Speaker 1: Uh, I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, a
Speaker 1: podcast that I just started with a tonal yelling. I guess, um,
Speaker 1: oh boy, we are already behind the eight ball normally.
Speaker 1: This I mean, this is a podcast where we talk
Speaker 1: about bad people, the worst people in all of history,
Speaker 1: and the bad things that they do. Um. One of
Speaker 1: those bad people is me for not knowing how to
Speaker 1: start my show, despite this being my only job to help.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think that you were bad. Why
Speaker 1: would you say you were bad? Thank you? Thank you?
Speaker 1: But it's your job to keep me from spiraling into
Speaker 1: into being unprofessional than you know. Who's great at being professional?
Speaker 1: Is my guest today, Mr Miles W. Gray. Uh see
Speaker 1: that's how you. That's the kind of a tonal shrieking
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. You should use to start
Speaker 1: a podcast. God damn it. Why can't I do it
Speaker 1: that way you did? I mean, I merely just did
Speaker 1: my own rendition of the the W and your name
Speaker 1: stand for a winner? He hed W in my name Gray?
Speaker 1: What where's W come from? Well? I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: set you up for success in your future political career.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, thank you so much. I mean, like, we know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be well, I maybe I probably
Speaker 1: eventually would it up as a politician, but first, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a motivational speaker. We talked about
Speaker 1: this university into Yeah, I will first create a fucking,
Speaker 1: you know, gaggle of mindless stooges uh, and just turned
Speaker 1: them into my political base. That's very appropriate, Miles, that
Speaker 1: you're talking about creating a gaggle of my listooges kind
Speaker 1: of a cult because we're talking about a cult today,
Speaker 1: but we're also talking about a school. We're talking about
Speaker 1: a cult that's a school, Miles. How do you feel
Speaker 1: about kids? Man? Dude? Last time it was so fucking brutal? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: how do I feel about I think kids are our
Speaker 1: future and we need to nurture them and protect them
Speaker 1: at all costs. Now, when you say nurture and protect,
Speaker 1: does that mean bring them to operate an internal police
Speaker 1: state based on violence and sexual assault in order to
Speaker 1: control their own behavior and behavior of their peers. The
Speaker 1: h we have fun, we do have fun. Um, We're
Speaker 1: not going to have fun today. Today's a horrible episode.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of the Alan School? No? How
Speaker 1: do you spell it e l a in like the
Speaker 1: French word, you know, alan. No, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: maybe sounds familiar. Are there ones in l A at all? Good? God, No, No,
Speaker 1: they're not any of these anywhere anymore. But existed. This
Speaker 1: was the kind of school that could only exist in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere Maine. And if you've ever been
Speaker 1: to Maine, middle of nowhere, Maine is about as middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere as you get, right. I've been up there
Speaker 1: for hockey, m yeah, but the middle of nowhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like that's like for people that are trying to be like, dude,
Speaker 1: get the funk away from me. Yeah, and people who
Speaker 1: don't want too many prying eyes over the school that
Speaker 1: they're running, because it's actually just a series of horrible crimes. Now, miles,
Speaker 1: a series of horrible crimes. I think we can all agree.
Speaker 1: Kids are can be problematic, right, you know, their little
Speaker 1: brains are still developing. All kids are gonna do shitty,
Speaker 1: harmful things to themselves and to other people because they're
Speaker 1: just kind of learning how to be functional human beings.
Speaker 1: Pretty normal process of growing up. You're gonna say things
Speaker 1: that hurt your parents. You know, you're probably gonna punch
Speaker 1: your little brother or sister. You're gonna do something shitty, right,
Speaker 1: every kid does just hard of being a kid, um,
Speaker 1: and it gets you know, kind of taken up a
Speaker 1: level when you're a teenager. Right. Teens lash out, say
Speaker 1: horrible things. They maybe get involved with substances that are
Speaker 1: that are going to be bad form. They they you know, uh,
Speaker 1: steal a car. Kids do dumb shit, right, Um, teenagers do.
Speaker 1: And I think any reasonable person or organization that's trying
Speaker 1: to like take care of teenagers in particular will acknowledge that, like,
Speaker 1: they're going to make mistakes because their brains aren't finished.
