight. If the kid's family sues, you tell the judge, hey your Honor, we gave that kid all the peanut butter he could eat. It's not our fault he refused to eat it. In 1985 Straight-Atlanta paid former client Susan White $37,000 in an out-of-court settlement. Ms. White claimed she was put on a diet of peanut butter and water for 29 days because she would not admit to having a drug problem she did not have. Her suit was handled by the ACLU.

Straight was preceeded by a federally funded program called The Seed. The Seed lost its federal funding and virtually closed after the US Senate accused it of using North Korean brainwashing methods on children. The man who managed the federal grant to The Seed was National Institue on Drug Abuse (a subsidiary of NIH) director Dr. Robert DuPont who was also the second White House Drug Czar. After Dr. DuPont left federal service, he became a paid consultant for Straight boasting that he encouraged Nancy Reagan to get involved with Straight and that it was his suggestion that Straight go national. Straight got sued all over the place and, invaribly, Dr. DuPont was used as an expert witness for Straight. The fact is the more people who sued Straight, the more money DuPont might stand to make defending Straight. Listen to his deposition for the Michael Daniels trial on April 6, 1988 where he is asked about peanut butter diets (pp. 69 - 70).

Q. “Do you feel that if a person were placed on a peanut butter diet for any length of time that could not in any way be considered mental abuse?

A. “I think it’s unpleasant. I would put it in the category of being unpleasant, not more than that. You have to understand that peanut butter is a mainistay in my diet, but of course I select it.”

Q. “Doctor, you don’t eat peanut butter all three meals of your day, do you?”

A. “It comes close sometimes but--”

Q. “Do you ever eat peanut butter for all three meals of your day?”

A. “No, but probably two.” “...If a person were allowed to eat nothing but peanut butter and that went on for even a period of days when there was no other food offered to that person, that would be upsetting. Now, abuse, I don’t know. I think it’s distressing, let me put it that way. I wouldn’t go beyond that.”

The point is if you want to deprive a kid of food in a democracy, you need a trick and it wouldn't hurt to have big gun expert witnesses too.

According to The Simon Wiesenthal Center in LA, The SS called Dachau a "re-education centre". Now that's important because Straight calls its camps "re-acculturation centers." Jews in Hitler's concentration camps were made to defecate publicly like cats and dogs. Straight kids eliminated and wiped publicly before an oldcomer. These things are important because Walter Loebenberg, president of Straight Foundation, founded the Florida Holocaust Museum. On the board of directos are or have been Mel Sembler, Betty Sembler and Straight board members Jay Synder and Dr. Bruce Epstein. Dr. Epstein has been director of the museum. Many Straight survivors feel that the Museum is just a smoke screen to hide their work at Straight, and so they have protested Museum functions.

In April 1998 Stephen Goldman who was then director of The Florida Holocaust Museum said, "There's no irony in it being here. Our lessons are those of tolerance and breaking down of barriers." He was talking about hosting "Stealing Home: How Jackie Robinson Changed America." Well I take exception to that. In 1978 Florida’s Bureau of Criminal Justice Planning and Assistance released a report on Straight finding that in its first 18 months of operation Straight had enrolled 450 youths but only one had been black. Five years later Straight's national clinical director admitted that out of 260 young clients at Straight - St. Petersburg there were no blacks! How can you run an institution that abuses children and then start a Holocaust Museum. How can you treat just white kids because they have more money, and then have a display to a great American baseball player because he is black!

So you see the difference Victor. You can not feed an American kid fish head soup, or worse, nothing at all because the police will take you to jail. But in Nazi Germany it was the police themselves who fed people fish head soup. Who's going to arrest them. Time and space limits my argument just to the starvation issue; there are so many more. Straight is not just a step in the direction of what happened in Germany; it is a GREAT leap in that direction.

Victor, God love you, I could never be able to comprehend how you feel and your point is soundly taken -- Straight is not as bad as Hitler's Germany and absolutely NOTHING can even begin compare to THE HOLOCAUST. Still 75,000 American kids had their civil liberties and human rights violated. What do you call it? The Straight Incident? That's fine. But as for me I'll continue to call it The Late Great Straight Holocaust.

The Clary report: Did Mel Sembler quash a state attempt to close an abusive drug rehab?

2005-11-13T14:03:00.000-08:00

The Clary Report, Ambassador Mel Sembler, Florida state Senator Donald Sullivan, MD and his wife Judge Irene Sullivan

Straight closed its flagship program in Saint Petersburg on April 13, 1993 amidst an investigation of Straight being conducted by Lowell Clary, Acting Inspector General for Florida’s Department of Health and Human Services (HRS) now called the Office of Children and Family. Mr. Clary had begun his investigation back in December because of damaging documents about Straight's operations which he had received from Richard Bradbury. Mr. Clary released his findings on May 19, a month after Straight, Inc. had closed. His report, which is presented below in its entirety, insinuates that Melvin Sembler and " unnamed state senators" probably pressured HRS to grant Straight-Saint Petersburg a license in 1989 when an on-site inspection team was preparing to deny the license. According to the report Harry Moffitt, an HRS senior program specialist, said that deputy assistant secretary Linda Lewis questioned why Florida would continue to let Straight operate in spite of allegations of withholding medication and food from clients, depriving them of sleep and using excessive force against them. That when Ms. Lewis brought this up to Ivor Groves, an assistant secretary to HRS, she had been told that she would be fired on the spot if she did not do as told. Groves denied the conversation and Lewis did not recall it. The report also revealed a definite pattern of abuse or excessive force used against clients at Straight facilities. See the five page report here:

Post Clary: Straight's Dr. Donald Sullivan, MD oversees Florida's Office of Children and Families--the office that would investigate Sembler--if an investigation was ordered

Donald C. Sullivan, MD is a respected orthopedic surgeon in Saint Petersburg, Florida. In 1992 he was successfully elected to the Florida state Senate as a Republican. One thing that former Senator Sullivan can be credited for is making Saint Petersburg Community College a full four year college. [ Betty Sembler sits with Florida's drug czar Jim McDonough on on the advisory board of the Multijurisdictional Counterdrug Task Force Training (MCTFT)--a program funded by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Florida National Guard and hosted near Betty's house at Saint Petersburg Junior College. MCTFT is the federal government's program to train law enforcement officers, nationwide, in counter drug task force efforts.] Besides his work in education, Senator Sullivan served on the state Senate's Children and Families Committee which oversees Florida's Office of Children and Families, the very same office that the Clary Report insinuates was prepared to deny Straight's license in 1989 when political pressure was put on it to grant a license. This all occurring, of course, before Senator Sullivan came aboard.

Former Senator Sullivan says he had been persuaded into running for the state Senate in 1992 by his friend, then state Senator, John Grant, a Republican from Tampa. (Between 1994 and 1996 Senator John Grant got $4,000 from eight separate $500 donations from the Sembler clan. Joseph Garcia, former Chairman Straight Executive Committee and former Executive Vice President and Treasurer of Drug Free America Foundation contributed $250 to John Grant's 1996 campaign. [Source: Florida Department of State Division of Elections]) Interestingly, Wesley Pennington, the president of Straight, ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the state assembly in 1992. Interesting because according to a document submitted by Straight Foundation to the IRS as part of its tax package, in May 1992 Donald Sullivan, MD was the secretary of the board of directors of Straight Foundation, Inc. Check out the 1996 annual report for Straight Foundation (which now calls itself the Drug Free America Foundation) in which the state's office of corporations is instructed to remove Donald Sullivan from its list of officers.

Post Clary: Dr. Sullivan's wife Irene Sullivan becomes a Sixth Circuit judge

In the preface to an article written by Saint Petersburg Times reporter William R. Levesque on October 29, 1998, Mr. Levesque writes: "Critics say the endorsements blur the line between party politics and non-partisan judicial campaigns." He writes: "In two fliers, the Republican Party of Pinellas County urges residents to vote the party ticket, . . . Included in the list are Irene Sullivan, a candidate for circuit court judge, and George Brown. . ." Irene Sullivan, who is the wife of Dr. Donald C. Sullivan, got her judgeship. (Irene Sullivan received $1,000 from Mel and Betty Sembler in four separate $250 donations between 1997 and 1998. Walter Loebenberg donated $500 to Ms. Sullivan's campaign in 1998 and $250 in 1997. Former Straight board members or advisory board members attorneys Guy Perenich and Myron Mensch, Dr. Bruce Epstein and wife Amy (Amy is not a former board member), and Mel Gross and Raymond Bourgholtzer threw in $650 combined. DFAF Advisory Board member Susan Latvala and her husband state senator Jack Latvala donated $550 between 1997 and 1998. Irene's husband and former Straight Foundation secretary Donald Sullivan, MD gave the maximum allowed of $500. But all of this pales to insignificance compared to what Irene Sullivan donated to her own campaign fund. She gave $99,000 of her own money to become a judge. [Source: Florida Department of State Division of Elections])

For Betty Sembler's 70th birthday everybody gathered at Gratzzi's Italian restaurant to wish her well. Judge Irene Sullivan was there. Instead of gifts Betty had asked everyone to contribute to the DFAF.

The Clary finding is not the only time Mel Sembler's cronies put heat on state licensing officials either. Straight had opened in 1976 and by 1978 was in danger of being shut down because of numerous allegations of serious child abuse. The man who led the investigation had been Robert G. Marshall, district director of the state's licensing authority for drug rehabilitation programs in Pinellas County for the state office of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS). Naturally, a special citizen's committee called Parents Associated Inc. had been created to investigate--the investigator, Bob Marshall. Prominent on that citizen's committee had been Pinellas County Judge Jack Dadswell and Mack Vines who would be the chief of police by 1980. (Terry Hensley, another Saint Petersburg Police Chief, would later become the executive director of the Straight Foundation under its new name the Drug Free America Foundation.) A spokesperson for HRS Secretary William J. "Pete" Page, Jr. has admitted that Straight officials had called to complain about Marshall. Straight board member John White said that on one occasion a Straight official complained to Page about Marshall, but he did not know who it was. Even Melvin Sembler confirmed that some Straight officials had contacted Mr. Page about the HRS investigation of Straight, but, according to a newspaper account of the time, like Senator Curt Kiser 10 years later, he can't remember who they were. In any event Straight did not close but the investigator Bob Marshall was fired!

An interesting thing happened after the man destined to be the chief of police for Saint Petersburg investigated HRS' Bob Marshall. One of his assistants, Lt David Milchan, who had headed the Youth Services Division of the St. Petersburg Police Department, had frequently referred families to Straight. In fact he was on the Straight Advisory Committee. Well it seems he just got tired of being a police officer after all those years of service. No he didn't bother retiring. He just up and quit and took a job with HRS. So now Straight had managed to get Bob Marshall fired for investigating Straight and get a former board member working for HRS to boot. Well after a bit David Milchan decided that he wanted to be a policeman after all, and so he went back to law enforcement. But not as a mere lieutenant. He went to Saint Petersburg Beach which is the city of residence for Straight co-founder Joseph Zappala and, in 1981, was given the job of Chief of Police! The Saint Petersburg Beach Lions Club annually awards the Joseph Zappala Policeman of the Year Award.

Related stories:

Dr. Sullivan being considered for Florida state's Top GOP
Charlie Crist is Florida's attorney general
St. Petersburg Times on Clary Report: A persistent foul odor

Drug Free America Foundation, America's foremost conservative think tank on drug policy, founded in deceit

2005-10-30T09:01:00.000-08:00

Drug Free America Foundation is a non-profit setup by Melvin and Betty Sembler as a think tank to influence national and international drug policy. Also, it helps small businesses set up Drug Free Workplace Environments through a grant by the U.S. Small Business Administration. But DFAF was founded in fraud. In 1976 Melvin and Betty Sembler were principal founders of Straight, Inc.--one of the most destructive juvenile drug rehabilitation programs the world has ever seen. By 1985 Straight had faced so many law suits and criminal investigations that a shell corporation was created to buffer Mel Sembler from civil suits and from possible criminal indictments, and to protect Straight's financial assets. The shell corporation was called Straight Foundation, Inc.

In 1985 the foundation misrepresented itself to the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations by stating it had been formed, in part, to fund treatment programs when, in fact, it had been formed to fund Straight, Inc. and Straight, Inc. almost exclusively. It also raised funds for Straight, Inc. and, it appears, only for Straight, Inc. In reality it leased Straight, Inc.'s property back to itself. In 1995 Straight Foundation, Inc. changed is name to Drug Free America Foundation and changed its mission to its current ones. Perhaps Melvin and Betty Sembler should be in prison for their roles at Straight. Instead they've bought their way into politics and are major players in establishing national and international drug policy.
See: dfaf shell story
Semblers and national drug policy
Semblers and international drug policy

A Halloween Message. Be careful what you read.

2005-10-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

Historically, the ACLU has helped our great nation make giant gains with civil liberties. But sometimes they just don't know when to shut up as in the Boston ACLU 2000 defense of NAMBLA's web page privacy. According to the Boston Globe The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) officials in the past have said "their main goal is the abolition of age-of-consent laws that classify sex with children as rape."

We believe that a five year old boy might trade oral sex to an adult for an ice cream cone and be all the more merry for it. But when that lad turns 14, knowledge of homosexuality and peer pressure can make him think he's a queer and cause him to commit suicide. We believe this is how Straight, Inc. (the late great juvenile drug rehabilitation program) aided in the murder of so many of its former clients. [Over 40 former Straight clients have committed suicide!]

Last year the school board of Puyallup, WA ruled to ban Halloween festivities during school time. A major reason? Celebrating Halloween would offend Wiccans (real witches). Well what is the ACLU doing about it? And what about werewolves, vampires and The Creature from the Black Lagooni?

So what are the Marines doing wrong in the photo? They are praying, that's what. They are bowing their heads in prayer. When we received an email that an ACLU spokesman named Lucius Traveler saw the photo and went ballistic stating, "These are federal employees on federal property and on federal time. For them to pray is clearly an establishment of religion, and we must nip this in the bud immediately," we went ballistic too. So we investigated. Did Mr. Traveler actually say that? Turns out the ACLU does not even have a Mr. whatever his name is. It's all just a hoax.

But really, as for the ACLU you gotta' love 'em when you need 'em; and damn 'em when you don't. Like I say, the ACLU has made some great strides for us all; but then they've done some odious work too. This time they're off the hook. As for the Marines--God bless them one and all! Semper Fi.

Dr. Riddile receives award prompting Leigh Bright and Wes Fager to write letters of protest

2005-10-24T19:09:00.000-07:00

References:
a. MetLife/NASSP PR on Dr. Mel Riddile
b. Wash Post on Dr. Mel Riddile

Recently Dr. Mel Riddile, former national executive director of Straight, was named top high school principal in America by MetLife and the National Association of Secondary School Principals. This prompted Wes Fager, editor of theStraights dot com, to send the following eMail to Michael Carr of NASSP:
_____________________
Dear Michael Carr, NASSP

I was dissapointed to learn that Dr. Riddile has been selected by your organization as National High School Principal of the Year. Dr. Riddile is the former director of Straight-Springfield, Virginia and the former national director of Straight, Inc. For 17 years Straight, Inc. was the biggest juvenile drug rehabilitation program in the world (though Dr. Riddile was not with the program all that time). But Straight was also one of the most destructive rehab programs the world has ever seen. It operated on deceit, fear, intimidation, and untested methods brainwashing. Mental and physical abuse were rampant. Eventually this national-level program had to close all its treatment camps under mounting civil suits and investigations from state criminal and child welfare agencies.

And while Dr. Riddile is being recognized today for his current work and receiving a $5,000 check, I think it is important to note that over 40 of Straight's former clients have committed suicide.

Wesley Fager
ed, http://www.thestraights.com

Related story:
A story extolling the virtues of Dr. Riddile and his recent award in The Washington Post on 10/23/05 led former Straight student Leigh Bright to send a letter to the editor to theStraights dot com and to the Wash Post.

Felony exploitation of children?

