[HN Gopher] Elan School
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Elan School
Author : orang2tang
Score : 111 points
Date : 2022-03-29 18:21 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (elan.school)
(TXT) w3m dump (elan.school)
| cameronfraser wrote:
| I went to a similar school called CEDU, same protocol for getting
| students there, same abuse. Elan school was actually actively
| contacting current students parents of CEDU right when it closed
| down to get them to come to Elan. Most of the people I went to
| CEDU with are broken or dead. There are more schools like this,
| they just close down and start again. I'll plug Daniel Yuen's
| name here, he was at the facility with me at the same time and
| ran away and is still missing 18 years later
| revscat wrote:
| What justification was used by your parents in sending you
| there?
| tempnow987 wrote:
| One challenge parents face is they don't feel there are other
| options.
|
| They often cannot get services locally, cannot get kids into
| anything in patient, cannot get discipline going.
|
| It's a weird dichotomy. You let your kid walk to park alone,
| you could face jail time. You send them to one of these
| camps, no issues.
|
| In addition to criticizing these program's I'd love to see
| better suggested options for often desperate parents,
| especially for kids who are a bit older.
|
| A lot of bad actors, but these schools have an opening
| sometimes where other systems are not stepping up.
| afandian wrote:
| tharne wrote:
| In a lot of U.S. states now, the age is as high as 12.
| The U.S. has gone absolutely insane in the name of
| protecting children. And, if you dare question the wisdom
| of any of these policies, you're typically met with
| something like, "I guess you just want children to DIE".
|
| As an aside, there's also this creepy trend in the U.S.
| to refer to 15 and 16 year-olds as "children". If someone
| had referred to me as a child at 16 years old, I would
| have looked at them like they were insane.
| afandian wrote:
| If that happened (UK) here I don't know how everyone
| would get to school? I guess the answer is get in a car?
| Which is just as crazy.
|
| I think it's creepier that we force children to be grown-
| up and take on adult attributes before they're ready.
| tharne wrote:
| > If that happened (UK) here I don't know how everyone
| would get to school? I guess the answer is get in a car?
|
| That's what happens here in the U.S. Part of the reason
| we have sky-high childhood obesity.
| buildbot wrote:
| 15-16 year olds both are and are not children, it's
| complex. A decade of time between then and now is a big
| difference in decision making rationality
| DeWilde wrote:
| Can you explain as to why you can't send children to play
| in a park? I don't understand, like far away or even near
| their home?
| tharne wrote:
| The rational answer is that you absolutely can send your
| children to play in the park.
|
| Why don't people do this then? In the U.S. in most
| states, leaving children unattended even close to home
| for any amount of time is considered a form of neglect or
| abuse, though the precise wording varies by state and the
| age of the child.
|
| The risk is that if the police pick up your kid or if the
| state department of child and family services catches
| wind of this, they can take your children from you and
| you have to go through a very unpleasant process to get
| them back, after which there are mandatory home visits by
| the state.
|
| Sadly, this happens more than it should since the laws in
| most states are very vaguely defined and the police and
| state employees at the department of child and family
| services are given extremely wide latitude in these
| situations. In some states the precise age at which you
| can leave children unattended isn't even explicitly
| defined; the interpretation "too young to be left alone"
| is left to the police or the state agency that handles
| these types of things.
|
| The most common victims are the working poor who
| sometimes will leave children unattended because they
| have to work and either can't afford or can't find
| childcare.
|
| It's a really bad situation on many levels, and for some
| reason there hasn't been a serious effort to reform a lot
| of these issues. I know the whole thing must sound
| absolutely crazy to anyone outside of the U.S. but it
| really is how things work in most places here.
| DeWilde wrote:
| This seems shockingly dumb. I wasn't aware of such things
| going on in the US, my cultural knowledge on the subject
| of growing up in the US was of kids roaming around on
| their bikes all day.
| tharne wrote:
| Kids roaming around on bikes was the norm in the U.S. for
| a long time. It started changing sometime in the mid-
| nineties and has been getting progressively worse since
| then.
|
| There are some glimmers of sanity emerging though, but
| it's very nascent. This org in particular is doing some
| good work: https://letgrow.org/ - there are also some
| stories on the site that explain things much more
| eloquently than I have.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| afandian wrote:
| Folks like who?