Speaker 1: And so even if those mistakes are pretty serious, right,
Speaker 1: things that might normally land an adult in prison, if
Speaker 1: it's a child, you have to approach them with an
Speaker 1: added level of compassion and understanding because their their brains
Speaker 1: aren't done yet. Now, I think reasonable people can admit
Speaker 1: that some kids have behavioral issues that make them dangerous
Speaker 1: to themselves and others. I've had to work with some
Speaker 1: of those kids. Um, I've had colleagues who got their
Speaker 1: bones broken from some of those kids. There's a necessity
Speaker 1: for specialists and even special facilities to help kids that
Speaker 1: have behavioral problems that make them a danger to be around. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: that's just a thing that is going to occur, and
Speaker 1: of course people in the country. Yeah. Now, unfortunately, Miles,
Speaker 1: this is the United States of America. And when you
Speaker 1: start with the firmace that yeah, okay, maybe sometimes we
Speaker 1: need a special facility for troubled kids, you open the
Speaker 1: door for a whole new industry. And because capitalism is
Speaker 1: what it is, when you have an industry for taking
Speaker 1: care of troubled kids, you also have an industry that
Speaker 1: has affected financial interest in making sure as many children
Speaker 1: as possible are placed in those facilities, whether they need
Speaker 1: the help or not. So where things get off the
Speaker 1: rails here. So when you attach the profit motive to
Speaker 1: dealing with absolutely problem, Okay, now we need a side
Speaker 1: business mislabeling these kids so we can turn them into customers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna start having to bribe some judges and bribe
Speaker 1: some healthcare workers to force more kids into our Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: So the best way, if you're in the business of
Speaker 1: running the facility for troubled kids, the best way to
Speaker 1: improve your business is to convince parents, judges, the legal
Speaker 1: system in the mental health system that a wide variety
Speaker 1: behaviors um from talking back and smoking weed to getting
Speaker 1: into fistfights at school justify incarceration and such facilities. Like
Speaker 1: the kid I know who got sent to a facility
Speaker 1: and it wasn't one of these facilities because he was
Speaker 1: there was other stuff going on, but it was a
Speaker 1: facility where he was in full time residential care. Uh.
Speaker 1: He broke his his one of his parents arms. He
Speaker 1: broke one of my colleagues jaws. He gave me a concussion.
Speaker 1: Like it was like a the kid needed really dedicated help, right,
Speaker 1: you can just eventually the school was like, we cannot
Speaker 1: take care of this kid. It's not it's not it's
Speaker 1: like he just farts at the wrong time class, Like no,
Speaker 1: this is this is what we're talking something different. And
Speaker 1: I want to make it clear when I talked about like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there is a need for special facilities for
Speaker 1: certain guts. That's the kind of kids. Like so you
Speaker 1: know you're you're fucking stabbing people with like scissors or stuff.
Speaker 1: I understanding, Yeah, And that has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the thing you're telling about this new business you were
Speaker 1: opening that was like a facility for which I think
Speaker 1: if I was going to tell you I could turn
Speaker 1: in ten thousand dollar investment and do a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars of profit as long as you're able to get
Speaker 1: two or three judges to just to just shutgun some
Speaker 1: children my way. See my idea, Miles, is what helps
Speaker 1: improve your character is an adult operating a rare earth
Speaker 1: magnet mineral mind. So what if we take troubled children
Speaker 1: and we forced them to mind in order to produce
Speaker 1: the materials needed for our cell phones. The instri already
Speaker 1: works off of slavery. This is slightly better than slavery.
Speaker 1: I go, go on now, and how much do I
Speaker 1: need to invest? Now? I just need to create some
Speaker 1: compromat for these judges. Miles. Well, well, well, I'll send
Speaker 1: you the prospectus later. But yeah, So the problem with
Speaker 1: this is, right, there's a need for some facility like this,
Speaker 1: but when it the profit motives gets attached to it,
Speaker 1: you have these people who decide who like the there's
Speaker 1: a vested interest in convincing parents and the legal system
Speaker 1: that like, no, no, kids don't just need to be
Speaker 1: put in special facilities if they're a danger to the
Speaker 1: life and limb of other people. If they're smoking weed.
Speaker 1: That's dangerous enough. You know. If they punched a kid
Speaker 1: in school one time, that's bad enough. Let's get him
Speaker 1: in the program. You know. That's that's how it happens
Speaker 1: with all of these troubled team facilities. Now, at the
Speaker 1: same time, if it's your business to treat kids in
Speaker 1: this kind of a facility, the reality of capitalism means
Speaker 1: that your priority is never, ever, not one single solitary
Speaker 1: time as a business, at least to say that every
Speaker 1: individual who works there field this way. But as a business,
Speaker 1: your priority is never going to be rehabilitation, or education
Speaker 1: or even basic health and safety. It will always be
Speaker 1: maximizing profit. And one way to do that is to
Speaker 1: hire people who will work for less money than such
Speaker 1: a complicated job should rightly pay. And the people who
Speaker 1: are willing to take that pay cut generally find other
Speaker 1: than financial motives for the work, like the opportunity to
Speaker 1: beat Moleste children. This is how the troubled team industry works, right,
Speaker 1: This is what it's colloquially called troubled team facilities, the
Speaker 1: troubled team industry, and these different facilities they run the
Speaker 1: gamut from like wilderness facilities where you're dropping kids in
Speaker 1: like the woods, basically ranch style offerings with like working
Speaker 1: on a farm, military school style things, and institutions that
Speaker 1: are harder to easily quantify, like the Allon School, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about in a minute now. When she was
Speaker 1: a teen, Paris Hilton was sent to one such institution
Speaker 1: called Provo Canyon, UM, which I think was more kind
Speaker 1: of on the wilderness side of things, might have been
Speaker 1: more of a ranch. But Provo Canyon is in Utah, UM,
Speaker 1: and Utah, by the way, is like mecca for schools
Speaker 1: that can legally abuse children. That's where most of these
Speaker 1: facilities are. Utah makes a lot of money off of
Speaker 1: systematically abusing children for profit UM, which is why the
Speaker 1: legal system in Utah is set up to enable these schools.