2005-07-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

Accordig to USA Today, May 27, 2005, a music store manager in Port Richey, Florida has been charged with felony exploitation of the elderly and was held on $10,000 bail at the Pasco County jail. According to the charge Scott Heyder, manager of a music store, sold a 79 year old woman 11 organs over an 18 month period, including four in one day. The organs keep getting more expensive and Mr. Heyer kept selling to her despite pleas from the woman's family to stop it. What states, including Florida, have a felony exploitation of minors law on the books and what are the statues of limitation? [Related docs: 1996 Florida legislature revises statues on elderly and child exploitation MSWord html ]

Massachusetts looks at making it illegal for adults to strike a child

2005-07-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

The Commonwealth of Masschusetts is considering a bill to make it a crime to use corporal punishment on children (defined as anyone under 18 ). The proposal states: " “Corporal punishment”, the willful infliction of physical pain, including but not limited, to hitting, whipping, slapping, spanking, kicking, biting, striking with an object, pinching, punching, poking eyes, twisting limbs, boxing ears, shaking, “hot-saucing” (putting undiluted Tabasco sauce or soap in the mouth), administering electric shocks, or any other unreasonable use or degree of force. (b) It shall be unlawful in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for any adult to inflict corporal punishment upon a child." link

Mel Riddile, Straight's former national clinical director, protested at awards ceremony

2005-06-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

We have received word that on June 22, 2005 Melvin Riddile, Ph.D., the principal of J.E.B. Stuart High School in Fairfax County, Virginia was presented an award in Williamsburg, Virginia for being the best principal in Virginia. But the ceremony was protested by a handful of Straight survivors. Dr. Riddile is the former national executive director of Straight, Inc. and during the early 1980s Dr. Riddile was the director of the Straight camp in Springfield, Virginia (in Fairfax County). For 17 years Straight, Inc. was one of the most destructive juvenile rehabilitation programs in the world. Straight stopped treating kids for addictions in 1993 and today is an internationally recognized think tank on American and international drug policy. Today it calls itself Drug Free America Foundation and its founder (who is the former chairman of the finance committee for the national GOP) Melvin Sembler is our Ambassador to Italy. While DFAF no longer treats kids for addictions, Kids Helping Kids of Cincinnati, Ohio does.

Kids Helping Kids was founded in part by Dr. George Ross who, like Dr. Riddile, has a Ph.D. in Education. Dr. Ross is Straight's former national education director. A few months after Straight had opened in Virginia, back when Mel Riddile was director of the Virginia program, a young Straight escapee named Fred Collins was awarded $220,000 by a jury in US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia for being falsely imprisoned by Straight. Virginia authorities did not prosecute Dr. Riddile or anyone else for their roles at Straight, but state authorities in Kentucky tried to prosecute Dr. Ross for his alleged role of violating civil liberties at Possibilities Unlimited--another Straight-like program he founded in Lexington, Kentucky.

Straight-Cincinnati voluntarily closed in Ohio after state criminal authorities took it to court on multiple criminal counts. Today Kids Helping Kids continues to operate out of the old Straight facility. Recently some Straight survivors urged Dr. Riddile to speak out against Kids Helping Kids. They allege he personally knows "people who were involved with KHK." When Dr. Riddile refused to speak out against Kids, the Straight survivors passed out the following flier at the awards ceremony for Dr. Riddile. Here is a copy of the Riddile flier that was eMailed to us.

Related articles:

Straight's former national executive director represses right to free speech

2005-06-29T08:29:00.000-07:00

A while back we reported on President Bush's visit to a Fairfax County, Virginia High School last January. Out of 24 high schools in that country we were not surprised that the Pres selected J.E.B. Stuart High because the principal at Stuart is Dr. Mel Riddile. Dr. Riddile is the former national director for Straight, Inc. and the former director of the notorious Straight treatment camp in Springfield, Virginia. Thirteen former clients from Straight-Springfield went on to commit suicide or murder. (See What caused the 1980 epidemic of juvenile suicides in Fairfax County Virginia? and Abuses at Straight-Springfield. Note that most of the data in these reports occurred after Dr. Riddile's term at Straight-Springfield.) We got our information for our previous report from an article on J.E.B. Stuart's web page that implied, by omission, that the President was speaking to the students at that high school. The President opened his remarks saying, "I want to thank all the students here today." Now we have learned that only 75 of the school's 1400 students were allowed to attend the assembly. Most of the audience was made up of adult Republicans sycophants. One student who planned to protest the President's visit was expelled from school. His story made it to NPR. Whenever Nancy Reagan visited a Straight camp recalcitrant inmates were restrained in anterooms so the repression of free speech at J.E.B. Stuart does not surprise us. story

Wes Fager's letter to Bill O'Reilly on biased reporting by St Pete Times

2005-06-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

We know that John Couey probably killed 9 year-old Jessica Lunsford. We know this because, according to the Citrus County Florida authorities who are holding him, he admitted to the killing. But this confession likely will not make it to trial. Why? Because Couey kept asking for an attorney but the authorities failed to get him one. What's more, at least three others may have abetted Couey in his flee to Georgia before being captured but none of them have been arrested. The abduction and murder of Jessica Lunsford made national news and the subsequent botching by Citrus County authorities has been the subject of criticism by FOX News host Bill O'Reilly and by U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite. Not surprisingly the once mighty St. Petersburg Times stood by the incomptence of the Citrus County's Sheriff's Office and the prosecutor's office. And when the national media criticized Florida officials The Times jumped all over Bill O'Reilly. For example, on June 21, 2005 The Times editorialized, "In recent weeks, Fox television's minister of misinformation Bill O'Reilly has attacked these law enforcement agencies and the St. Petersburg Times for their actions. 'They're covering up something there,' he has blustered, while offering not a shred of proof to back up this absurd conclusion."

Like PumpGate these things are highly predictable. The abduction and murder of a little girl makes national news. When the authorities botch the investigation, if the local press fails to report the failures, the national press will. The Times blasts O'Reilly for doing its job and O'Reilly blasts back interviewing a former Citrus County assistant prosecutor. That interview is here.

This is not the first time O'Reilly has crossed paths with The Times, though he doesn't realize it yet. My email to Bill O'Reilly explaining this follows:

Dear Bill:

You don't realize it but the blotched Jessica Lunsford investigation is not the first time you've crossed paths with the Tash/Barnes St. Petersburg Times. In April you had Calvina Fay of the St. Petersburg-based Drug Free America Foundation on your program as an expert on the ease it is for one to get medical marijuana. You disagreed with Ms. Fay on the use of marijuana by talk show host Montel Williams to ease the pain he suffers from MS. In January Montel aired a segment about a ruthless, amateurish former juvenile drug rehabilitation program called Straight, Inc. Over 40 former Straight clients have committed suicide. Straight was founded by former finance chair to the national GOP and US Ambassador to Italy Melvin Sembler. Straight no longer treats kids for addictions and in 1995 changed its name to Drug Free America Foundation. Now people such as yourself are duped into calling on DFAF to defend national drug policy. And the reason you don't know any better is because The Times won't report on it because it is in Sembler's pockets and because a respected pediatrician and former Straight board was a medical writer for The Times.

Wes Fager

The Great Drug War now in second edition

2005-05-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

In 1983 a young man named Fred Collins made a daring escape from a private prison annex by throwing a chair through a window and climbing out. Having been starved for months he looked like a victim from a Nazi concentration camp. Amazingly, the prison annex happened to be the home owned by his own parents! The prison was the infamous Straight, Inc. which operated juvenile torture camps in the name of drug abuse treatment all over the country. In 1984 a federal jury awarded Mr. Collins (who had been an honors student at Virginia Tech before being shanghaied into Straight) $220,000 for being falsely imprisoned. $180,000 was for punitive damages alone! Arnold Trebach is a professor emeritus of law and social justice at American University. He learned about the trial from the local papers and was aghast from what he read.

In 1986 Professor Trebach published a book about the Reagan drug war of the Eighties and of the harm it caused to ordinary Americans as well as to our concepts of freedom. Today, to his own surprise, Professor Trebach is an admirer of Ronald Reagan for his dealings with the old Soviet Empire. Nevertheless, while the Reagans claimed to believe in personal freedom, they launched a campaign that justified perverse intrusions into the very bodies and bodily fluids of American citizens. Ronald Reagan endorsed Straight brochures and Nancy visited most of the Straight torture camps. Professor Trebach called his book The Great Drug War. An entire chapter is devoted to the Collins' trial and to the abuses of Straight up to that time. Psychology Today has this to say about TGDW, "At last! A professor, attorney, and writer who offers a reasonable and realistic approach to the drug problem in America." In the 1980s Arnold Trebach (and his Drug Policy Foundation) was the only intellectual voice around exposing institutional abuse in bogus treatment centers.Now a second edition of The Great Drug War, with a new introduction, is available. We wish the new edition could have been called The Late Great Drug War but this insidious, phony war rages on. The book is published by Unlimited Publishing, LLC. It should be a required text for the cause of reform by high school and college teachers in courses dealing with health education, drug policy, criminal justice, sociology, social work, and history. See Professor Trebach's write-up at www.trebach.com.

Order The Great Drug War at Amazon.com today.
School book stores should order from Baker & Taylor.

The O'Reilly Factor vs. Calvina Fay

2005-05-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

Last month Fox News Bill O'Reilly interviewed Calvina Fay of the Drug Free Foundation. The topic: medical marijuana and how easy it is to get it in states that allow for this substance. Both O'Reilly and Fay were concerned over how easy it is to obtain. And then O'Reilly mentioned Montel Williams and his plight with MS. O'Reilly said that if the cigarette helped Montel live with the pain he didn't Americacare how much he smoked. Here Calvina took an opposing view. It was obvious that Bill O'Reilly did not know that his own FOX News wrote a blistering report a couple of years ago about Straight or that Straight is now called Drug Free America Foundation--the group that his guest Calvina Fay is with. It was obvious that O'Reilly did not know that in January Montel aired a story on the horrors of Straight. Straight should have been prosecuted for insurance fraud, deceptive business practices, criminal child abuse. Instead it just changed its name and mission. Mel and Betty Sembler are now self-proclaimed drug policy experts and people like the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the US Supreme Court and Bill O'Reilly seek out their opinions on how this country should wage a war on drugs. Somebody needs to contact Bill and Montel, give them the background on DFAF and get them to hold another conference with Calvina, Mel and Betty, only this time include people like Arnold Trebach, Kevin Zeese and myself. The issue when it comes to DFAF and drug policy is not what is best for the nation. The issue is why should any reasonable person listen to anything Mel and Betty have to say--about anything. Related article: Mel and Betty on national drug policy

Mel Riddile, former National Executive Director for Straight, Inc., named 2005 Outstanding Principal in Virginia

2005-05-17T11:18:00.000-07:00

The award was announced in the Falls Church News Press. Riddile's background is given in the article but there is no mention of Straight. It is stated, however, that Principal Mel Riddile is a recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Mental Health Association of Northern Virginia. This is ironic because in 1984 a federal jury in northern Virginia awarded Fred Collins $220,000 because he had been held prisoner in the Straight camp in northern Virginia that was directed by Mel Riddile. Reports have it that young Collins had looked like a starved victim of the Holocaust when he finally escaped from Straight. Riddile went on to become the national executive director for Straight. Fred Collins returned to his studies and became a Ph.D. in mathematics. And the Virginia Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse yanked Straight's license after 9 stormy years of allegations of criminal child abuse. Dr. Riddile will receive his award in June in Williamsburg, Va. We have already received emails from those who would like to protest the award's ceremony. See Fornits for a discussion. story Fred Collins' abuse fornits discussion

14 years ago the Clownstown Chamber of Commerce tried to build a Shrine to Mel Sembler. Now Craig Sher, CEO of Sembler Co, is chairman of the Chamber!

2005-04-01T02:22:00.000-08:00

Last month Ambassador Melvin Sembler, AO, SO, ILNRA had a $113 million Shrine dedicated to himself in Rome. He had personally negotiated the deal. 14 years before the St. Petersburg, Fl. Chamber of Commerce tried to build a monument to his greatness. Now Craig Sher, CEO of Sembler Company, is chairman of the COC. How many teachers and firemen will be laid off in order to have funds to build whatever next the COC has planned for Melvin? An Italian paper is talking about Sembler and major, criminal child abuse. The Washington Post is talking about his $113 million folly to himself. The Internet is abuzz about his penis pump. And all the St. Pete Times (his hometown paper) can come up with is that the CEO of his company chairs the COC which has already tried to build a monument to this guy. It's time for Sembler/Barnes/Tash and all those on the board of Straight (now DFAF) to go. spt related article

Straight, Inc., now called Drug Free America Foundation, makes misleading News Advisory on Supreme Court's Medical Marijuana Ruling

2005-03-31T12:13:00.001-08:00

On March 30, 2005 the US Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision in Ashcroft v. Raich on whether raw marijuana can be used for medicinal purposes. DFAF has announced that its personnel will be available for comment upon the decision of the court. The news advisory states "Founded in 1995, Drug Free America Foundation . . . " We take issue with this statement. DFAF was not founded in 1995. It was founded in 1976 under the name Straight, Inc. which became notorious as one of the most brutal, destructive drug rehabilitation programs in the world. Over 40 former clients have committed suicide.

In 1985 Straight, Inc. changed its name to Straight Foundation, Inc., ostensibly to educate the public on the dangers of drug use, factually to protect founder Mel Sembler from criminal prosecutions and civil suits and to protect Straight's money and property from future civil suits. A new organization was created to treat kids for addictions. It was called Straight, Inc.!!! The foundation granted the new Straight money until once again it became self sufficient and started paying its profits back to the protected foundation in the form of rent. The new Straight, Inc. closed in 1993 under criminal investigations and law suits including a $20 million suit for damages by a Virginia man.

Straight's reputation for abuse notwithstanding [see Overview of Straight's Abuse] Program founders Mel and Betty Sembler felt that the knowledge that had gained at Straight uniquely qualified them to be drug policy experts and so in 1995 they changed the mission of Straight Foundation once again, this time to help small businesses setup Drug Free Workplaces and to be a think tank and a national advisory group for national and international drug policy. The name was also changed again to its current name Drug Free America Foundation. [See Piercing Straight's Corporate Veil.]

Besides criminal child abuse Straight is noted for fraud and deception. Now look at the Amicus Curiae Brief filed for the current Ashcroft v. Raich medical marijuana suit before the US Supreme Court. The brief is a friends of the court statement. It tells the judges, "Your honors, you are judges and not experts in drug use and drug policy, but we are. And we are willing to use our time and our money to give you our collective, unsolicited opinion on how you should vote. Who are we? We are doctors, lawyers and drug policy experts from all across America and we think there is no scientific basis for using medical marijuana. We think that would be a bad thing.

But some of the signers of the brief or their associates are involved in drug testing. They want stiff anti-drugs laws and they want to be paid to do the testing. So who really is this wide spectrum of drug experts from all across America shown at the right. First of all the brief was prepared by Attorney David Evans. A few years ago David Evans and Dr. Eric Voth prepared an Amicus Brief in support of the US government's opposition of California Proposition 215--a state initiative for medical marijuana use. David Evans was with The Legal Foundation Against Illicit Drugs and Dr. Voth was Chairman of the Institute on Global Drug Policy. But Calvina Fay, Executive Director of DFAF, is a cofounder of The Legal Foundation Against Illicit Drugs, and the Institute on Global Drug Policy is a subsidiary of DFAF. Today David Evans is also a member of DFAF'S Institute on Global Drug Policy. Now look at the signatories on the brief:

The Drug Free America Foundation (Straight, Inc.) is at the top of the list.
The Drug Free Schools Coalition. David Evans is executive director of the this coalition along with the likes of Colleen Wienhoff, former Vice Chairman of the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry Association (DATIA). She gets paid to do drug testing. Evans is also with the The Legal Foundation Against Illicit Drugs, an organization co-founded by Calvina Fay, Executive Director of DFAF.
Save Our Society From Drugs was founded by Betty Sembler.
The International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse is another subsidiary of DFAF. Father Cassian Newton is one member of the International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse. Back when he was known as Reverend Doctor Virgil Miller Newton, Father Cassian had been the national clinical director for Straight, Inc. He left on the heels of criminal investigations and law suits--one culminating in a $721,000 jury verdict in 1990--a suit in which Dr. Newton had been accused of throwing Karen Norton against a wall. After Straight Newton setup his own chain of abusive teen rehabs. After CBS' West 57th St. exposed him; county prosecutors raided his program; four counselors were convicted for assault; he settled with federal prosecutors for $45,000 in return for not being prosecuted for 254 counts of insurance fraud; and after he and his team settled with two clients for $11.5 million for abuses sustained, Dr. Newton, now Father Cassian, returned to Florida and rejoined Drug Free America Foundation! Read The Miller Newton Story. [Donald Ian Macdonald, MD, Straight's former national research director, and Robert L. DuPont, Jr., MD, a former paid Straight consultant, are also members of ISMFDA.]
The Institute on Global Drug Policy is, as we saw above, a subsidiary of DFAF.
Students Taking Action Not Drugs is also an arm of DFAF.