| candiodari wrote:
| Folks who believe in "protecting children". Who believe
| in CPS, while they are perfectly aware what a monstrous
| system CPS really is, but want to see others hurt and
| punished. Who actually believe something like CPS
| protects children. Who feel children need to be saved
| from, oh, lots of things, from sex to satan, drugs to
| iphones, saved from not getting vaccinated ... to saved
| from getting vaccinated, or are just after revenge, but
| while they want to intervene in children's lives, "if
| necessary" with violence, they absolutely DO NOT want to
| take care of any children. They also see NO need
| whatsoever to pay for either education or care, not even
| for the physical facilities, but they won't let them stay
| at "bad"/suboptimal homes, ESPECIALLY not if the kids
| want to (resulting in regular research pointing out that
| even outright abusive parents are producing much better
| results in children than even good CPS homes)
|
| Note that the comic says this place was "full of children
| from group homes". That would be CPS, mostly ex-foster
| children.
|
| People who believe in punishing "bad parents", while
| obviously NOT agreeing on what bad (or good, or "good
| enough") parenting actually is, sometimes resulting in 2
| people in CPS intervening for outright contradictory
| reasons. People who work in the front-end of CPS are all
| about why they are better, and why society needs to be
| fixed. With violence and punishments, of course, not with
| help and/or support. Grace is the real evil in that
| movie, despite being innocent and spending all her time
| trying to help, executing the will of the "folks"
| "protecting" children.
|
| You will note the ONE constant in all CPS systems around
| the world: those who decide what is done to the children
| NEVER actually have to watch (or even follow up on) what
| these actions actually do to those children. And
| absolutely nobody is responsible for what happened,
| except the children themselves. NEVER will you see a
| system where the people administering the system assigned
| the same responsibility parents have. They take kids
| away, with violence, make them shut up until 18, then
| dump them on the street.
|
| And make no mistake: these people ONLY want punishments
| dealt out. In theory, not to the children, but those
| children are "not their responsibility". Which
| effectively means they take _everything_ from those
| children, "for their protection" and give nothing to
| them. The caretakers are minimum wage failures (sometimes
| victims of CPS themselves) that cannot give a decent
| future to their kids. It's "not a punishment, it's just
| difficult". Everything from their parents, school,
| friends, right down to the idea of a playground they
| recognise is taken from those children. You can tell me
| that's "not" punishing children as much as you want.
|
| And people misunderstand children's reactions. Like in
| the movie "Short Term 12". After a while you realise WHY
| Jayden attacks her dad's car. Not because of the abuse,
| but because he is responsible for getting her into CPS,
| and taking away her future (same reason Marcus attacks
| himself). Jayden is attacking Grace for being a terrible
| pseudo-parent that takes away her future, a parent that's
| nothing but a countdown timer to prison, she is not
| attacking her dad for abuse at all, but for delivering
| her to Grace.
|
| CPS also creates institutions themselves, along these
| lines. They rename them and the techniques they use every
| 10 years or so, currently they're on "applied behavior
| analysis" (ABA), a supposed cure for "autism" (this
| decade's catch-all diagnosis masking the fact that CPS,
| psychologists, psychiatrist and whatever cheaper version
| of those (orthopedagogy is the current name) is bullshit
| and can't correctly diagnose disorders, or do anything
| about them. Oh well. I guess it's an improvement over
| PDD-NOS).
|
| The concept is always the same: isolation, idiotically
| bad schooling or none at all, and constant violence
| against children.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| cameronfraser wrote:
| They lie to parents and misrepresent the school usually. When
| parents go to visit everyone is acting to some extent. That
| being said it's usually narcissistic parents with money who
| are looking for an easy solution. There were quite a few
| fairly famous children there. Most of the kids there had
| issues for sure, including myself, but it was still in the
| realm of normal teenager issues.
| erdos4d wrote:
| > That being said it's usually narcissistic parents with
| money who are looking for an easy solution.
|
| After reading this and the previous thread on these
| programs, I really get the impression that this is the
| fundamental driver behind it. Some people in comments try
| to paint a picture of desperate parents at their wits end
| taken in by the program's lies, but these kids didn't wake
| up one day and decide to have a lot of problems. I strongly
| suspect that most were simply neglected and abused by
| horrible parents that had them and didn't want them and did
| a shit job being a parent to them because they are
| narcissistic assholes, the sort of shit people that
| American society churns out with ever increasing frequency.