Speaker 1: So her Paris Hilton credits Provo Canyon, the school she
Speaker 1: was sent to as a team for quote the most
Speaker 1: vivid and traumatizing memories I've ever experienced in my entire life.
Speaker 1: One particular memory helped fuel what has become a side
Speaker 1: career for Paris Hilton and exposing the team treatment industry. Quote.
Speaker 1: I continually experienced a nightmare where two men come into
Speaker 1: my room in the middle of the night and kidnapped me.
Speaker 1: It has caused me severe trauma, and I know it
Speaker 1: is a tinpole of this industry that has caused millions
Speaker 1: of survivors to suffer the same nightmares throughout their adult life. Now,
Speaker 1: that experience that she had of people coming into her
Speaker 1: house in the middle of the the night and kidnapping her, um,
Speaker 1: that's really common. It happens to conservatively tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of kids a year, some numbers of fifty all of
Speaker 1: them get kidnapped, but a lot of them do. That's
Speaker 1: the standard, right, Because you decide as a parent, I'm
Speaker 1: going to send my kid to this horrible facility where
Speaker 1: they'll be isolated and like abused until they stopped misbehaving. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to like sit down and say, because
Speaker 1: I caught you with weed, I'm sending you to the woods. Right,
Speaker 1: So how do you avoid that awkward conversation you hire
Speaker 1: men to abduct your child in the night, the night
Speaker 1: because you're already such a good parent. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing in the cases for kids whom, yeah, like for
Speaker 1: the normal trouble teams that sort of people who actually
Speaker 1: need it. Like you're saying a special care facility. But like,
Speaker 1: let's say just a kid are smoking me. They're like,
Speaker 1: that's it. We're having people disappear him in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night because we as parents aren't willing to
Speaker 1: have a conversation at all that will go through all
Speaker 1: these lengths to just avoid any form of being an
Speaker 1: adult in this situation. Like holy sh it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's outrageous and horror and it's just horrific. Um. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and there's there's companies that the service the company provides
Speaker 1: is like they'll send a handful of psychopaths to kidnap
Speaker 1: your child and like handcuff them or tied them up
Speaker 1: and throw them in the back of a van and drive.
Speaker 1: Like industry like, hey some kids dedicated guys. But yes,
Speaker 1: there's companies that just snatch kids for profit then their parents.
Speaker 1: It's it's very legal. You're like, as the parent, you
Speaker 1: sign away permission for this. Um. So if they get
Speaker 1: pulled over by the cops, they can say no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: we're not abducting this we are abducting this child. But
Speaker 1: the parents said, okay, oh no, here's the permission slip,
Speaker 1: here's my bad, I'm a licensed child snatcher. No, I'm
Speaker 1: a professional child abductor officer, like, and that's terrible bar
Speaker 1: chat too when you meet somebody like children in the dead.
Speaker 1: There's actually a kid tied up in the back of
Speaker 1: my van right now, so the front seat though, Oh
Speaker 1: that's okay, I was, I just need to take your order. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: it is a crime, thankfully in twenty states, to send
Speaker 1: children to gay conversion therapy, but it is perfectly legal
Speaker 1: to send your child to a treatment sitter center for
Speaker 1: anything else a parent regards as a flaw. So gay
Speaker 1: conversion therapy is legal in a bunch of states. It's
Speaker 1: not illegal really anywhere to send your child to a
Speaker 1: treatment center. And the treatment center doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: for like an actual problem that like I don't know
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist someone say like, oh yeah, this kid has
Speaker 1: this serious problem that needs special treatment. Anything you're not
Speaker 1: happy with that your kid does counts right because as
Speaker 1: a parent, you're the dictator of your child, because children
Speaker 1: have no rights, like effectively not if the parent like
Speaker 1: wants to do. Parents can do a lot of fund
Speaker 1: up ship to their kids perfectly legally. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who will fight in Congress for their right
Speaker 1: to abuse their children systematically because this nation was I
Speaker 1: don't know, a large chunk of the population of this
Speaker 1: country believes that parents are the biblical sovereigns of their
Speaker 1: children should be able to do anything they want to them. Um,
Speaker 1: it's good ship. Uh. Now, as a parent, you have
Speaker 1: the power to sign over physical control of your child
Speaker 1: to an organization one of these teen treatment facilities, and
Speaker 1: every year parents have around fifty kids do so. If
Speaker 1: you listen to our two parter on Sinnnon with American
Speaker 1: hero Paul Left Tompkins, you know that the troubled teen
Speaker 1: industry got its start with that particular cult. Um have
Speaker 1: you did you listen to those episodes? Miles, No, I
Speaker 1: haven't heard that one. Cinnanon was a This will be
Speaker 1: useful people who haven't listened to it yet all though
Speaker 1: it's a pretty good two parter. Sinnon was a drug
Speaker 1: the first drug rehab program like in the nation, like
Speaker 1: focused on like dope as opposed to alcohol, and it
Speaker 1: was kind of based initially off alcoholics anonymous like Sinning
Speaker 1: s y in. Uh. Yeah, I thought it was like
Speaker 1: super Christian like first Sinner Sinning. It wasn't, and it
Speaker 1: was was founded by this guy Charles de Ork who
Speaker 1: was UM an alcoholic and not a drug addict himself,
Speaker 1: and he was he became a cult leader. This this
Speaker 1: thing went from like people kind of living together in
Speaker 1: this compound and like doing hard labor and UM. You know,
Speaker 1: they had all these different things that they thought would
Speaker 1: help keep you off drugs. One of them was called
Speaker 1: the game, which was this therapeutic tool invented by Charles
Speaker 1: Dedrick where everyone would sit around in a room, all
Speaker 1: these addicts and they would scream abuse at each other.