So the brief leads the judges to believe that drug policy experts from all over America have taken their time and money to give them their collective opinion, when the fact is (according to the brief's title page) it is all one organization, Straight, Inc., steeped in criminal crimes against humanity, now called Drug Free America Foundation, trying to convince the US Supreme court to obey the wishes of Mel and Betty Sembler. (In truth, if you look at the body of the brief there are many endorsers not connected to DFAF.)

We are making no statement on the rightness or wrongness of the medical marijuana initiative. We are saying that the apparent principals behind the opposition have no business having the ear of the highest court in the land. We are saying that the public should not consult with the DFAF, its subsidiaries or associates about the outcome of the upcoming Supreme Court decision. We are saying that instead Melvin Sembler, Betty Sembler and Miller Newton, among others, should be investigated for their roles in Straight and for the deaths of over 40 former Straight or Straight-related clients.Related articles:

DFAF and national drug policy
DFAF and international drug policy

Overview of Straight's abuses

2005-03-13T21:45:00.000-08:00

Melvin Floyd Sembler is a multi-millionaire from Saint Petersburg, Florida. He is also the US Ambassador to Italy. But how did he get to be a multi-millionaire? And how did he get to be a US ambassador--not once but twice? And what are these stories spreading around linking him and his wife Betty Sembler to child abuse? Mr. Sembler used to sell ladies underwear in a ladies apparel store in Dyersburg, Tennessee. He married the store owner's daughter and expanded the business into shopping center construction and management. In the early 70s he moved the shopping center construction business to Pinellas County Florida where it flourishes today under the name Sembler Company. In 1987 Sembler Company got caught buying a piece of swampland[2] in Florida (using insider information) for $1 million and almost selling it overnight (with the aid of its insider) to the city of Clearwater, Florida for $2.65 million. The local press caught wind so in the end the company only made $1 million on the deal.

The Semblers have admitted that about the time of their move to Florida they put their number two son into a controversial, federally-funded drug rehabilitation program chain called The Seed. In 1974 the US Senate published a study that likened The Seed's methods to Communist brainwashing. (See Individual Rights and the Federal Role in Behavior Modification by the US Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights.[3]) Under such a scathing indictment The Seed withered but out if its ashes the Semblers created (with the aid of federal grants) their own rendition of The Seed which they called Straight, Inc. A half dozen directors left Straight in its first year. One of them inferred that Straight was worse than The Seed. And indeed it was.

The idea (as perfected by the Communist Chinese) is to strip a kid of all self esteem and then build him back up in the straight image. Life starts anew at Straight and all time before Straight is one's druggie past, even the period when he was just five years old. As in Chinese Seventh of May Academies (brainwashing prisons) kids (12 - 21) were deprived of food and sleep, painfully restrained without cause, spat upon in their faces and not allowed to wipe the spit off, made to urinate and to defecate on themselves (young girls on their period bled in their pants). Kids constantly yelled at other kids trying to get them to admit to drug usage or sex acts they may or may not have committed. Kids were coaxed or terrorized into signing confessions (true or false) of an utmost personal nature. [This is the criminal act of extortion. Kids are tortured for information about themselves that can be potentially used to silence the child while his parents continue to pay Straight's fees (eg. money exchanges hands). The information can be used to keep the kid and his family from speaking out against the program once he leaves and it can also be used to discourage civil suits and criminal complaints.] This bizarre, experimental treatment lasted two years--though Straight officials invariably told prospective parents that their kid might make it through in a few months.

In such a confused, terrorized and humiliated state of mind many kids carved on their bodies just like caged animals often do. So they had to be watched 24/7, even when they wiped themselves on the toilet, to guard them from committing suicide. But Straight had no plan to guard them once they left Straight. Over 40 former clients from Straight and follow-on Straights, that we know about, have committed suicide after leaving. (See Straight: Suicide or Murder.[4]) Straight targeted the children of affluent white families and though most clients were teenagers there were some adults in their early 20s as well as children as young as 12. Unfortunately, records, media reports and eye witness reveal that many kids being treated for drug addiction at Straight were not drug addicts. Heath officials in Boston cited Straight for treating one little girl age 12 for drug addiction when her records indicated that all she had done was to sniff a magic marker! Yet through the years tens of thousands of American teenagers were held hostage while Straight claimed exorbitant success rates and earned nearly $100,00 million in the process. From 1976 to 1993 Straight, Inc., with treatment camps all over America, was the biggest juvenile rehabilitation program in the world! Much of its spectacular success was due to endorsements by the likes of Nancy and Ronald Reagan. George Bush the elder even made a TV commercial[5] for Straight.

In 1990 Straight invited two prominent Canadian psychology professors from Simon Frasher University to visit its treatment camp in Springfield, Virginia to dispell the rumors, once and for all, of brainwashing. Professor Beyerstein's concluded that Straight was indeed using Communist brainwashing techniques and published his findings in his report Treatment, Thought Reform and the Road to Hell. The other professor, Dr. Bruce K. Alexander, subsequently wrote a book on Canadian drug policy titled Peaceful Measures: Canada's Way Out of the 'War on Drugs'. On page 75 he wrote this about Straight, Straight officials have generously allowed me to witness some of their group sessions firsthand . . . I believe that Straight's treatment can be fairly compared with 'brainwashing' in prisoner-of-war camps as documented by Brown (1963, chap. 2)*. Thus, procedures that would be reprehensible in any context outside of a prisoner-of-war camp are considered acceptable 'treatment' in the case of drug addiction. * The quote is from Techniques of Persuasion: From Propaganda to Brainwashing by J. A. C. Brown.

Take the quick tour of Straight's abuses:

Newspaper montage on Straight [6]
what professionals have to say about Straight [7]
voluminous court cases involving Straight [8]
FOX News 2002 report on Sembler and Straight [9]
The Montel Williams Show revisits Straight 12 years later (the show's video
trailer) [10]

Now read:

torture of Marcie Sizemore
torture of Leigh Bright
torture of Sammie Monroe
torture of Bobby
torture of Donald

Now read the story of Straight's former national clinical director, Reverend Doctor Miller Newton.

In 1985 Straight faced yet another law suit for abusing a minor. Scared for his personal liability, Melvin Sembler and his board of directors changed the mission of Straight from rehabilitation to educating the public of the dangers of drug use. And changed the name from Straight, Inc. to Straight Foundation, Inc. Then a new organization was formed to treat kids for addictions. The new organization was called--Straight, Inc. all over again. The foundation of course held all the assets--property and cash. It leased the property back to the treatment program. Mel Sembler went with the foundation where he felt he could not be sued for what the treatment arm did. (See Straight: piercing the corporate veil. [11]) In 1989 health officials in Florida tried to close Straight's flagship treatment center in St. Petersburg but there is evidence that Mr. Sembler used his growing political clout to quash [12] that effort. Straight, Inc. finally closed in 1993 amidst law suits and state investigations, but the foundation did not. In 1995 Straight Foundation, Inc. changed its name yet again to its current name: Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF) [13]. The mission was changed again too. The current mission is a. to help small businesses setup Drug Free Workplace Environments, and b. to be a national drug policy think tank. Melvin Sembler is the former national finance chairman for the national Republican Party. He has given a lot of money to Republicans and has helped raised millions more. George H.W. Bush made him ambassador to Australia. George W. Bush has made him our current ambassador to Italy. At his Senate confirmation hearings Sembler stressed that he was selected because of his humanitarian work at Straight. (On his official state department web page [14] Sembler claims that he and Betty saved 12,000 kids at Straight.) But Melvin Sembler was given ambassadorial jobs because of his money. [See Sembler's contributions to the Republicans. [15] ] And because of his money the Republican Party helped Straight [16] become the power it became.

This site is mirrored at www.theStraights.com/overview-abuses.htm

Ambassador Melvin Sembler, wife Betty and Straight, Inc.:should they be ambassadors of national drug policy,or jailed?

2005-03-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

They [groups hoping to profit from drug legalization] don't care about civil liberties or our nation's children. . . They only care about getting rich . . . Betty Sembler, from a letter[1] dated July 6, 2004 to a US Representative.

Melvin Sembler is the US ambassador to Italy and like most ambassadors appointed by George Bush he bought his way in so--so what. Melvin Sembler and his wife Betty Sembler have dark pasts--that's what. Pasts dealing with abuse of teens on a grand scale. Read Overview of Straight Abuses. And now they feel those pasts uniquely qualify them above all others to set national and international drug policy. Read now the Semblers' plan for a national drug strategy by making all teens pee in a bottle as a rite of passage to get their driver's license.

Be sure to read the companion article about Mel and Betty taking sites on international demand reduction in Ambassador Melvin Sembler & wife Betty: self-proclaimed international drug policy experts (link).

Also read A STUDY OF THE INVOLVEMENT OF THE DRUG FREE AMERICA FOUNDATION. INC. (formerly Straight Foundation, Inc.) IN AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL DRUG POLICY (link).

Melvin and Betty Sembler: self proclaimed drug policy experts.

As a drug prevention and policy expert, caring mother and grandmother, I urge you--do not vote for the Hinchey- Rohrabacher amendment. Betty Sembler, from a letter [1] dated July 6, 2004 to a US Representative.

Some think that Melvin and Betty Sembler should have gone to prison for what their Straight program did to tens of thousands of teenagers--but that will never happen. Instead Mr. Sembler bought into Republican politics and is now the US Ambassador to Italy. His Drug Free America Foundation (formerly called Straight Foundation) is one of the major power brokers setting national and international drug policy. In 1988 Melvin Sembler recommended a novel solution to the US drug problem. "Test every 16-year-old for drugs before we issue a drivers license," he declared then.[17] It appears that Mel and Betty Sembler, through their DFAF, are trying to realize this unconstitutional goal. But who will be paid to do the actual testing? The DFAF does not do drug testing but its partner National Drug and Alcohol Testing, Inc. in St. Petersburg does. NDATI received $234,000 from the Small Business Administration (SBA) as part of The Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1998. Calvina Fay, executive director of DFAF, used to operate a drug testing company. Just before coming to DFAF she was the director of the Houston Drug-Free Business Initiative which had as a charter sponsor Drug Screens, Inc.--a drug testing company. Calvina's former Houston group got $170,000 from the SBA while DFAF itself took in $314,539. Read now how Mel and Betty Sembler have turned the knowledge they have gained about drugs from treating children at Straight, Inc. into a formula for setting national and international drug policy. Read how they have been the major force chipping away at the Fourth Amendment to make our kids pee in a bottle in order to get their driver's license.

The Semblers' and DFAF's National Drug Control Strategy

Initiative 1. Make all Americans under age 40 be drug tested

1A. Make high school athletes pee in a jar. In 1992 in Veronia School District vs Acton an Oregon school district tried to force high school athletes to undergo drug testing in violation of their IV Amendment right protecting them from unreasonable searches and seizures. This was an easy sale because a good argument can be made that contact sports players are at a greater risk of injury if they are on drugs. Veronica School District called in former drug czar and founding director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Robert DuPont, MD to be its expert witness. Dr. DuPont testified that suspicionless drug testing of high school athletes was for their own good. The courts ruled in favor of suspicionless drug testing of school athletes.

But Robert DuPont is on DFAF's Advisory Board and is tied directly to Straight, Inc. DuPont is tied to The Seed, Straight, DFAF and had a big-time financial conflict of interest to boot. Betty Sembler was Jeb Bush's finance co-chair when he ran unsuccessfully for governor of Florida. After that he created the Foundation for Florida's Future to keep his political machine alive. Major contributors to his foundation were Melvin Sembler and H. Wayne Huizenga. Among other enterprises, Huizenga owns Psychemedics, the world's premier drug hair testing company. Robert DuPont is the chairman of the scientific advisory board for Psychemedics. DuPont has partnered with former DEA head Peter Bensinger to form Bensinger and DuPont. One contract they have is to prescreen workers for the US Post Office for illegal drug use. It is the biggest prescreening program in the world. Thus while it may be in a kid's best interest to be tested before playing sports, Dr. DuPont possibly stands to make money by testing them for drugs! Furthermore, Robert DuPont is on the Advisory Board for DFAF along with Florida Governor Jeb Bush. When he headed NIDA Dr. DuPont oversaw the government grant to The Seed. Later DuPont left federal service and became a paid consultant for Straight! In fact he has testified that it was his suggestion that Straight go national. Dr. DuPont has testified for Straight as an expert witness in many of its civil suits for abusing kids.

1B. Make high school kids participating in ANY school activity (including the history club or chess club) pee in a jar. Getting the courts to suspend a child athlete's Fourth Amendment rights is easy--just argue it's for his own good because he could get hurt more easily in contact sports if he's high on drugs. But getting the courts to agree to do the same for a girl in the glee club was more challenging. The case which again went to the US Supreme Court for that was Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma Petitioner v. Earls Respondent. David Evans of The Legal Foundation Against Illicit Drugs wrote an Amicus Curiae brief for the court in favor of the testing. But Calvina Fay, Executive Director of DFAF, is a cofounder of Evans' Legal Foundation Against Illicit Drugs and Evans is also a member of the Institute on Global Drug Policy, a DFAF subsidiary. Among the signers of the brief were: Drug Free America Foundation; Legal Foundation Against Illicit Drugs; Institute on Global Drug Policy; Eric Voth, MD, director of Institute on Global Drug Policy; Bensinger DuPont & Associates; Robert L. Dupont, MD; Peter Bensinger; Julie Murdoch, Esq. of Bensinger, DuPont & Associates; Donald Ian Macdonald, MD--Straight's former national research director turned White House Drug Czar; Stephanie Haynes, Save Our Society From Drugs™--a Betty Sembler foundation. In other words not only did Straight's former paid advisor, now DFAF Advisory Board member, Robert DuPont sign, but his business partner Peter Bensinger signed, their business signed, and Julie Murdock, an employee signed. And these guys get paid to do testing!

1C. Make ALL HIGH SCHOOL KIDS pee in a jar. This is the logical next step and it is surely imminent.

1D. Make ALL KIDS IN AMERICA who turn 16 pay those who run the drug testing industry a fee as a rite of passage to get their driver's permit. In 1988 Melvin Sembler recommended a novel solution to the US drug problem. "Test every 16-year-old for drugs before we issue a drivers license," he declared then.[1] This is coming.

1E. Make ALL AMERICANS UNDER 40 be drug tested. Sembler's drug testing expert Robert DuPont once wrote the article Never trust anybody under 40 [22]. This is coming.

Initiative 2 Kill the medical marijuana initiative

2A Kill medical marijuana initiatives in the states. In November 1996 California voters passed Proposition 215 which permitted Californians to use marijuana for medical purposes. The federal government fought the initiative and took the case to the US Supreme Court which ruled for the federal government. Attorney David Evans of The Legal Foundation Against Illicit Drugs and Dr. Eric Voth, Chairman of the Institute on Global Drug Policy, co-authored an Amicus Curiae brief in support of the US government's effort to remove the proposition.

But both Evans and Voth are tied to DFAF. Calvina Fay, Executive Director of DFAF, is a cofounder of Evans' The Legal Foundation Against Illicit Drugs and Voth's Institute on Global Drug Policy [18] is a subsidiary of DFAF. Today David Evans is also a member of the Institute on Global Drug Policy.

In 1998 Betty Sembler representing her SOS™ group worked with Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles' cabinet to stop a medical marijuana initiative there. Time Moore, chief of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, worked with her. He is now on Straight's (DFAF's) advisory Board. link

2B Kill national initiatives to support medical marijuana (Smoke 'n Mirrors). In 2002 Angel McClary Raich and others sued US Attorney General John Ashcroft for the right to use medically prescribed marijuana to treat various illnesses. By 2004 the matter had worked its way up to the US Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Raich, et. al. An apparently diversified group of professionals from all over America wrote the Amicus Curiae Brief shown below to support the government's position.