| That sort of people believe things that sound like easy
| fixes for their years of failure to actually be a good
| parent, and the child suffers even more for it.
| stardenburden wrote:
| I read the entire comic two days ago, it left me disturbed and
| angry. It's tragic to what humans are possible, and terrifying to
| see the results of countless studies in real life - abused for
| money.
|
| I don't understand how the school could exist for so long,
| conditions were straight up evil - how did nobody publish that in
| a mainstream newspaper?
| revscat wrote:
| Not only how it existed, but how people could find cause to
| send their own children there.
| ars wrote:
| The parents did not actually know what it was really like.
| They only knew the marketing "we'll help your kids".
|
| When the kids told them, they were usually not believed
| because these were kids with a history of bad behavior
| already.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Elan, like much of the Troubled Teen industry, had roots tracing
| to the Synanon cult.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanon
| robocat wrote:
| The series is ongoing - sign up using your email and get the next
| episode.
|
| One interesting side effect is that the author's art is evolving
| as they write the episodes.
|
| The scariest part for me is to think where else are things worse
| than that? I have led an extremely sheltered life by comparison.
| Nitrolo wrote:
| For those that are interested, Behind the Bastards did a two part
| episode on the Elan school last year:
|
| https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-one-elan-scho...
| monkeybutton wrote:
| One of my earliest memories of the internet was reading about
| Tranquility Bay _, another similar school with the added bonus of
| being outside the US. It was absolutely mind boggling that kids
| could be kidnapped and abused for profit like that.
|
| _ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranquility_Bay
| zzixp wrote:
| I originally found this link 2 days ago from this HN discussion
| on the troubled teen industry:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30819756. I sat through and
| read the entire thing in one sitting. It's gripping and
| incredibly horrifying at the same time.
| ohlookabird wrote:
| Found it also a while ago (maybe also on HN), and was
| captivated by it. I had to spend a whole Saturday reading
| through it. Absolutely horrifying.
| helpfulclippy wrote:
| Same, except it took me two (lengthy) sittings. Really strong
| stuff. Had to really reflect afterwards.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Lots of kids end up in places like these. Paris Hilton even ended
| up in a similar place where they abused the kids (as much as
| legally allowed). I'm not sure if it was as bad as depicted here,
| but it started off with what was essentially a legal (parent
| sanctioned) kidnapping by thugs from the school. I think her
| documentary mentioned she was around the same age when it
| happened.
| acherion wrote:
| I took a look around the site outside of the comics, and saw that
| there were a list of social media sites to share the content,
| with the Reddit entry containing a link to the author's reddit
| account. Curious to see what the latest updates were, I clicked
| on the link but saw that it was suspended - does anyone know why?
| jszymborski wrote:
| I first learned about the Elan "School" from this video by Nexpo
| [0], and later watched a documentary. I honestly couldn't believe
| how surreal the whole story was.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eM7pb5M5DU
| dljsjr wrote:
| I was completely unaware of the existence of Elan School and I
| couldn't find much on the site that talks about what's going on
| unless you actually read the comic. Unfortunately it's the middle
| of the work day so I don't have time to read the comic right now
| but I wanted to know what it was about to know if I should come
| back to it.
|
| If you're in a similar boat: Elan School was apparently a
| behavior modification/"therapeutic" boarding school in Maine that
| engaged in some extremely controversial practices:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elan_School
|
| The comic is an autobiographical tale of a person that was forced
| to attend this facility against their will at the age of 16,
| ostensibly via kidnapping. It's really harrowing stuff.
|
| EDIT: brevity
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| > Elan School was apparently a behavior
| modification/"therapeutic" boarding school in Maine that
| engaged in some extremely controversial practices:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elan_School
|
| Not that I'm doubting any intentions here, but I think dressing
| this up as "extremely controversial" might be under-selling or
| burying the lede a bit. Had the practices (the ring, isolation,
| management structure) that occurred at Elan been done on adult
| prisoners, they would have with absolute moral certainty been
| seen as war crimes of the highest order. The fact that this
| happened to children and had the level of corruption and money
| behind it to persist for as long as it did should give one
| extreme pause, and the reprehensibility of the institution
| should not be "controversial," but rather condemned.
|
| Indeed I would agree that this is really harrowing stuff. Just
| wanted to add that if you're going to look into this without
| any prior knowledge be sure that you're ready to be exposed to
| several levels of trauma.