Speaker 1: They would just like insult each other, talk about what
Speaker 1: they hated about each other. And it was this. The
Speaker 1: idea was that like, oh, addicts need extra accountability because
Speaker 1: they're so good at lying. So you you have this,
Speaker 1: you know, this regular thing where you get to like
Speaker 1: you get abused for things that you do. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's a way to blow off steam to um it
Speaker 1: it was. Sent it on was hugely popular for a while.
Speaker 1: UM judges were so enthusiastic about the practice that they
Speaker 1: started sending children who have been caught with dope to
Speaker 1: sent it on UM. And because these kids, most of
Speaker 1: the people who went to sinning on and got involved,
Speaker 1: like wanted help, like, we're addicts, but these kids didn't
Speaker 1: like it generally weren't serious addicts, but also didn't want
Speaker 1: to be there, so they had to develop these really
Speaker 1: brutal rules for like punishing them and cracking down and
Speaker 1: stopping them from escaping and keeping them in line. Um.
Speaker 1: And it became physically abusive too, and mentally abusive obviously. Um.
Speaker 1: But that was not why Sentnon got in trouble, right.
Speaker 1: Send it On eventually got in trouble because they tried
Speaker 1: to assassinate a lawyer with a rattlesnake after building their
Speaker 1: own army in California. Um, that was quite a story, miles,
Speaker 1: I mean, so passe. And assassinating a lawyer with the
Speaker 1: arm I mean, come on. So sent it On is
Speaker 1: where the troubled teen industry gets a start, right. This
Speaker 1: is the first time that judges are like, oh, we
Speaker 1: don't have to just throw these kids in prison, which
Speaker 1: is admittedly the wrong thing to do with the kid
Speaker 1: who you've caught with weed or something. But instead of like,
Speaker 1: we just hand them over to this weird cult and
Speaker 1: the cult will abuse them until they don't smoke pot anymore,
Speaker 1: and this will solve our problems. Forever okayament out of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the yearly sixties, sent Anon was a bona fide phenomenon,
Speaker 1: and they inspired a dizzy variety of imitators who used
Speaker 1: variations of their methods. One of these imitators was the
Speaker 1: day Top Village in New York, which is actually the
Speaker 1: second ever drug rehab program in the United States. It
Speaker 1: was created in nineteen sixty three, just five years after
Speaker 1: Sentnon started UM, and the day Top Village followed what
Speaker 1: they called a therapeutic community style of treatment UM, which
Speaker 1: is where the actual work of rehabilitation is done by
Speaker 1: other addicts, counseling and holding each other accountable. This is
Speaker 1: the same thing sent Anon dead, and part of what
Speaker 1: they mean by that is again you all sit in
Speaker 1: a room together and yell abuse at each other. UM.
Speaker 1: Some people said this helps, but I've never gone, I've
Speaker 1: never been addicted to hair owen. Maybe maybe a mean
Speaker 1: don't try it, I guess yeah, um, and it's worth
Speaker 1: a day Toop Village has not been accused of the
Speaker 1: same kind of abuse of Centnon, and they never tried
Speaker 1: to build their own marine corps or assassinate a lawyer
Speaker 1: with a Rattlesnake, So a lot of problematic things about
Speaker 1: day Top. They didn't go as over the goddamn top
Speaker 1: as a cent Anon did. For our purposes. Day Top
Speaker 1: Village in New York is noteworthy because in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties a troubled eighteen year old named Joe Ritchie
Speaker 1: was sent there. Joe would go on to create the
Speaker 1: Alan School, which might be the most abuse of troubled
Speaker 1: teen institution who ever exist. But to properly tell that story,
Speaker 1: we've got to go back in time again and give
Speaker 1: Joe's back story. So I had to talk about where
Speaker 1: the troubled teen industry starts. Let's talk about Joe a
Speaker 1: little bit. He was born in port Chester, New York,
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty five to parents who were deeply troubled.
Speaker 1: They split up and we don't know why, but a
Speaker 1: hint as to why may come from the fact that
Speaker 1: his father, Frank, was nicknamed Bamboo because he was so
Speaker 1: good at bouncing back after getting punched in the face
Speaker 1: during the near constant bar fights he had at local bombs.