Just look at all those impressive professional organizations agreeing with government to disallow the use of medical marijuana! Now take a closer look at the endorsers:

The Drug Free America Foundation (formerly Straight, Inc.)
The Drug Free Schools Coalition. David Evans is executive director of the this coalition along with the likes of Colleen Wienhoff, former Vice Chairman of the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry Association (DATIA). She gets paid to do drug testing. Evans is also with the The Legal Foundation Against Illicit Drugs, an organization co-founded by Calvina Fay, Executive Director of DFAF.
Save Our Society From Drugs [19] was founded by Betty Sembler.
The International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse [20] is another subsidiary of DFAF. Father Cassian Newton is one member of the International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse. Back when he was known as Reverend Doctor Virgil Miller Newton , Father Cassian had been the national clinical director for Straight, Inc. He left on the heels of criminal investigations and law suits--one culminating in a $721,000 jury verdict in 1990--a suit in which Dr. Newton had been accused of throwing Karen Norton against a wall. After Straight Newton setup his own chain of abusive teen rehabs. After CBS' West 57th St. exposed him; county prosecutors raided his program; four counselors were convicted for assault; he settled with federal prosecutors for $45,000 in return for not being prosecuted for 254 counts of insurance fraud; and after he and his team settled with two clients for $11.5 million for abuses sustained, Dr. Newton, now Father Cassian, returned to Florida and rejoined Drug Free America Foundation! Read The Miller Newton Story. [Donald Ian Macdonald, MD, Straight's former national research director, and Robert L. DuPont, Jr., MD, a former paid Straight consultant, are also members of ISMFDA.]
The Institute on Global Drug Policy is, as we saw above, a subsidiary of DFAF.
Students Taking Action Not Drugs [21] is also an arm of DFAF.

The brief is clearly fronted by America's two foremost, self-proclaimed experts on drug policy: Ambassador Melvin Sembler and his wife Betty Sembler through their Drug Free America Foundation (Straight).

In 1999 DFAF issued this press release against medical marijuana. Link

In March 2001 Betty Sembler testified before a House Committee drilling Rob Kampia on medical marijuana.

In Arizona DFAF fought legalization issues and Maricopa County prosecutor Rick Romely joined DFAF's Advisory Board.

Initiative 3. Kill the move for legalization and for treatment in lieu of prison for possession of small amounts of marijuana

In Ohio. Betty worked with Hope Taft, governor of Ohio. Read The Governor’s Sub-rosa Plot to Subvert an Election in Ohio.

In Michigan. On May 3rd and 4th, 2000 the DEA and DFAF cosponsored an anti-legalization conference in Lansing, Michigan titled, "Training the Trainers: Putting the Brakes on the Drug Legalization Movement."

The Semblers' and DFAF's International demand reduction Drug Control Strategy

The DFAF works hand-in-hand with the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas (DPNA) and Global Drug Prevention Network (GDPN) for worldwide demand reduction. Stephanie Haynes (who represented Betty Sembler's S.O.S.™ when she signed the Amicus brief for Pottawatomie County) is now director of DPNA. Take a look at some DFAF / DPNA sponsorships:

On April 26-29, 2001 DFAF and DPNA sponsored a conference in Saint Petersburg,
Florida (the Semblers' hometown) called the International Task Force Development on Strategic Policy.[23]
DFAF cosponsored the Vancouver conference [24] on May 1-3, 2002.
On May 24, 2002 Mel Sembler hosted an international drug policy summit with the Italians [25] at his ambassador's villa in Rome.

Last year DFAF and DPNA sponsored a series of conferences [26] in South America.

September 12-14, 2002, Sound Drug Policies, Montevideo, Uruguay
September 20-21, 2002, Preventive Drug Education, Medellín, Colombia
September 26-27, 2002, Drug Prevention Education, Mexico City, Mexico
October 24-25, 2002, NGO Coalition Building, Santiago de Chile, Chile
October 28-30, 2002, Sound Drug Policies, Lima – Peru November 13-14, 2002, Sound Drug Policies, Buenos Aires – Argentina

International Task Force on Strategic Drug Policy. This is a task force under the Office of National Drug Control Policy (Office of White House Drug Czar John Walters). DFAF's Calvina Fay is its principal contact. The task force met in Brussels from Feb. - Mar., 2005 to draft a strategy to fight the war on harm reduction. Other members include Betty Sembler and Eric Voth. Former White House Drug Czar was Robert DuPont is a former paid consultant for Straight and today is on DFAF's Advisory Board. Former Drug Czar Donald Ian Macdonald is the former national research director for Straigth, Inc. A Straight memo states that former Drug Czar Bob Martinez would work to get Straight a license. Ronald Reagan's Drug Czar Carlton Turner who accompanied Nancy Reagan on her first visit to Straight endorses the front page of Father Newton's book Not My Kid with these words: "Not My Kid should be required reading for any parent concerned about their children's future." Father Newton was Straight's former national clinical director who was personally responsible for abusing children. Turner spoke at a Straight fund raising dinner in May 1982.. link1 link2

For additional information on Mel and Betty's international drug policy read Ambassador Melvin Sembler and wife Betty: self-proclaimed international drug policy experts (link).

What are the Semblers really after?
Used to be when armies crawled on their bellies. When soldiers were placed on KP, peeled their own potatoes and had mess sergeants. But that was before high presidential contributors convinced the president they could do it cheaper. People like Vice President Dick Cheney who used to run Halliburton [27] which, among other lucrative DOD contracts, feeds all those soldiers in Iraq. Dick Cheney's good friend Mel Sembler is on Jeb Bush's Council of 100 [28]. That's the shadow government in Florida that recommended (and is now helping to implement) to Jeb Bush the privatization of state government jobs. Mel Sembler has many management companies. Will he bid on the management of these jobs newly turned over to the private sector? Mel Sembler wants every 16 year-old in America drug tested. His cronies would share in the profit made by administering the tests. And what is Sembler's plan if a kid shows up positive? If it turns out the kid is just a user will he be court ordered to a Sembler-based therapeutic community for treatment? The Sembler's may have lost their Straight treatment program, but a good case can be made that another Pinellas County, Florida drug rehabilitation program, Operation PAR [29], has become the drug treatment arm of DFAF. [There have been no allegations of abuse at PAR.] But if a kid shows positive and the ensuing investigation finds that he is a drug pusher would the kid be sent to prison? And if so, a private prison?

In September 1989 George H.W. Bush announced a whopping $7.9 billion anti-drug strategy that calls for tougher punishment for users and for more federal spending on law enforcement, prison construction, treatment and prevention.[30] How much of that budget and future budgets did the Semblers get for treatment and prevention? The conspiracy theorist amongst us are alarmed about Wackenhut, a big operator of private prisons, because it was founded by a former FBI agent and because it hires former FBI and CIA agents. George Bush directed the CIA and his friend Mel Sembler builds shopping centers. How hard would it be for Sembler Company to retool and construct private prisons.

According to former White House Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey, American drug policy has led to the creation of a vast "drug gulag" of federal and state prisons. Due to American drug policy the prison population has quadrupled since 1980 making the incarceration rate in America the highest among western democracies. According to Human Rights Watch[31], "Most drug offenders are white. Five times as many whites use drugs as blacks." But "nationwide, black men are sent to state prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men." Mel Sembler's Straight program catered to white children [32] because their parents were better able to pay Straight's bill.

While almost all of us agree that it is wrong to abuse a child under any circumstance, many of us feel it is morally reprehensible for one man to make money off the imprisonment of another man. Eighteen years ago there were just five privately-owned prisons in America maintaining just 2,000 prisoners. Ten years later there were almost 20 private companies, operating 100 prisons, housing 62,000 prisoners. Today Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) alone houses 62,000 inmates! CCA stocks are sold on the NYSE [CXW]. Their value leaped from $8 a share in 1992 to $30 in 1995. CCA, Wackenhut and Esmor are the three top purveyors of private prisons in this country. Eight years ago Forbes rated Wackenhut as one of the top 200 small businesses in the land. (Read: "Sodexho Marriott Stops "No More Prisons" Show at American University -- Event Was Planned to Highlight Company's Ties to Private Prison Industry" (link) .

Most people think George Bush was Mel Sembler's first choice for president in 1992. He was not. Sembler backed the Republican governor of Tennessee, Lamar Alexander. CCA was founded in 1983 by two Nashville businessmen. Gov. Alexander's wife Honey invested $8,900 in CCA. In 1985 Lamar Alexander backed a $250 million contract to CCA to take over the operation of Tennessee's prison system. To avoid any conflict of interest, Honey Alexander traded her CCA stocks to a friend for 10,000 shares in South Life Corporation, a life insurance company. She sold her stocks in 1989 for a net gain of $133,000.00. In the end CCA's privatization effort failed and all but one of the affected prisons were returned to state control.[33], [34] Charles L. Overby, formerly special assistant for administration to Governor Lamar Alexander, is on the board of directors of CCA.[35] J. Mark Tipps, campaign manager for Lamar Alexander's presidential bid and deputy chief counsel for the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee's special investigation of campaign finance in 1997, is a lobbyist for CCA or Wackenhut as is Lewis Donelson of Baker Donelson Bearman & Caldwell who was also finance commissioner under former Gov. Lamar Alexander. In 1996 and 1998, private prison corporations contributed more than $284,000 to political party committees in Florida alone, four-fifths to the Republican Party. [36]

W.G. “Bill” Bankhead is the "tough love" Secretary for Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice. He has awarded several contracts to Ramsay Youth Services, Inc. (Nasdaq: RYOU), formerly Ramsay Health Care, Inc., to operate juvenile prisons in Florida. He is a member of the Advisory Board for DFAF. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) [37] has been granting Betty Sembler's Operation PAR $64,000 a year since 1999. Guy Tunnell, commissioner of FDLE, and James "Tim" Moore, former commissioner of FDLE, are members of the Advisory Board for DFAF. In 1995 the Florida Attorney General's office granted Operation PAR $59,000. Charlie Crist, the present AG, has been a friend of Mel's son Brent since childhood. Operation PAR runs a pilot program to rehabilitate prostitutes which as been funded by the St. Petersburg Police Department. Op PAR board member Terry Hensley is the former executive director of DFAF. Before that he was chief of police for St. Petersburg. Operation PAR works with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. It appears that Betty Sembler had something to do with the creation of the St. Petersburg-based Multijurisdictional Counterdrug Task Force Training organization that trains law enforcement officials nationwide in drug interdiction. She serves on MCTFT's Advisory Board with Pinellas County's sheriff Jim Coates and Guy Tunnell, commissioner of FDLE. Betty Sembler is Florida Governor Jeb Bush's former finance co-chairman. In 2000 Jeb Bush proposed to spend $16.4 million for the construction of more juvenile residential centers so that incarceration stays could be increased by five months. Jeb Bush is on the Advisory Board for DFAF. His wife Columba and his lieutenant governor, Toni Jennings, are also on DFAF's Advisory Board.

The big fear is that as Sembler helps perpetuate the phony War on Drugs, the parents of teenagers will be made to pay Sembler's cronies to be drug tested. Then if a kid shows positive but is found not to be a dealer he will be forced into a drug rehab program that might be run by the Semblers or their cronies. If it is determined that he is a dealer, he might be sent to a private prison conceivably built by and/or operated by the Semblers or, like CCA, one that is closely associated with one of Sembler's cronies.

Mel Sembler was lampooned by Gary Tradeau in the Doonesbury comic strip and received Florida's Sour Orange Award for buying his first ambassadorship. He was chastised in his hometown newspaper because some businessmen proposed to the chamber of commerce that they build a granite monument to him. In 2005 the Washington Post gave him its Narcissist Run Amok award for getting American taxpayers to buy and refurbish a mansion in Rome for $113 million and then name it after himself. Editorials in his local paper have mentioned the Sembler name in articles with the words foul odor and rotten in the title. He is quoted in the book 776 Even Stupider Things Ever Said, his degree in communications from Northwestern notwithstanding. He has made a mint building and managing shopping centers--his forte being in hiring former municipal or county commissioners to lobby his projects. He has used his wealth to buy into politics and to get fellow Republicans to endorse him and his Straight program.

Melvin and Betty Sembler are two very public figures who are major violators of human rights and civil liberties, and it is disheartening to watch this dynamic duo, so unqualified in law and drug policy, chip away at the Fourth Amendment. It is almost eerie how their goal and method is the complete antithesis of what another dynamic duo, Charlie Houston and his student Thurgood Marshall, did to the Fourteenth Amendment. Mel and Betty ran a drug program that targeted almost exclusively white kids and denied those kids education; Houston and Marshall worked to get equal education for black kids. Houston and Marshall gradually chipped away at the the Fourteenth Amendment (due process and equal protection) and Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but equal) by introducing a series of law suits to give blacks more and more rights to an education, culminating on May 17, 1954 when the US Supreme Court agreed with them in Brown vs. the Board of Education that "equal but separate" schools for blacks are not "equal" to schools for whites.

It's worth noting that through the years two of Mel and Betty's biggest critics have been the old Old St. Petersburg Times when it was run by Eugene Patterson. Patterson won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials opposing racism and was vice chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission from 1964-68. Another critic is Arnold Trebach, Professor Emeritus of Law and Social Justice at American University. Professor Trebach was chief of the US Justice Department's Civil Rights Division when it was trying to implement integration in the south after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.

Mel and Betty are gradually chipping away at the Fourth Amendment in Veronia School District, Pottawatomie County, and the rest so that drug testers can be paid to look inside our bodies without probable cause just because the technology now exists to do that. And to think, this First Couple of American Drug Policy got on their anti-drug high horse because of a union they made on May 17, 1953 (the day they got married, exactly one year to the day before Brown vs. the Board of Education was decided) which produced a son who got involved in the illegal drug scene.[38]

References:
A Study of the Involvement of the Drug Free America Foundation, Inc. (formerly Straight Foundation, Inc.) in American Drug Policy [39] (link) by Wesley Fager

The Drug Prevention Network of the Americas and the worldwide, "demand reduction" reach of Straight [40] (link) by Wesley Fager

Footnotes:
1. RohrabacherHincheyPaul
2. http://www.tampaindymedia.org/bin/site/templates/default.asp?area_2=imc/open newswire/2005/Jan/3206.7041015625.dat
3. http://thestraights.com/images/seed-Ervin-brainwash.htm
4. http://thestraights.com/theprogram/suicides.htm
5. http://thestraights.com/video/bush.rm
6. Straight headline montage
7. http://thestraights.com/professional-comments.htm
8. http://www.thestraights.com/legal/matrix-civil-criminal.htm
9. http://www.webdiva.org/fox/
10. http://www.montelshow.com/featured_promo/upload/01-18-05 hi.wmv
11. http://www.thestraights.com/financial/st-fdn-piercing-veil.htm
12. tampa indy Feb 2005
13. http://dfaf.com/
14. http://www.usembassy.it/mission/amb/amb-bio-en.htm
15. Sembler family contributions
16. http://thestraights.com/gop.htm
17. The St. Petersburg Times, 7-31-88, p. 8D.
18. onpointradio
19. http://dfaf.org/search.php?search=save+our+society
20. http://dfaf.org/globaldrugpolicy.php
21. http://dfaf.org/press/detail.php?id=7
22. a. DuPont, R.L. (1989c). Never trust anyone under 40: What employers should know about drugs in the workplace. Policy Review, Spring 1989, 52-57 b. http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/cbook/chap12.html
23. http://www.gdpn.org/dpna/events/reports/taskforce.htm
24. http://www.vancourier.com/052102/opinion/052102op1.html
25. http://thestraights.com/news/archieve1.htm#rome-summit
26. http://www.gdpn.org/dpna/events/training/lima.htm
27. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4121538/
28. http://www.whoseflorida.com/council-of-100.htm
28f. St. Petersburg Times, Sept. 6, 1989
29. http://thestraights.com/articles/op-par-and-dfaf.htm
30.
31. http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/drugs/war/key-facts.htm
32. frontpageextension.htm#whitecharity
33. Politics for Profit: The Rich Rise of Lamar Alexander by Doug Ireland in The Nation for April 17, 1995
34.a. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=869
34.b. http://www.tndp.org/newsroom/releases/april04/alexander.htm
34.c. http://www.spectacle.org/595/lamar.html
35. http://www.correctionscorp.com/board.html
36. Private Prisons, Politics & Profits By Edwin Bender July 1, 2000
http://www.followthemoney.org/press/ZZ/20000701.phtml
37. http://www.co.pinellas.fl.us/bcc/juscoord/funding.htm
38. http://www.sembler.com/newsletters/0330893-newsletter_lr.pdf
39. http://thestraights.com/reports/dfaf-and-drug-policy.htm
40. http://thestraights.com/articles/dpna.htm
33. 28b. America's Private Gulag by Ken Silverstein
41. http://thestraights.com/articles/dpna.htm