| abstractbeliefs wrote:
| While they are surely morally bankrupt and abhorrent, they
| aren't "war crimes of the highest order". Let's not dilute
| and devalue what war crimes are for internet punchiness when
| they are happening even today.
|
| War crimes are when you break the rules of war. America
| mistreating its own population does not amount to war crimes.
| DeWilde wrote:
| These would be categorized as crimes against humanity.
| dljsjr wrote:
| Yeah I wasn't trying to downplay how horrible what they did
| was, more just trying to use neutral/editorial language
| :shrug:
| therein wrote:
| Here is where I first heard of the Elan School:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eM7pb5M5DU
| mosseater wrote:
| There is actually a compilation of evidence of what went on at
| the Elan School here - https://elan.school/proof/
| jstgord wrote:
| WARN : deeply disturbing and utterly compelling
|
| Im 10 pages in, taking a break because its too heavy ..
|
| Random thoughts come to mind, given recent events, such as how a
| whole populace can be subjugated by regular abuse and
| misinformation .. and follow the whims of a despotic cult-leader.
| [ It strikes me most Russians have no idea whats going on in
| Ukraine, or are happy to pretend its not really happening. Why do
| millions have to have their lives uprooted by the decisions of
| one person ? ]
|
| How many of us have the wherewithal to question the cultural
| rules we were brought up with, or the persistence to improve or
| change things, fighting a life-sapping bureaucracy ?
|
| I fortunately live in a liberal democracy with excess food and
| security, with only first-world problems .. and yet .. it seems
| 85% of the citizens want action on climate change, while our
| elected leaders are hell bent on burning as much carbon as
| possible - so I have to ask, am I even living in a democracy ?
|
| As a software dev, Ive been long thinking that almost all of our
| systems are far too centralized, and thus too brittle ..
| banking/currency/payments, social media, communications, food
| production, energy supply, politics, military,
| shipping/trade/transport, workplaces, education ..
|
| yes, all of this is off-topic, but there are echoes .. we do have
| to keep re-remembering the Holocaust, because we are the same
| humans.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Here's a lovely list of notable alumni, from their wikipedia
| page:
|
| Notable alumni
|
| > Tiffany Sedaris, artist, and sister of Amy Sedaris and David
| Sedaris. Tiffany's two years at Elan is cited in her sibling's
| writings and interviews as deeply traumatic to her, and a direct
| cause of her inability to form normal relationships with her
| family members. After decades of struggling with mental illness,
| Tiffany ultimately committed suicide in May 2013.[23][24]
|
| > Michael Skakel, convicted in the murder of Martha Moxley. The
| case drew media attention largely because Skakel is related to
| the Kennedy family.[5]
|
| > Ben Weasel, of the punk rock band Screeching Weasel.[13]
|
| > Phil Williams Jr. died at age 15, after being forced to
| participate in the school's notorious boxing-ring punishment.[25]
| atdrummond wrote:
| I went to a similar programme as a kid and then was horrified to
| see the same techniques at a rehab I attended as an adult. There
| have been some improvements, especially in the previously lawless
| states as Utah, but I'm certain there are still countless schools
| abusing students in the same or similar methods.
|
| A lot of these treatment methodologies are descended from what
| was done at Synanon. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43uD12ooM7U
| is a good primer video on this.)
| GistNoesis wrote:
| Warning : The read is really-long (multiple-hour), and
| potentially PTSD trigger inducing.
|
| Interesting but disturbing. Happy that such hell-hole is now
| closed.
|
| There is also a documentary
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Darkness (available on
| Netflix) about the school.
| notamy wrote:
| > PTSD trigger inducing.
|
| I will second this -- I found it the other night and made it 8
| pages in before it was too much to keep going
| bentcorner wrote:
| This is horrifying. Can we be sure something like this isn't
| still happening? Are there people trying to help stop this kind
| of thing? I don't even know where to start.
| doitLP wrote:
| Imagine the horrors of the Uighur reeducation camps. 10000x the
| scale but with rape and physical torture.
|
| I made it only 20 slides into this comic. I didn't have it this
| bad but it triggered memories of the high-control group (a term
| much better and more descriptive than "cult") I used to be part
| of.
|
| There's definitely some tried and true methods of mentally
| destroying and controlling human beings.
| ars wrote:
| It's almost for sure still happening, by desperate parents who
| don't know what else to do for their kids other than jail.
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(page generated 2022-03-29 23:01 UTC)