Speaker 1: Like his nickname in town was because like that guy
Speaker 1: could get wow, He's really good to get the ship bunched.
Speaker 1: Out of a fus bamboo bamboo called bamboo because he's
Speaker 1: so good to get punched and what do I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a weird for those the vibe of those people
Speaker 1: who just take shots like and are like kind of
Speaker 1: sad and like bar fight immortals. I can't imagine the
Speaker 1: energy sorting around that kind of person. I'm not surprised
Speaker 1: his marriage didn't last. Yeah, he's like, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: even know how to respond to physical stimulus, no less
Speaker 1: verbal to adjust any kind of great emotions. Guy. He
Speaker 1: was a day laborer and known locally as quote a
Speaker 1: kingpin of bar fights. Um. He was violent but also charming,
Speaker 1: which is probably how he snared in Santro Joe Richie's mother. Now,
Speaker 1: the sant Toro's and the Richies were both Italian American families,
Speaker 1: but the Santorro family did the Ritchie family because the
Speaker 1: Richie family was newer to the country and didn't speak
Speaker 1: English very well. Um. When Anne and Frank split up,
Speaker 1: she signed over custody of her son, Joe to her parents,
Speaker 1: Michael and Angela, and Joe was raised by his maternal
Speaker 1: grandparents and several other relatives. Um. So from the beginning
Speaker 1: this kid doesn't have you know, his mom when she
Speaker 1: splits up with his husband, like signs over custody to
Speaker 1: his grandparents, which is kind of an odd move as well. Um,
Speaker 1: but this is also a period in which single motherhood
Speaker 1: is really in some cases, like even legally penalized. So like,
Speaker 1: I guess it makes a degree of sense as to
Speaker 1: why this happened. Um. The Santaro family where Joe was
Speaker 1: raised was They were poor but proud, and they regularly
Speaker 1: attended Mass at the Holy Rosary Church. As a young child,
Speaker 1: Joe was an altar boy. He spent time at the
Speaker 1: community center, where he learned to box and play basketball.
Speaker 1: One of his friends at the time, Victornato, remembered him
Speaker 1: this way quote. We called him Joe Rich. He was
Speaker 1: a good guy, but I've never seen anyone as wild.
Speaker 1: Joe was really tough. If he were nice to him,
Speaker 1: he'd be your friend, but you didn't want to mess
Speaker 1: with him. He was always looking over his shoulder, and
Speaker 1: if you did something to cross him, he'd never let
Speaker 1: you forget it. Joe Rich was sharp, knew how to survive.
Speaker 1: I used to think he had nine lives. If he
Speaker 1: did something really wrong, he'd get out of it, someone
Speaker 1: else would take the heat. He always had himself covered.
Speaker 1: It seems Joe rich knew where to go. He was
Speaker 1: definitely ahead of his time. When we were involved in
Speaker 1: basketball games, he was thinking about stealing cars. I really
Speaker 1: figured he'd eventually be successful, either that or debt. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a wild thing to say. He's also got a
Speaker 1: little bit bamboo DNA too to him with the Nine Lives.
Speaker 1: I just like when you first said it's like while
Speaker 1: we were playing basketball, I thought you were saying like
Speaker 1: he was like he like in the middle of the
Speaker 1: basketball game, he's like checked out. He's like, how are
Speaker 1: you going to steal these cars? And he gets hit
Speaker 1: in ahead of the basketball I think that's come on,
Speaker 1: Sorry man, you think about stealing cars again? Fuck dude,
Speaker 1: we're gonna lose. Yeah, yeah, sorry? Uh now, Miles, you
Speaker 1: know who else likes to steal cars? Uh? These average tisers? Yep.
Speaker 1: We are entirely sponsored by a ring of car thieves
Speaker 1: and shop chop shops. If you're looking for a nice
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Speaker 1: you're looking for that catalytic converter that I took out,
Speaker 1: check out one of these ads. I mean, look, we're
Speaker 1: podcast host so when we're not recording, we're both actively
Speaker 1: out and about stealing the catalytic converters. Were just like,
Speaker 1: when well some people are thinking about podcasts, all you
Speaker 1: and I are thinking about is how we're getting more
Speaker 1: catalytic converters out of Honda's. Yeah, that's that's that's my
Speaker 1: whole life. Man. You should have seen me, man, it was.
Speaker 1: It was the twenties. I was podcasting ceiling catalytic convert
Speaker 1: converters at it made out of catalytic converters. Down the street.
Speaker 1: People said, oh, that's the cat King of Portlands. There
Speaker 1: he is. Catman. Uh, here's some adsh we're back and
Speaker 1: we're thinking about stealing catalytic converters. The new business for
Speaker 1: the new Furby. Yeah, it's the new Ferby. Look, the
Speaker 1: economy is heading for another downturn. Can you afford not
Speaker 1: to learn how to steal catalytic converters? That's all sphening
Speaker 1: catalytic converters. Oh yeah, you gotta know how to siphon. Now.