Document Location:
http://www.thestraights.com/drugpolicy.htm

Psychiatrist says life events can contribute to insanity

2005-03-03T16:17:00.000-08:00

story

Florida's Supreme Court strikes down statue of limitations, allows abuse law suit 20 years later

2005-02-26T15:05:00.000-08:00

In 1995 a woman identified as S.A.P. filed a lawsuit accussing the state of Florida of concealing details of how she was "beaten, burned choked and denied food" in 1979 at the age of 3 and 4. The judge threw it out under Florida's 4 year statue of limitations law (section 768.28(13)). S.A.P. appealed and the matter made its way to Florida's Supreme Court. On November 27, 2002, in a 5-2 decision, Florida's Supreme Court ruled that the "statute of limitations" could not stop a lawsuit against the state "when one of the allegations in the suit says the state concealed facts about the abuse and delayed the filing of the lawsuit." [Src: Naples Daily News 11/28/02 by Jackie Hallifax, AP]

Related articles:

1973: Pinellas County States Attorney James T. Russell and County Sheriff Don Genung invite The Seed, Straight's progenator, to Pinellas County. Russell and 6th Circuit judges join The Seed's advisory board. story
1978: The Dale Report confirms child abuse at Straight. State Attorney James T. Russell does absolutely nothing while state health officials bow to political pressure from the Sembler crowd, hide the abuse in its official report, and fires its chief investigator. link
1978: Sixteen year old Jerry Vancil exposes child abuse at Straight to St. Pete Times but state investigation is dropped when Vancil dissapears. He has never been seen or heard from since (dead or alive) and the state has never bothered to look for him (or his body). link
Ray Waymire, acting chief of police for the city of St. Petersburg, Fl., was a founding Straight board member. link
1987: HRS (state health department) received a complaint from a kid who escaped from Straight only to be brought back in handcuffs by a sheriff's deputy.
1989: Clary Report--Florida state health officials (HRS) bow to political presure once again and allow abuse to continue. Straight Foundation secretary Donald Sullivan, MD resigns to run for state Senate and joins committee that would oversee any investigation of Straight while his wife Irene Sullivan joins Sixth Circuit and attends Betty Sembler's birthday party. link
States Attorney James T. Russell shows favortism to Sembler by failing to prosecute anyone in his clan over the Great Cooper's Point Land Scam while his former assistant state attorney Louis Kwall (whose former partner is now a 6th Circuit judge), who may have investigated the torture of Leigh Bright, et. al., but took no action if he did, becomes attorney for one of those involved in the land scandal; joins Sembler's powerful Republican Pary Machine; and his wife becomes the Sheriff's attorney. link
1990s: A teenager who had escaped from Straight met with an HRS (Florida state health department) official to file a complaint against Straight. Instead the HRS official called the police who escorted the child back to Straight for further abuse.
The Governor, his wife, the Lieutenant Governor, the Mayor and everybody else joins the Advisory Board of Straight (now called DFAF). link
The Sixth Circuit and the cops collude with Straight. link
Operation PAR is a rehabilitation tool used extensively by Pinellas County's 6th Circuit. It appears that Operation PAR has become the new treatment arm of Straight (now DFAF). link
Florida's 6th Circuit gags Ray Bradbury to keep him from exposing its own involvement in Straight and The Seed. link
1978: US Congressman C.W. "Bill" Young receives three out-of-state complaints against Straight and forwards them to James T. Russell. Russell investigates but does absolutley nothing and Young lets the ball drop. (St. Pete Times, 4/30/78, p. 15B) [Also see Young and Straight; Young and pork for Sembler's Treasure Island; Sembler tells Young to give Itlalians $10M of our money.]
How Phil Elberg overcame the statue of limitations in the Lulu Corter case. link
RICO and how attorney Wendall Turley overcame the statue of limitations to sue the Hare Krishna church for abusing its children 25 years ago. link
Suicide or Murder? (Straight and 40+ suicides) link
Over 40 suicides: Florida jury convicts mother of child abuse resulting in suicide after judge allows a psychological autopsy to determine state of mind of deceased teenager (e.g. whether actions taken by mother drove girl to suicide). story

Claims Bill. Beyond suing for recompensation, there is another possible avenue of relief. That's a claims bill. Let's say the U.S. government did wrong by knowingly exposing thousands of our soldiers to the plant defoliator Agent Orange. The US Congress can pass a special bill to give a monetary award to those who had been put in harms way. Could the Florida legislature be educated to the problem that Florida state officials colluded with Straight, looked the other way, failed to prosecute, backed down to political pressure from Mel Sembler? Could the legislature be humbled into doing the right thing and make amends for what Florida state officials allowed to happen to thousands of kids by authorizing a special claims bill to reimburse them for the harm state officials caused by their reckless failure to do their jobs. link

If David Miscaviage can go to his deposition as Admiral Farragut, then Keith Henson can go as Bozo the Clown.

DFAF carries the logo OJJDP

2005-02-26T02:13:00.000-08:00

OJJDP is the US government's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. If you go to Drug Free America Foundation's (formerly Straight, Inc.) web page, at the bottom right appears the logo OJJDP. What does this mean? Could DFAF and OJJDP be one and the same? (new 2/26/05)

Has Op PAR become the treatment arm of the Drug Free America Foundation?

2005-02-25T21:35:00.000-08:00

Or: 3 strikes and the Sixth Circuit is OUT!

This article also appears on Tampa Bay Independent Media.

SUMMARY Operation PAR is the biggest drug rehabilitation program in the southeast. In recent years PAR has been infiltrated by officials formerly associated with the defunct Straight, Inc. program. In its heyday Straight was the biggest juvenile rehab chain in the world, but it had a reputation for the dastardly abuse of its young clients (over 40 former clients have commited suicide) as can be seen in these links:

a newspaper montage on Straight
professionals comment on Straight
the US Senate calls the methods of The Seed (the model upon which Straight is based) Communist-styled brainwashing
Straight civil suits
Montel Williams Show on Straight (video trailer)
George W. Bush praises Straight (video)
Straight Kids (a video trailer)
Miller Newton, Straight's former national clinical director, and now with a DFAF subsidiary, settles for $11 million for abusing kids
Tough Love rejects Straight

Straight was founded and operated by US Ambassador to Italy, Melvin Sembler and his wife Betty. Today Straight is called Drug Free America Foundation. Today it specialzes in helping small businesses set up Drug Free Workplaces, and in promoting national and international drug policy. Many of Florida's Sixth Circuit justices were publicly supportive of Straight, Inc. and its predecessor The Seed. Betty Sembler and many others tied to DFAF/Straight have joined Operation PAR. The Sixth Circuit works closely with Operation PAR. Operation PAR has had no reputation for abuse. This report looks at the question, has Operation PAR become the treatment arm of DFAF? And, if so, should the Sixth Circuit be aware of it?
---------------------------------------------------------

I n the early 1970s a remarkable woman from Pinellas County Florida named Shirley Coletti was so concerned that her teenage daughter was using drugs that she worked with James T. Russell, the county prosecutor, and Sheriff Don Gedung to found a juvenile drug rehabilitation program they called Parental Awareness and Responsibility or Operation PAR. Op PAR has become so successful that in 2001 PAR sent a representative to the National Institute on Drug Abuse's National Conference on Drug Abuse Prevention. But Shirley Coletti did not represent PAR at the conference; a woman named Betty Sembler did. A few years after PAR was founded, Betty Sembler had been another Pinellas County mother concerned that one of her teenagers was into the drug scene. But she did not send him to PAR; she chose instead a controversial Fort Lauderdale-based therapeutic community called The Seed.

The Seed had been founded by a comedian and recovering alcoholic named Art Barker. The St. Petersburg Times reported that Barker had a mail-order degree in psychology. Barker had ambitions to make The Seed a national program. James T. Russell and Sheriff Gedung visited the program and recommended opening a Seed expansion facility in Pinellas County. Sixth Circuit (Pinellas /Pasco County) Judge Jack Dadswell had two kids in The Seed in Fort Lauderdale. He had been on the Executive Committee which had brought The Seed to St. Petersburg in Pinellas County. Sixth Circuit Justices William L. Walker and James B. Sanderlin had served on The Seed’s Advisory Board along with Russell, Gedung and Dr. Charles J. Crist, vice chairman of the Pinellas County school board and father of Charlie Crist (Florida's Attorney General). Thirty years ago Sixth Circuit Judge Jack Page boasted about sending kids to The Seed "on a daily basis." Today it's Judges Walt Logan and Dee Anna Farnell who brag about sending one kid a day to Operation PAR.

In 1974 the US Senate published a report that likened the methods of The Seed to those used by North Koreans on American servicemen (brainwashing). The Seed fell from grace after that but Betty Sembler and her husband Melvin were so enamored with The Seed that they opened their own version of The Seed which they called Straight, Inc. Mel Sembler was very wealthy and politically connected too and the two of them were able to accomplish what Art Barker had not. They made Straight a national-level program with treatment camps all over the country.

Besides peddling their program to politicians, the Sembler's were very successful in marketing Straight to the 6th Circuit as this marketing minutes shows. In 1977 Judge Page (the judge who sent kids to The Seed "on a daily basis") had called Straight "excellent"; but word of Straight's abuses were quickly leaking out. Turns out, Straight was much more destructive than The Seed had been. By 1981 Judge Page and other 6th Circuit justices had stopped sending kids to Straight. Judge Page says he started sending kids to PAR instead. He noted that a court order to Straight could involve more time than a sentence to jail for the drug offense for which the juvenile had been brought to him in the first place. He noted that PAR is a shorter program and a little more “normal” than Straight.

In 1985 the Semblers, fearing civil suits (and perhaps fearing possible criminal prosecution as well) changed the mission of Straight, Inc. from "treatment" to "education" and its name from "Straight, Inc." to "Straight Foundation, Inc." And then they created a brand new organization to treat kids for addiction which they called "Straight, Inc."! [See Straight: Piercing the Corporate Veil] In 1989 Florida health authorities tried to close Straight's flagship treatment camp in Pinellas County, but it appears that Mel Sembler used his political connections to keep it open. The new Straight, Inc. finally closed in 1993 amidst law suits and allegations of child abuse all over the country. And for the first time in 17 years DFAF and Betty Sembler found themselves without ties to a drug treatment business. James T. Russell, the man who brought The Seed to Pinellas County, never indicted Mel and Betty Sembler for their role in Straight, Inc. In fact the only person Russell ever prosecuted from Straight was a male adult counselor who went ot prison for sexually molesting a teenage male client. James T. Russell never even indicted anyone connected with Mel Sembler in 1988 for conspiring to defraud the taxpayers of Clearwater, Florida in The Great Cooper's Point Land Scam .

In 1995, two years after Straight had to be closed, Betty changed the name of her educational foundation again. This time to Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF). But Ms. Sembler will always feel she has something special to offer those suffering from addictions, her fiasco at Straight, Inc. notwithstanding. After Straight closed she joined the board of directors for Operation PAR. And so it came to pass that it was Betty Sembler, and not Shirley Coletti, who attended the 2001 NIDA conference representing Operation PAR. (That same year Mrs. Sembler spoke to the US Congress as a representive of DFAF. So this dual hatted grandam of the "War on Drugs" and self proclaimed "drug prevention and policy expert" represents DFAF when she wants to talk drug policy and represents PAR when she wants to talk drug treatment.)

Betty Sembler is not the only person with ties to Straight who has come over to PAR. Susan Latvala is chairman of the board of directors of Operation PAR. She is also on DFAF's Advisory Board. Former St. Petersburg police chief Terry Hensley is the former executive director of DFAF. Before that he was a director at Op PAR. The former director of Straight - St. Petersburg is an Interim Executive Director at Operation PAR. The former director of Straight - Sarasota is director of marketing for Operation PAR. Judge Irene Sullivan is on one PAR committee; her husband Donald was formerly secretary of Straight Foundation.

Betty's treatment concept through the use of politics (with its influx of taxpayer money) seems to have reached Operation PAR. The Sembler's were able to persuade George H. W. Bush and Nancy Reagan to visit Straight. Already Jeb Bush and his mother Barbara have made separate visits to Operation PAR. The web page for The White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy caries a feature article on Operation PAR. Wes Fager, editor of www.theStraights.com once editorialized on his concern of Mel Sembler's plan to test all American teenagers as a rite of passage for getting a learner's permit and that possibly Sembler and/or his associates would be paid to do the testing. If a teen shows positive on this invasion of his privacy and if he is just a user he would possibly go to a Sembler-inspired drug rehab program. But if he is a dealer, he would go to a private prison for punishment and treatment. (See Sembler's plan to make all 16 year-olds pay drug testers for the right to drive .) Operation PAR is already working with law enforcement in America. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has been granting PAR $64,000 a year since 1999. In 1995 the Florida Attorney General's office granted Operation PAR $59,000. Operation PAR runs a pilot program to rehabilitate prostitutes which as been funded by the St. Petersburg Police Department. Also Operation PAR works with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. Internationally, PAR runs a prison program in Barbados. Today Operation PAR is an $18-million, 500-employee agency treating 8,000 to 10,000 people yearly making it the biggest, most comprehensive drug treatment agency in the southeastern United States!

Blacks and addiction in Pinellas County. A study done by the St. Petersburg Times in the early 1980s found that Operation PAR clients were typically black, had demonstrated a drug dependency beyond casual use of marijuana, and paid on a true sliding scale based upon income. That same study found that Straight clients were typically white, the fees were steep, and casual use of marijuana was cause for admittance.

After the street violence in the predominantly black Midtown section of St. Petersburg in 1996 the community opened Family and Substance Abuse Center to treat black addicts. But by 2003 no public money had ever been freed up for the operation of that program (unless the person in need had committed a crime and had been subsequently court ordered). Any available operational money went to Operation PAR and to other established treatment programs elsewhere in the region. So much for failed drug rehabilitation for Midtown. But the city did manage to free up $ 1.3 million to buy land to build a $ 5 million shopping center in Midtown. Urban Development Solutions, a nonprofit headed by Larry Newsome and the NAACP's Daryl Rouson, got the contract. The city council leased land to UDS for $5 per year and loaned it $1.35 million for construction. The loan is interest free and UDS doesn't have to make payments for 10 years. And who is UDS' business partner in this project? The Sembler Company. [See Coalition Building: Sembler and the NAACP.]

Op PAR receives a lot of its income from government grants, and from government Medicaid and Medicare payments. Last year it received a $ 4 million federal grant to build a development center and therapeutic community. In 1999 PAR was accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Today PAR can also be reimbursed by managed health care providers in addition to receiving its government grants. PAR even bought and operated a mental hospital which is ironic since Susan Latvala, chairman of the board at PAR, has been very chummy with the Church of Scientology™. Scientologists strongly oppose the profession of psychiatry, though many consider Scientology™'s Dianetic™ processing as a sort of poor man's alternative to psychiatric counseling. PAR's Dr. Betty Buchan even endorses Narconon™ the drug treatment regimen so closely aligned with Scientology™.

Two Strikes against the Sixth Circuit. Justices Page, Logan and Farnell are not the only 6th Circuit judges with a working relationship with Operation PAR. Sixth Circuit Judge Nancy Moate Ley is or was a member of the board of directors at Operation PAR. Judge Lauren Laughlin works with Operation PAR to do drug assessments for the court. Pinellas County prosecutor James T. Russell helped found PAR. PAR runs a program for the county sheriff's department. Judges are always looking for an alternative to rehabilitate or punish young offenders in lieu of sending them to jail. That's understandable, but the judges need also understand that these places of businesses are, after all, just that--places of business--even many of the non-profits. The more people they treat, the more money they make. The more people referred to them by the courts, the more money they make. And the longer a person stays in treatment, the more money they make. Twice before Florida's 6th Circuit has placed its money on juvenile rehabilitation programs endorsed by or operated by Betty Sembler. And twice before that court has struck out. To our knowledge, there has been absolutely no history of abuse at Operation PAR and that's great. But the court should be reminded, from time-to-time, of its own endorsements of The Seed, Straight and Operation PAR, and the links these programs have to one another. [See The skinny on Florida's Royal Court under Judge George Greer.)