Speaker 1: The good thing about siphoning is the sucking skills that
Speaker 1: you use while siphoning are useful in a variety of
Speaker 1: other endeavors, especially other quasi legal endeavors you're going to
Speaker 1: have to engage in to make a living when the
Speaker 1: economy collapses, which is unclogging toilets with a hose. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you're thinking, folks, Come on, don't be filthy,
Speaker 1: you you, you don't be filthy. Picture someone sucking ship
Speaker 1: through a hose from a toilet. Where Why did you
Speaker 1: have me back, Miles, because we got to talk about
Speaker 1: some really profound child See I always do this. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a good time. Really wait
Speaker 1: wait wait, wait, wait wait now remember the show I
Speaker 1: had you on ONTs to talk about the Trump University
Speaker 1: and after that it's just been bleaker and bleaker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, I like, I like, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: So Joe Richie is one of the kinds of guys
Speaker 1: we deal with from time to time on this show.
Speaker 1: He's famous enough that we have pretty good texture on
Speaker 1: his early life, but he's obscure enough that there's also
Speaker 1: a lot of unanswered questions because, like you're talking about
Speaker 1: a guy like Hitler, there's like a bunch of really
Speaker 1: good biographers who have all covered his child and you
Speaker 1: can get different. You can find the answer to pretty
Speaker 1: much every factual question about his early life. And one
Speaker 1: of those books, if you read enough biography. We only
Speaker 1: have one biography of Joe Ritchie, and pretty much all
Speaker 1: of my info about his early life comes from the
Speaker 1: book Duck in a Raincoat by Mara Curley, and I
Speaker 1: think it's a very good book. But there are moments
Speaker 1: like the one I'm about to quote, where you know
Speaker 1: there's a deeper story lurking quote. Donano said, Richie dated
Speaker 1: his social science teacher in junior high, a tall, dark
Speaker 1: haired beauty just out of college. Now that sounds like
Speaker 1: statutory rape to me, right, what the fuck? Junior high? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his friends just like, oh yeah, he was dating
Speaker 1: one of the teachers. And it's like thirteen year old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's thirteen, fourteen and two, Like that's the youngest she
Speaker 1: could be is twenty two, and it's like taking him.
Speaker 1: I guess it's fine, Um, but I didn't think that
Speaker 1: was the case. Jesus, And that's it. It's just merely
Speaker 1: like he was really cool. He was also a teacher
Speaker 1: when he was like fourteen. Yeah, no, that's how it
Speaker 1: was going. I don't know. I don't know. Did you
Speaker 1: have a lot of weird abandonment issues because of the
Speaker 1: thing with his mom and older women? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, we could talk about that, but it like
Speaker 1: one of the and it seems like his friends it
Speaker 1: was one of the stereotypic things, Well she's hot, it's cool, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think that's the attitude the other kids had
Speaker 1: about it. Um, Obviously this is rape, even if it
Speaker 1: is something that he went to his grave thinking was
Speaker 1: like fine, like it's that doesn't make it. That's why
Speaker 1: it's statutory, right, that's what that is. UM. Now, hearing that,
Speaker 1: hearing that he had this like relationship with a teacher
Speaker 1: much older than him, that he thought nothing, apparently didn't
Speaker 1: think anything about I can't help but wonder if like,
Speaker 1: well he's an altar boy too, did anything like you know, like,
Speaker 1: you can't not consider that given the prevalence of abuse
Speaker 1: in the Catholic Church. Um And I actually did look
Speaker 1: up a comprehensive report on sexual assault allegations against priests
Speaker 1: in the Archdiocese of New York. It's a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five pages. Because the Catholic Church, um And, while
Speaker 1: there are four molester priests who were stationed in port Chester,
Speaker 1: where Joe lived. The earliest left in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: and the others didn't start doing their thing until the
Speaker 1: late sixties, seventies and early eighties, so there's not even
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence to suggest anything happened about this. Um, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to let you guys know I did canto
Speaker 1: it because I wanted to say whatever the truth. Joe
Speaker 1: grew up into a troubled adolescent. He skipped school constantly.
Speaker 1: He and his friends would regularly steel pies from a
Speaker 1: neighbor for pie fights, which is an adorable sort of
Speaker 1: child crying right, yes, like that still cooling? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: how it sounds, right. It sounds like some Andy Griffith level.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the kind of crime you'd said Bartie
Speaker 1: fifout to deal with, right exactly. It's steal and pies, barn,
Speaker 1: what's that guy? Like a Norman Rockwell painting of like
Speaker 1: you know, future cult leader steal and pies for pie fights. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it didn't stay cool cute. When he was fifteen, Joe
Speaker 1: went joy riding with some of his friends. You have
Speaker 1: to assume they were drunk, but we're not. We don't
Speaker 1: know that. Um, they crashed and he was flung from
Speaker 1: the car seatbelts were just a fever dream in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty and he spent months in the hospital and then
Speaker 1: more months in physical therapy, had to learn how to
Speaker 1: walk again, Like, which is like, that's like a level
Speaker 1: of injury severity is you have to relearn how to walk, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a bad accident. Scrambled a little bit, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got I got a little bit. Yeah, scrambled was
Speaker 1: a good word for it. So some of Joe's family
Speaker 1: later told Maura Curley that this accident was a negative
Speaker 1: turning point in his life, possibly because he was given
Speaker 1: a lot of drugs while he was recovering and he
Speaker 1: got addicted to the drugs. Um, there's debate over this.