Straight, Inc. used to be the treatment arm of DFAF but today DFAF has no drug abuse treatment arm. Or does it? Drug Free Workplaces of Tampa Bay is an arm of DFAF. According to SAMHSA, there are 147 substance abuse programs within 100 miles of Pinellas County, and yet DFWTB's web page links to one, and only one, of these 147 programs--Operation PAR![1] Why? What is the true relationship between Op PAR and DFAF? On Feb. 12, 1999 Betty Sembler and Shirley Coletti attended Governor Jeb Bush's Drug Summit in Tallahassee but they had to be back in Tampa that evening to attend an Operation PAR fund raiser co-chaired by Karol Bullard, wife Sembler's business partner Fred Bullard. No problem, the two just hopped aboard Mel Sembler's private jet and flew to Tampa. Lennie Bennett, a gossip columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, covered the day's events writing that Betty Sembler is "one of PAR's founders." Well that is not true, but we might was well start believing it. After all, who runs PAR today--Shirley Coletti or the Straight crowd?

Related articles:
The Infiltration of Operation PAR by Straight
Straight Foundation: Piercing the Corporate Veil

Footnotes:
[1] DFWTB links to several sites, but only one of them is a drug treatment program--OP PAR.

If David Miscaviage can go to his deposition as Admiral Farragut, then Keith Henson can go as Bozo the Clown.

The Conspiracy Theory: Is Straight some sort of Richard Nixon CIA-NIH mind-control experiment gone awry?

2005-02-25T21:34:00.000-08:00

by Wesley Fager (c) 2005

Thomas Constantine (former director of the DEA) is on the Advisory Board of Straight under its latest name (Drug Free America Foundation). Karen P. Tandy (Administrator DEA) is also on the Advisory Board. Former Drug Czar Robert DuPont of Bensinger & DuPont is another board member. Dr. DuPont administered the US government's grant to The Seed, Straight's predecessor, when he was the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (an NIH subsidiary). Later he became a paid Straight consultant. Peter Bensinger, DuPont's business partner, was another director of the DEA.

Guy M. Tunnell, Commissioner, Florida Department of Law Enforcement (Florida's state police) and former FDLE commissioner James "Tim" Moore are also on the board. Former White House drug czars Rober DuPont, MD (a former paid Straight consultant) and Donald Ian MacDonald, MD (Straight's former national medical research director) are members of the International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse (a DFAF subsidiary). Richard Schwartz, MD, former medical research director for Straight - Springfield is another forum member.

Former CIA director George H. W. Bush made a TV commercial for Straight out of the Oval Office and appointed Straight founders Mel Sembler and Joseph Zappala to ambassadors to Australia and Spain, respectively. His son President George W. Bush appointed Sembler to ambassador to Italy. His son Governor Jeb Bush is on the Advisory Board for Straight (under its current name, DFAF) along with his wife Columba and his Lt. Governor Toni Jennings. DFAF is funded by the US government. Perhaps it's a good time to wonder whether Straight (and its predecessor--The Seed) is some sort of Richard Nixon CIA-NIH mind-control experiment gone awry?

____________________________________

In the early 1950s accounts started coming out of Red China about a remarkable discovery to change men's minds. It was quickly called brainwashing in the West, though one prominent psychiatrist suggested "mendicide" or "death of the mind" as a more appropriate title. After careful scientific analysis it was finally dubbed thought reform by the Western medical establishment. What the Chinese had devised are "re-education" schools which they call Seventh of May Academies. In reality they are prisons for political prisoners which they call "students". Academy students are deprived of food and sleep, of toilet facilities and baths, of medicine. Their hands are chained behind their backs so they have to eat their meager rations and lap water out of a bowl like an animal. They defecate like a dog or cat without being able to wipe themselves. People spit in their faces and they are beaten, scolded, and incessantly urged to "tell all" in a process called "struggling". The students live under constant fear that they may be executed at any time.

As the Chinese thought reform student is being systematically humiliated, he is made to invent a trumped-up confession and then to spend the next three years of his life re-writing it, perfecting it, rehearsing it, and defending it, until, it is felt, he actually comes to believe his own made-up story! Once it is deemed the student is sufficiently confused about his own confession, he starts taking classes to learn Communist doctrines [re-education]. Psychologically the student becomes depressed over his present milieu and overloaded with deep feelings of guilt and shame for what he has admitted to, including confessions to turn in his friends and family members for real or dreamed-up crimes. For years he is afforded no exercise, diversions, or free time for relaxation or contemplation to think things out because he spends his three years in a small cell with eight other inmates. No one graduates unless everyone does what is asked. And what is asked is that they all come to truly believe their confession. There is a nightly court where a judge questions the student about his confession and tries to trip him up, and where guards might beat him, but it is his fellow cellmates who wake him through the day and night depriving him of sleep. It is his fellow prisoners who constantly urge him to "tell all" and who spit in his face. There is no trust. Everybody rats on everybody else in order to save himself.

Many newage (one word rendition of "New Age", rhymes with sewage. Coined by cult buster and magician The Amazing Randi) cult leaders have read these accounts of brainwashing (just as this author has) and some have attempted to use some of these techniques on members of their own organizations. Cult apologists, citing findings in Lifton's own work, argue that you can't really cleanse someone's mind. Whether brainwashing truly works or not, I'll leave that to the cult apologists to convince a judge. But I will tell you there is no denying that brainwashing is cruel, physically and psychologically damaging, and can lead to death by suicide from humiliation and depression. And, I can also tell you that, many cult leaders use it because they think it works, or at least they don't know of any better way to exert total control over their subordinates. Some cults, claiming they can make sane men saner and smart men smarter, have been accused of using thought control in their program. This is the so-called human potential movement.

The newage cults are not the only westerners who have shown interest in Chinese Communist thought reform. The United States government is another. In the 1960s the CIA started experimenting with thought reform and in the use of mind altering drugs to control one's thoughts as possible ways to combat brainwashing, and also as a way to try to persuade enemy agents into becoming double agents for the United States. The U.S. prison system is another government agency which has investigated brainwashing. Their interest is in a way to rehabilitate prisoners. Incredibly, in 1962 Dr. Edgar H. Schein, associate professor of psychiatry at M.I.T., addressing the topic "Man Against Man: Brainwashing" at a seminar for prison wardens and psychologists chaired by James V. Bennett, the then director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, told his audience:

My basic argument is this: in order to produce marked change of behavior and/or attitude, it is necessary to weaken, undermine, or remove the supports of the old patterns of behavior and the old attitudes'; this can be done 'either by removing the individual physically and preventing any communication with those whom he cares about, or by proving to him that those whom he respects are not worthy of it and, indeed, should be actively mistrusted.' Dr. Schein told his audience that he had gotten most of his ideas by studying the techniques used by North Korean and Chinese Communist on GI prisoners of war, but cautioned his audience not to be put off by this fact: 'These same techniques in the service of different goals may be quite acceptable to us. . . I would like to have you think of brainwashing not in terms of politics, ethics, and morals, but in terms of the deliberate changing of human behavior and attitudes by a group of men who have relatively complete control over the environment in which the captive population lives.' [Corrective Psychiatry & Journal of Social Change, Second Quarter, 1962.]

Thus were experimental "brainwashing" programs begun in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the Marion, Springfield, and Butner federal prisons.

Thought reform is not the only tool in the arsenal of government agencies and mind control cults. Some newage ideas are coming right out of professional western psychology. Primal Scream, for one, where the patient lays on the floor in his therapists' office and screams to the top of his lungs. Another is rebirthing where a person is wrapped in a blanket and slowly emerges reliving the birthing experience. Two counselors are in prison in Colorado today for rebirthing a defiant little girl named Megan. She did not come out of her the blanket alive. Aversion therapy is another popular tool for behavioral modification. One father, fearing his teenage son was gay, sent him to a program that placed an erection detector on the child's penis. The child was shown pictures of nude males and if the detector sensed movement in the young boy's genitals, he was given an electric shock. The boy committed suicide.

Synanon Church. In 1958 in California a recovering alcoholic named Chuck Dederich formed a foundation to treat heroin addicts which he called Synanon. The heart of Synanon was a brutal, verbal peer group confrontation called "The Game" (or synanon with a small "s") where addicts shouted indictments at one another. That is, addicts aided in their own recovery. Synanon was no more effective than anyone else but some slick marketing strategies plus national exposure in a book by New York psychiatrist Daniel Casriel and spreads in Look, Life and Ebony magazines made the Synanon Game a new standard of addiction treatment. Programs like Phoenix House and Daytop are based on synanon-style confrontations though they prefer to call themselves the more professional sounding therapeutic communities.

A remarkable series of events converged on the month of June 1970 which has forever affected the way the world has come to look at addiction treatment. Woodstock had just occurred and shown us that middle class whites were using drugs. And Charles Manson and Green Beret Captain Jeffery MacDonald had scared us into believing that drugs make middle class kids want to kill. Through the winter of 1970 the nations' newspapers and magazines were forecasting a heroine epidemic amongst middle class American teenagers which would begin in June of 1970. All sorts of drug treatment programs started springing up all over the place. Charles Manson's trial began in June and the month before, in May, Narconon™, the drug rehabilitation program affiliated with the Church of Scientology™, was incorporated on the west coast. But many of the new treatment programs were Synanon-based therapeutic communities like Elan (if you've been keeping up with the Michael Skakel / Martha Moxley murder trial). Another was The Seed which opened for business in June 1970 on the east coast in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The Seed was a synanon for kids-only. It was unusual in that as a start-up, experimental program founded by a high school graduate and recovering alcoholic, it got a grant for $1 million (in 1970 dollars!) from the federal government's NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse )--a subsidiary of the sprawling NIMH (National Institue of Mental Health). Psychiatrist Robert L. DuPont, Jr. was then the director of NIDA. The CIA had experimented with LSD on prisoners at the NIH's lock-up hospital in Lexington, Kentucky where NIH had set up its own experimental synanon which it called MATRIX. This has made more than one conspiracy theorist wonder whether The Seed was some sort of CIA-backed mind control experiment to turn long-hair, pot smoking American teenagers into mindful and obedient, clean-cut kids with button-down, collared shirts who would fight our wars and vote for Richard Nixon's Republican Party. The theory gets even more intriguing when, in 1974, the U.S. Senate published a report which likened The Seeds methods to the brainwashing techniques employed by the North Koreans against American servicemen during the Korean War. The Senate report was a principal reason for The Seed to stop its expansion programs.

Drug Free America Foundation (Straight). But out of the ashes of one of those Seed expansion programs, some former Seed parents including Melvin Sembler (now Ambassador to Italy) and his wife Betty Sembler, opened their own Seed-like program which they called Straight, Inc. which grew to become the largest chain of juvenile drug rehabilitation programs in the world. Straight was so successful , in large part, because Robert DuPont (the man who had administered the unusual NIDA contract to The Seed) left NIDA and became a paid consultant for Straight! He claims that he got Nancy Reagan involved in Straight. He has stated in deposition that it was his idea that Straight go national. He defended Straight in many of its civil suits against it for abusing kids. Today Straight is a drug policy think tank operating under the name Drug Free America Foundation and Robert DuPont is on its Advisory Board. DFAF does not run the Straight treatment program anymore (though Betty Sembler and so many other former Straight officials have infiltrated Operation PAR, another therapeutic community for drug rehabilitation, that a great case can be made that PAR is the new treatment arm of DFAF.) DFAF no longer operates the old Straight program but second-generation Straights continue to operate all over the country and there have been allegations of abuse at some of them. [Look at the people who endorse Straight on the flier at top left. George Bush is the former director of the CIA during the Nixon administration. Robert DuPont is the founding director of NIMH'S NIDA. In World War II Congressman Charles Bennett had been an intelligence officer assigned to the secret Counter Intelligence Corps. And Dr. Maxie Maultsby taught Rational Emotive Therapy to Straight's Dr. George Ross at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY., the same city where the NIMH operated an experimental, federal lockup hospital on addictions and where the CIA conducted LSD experiments on inmates.]

The juvenile heroine epidemic never did materialize in June 1970 but a plethora of treatment programs to combat it did. Now thanks especially to synanons any businessman can open up a lucrative drug rehab program for teens. Today there are all kinds of specialty schools for defiant, middle class teenagers and rich kids (and some wards of the state). They are variously called wilderness programs, boot camps, emotional growth schools, achievement camps, religious boarding schools, and synanon-based therapeutic communities. Kids are treated for drug addiction, sexual orientation, eating disorders, low academic performance, or for just plain being defiant. And the programs are not cheap either, some costing as much as $60,000 a year. Accusations of abuse have been leveled at some of these programs and there have been some deaths. Many of these specialty schools employ aspects of behavior modification including elements of Communist Chinese brainwashing, and some develop novel ways to effect these techniques to avoid criminal prosecutions. Instead of using chains to restrain ( which, criminally, is bondage) they pick fights with clients and then have 4 or 5 of his fellow clients painfully restrain him. In Straight food deprivation is achieved by giving a kid food!--plain peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast, for lunch and for supper, no jelly, just big globs of peanut butter, for up to 30 days until the child is sickened at the thought of another peanut butter sandwich.

Like so many involved in the human potential movement, many kids in newage rehabilitation programs are tricked or forced to tell their deepest darkest secret (confession) as a primary step towards recovery, often citing AA ("admitted to God, myself, and another human being") as the reason. This extorted information may then be used against the confessor, relentlessly. Many of these programs use the Chinese peer group concept--no one gets out unless everyone complies. In the Straight cult inmates actually spit in one another's faces just like their counter parts in Chinese Seventh of May Academies. In many of these programs kids are allowed no unmonitored contact with their own parents until they earn that privilege. In many of these programs kids are not allowed to discuss what happens in the program. In order to control parents, parents are often subjected to some form of a control program of their own where they will typically attend parent meetings in the evening or attend a weekend seminar from time-to-time.

It would be another decade after June 1970 before the established psychiatric hospitals would catch on to the the lucrative market of teenage drug addiction; that's another story altogether. But the message about any program which treats teens is this. If a child can be sexually molested in a Catholic Church, can he not be sexually molested in a treatment program for teens--or physically assaulted or psychologically abused? How can a parent consent to place a child in any program where he can not contact that child at reasonably specified time periods? How can a parent consent to not ask his child what happens in this program? And how can a well-meaning judge sentence a teenager to such a place or even recommend such a place? Look, everybody knows there are kids with problems who need help, and there are many fine programs available which are genuinely concerned with helping kids in trouble. But judges need to realize that all of these places, like private prisons, are, after all, businesses. A warden in a publicly operated prison has incentive to get a prisoner rehabilitated and back to society at large as a productive citizen. In a privately owned prison, the longer a prisoner stays, the more money the warden and guards make. Is this not an inducement for prison wardens and guards to pick fights with prisoners to stop early paroles? And while we are on private prisons, the conspiracy theorists among us ask why George H. W. Bush, former director of the CIA, is so interested in Straight which is a private prison. And why is Wackenhut, the nation's second largest operator of private prisons, so filled with former CIA men? Why is George H. W. Bush so close to Straight founders Mel Sembler and Joe Zappala, two Floridian construction moguls.? And why is a Florida-based private prison operations company running private prisons in Texas?

Related Articles:

Straight (now called DFAF) announces advisory board

2005-02-25T20:22:00.000-08:00

Previously we reported that Governor Jeb Bush, his wife Columba and his Lieutenant Governor Toni Jennings, along with other prominent Florida Republicans had joined the advisory board of Straight under its new name--Drug Free America Foundation. That report is here. DFAF has now publicly disclosed its members and backers, so we have some new names to add to the list. Historically, Straight targeted the children of affluent white parents for drug treatment (See $95 million charity for white kids) Thus it is not surprising to learn that Darryl Rouson, President of the St. Petersburg Chapter of the NAACP, has joined DFAF's Advisory Board. Susan Latvala, the Pinellas County Commissioner who is so chummy with the Church of Scientology, joined Rouson along with Christy McCampbell, Director of Public Safety, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (See Advisory DFAF Board. See Never Again on Advisory Board.) Foundation founder Betty Sembler's biography is here.

More surprising than the inclusion of Darryl Rouson is the revelation that Stephanie Haynes of the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas is now a special DFAF advisor. In 1996 Texas Governor George W. Bush appointed Stephanie Haynes to the board of directors of the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (TCADA). In 1989 TCADA yanked the license of Kids of El Paso, Miller Newtons's brutal rendition of Straight, and in 1991 Straight-Dallas closed after being advised by TCADA that it was going to revoke Straight's license for reports of child abuse. (See Haynes)

Man dies of heroin overdose at Operation Par two days before his graduation from the program

2005-02-25T18:17:00.000-08:00

Man dies of heroin overdose at Operation Par two days before his graduation from the program story

Operation Par to receive 1.5 million fed grant

2005-02-25T18:16:00.000-08:00

story

Straight-infiltrated Operation Par sending referals to Narconon™

2005-02-25T18:14:00.000-08:00

story

Operation PAR's Dr. Betty Buchan endorses Narconon™

2005-02-25T18:13:00.000-08:00

story

DFAF Adv. Bd. member Susan Latvala and husband Jack (former director of the Fl. state Republican Party) get chummy with the Church of Scientology™

2005-02-25T18:08:00.000-08:00

story

Operation Par counselor with extensive criminal record arrested for armed rape

2005-02-25T18:05:00.000-08:00

story

Operation Par defends its hiring screening process in wake of assault by one of its counselors

2005-02-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

story

Reader's shouldn't be overly surprised at PAR's ability to screen its employees. In 1999 it took them over a year to learn that its CEO had been convicted of a DUI. story PAR fired its medical director in 1994 as soon as it learned that he had been accused of sexual abuse of a teenage boy. story

Operation PAR tackles faith-based by W. Fager

2005-02-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

Faith-based rehabilitation is a concept that assumes that men of God need no state oversight to administer social programs such as drug rehabilitation. It is a concept first popularized in Texas by then Gov. George W. Bush who is today trying to make it the law of the land. In a clear violation of "separation of church and state" the president presses for awarding federal grant money to church-based social programs.

Many fault the President for assuming that all men of God should be trusted out of hand. Look at Father Bruce Ritter and Covenant House, for example. During his 1984 inaugural address President Ronald Reagan singled out Father Bruce Ritter as one of the nation's "un-sung" heroes for his work at Covenant House, a program to take in homeless children. In 1989 President George H. W. Bush launched his "thousand points of light" initiative from Covenant House. Four months after Bush's award, Father Ritter stepped down from Covenant House amidst allegations he was having sex with the young boys he saved from the streets and that he was fraudulently handling charitable funds.

The President's brother Jeb Bush is pushing the faith-based initiative in Florida. But, like Texas, Florida has had problems with church-based social programs as reported in An intro to ABC Pensacola News Report on faith-based schools by W. Fager. Look at Reverend Doctor Miller Newton. Miller Newton was formerly the national clinical director for Straight, Inc. He hurriedly left Florida in 1982 amidst a flurry of criminal and civil allegations for abusing teenagers. He moved to New Jersey and setup his own Straight-like program he called Kids of Bergen County. From there he setup his own chain of juvenile rehabilitation programs he called Kids Centers of America. In 1989 state health authorities closed down his Kids of Southern California for abusing kids. So Straight moved in and took over his clients. Next year California health authorities closed down Straight of Southern California for abusing kids. Similarly state authorities closed Kids of El Paso and Kids of Salt Lake City. In 1993 three counselors at Kids in New Jersey were convicted of assault. In 1999 another was convicted of assault. Reverend Newton finally closed his flagship facility two years ago after paying out over $11 million to former clients for abuse and to the federal government for Medicare fraud. The New Jersey Law Journal labled Father Newton's treatment regimen "medical quackery." Reverend Newton has moved back to Florida and taken on an alias--Father Cassian. Straight watchers have been very concerned that Jeb Bush will let him organize a faith-based treatment program for youths in Florida, because, by ordination and education, he is a man of God. Father Cassian has not established a social program for youths, but he has joined a subsidiary group of DFAF!

In 1984 Straight, Inc. was ordered by a jury in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia to pay Fred Collins $220,000 for falsely imprisoning him. The jury felt that Mr. Collins had not sufficiently proved that he had been abused while incarcerated at Straight, otherwise the judgment would have surely been for much more. Fred Collins had been an honor roll engineering student at Virginia Tech who had come to Straight to visit his brother there during Spring break. But during prescreening as a requirement to see his brother, a Straight counselor had looked into Fred's eyes, determined that they were red, and ordered him into treatment against his will. The counselor who made the decision to incarcerate Fred Collins was a former Catholic priest named Chris Yarnold. During deposition Mr. Yarnold admitted he did not know what laughing gas was, nor did he know the active ingredient in marijuana [THC]. When asked, in court, if he knew how the hallucinogenic factor in drugs worked, he replied, "No. All I knew was drugs affected people." He declared that he had known Mr. Collins had been smoking marijuana because his eyes had been red at intake. He admitted that contact lenses could make one’s eyes red, but on physical examination of Collins at the trial, he failed to notice that Collins was then wearing contact lenses. Later Yarnold became director of the ill-fated Straight-Sarasota.

Today Chris Yarnold is director of marketing at Betty Sembler's Operation Par. He represents Op PAR on Florida's Faith and Community-Based Treatment Committee. Operation PAR is looking for individuals to serve on its interfaith advisory board.

Mr. Yarnold is standing in the line to get that fat faith-based money along with Joy Margolis. Joy is Straight's former mouthpiece. Now she is a member of Jeb Bush's Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Advisory Board. A second link is here.

Also read Child Abuse in Florida's Faith-based Programs by Wes Fager.

Disinfopedia on DFAF

2005-02-25T14:12:00.000-08:00

link

Report spells out Straight's violation of human rights and civil liberties

2005-02-02T17:57:00.000-08:00

report

Congressional candidate Bob Schubring and John Holowach to premiere their new film on the War on Drugs

2005-01-23T06:30:00.000-08:00

Robert "Bob" Schubring of Troy, Michigan, who is campaigning to unseat Republican drug war promoter Joe Knollenberg from Michigan's 9th Congressional District, announced the premiere of his feature-length documentary on the Drug War, "HIGH", which will be hosted by the Ohio State University chapter of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy in Columbus on February 28th, 2006. Straight founder Mel Sembler declined to be interviewed for this film. Anti-Straight activist Wes Fager was interviewed and is in the trailer. Schubring's Press release video trailer: Google Video Windows Media Quicktime (Small) MPEG-1

State of California legislature tolls statutes of limitations for those sexually abused by priests

2004-12-26T17:49:00.000-08:00

story
story2

More grounds for Straight survivors' class action

2004-12-26T17:26:00.000-08:00

Previously we reported that exposing teens to self mutilation, sunshine deprivation and teen depression, all of which were prevalent at Straight, can lead to later problems in adulthood. We have also reported on an Air Force study that concludes that long periods in captivity can lead to post captivity suicide. Now we regret to report that we have just received an unsolicited email from The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress (forum) in which it is stated that veterans who experience Postraumatic Stress Disorder as a result of combat are six times more likely to suffer a heart attack than other vets. Related site: David Baldwin's Trauma Information

Congressman C.W. "Bill" Young and Straight

2004-12-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

In 1974 US Congresman C.W. "Bill" Young met with Robert DuPont, then director of NIDA, later a Straight consultant, today a member of DFAF's Advisory Board, to secure federal funding for The Seed in Pinellas County. Four years later Congressman Young received three out-of-state complaints about Straight, but did not stop the abuse. In February 2003 Young's Appropriation Committee approved a $100 million valentine for Pinellas County including $3 million for beach improvements to Treasure Island and St. Pete Beach and $ 4 million for a development center and therappeutic community for Operation Par. Later that year Operation Par dedicated the $4.3 million The Beverly and C.W. Bill Young Center for Research and Recovery.

DFAF's Susan Latvala has choice words for blacks

2004-12-26T07:44:00.000-08:00

And if the blacks don't like the way our money is being spent down there, they can always complain to County Commissioner and Operation Par board member / DFAF Advisory Board member Susan Latvala who has remarked that if African-American leaders want more blacks in administrative positions in the county they, "should send to the district people who could pass the test."

Arizona facing federal lawsuit after teen prisoners commit suicide

2004-11-26T17:55:00.000-08:00

The federal government is considering suing the state of Arizona over civil rights violations to teenage prisoners after three teens committed suicide under the dismal conditions of juvenile prisons. Link

US Air Force determines that long stay in abusive captivity can lead to post release suicide

2004-08-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

See Washington Post

Related articles:

teen depression
girls kissing and male suicides
Straight suicide attempts
Straight suicides

Where is Bill Oliver--Straight's former national director--today?

2004-04-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

link

How successful is Straight?

2004-03-15T07:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.thestraights.com/articles/how-successful.htm

Margolis says Straight tried to stop the abuse by W. Fager

2003-12-12T09:06:00.000-08:00

On March 24, 1990 Los Angeles Times Reporter John Hurst published a large, front page feature article on the horrors of the new Straight, Inc. He interviewed Joy Margolis, Straight's national spokesperson for that article, and learned from her that the new Straight, Inc. did not tolerate abuse. That the new Straight. Inc. got rid of abusers whenever abuse was brought to their attention. Joy was asked about the allegations of Erica Clifton that while in Straight - Dallas she was held down and the boys painfully pulled her legs apart. She recalled one time when she was resisting and they "put a . . . Kotex pad down my throat to where I was gagging." When The Times asked Joy about the alleged incident she responded, "We regret things that have happened in the past. When it has been called to our attention, we have taken proper action." "We don't condone gagging," Joy told The Times. "One staff member I know of who was guilty of this was fired. "The Times wrote about Gena Golden age 16 who said of her Straight - Dallas stay that her nose was badly broken while she was being restrained and that "clients were sometimes held down and kicked." According to The Times, "Margolis acknowledged that Golden's nose was broken while the girl was being held. She said it was an isolated incident. She also said that Straight does not condone kicking clients." The Times pressed about a Texas state health report charging that "clients were tied with rope and with an automobile towing strap to prevent escape, that clients were physically restrained for minor infractions such as 'failure to sit up properly', and that bedrooms were overcrowded and furnished with 'containers to be used for urination.' " Once again Joy Margolis put everyone at ease explaining (according to The Times piece), "a staff trainee used a rope to tie up a client and was fired, as was an employee who instigated the practice of putting the containers for urine in bedrooms."

The great Cincinnati land deal

2003-11-12T00:48:00.000-08:00

Drug Free America Foundation used to be called Straight, Inc. It was founded in fraud under the name Straight Foundation, Inc. as a shell corporation to protect Straight, Inc.'s property and cash from civil suits, and to protect Mel Sembler from civil suits and criminal prosecutions. According to its own literature, "Drug Free America Foundation was founded by Ambassador and Mrs. Mel Sembler through private means . . ." But what were those private means.

Much, and probably almost all, of DFAF's initial private funding came from Straight parents and from people and organizations who thought they were donating money to help drug addicted kids become clean at Straight, Inc.--and only at Straight, Inc. Now that money is being used by DFAF to help businesses set up drug free work places and to fly Betty Sembler and company around the world to recommend national and international drug policy. Hopefully PumpGate will shed some light into where Straight's money is going.

Did Straight ever really close? Straights operated in major metropolitan areas across America. Surprisingly, there was never a Straight in the New York City area--the biggest city of all! This has led some to wonder whether Miller Newton ( traight's former national clinical director and a current member of a DFAF forum who headquartered his own Straight-like franchise from the NYC area) was actually working for Straight. There is other data to support that suspicion. (See chain from that area speculate that . cities Probably most of Straight's money was in real estate. The complete story on Straight's real estate holdings is here. In the current articleto After Straight, Inc. was run out of Ohio for abusing kids there, Straight Foundation tried to sale the Cincinnati property. But a group of concerned parents and local companies generally known as the Greater Cincinnati Area Straight Chapter had raised $1.5 million to bring Straight to Cincinnati and they felt that any money made from the sale of the property should stay in the Cincinnati area to help drug addicted kids in that area. Consequently local citizens Donald Bell, Anthony Celebrezze (Attorney General for the state of Ohio), J. Thomas Markham, Samuel B. Thompson, Jr., Nick J. Pishotti, Richard Tarvin, James M. VanBuren, Jr., The Greater Cincinnati Foundation, The Kroger Company and The Proctor & Gamble Company filed a class action suit against Straight in the US District Court in Cincinnati claiming that "at least $1.3 million" of the funds they had raised had been used to purchase the Straight-Cincinnati facility and that any money recovered form the sale of the property should remain in the Cincinnati area [Case # C-1-88-760]. Furthermore they wanted another $62,000 in legal fees they said they had spent trying to keep Straight from walking off with the money.
According to Exhibit A to Garcia’s affidavit, in May 1988 Straight Foundation had received a verbal appraisal from Strickland & Wright for approximately $550,000. Furthermore, the exhibit states that Mr. Wright had been instructed by Straight not to provide a written appraisal. Since Straight claimed the depreciated value of the facility in 1990 to be $1,098,062, and since Straight claimed that it had a verbal appraisal (presumably there is no written confirmation of this appraisal) for only $550,000 or 45.91% of the depreciated value, Mr. Garcia reasoned that all Straight holdings could reasonably be sold for just 45.91% of its depreciated value. He made this claim in spite of the fact that he acknowledges that Faith Tabernacle Church had put down a $15,000 deposit in an effort to buy the property early-on for $650,000 but was unable to raise the money and so Straight Foundation pocketed that $15,000.
According to the settlement agreement approved by the court on September 29, 1989 Straight Foundation and the plaintiffs would split 50-50 on proceeds from the sale of the property, and the plaintiffs would pay their legal fees from their half of the pie. I don’t have complete records of what happened after the 1989 settlement agreement but the best I can piece together from the court docket sheet is that on July 1, 1993 there was a Motion to Intervene by a Tri-State Drug Rehabilitation from across the river in Hebron Kentucky. And on July 2 a hearing was held on a motion to approve the sale and attorney fees. Then, according to Kentucky Post, on July 22, 1993 Tri-State Drug Rehab was the highest bidder on the property. The bid being $301,000. [Kentucky Post, 10/9/93]
The depreciated value of the facility was $1 million. If Straight got a million for it, it would have to give the Cincinnati folks a half million dollars. Even if Straight sold it for just $650,000 they would have to give the Cincinnati folks over $300,000. As it is the building sold for just $301,000 (or 54% of the 45.91% value) and the Cincinnati folks got just $150,500. An affidavit by the plaintiffs dated 9-27-89 shows their legal fees to be $66,345.50. Because of further court actions, I assume their legal fees to have been $70,000 by the time of sale, thus the Cincinnati fathers had managed to recover just $80,000 from their $1,393,165 investment!
Garcia had said that about the only organization that would buy one of their facilities would almost have to be another drug rehab program (as in fat chance of that happening), but that is exactly what did happen. And what is Tri-State Drug Rehab? Its treatment program was formerly called Kids Helping Kids of Hebron and now called Kids Helping Kids of Cincinnati. Kids Helping Kids of Hebron was created, in part, by Straight’s former national training director--Dr. George Ross. The therapeutic program is based almost exclusively on the Straight therapeutic model. At least two program employees have come from Straight. Ruth P. Thomas, first clinical director at KHKs, studied Rational Behavior Training at the University of Kentucky with Dr. Maxie C. Maultsby, as did Dr. Ross. On page 7 of his PhD thesis on Straight, Dr. Newton writes that Straight is "Kids Helping Kids." He went on to call his own Straight-like program Kids of Bergen County. Newton’s thesis was finished in 1981 and Kids Helping Kids of Hebron was founded on July 15, 1981.
The timing of the sale of the Cincinnati facility is worth mentioning. Later you will learn that in 1989 when Dr. Newton’s Kids of Southern California closed failing to get a license, that Straight moved into that very facility and took over the Kids’ clientele. When Straight-Orlando closed on August 14, 1992, Michael Scaletta, Straight’s former director at Straight-Orlando, opened up SAFE, Inc. out of the same facility using the same clients. Straight-Detroit closed in 1993. On June 18, 1993, former Straight official Helen Gowanny helped found Pathway Family Center 15 miles from the old Straight camp. Three days later on June 21, 1993, Kathleen M. Cone, formerly the registered agent for Straight, Inc. in Atlanta opened Phoenix Institute for Adolescents just miles from Straight-Atlanta. Ten days later on July 1, 1993 Straight-Atlanta, the last Straight treatment facility closed. On that very day in Cincinnati Kids Helping Kids filed a Motion to Intervene in federal court. A hearing was IMMEDIATELY held the next day for a motion to approve the sale and attorney fees. The property was sold 20 days later for a fraction of its value and the people who had raised the money got a return of just $70,000 out of a $1.3 million investment. Next you’ll see that exactly one week later, when Straight didn’t have to share anything with anyone, the Saint Petersburg properties sold for more than what they had been purchased for.
So real estate attorney Joseph Garcia gets a big fat F when selling Straight properties in the Cincinnati case. Unless, of course, Straight had no intention of giving the Cincinnati folks a half million dollars. If that were the case then Mr. Garcia would get an A+. So what about real estate transactions where Straight would not have to split with anyone. Let’s look at the sale of the Tampa Bay holdings next.