Speaker 1: That would make sense, right, A lot of people's pain
Speaker 1: killer addiction starts because they are in some sort of
Speaker 1: horrible accident where they get pain killers. Now, about a
Speaker 1: year after he got out of the hospital, his family
Speaker 1: sent him to a residential treatment facility for difficult boys
Speaker 1: called p i n S, or Persons in need of Treatment.
Speaker 1: So and again, we don't have a we don't have
Speaker 1: as much texture about why, as I would like to have.
Speaker 1: But it seems like he recovers from this and his
Speaker 1: parents decide he needs to go to a facility. And
Speaker 1: it may have been just because like, oh, he's been
Speaker 1: joy writing. He was like stealing guards or whatever with
Speaker 1: his friends. They were joy writing. This is clearly a problem.
Speaker 1: Once he recovers, let's send him to a treatment facil
Speaker 1: That may as soon as he recovers from a horrific
Speaker 1: car wreck that rendered him unable to walk, that he
Speaker 1: had to relearn it, then let's just send him away,
Speaker 1: send him which questionable parenting, I would say, Um, at
Speaker 1: that point, are his parents? You're saying his parents are
Speaker 1: his maternal grandparents? Are so not making following along? Ye,
Speaker 1: but they're the ones who raise him. Um. So he
Speaker 1: stays in this treatment facility for two years and then
Speaker 1: returns to high school in nineteen sixty three, where he
Speaker 1: stayed until he left without graduating in nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: at age twenty one. So he's in high school at
Speaker 1: age twenty one, which sounds like a nightmare. He shit,
Speaker 1: which also shouldn't be allowed. What's the what's the how
Speaker 1: does the time work? He was fifteen when he got
Speaker 1: on the car wreck. Yeah, fifteen, and then he's like
Speaker 1: seventeen or eighteen when he gets back from the treatment program.
Speaker 1: And then he stays in high school for three more years,
Speaker 1: so he was like starting sophomore year at like eighteen
Speaker 1: or something. I think, so I think he like he
Speaker 1: what A that's a weird vibe. That's weird, especially since
Speaker 1: at fourteen he's fucking a teacher. And then at twenty
Speaker 1: one he's still in the school, Like that's real hungover
Speaker 1: and then they're like, well, what, it's not illegal, and
Speaker 1: this is this is a school in the sixties, so
Speaker 1: I have to assume all of the kids were drunk
Speaker 1: a hundred percent of the time, as were the teachers,
Speaker 1: as were the teachers God willing um, and everyone was
Speaker 1: chain smoking. So it's less weird than it would be today. Now,
Speaker 1: the same year in the nineteen sixties six when he
Speaker 1: leaves high school. So he leaves. He doesn't leave high
Speaker 1: school because he's like I'm done with school. He leaves
Speaker 1: because he hijacks and mail truck um, or at least
Speaker 1: tries to rob it. The details around the crime are
Speaker 1: a little bit uncertain, but as best as I can determine.
Speaker 1: It seems like he and his lawyer decided to claim
Speaker 1: that he'd done it because he was a heroin addict
Speaker 1: and was desperate for money. Some sources, some of his friends,
Speaker 1: well some of not his friends. Some sources like usually
Speaker 1: when you find his life reported on an articles, they'll
Speaker 1: say he was a heroin addict and that's why he
Speaker 1: robs this mail truck and gets sent to the facility
Speaker 1: he's sent to. That's not what Mara Curly, his only biographer, thinks,
Speaker 1: And that because and she doesn't think that because people
Speaker 1: she talked to who were friends of Joe Richie's during
Speaker 1: this period of time don't think he was a heroin addict.
Speaker 1: Like he did a little bit of heroin, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't like a hardcore addict. He wasn't like he was
Speaker 1: robbing ship. But he wasn't robbing ship because his heroin
Speaker 1: addiction was so bad. That's what some of his friends.
Speaker 1: He liked the thrill of the robbery. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he wanted ship. Um. I don't know, I didn't know
Speaker 1: the guy. Um, but this was a really good time
Speaker 1: in American history to try to to go to a
Speaker 1: judge and say, hey, I did it because I'm a
Speaker 1: drug addict and I need to go to a treatment
Speaker 1: facility rather than prison. Because, as we just talked about,
Speaker 1: sinning On was at the peak of its fame in
Speaker 1: the late sixties, and so it had just become popular
Speaker 1: for judges to send people to programs like this rather
Speaker 1: than sending them to prison straight. It's funny how we
Speaker 1: went for like full circle of being like yeah, and
Speaker 1: like we want to have some little bit of compassion
Speaker 1: even though side to some really funked up organization to
Speaker 1: amassing carceration the people again like yeah, let's do some
Speaker 1: rehabilitation before incarceration again. Okay, Okay, we're back there again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's not the wrong thing from the judge's point
Speaker 1: of view. I guess it's also possibility lied about the
Speaker 1: addiction because it's a lot better to go to one
Speaker 1: of these facilities and fun right now, whatever the truth.