THE KISS: Should Straight be culpable for any post-Straight suicides? Today's Washington Post might suggest an answer

2003-09-06T00:14:00.000-07:00

Over 40 former clients from theStraights are known to have commited suicide. Only about 5% were female. Why?

An editorial by Wesley Fager (c) 9-6-03

Extortion. The obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.
18 U.S.C. S 1951(b)(2) (Also known as the Hobbs Act.)

[Photo of AP entertainment writer Christy Lemire, left, and Meredith Vieira, co-host of ABC's "The View".] To marathon a person by making her stand on her feet for extended periods of time while yelling and spitting in her face can be deadly, that's what killed Jesus Christ--all the fluid eventually drained to his feet and he died of heart failure. But that's not the cruelest, most destructive thing Straight does to kids. Making a teenager soil her pants and sit in it may be against the laws of man, but it's not the worst Straight does either. Nor is it denying a child food or sleep, bending fingers back, beating him or making her bleed without a Kotex, or even making a kid ask for permission for each wipe of his annus. There is something more heinous yet, utterly despicable and probably lethal. A report in Today's Washington Post that includes a story on Meredith Vieira--the former reporter on CBS' West 57th Street who broke the story on child abuse at Miller Newton's second-generation Straight--presents evidence that might help us understand Straight's ultimate nightmare for some. Might help us understand why of the 40 former Straight clients who are known to have committed suicide, only three have been women.

Had you asked Straight before the states closed it down why there have been so many post-Straight suicides, Straight would have probably said because their clients are little monsters who are drug addicts and that's what drug addicts do, they kill themselves. But we know now that many Straight clients are not drug addicts at all. Most have probably tried marijuana and many were recreational users of marijuana or beer. Some are addicts; others had virtually no history of drug abuse and some no use of any kind at all. If drug addiction is not the common link between Straight kids then what is? What is the ability a client's parents to pay Straight's high cost either by affluence or by access to funds through a loan, second mortgage, a rich relative or borrowing against a life insurance policy. Perhaps having a high percentage of adoptees as clients sheds some light as to the affluence of Straight's targeted population--affluent white kids, see: http://thestraights.com/reports/white-kids-only.htm

Since Straight clients are not necessarily drug addicts and since Straight was roughly evenly divided between boys and girls, what does cause the high suicide rate and why in the strange proportions given? Before turning to Meredith Vieira and the Washington Post one needs to understand some things about Straight. In Chinese thought reform schools upon which Straight is modeled students are constantly badgered to get honest, tell all. They are coaxed, beaten, frightened, cajoled, deprived of food and sleep--by their peers--and then persuaded to confess to being a reactionary, anti-revolutionary or a sympathizer with George Bush. Likewise Straight students are constantly badgered to get honest, to tell all. They are coaxed, beaten, frightened, cajoled, or just plain terrified into confessing all by their peers. But what Straight is looking for is confession of drug usage that may or may not be true, and for information about their sex life. While the child is being broken down, three questions are frequently asked. Have you ever had sex with an animal? Have you ever had sex with a parent or sibling? Have you ever had sex with someone of the same sex?

Straight knows that sooner or later it will have to let the parents talk to their child. To that end the parent is sent to a school and taught how to talk to his child once he earns back that right. The child is given the same schooling and is pushed constantly for a written confession. Finally after a few weeks or sometimes 6 - 9 months, the child earns TALK. Mom, dad, child and a Straight official have a 5 minute sit-down. It is forbidden to talk about current events in one's life at Straight. Dad says, "son I remember a time in your druggie past when you did (fill in the blank) and it made me feel (select one of the 99 sanctioned feeling words developed by Dr. Newton. All other words are 'thought' words and are forbidden.). Dad then concludes, "but I love you." Next mom says, "Bill, I remember a time in your druggie past when you did (fill in the blank) and it made me feel (chose an allowed feeling word), but I love you." Finally the student says, "Mom, Dad, I remember a time in my druggie past when I (fill in the blank) and it made me feel (chose an allowed feeling word), but I love you." Everyone then stands, hugs, and the session is over. The word blackmail is never used, but if the child has confessed to some embarrassing sexual activity or fantasy that he has indulged in, even if it is a lie, an exaggeration or actually true, that confession has been recorded in the child's own handwriting and signed by him in a Moral Inventory, (COC) Chain of Command, or FOS (full of shit) list. The confession gives Straight additional insurance that the child will not tell of the abuse for fear of embarrassment if exposed to his parents. The confessed material is also available should the child or his parents ever decide to sue. In effect Straight obtains property from the confessor's parents in the monthly fees paid, the parents remining ignorant of the abuse as their child is too frightened and too embarrassed to tell them when he finally has a monitored talk session.

Straight is a two year sentence. Newcomer males must look down whenever females pass. Guys are forbidden to look to the right at the girls group. Guys sleep several to a room, sometimes locked in, sometimes alarmed in. They are accompanied to the bathroom by another male who watches them get into the shower and watches as they wipe themselves on the toilet. In a very unnatural setting, guys talk to one another while one is using the toilet. Many try to commit suicide at Straight but can not because they are watched all the time even when they wipe themselves on the toilet. There is no opportunity to masturbate in private. One kid reports that he once held up five fingers in a rap meaning he could only talk to a 5th Phasor. He told him that he had masturbated last night. The child psychiatrist-guard hugged him and said that his honesty would keep him sober one more day! There are sex raps where kids are forced to talk in group about the content of their confessions. Sometimes boys talk about sucking dicks or being fucked in the ass, openly, in front of their peers. Miller Newton has taken some of these criminally extorted confessions and used them in his book Kids, Sex and Drugs to show, he feels, that drugs make kids want to have sex with members of the opposite sex and with cats and dogs. After graduation clients become 7th Steppers and are allowed no boy-girl relationships for six months. Violators are placed back on first phase. Straight is a homophobic cult that makes kids talk about and think about things they best not be thinking about.

Once the child leaves Straight either by escape, graduation or the parent yanks him the child has time to rest and reflect. Reflection on what he or she has admitted to in Straight. Meredith Vieira demonstrates in the Washington Post that heterosexual girls can kiss one another because it is a guys thing. It turns men on. These women are not lesbians, but they can kiss one another, passionately on the lips, to turn guys on. Read "The Kiss That Leaves Men Open-Mouthed" in The Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32920-2003Sep5.html

(In the printed version, besides Meredith Vieira and guest Christy Lemire getting it on, there are photos of Madonna and Britney in a lip lock and Madonna and Christina Aguilera kissing.)

The big point to be made here is that the mores of Western society let Straight girls handle their trumped-up confessions better than the boys. When you do what Straight does to a young man, you can kill him. Once they get out, some former male clients understandably question their manhood. This is Straight's great problem. Former male clients sometimes could possibly wonder whether they are now gay because they have admitted under duress to something they may or may not have done. Straight's teenage therapists can easily turn an episode of two 4 year-old boys playing doctor into a homosexual experience. The Sullivan Report published in 1989 found that homosexuals in the age group 15 to 24 were three times more likely as heterosexuals to kill themselves, and concluded that homosexuality was one of the risk factors for youth suicide. [Washington Post, 1-13-90, p. A5.] Most kids come out of Straight probably suffering from Straight-induced post traumatic stress syndrome, anyway. They are depressed and confused. Their sexuality has probably not changed, but many may have taken on life-long Straight induced fears and guilt. Perhaps unable to cope, 37 former male clients have committed suicide. Three women have too. Significantly, 13 of the 40 deaths have been former clients of Straight--Springfield in Fairfax County, Virginia. Suspiciously, during the nine years Straight was in Fairfax County there have been three incidences involving multiple-death suicides by teenagers. Two of those have involved at least one former Straight client and there is a report that one of those was a double suicide involving two former Straight clients! The author feels that he has probably uncovered most of the suicides by former Springfield clients, but not all. He concludes that since he lives in Fairfax County it is easier for him to discover those deaths (suicides, especially of youths, are frequently not reported as such by the press unless it is a multi-death pact). He fears that similar statistics exist for other Straight-related programs. Conservatively he estimates the death toll just from the 12 programs that operated under the name Straight to be 150. The total toll from all related programs could be as high as 250, which if accurate, would make Straight the cult with the third highest suicide rate in the world, exceeded only by Jim Jones The People's Temple where 900 parishoners took cyanide together, and perhaps another group that the author will not name.

Sraight's goal is to make money, not to kill, but has Straight caused people to kill themselves? Consider this:

According to statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics, in 1987 the Tampa Bay area (Hillsborough, Pasco, and Pinellas Counties) had the highest suicide rate in the country.(35) It's not just because of the large number of retirees there either. The juvenile suicide rate in Pinellas County rose 130% between 1980 and 1986.(36) A 1992 study found that 1 out of 4 girls in neighboring Pasco County attempted suicide in 1991 (national average was 10%).(37) And in neighboring Hillsborough County the juvenile suicide rate rose from 3 in 1980 to 9 by 1987.(38) 19 youths committed suicide in Pinellas/ Hillsborough Counties in 1989 [up to nine of these were gay.](39) Straight operated its founding center, Straight-St Pete, in Saint Petersburg, Florida in Pinellas County from 1976 to 1993.
In 1986 a Straight-like program called Outreach was opened in Cape Coral, Florida. Next year in 1987 a community task force was put together to find out why 19 youths aged 14 - 17 had attempted suicide. [I have no data whether any of these youths were at Outreach, nor do I have any data showing that Outreach was an "abusive" Straight-like program.](40)
In 1988 the National Center for Disease Control launched a study on juvenile suicides in Cobb County, Georgia because its suicide rate of 14.7 for every 100,000 was 3 higher than the state average, and 2 times higher than the national average. Straight-Atlanta, operated in Marietta, Georgia in Cobb County.
Dr. Richard Schwartz, medical research director for Straight-Springfield, noted in an article for Straight's newsletter EPIDEMIC , Vol 6, that suicide was the fifth ranked cause of death of American teenagers in 1964, third in 1978 and second in 1983. But Straight had started operating in late 1976 and had centers in Cincinnati, Springfield, Virginia, Saint Petersburg and Sarasota by 1983. Suspiciously, the rise in juvenile suicide rates coincide with the rise in the the number of Straights.

There may be a precedent for charging Straight with negligent homicide, negligent manslaughter or at least "child abuse resulting in death by suicide"--and right down there in Florida, no less. On October 30, 1987 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida a trial by jury found Ms. Theresa Jackson guilty of child abuse resulting in the death by suicide of her 17 year-old daughter Tina Mancini. Ms. Jackson had forced her daughter to dance nude at a topless bar so the mother could live off the earnings. This was a third degree felony. Another applicable precedent set in this case is that Broward County Circuit Judge Arthur Franza allowed expert testimony as to "state of mind" of the dead girl to be entered into evidence when he allowed Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Jacobs to testify about his 'psychological autopsy" of the dead girl.(41)

For further reading on the 40 deaths from Straight, take these links:

Straight creates an environment for suicide
http://www.theStraights.com/theprogram/suicides.htm
http://www.theStraights.com/theprogram/suicide-attempts.htm

DPNA severs ties to its own forum

2003-06-13T07:36:00.000-07:00

6-13-03 On May 29, 2003 the Oakton Institute reported on an alliance between DFAF (formerly Straight, Inc.) and DPNA (Drug Prevention Network of the Americas). In that article we reported that DPNA has an open discussion forum. Since that time there have been several posts to their forum to set the record straight on Straight. Subsequently, DPNA has left its forum page open, but removed the link to it from its own web page! It would be frightening to think that an international group like DPNA could not stand up to the truth. Yet this is not the first time such a perceived event has happened. On October 31, 2002 DFAF itself announced a free and open web forum. By the next evening nitizens familiar with DFAF's dastardly past discovered that forum and started posting to it. Within 12 hours the open forum had become a closed forum. Even the new Saint Petersburg Times seems to have been stymied. Recently the Times published an article about DFAF's founders Mel and Betty Sembler and their 50th wedding anniversary in Rome; but apparently the paper chose to camouflage the story under the title of another story dealing with a nursing home in Tampa.

Florida Supreme Court rules that counselor can be sued for revealing secrets disclosed to him

2002-12-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

In the case of the Donna Gracey and Joseph Gracey vs. Donald Eaker (a marriage counselor) The Florida Supreme Court ruled today, Dec. 19, 2002, that a marriage counselor can be sued for revealing information given to him in confidence by his clients. A rule that lawsuits can seek damages for emotional distress only if there has been an underlying physical injury doesn't apply in this case, Justice R. Fred Lewis wrote for the majority. Justice Lewis wrote, "Donald Eaker is accused of 'revealing the most confidential of information disclosed to him by each individual' ". [Source: Naples Daily News]

Pathway gets $150,000 grant

2002-12-10T08:22:00.000-08:00

This past November (2002) Pathway Family Center - Indianapolis received a $150,000 grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust to expand its services over the next two years. In 2000 it got a $100,000 grant from Pulliam. Pathway was the second Straight legacy program to expand its services when in created a treatment center in Indianapolis in 2000. Pathway - Detroit had been created in 1993 by former Straight officer Helen Gowanny and others in Southfield, Michigan after the collapse of Straight - Detroit. Straight's former national clinical director, Reverend Doctor Miller Newton, founded the first second-generation Straight to have expansion programs. His Kids Helping Kids franchise operated in New Jersey, California, Salt Lake City and El Paso. All closed under allegations of child abuse. Last December the city-county council for Indianapolis-Marion County approved a $10,000 grant to Pathway for 2003. The Pacers Foundation granted the organization another $9,000 for 2002-2003. In November 2002, the Indianapolis Families Count Awards gave $5,000 to Pathway.

It takes DFAF only 48 hours to abandon Open Forums

2002-11-02T01:02:00.000-08:00

In what some analysts believe may well be the shortest lived Open discussion forum ever on the World Wide Web, Straight, Inc. (which now calls itself Drug Free America Foundation, Inc. ) [Straight's former national clinical director, Reverend Doctor2 Miller Newton, now calls himself Father Cassius; Straight's founder Ambassador Melvin Sembler, AO still calls himself Mel Sembler] attempted to establish an internet forum recently. But almost immediately they were pounced upon by hostile former students from the$traights who made postings about their stay at the$traights. Actually there were three Open forums done up in patriotic red, white and blue the same way Straight adorned their warehouses with a red, white and blue American flag. There was an Open teen forum for school kids. The religious page featured a Wall link for people to post memories about loved ones who are casualties of War on Drugs. But posters submitted reports about former clients from the$traights who have committed suicide. And there was a Gazebo link for other discussions. As far as can be ascertained by us, DFAF opened the board sometime on Thursday October 31, 2002. By Friday former clients had begun posting and someone informed us at the Institute of the developing situation at 2330 hours Friday night. We made an unpublished prediction here that the forums would be closed by noon the next day--Saturday. At some point on Saturday November 2, the School board and the Wall board both posted this alert: "The site administrators have made this forum inaccessible." The Gazebo forum claims to be still operating, apparently for registered users only. Can dissenters still post? Have posts been removed? Someone should look into this with the Guinness Book of World Records--the shortest lived Open forum.

[Oh, one more thing. When you cruise the DFAF site, notice they have cute little icons for a church, a bank, etc. When you hover on the bank there is a green background perhaps signifying cash. When you hover on the hospital you see red, perhaps symbolizing blood. But when you click on the school the background A Clockwork Orange. Straight was a thought reform school. A coincidence? A Freudian slip?]

Florida Supreme Court upholds law making it a felony to cause "mental injury" to a child

2002-09-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

AP Sept. 5, 2002 TALLAHASSEE — The state Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously upheld the section of Florida's child abuse law that makes it a felony to cause "mental injury" to a child. [Source: Naples Daily News]