Speaker 1: Joe goes to the day Top village in New York
Speaker 1: and he thrives there. Um, he's really good at the game.
Speaker 1: These sessions that he participates in with other addicts where
Speaker 1: you're like telling each other about your faults and flaws
Speaker 1: and stuff. He's really good he's very good at it.
Speaker 1: Like there's like a break or rankings. It's like have
Speaker 1: you seen Joe in the game. It's a social thing,
Speaker 1: so everyone is supposed to take turns kind of picking
Speaker 1: an individual and like talking about the things they don't
Speaker 1: like about that person. That's that's like kind of how
Speaker 1: it goes. Some people are good at directing those sort
Speaker 1: of group conversations. They're good at controlling them. They're good
Speaker 1: at getting other people to get hang up on someone.
Speaker 1: They're good at avoiding being the focus of negative attention themselves.
Speaker 1: And this is a thing that's been observed by psychologists
Speaker 1: and stuff about UM. Sociopaths in particular are very good
Speaker 1: at group therapy. Like they they're good. They're they're good
Speaker 1: at manipulating people. It's what they do UM and so
Speaker 1: they know how to take advantage of these places and
Speaker 1: kind of one of the dangers and this is we
Speaker 1: talked about this in the Cinnanon episode and I found
Speaker 1: a study on this. It's been noted that a number
Speaker 1: of cults have come out of different alcoholics anonymous groups.
Speaker 1: And this is not like me shipping on a I
Speaker 1: know people who swear by it, but it's a problem
Speaker 1: that has been noted with a A is that sometimes
Speaker 1: these these kind of group therapy sessions, individuals within them
Speaker 1: gain a level of mental control of other people in them,
Speaker 1: and they turn into cults. It's happened a handful of times.
Speaker 1: That's how Sentanon started. Um. So it's like it's the
Speaker 1: the material for star more. Formation is present at a cult.
Speaker 1: Formation is present and if with the right ingredients, it
Speaker 1: may leave in the right and it can happen. Which
Speaker 1: is it's more this is again less of a flaw
Speaker 1: in a and more of just like this is how
Speaker 1: people work a This is one of the things they're
Speaker 1: vulnerable to because of the you know, other other things.
Speaker 1: Churches are vulnerable to this thing too. Right, it's not
Speaker 1: exacting on a here, but it's a known quantity in
Speaker 1: these kinds of organizations. And Joe is very good at that.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean when I say that he was
Speaker 1: good at the game, he's right right reippillating people in
Speaker 1: this way. I was being stupid and acting as if
Speaker 1: they were like the game at Richie killing it. He
Speaker 1: brought up, as you know, his paternal abandonment issues. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: He's like I do kind of now want like football announcers,
Speaker 1: like covering therapy. Oh, we just talked about the fact
Speaker 1: that his dad used to hit him. He went there,
Speaker 1: he went there. You didn't think he's going to go
Speaker 1: there this early on. And I think he's going to
Speaker 1: counter with something about his mother's inability to say that
Speaker 1: she loved him. Yep. Okay, Oh my god, you just
Speaker 1: brought up the time he left the gate open and
Speaker 1: the dog got out and was hit by a car. Oh,
Speaker 1: she's bringing out pictures of the sister. She's bringing out
Speaker 1: pictures of the sister. We have not seen this in
Speaker 1: a long time. Richard usually doesn't just emailed me. Um,
Speaker 1: they're giving us forty two million dollars to make this show.
Speaker 1: An algorithm just deemed it, so thank you Netflix algorithm.
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, I guess this is what we're this is, Sophie.
Speaker 1: Let's U cancel the show for the day. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure the eventually they're gonna be like, this
Speaker 1: is what we're thinking, Robert, we're noticing how big Pokemon
Speaker 1: is and how big your podcast is. What about behind
Speaker 1: the Bastard's Man, where it's you got to catch them all? Okay,
Speaker 1: and it's this anime series and it's a little bit
Speaker 1: of everything. Huh, how do what do you think about that? Huh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the algorithm says it's going to be a fucking hit.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I'll do anything for enough money to
Speaker 1: buy an armored vehicle. Now there there's news for you.
Speaker 1: Got to just all your bastard mon You gotta catch
Speaker 1: them all. Got to catch all of the route clearance vehicles.
Speaker 1: Um So, he's really good. He goes to day Top.
Speaker 1: He's really good at the game. He learns he starts
Speaker 1: this is really when he learns like that he has
Speaker 1: a gift for actually kind of like manipulating people. And
Speaker 1: at first he's doing in such a way that he's
Speaker 1: trying to like I think, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know how much he sees it this way. But other
Speaker 1: people see it as like he's helping them deal with
Speaker 1: their addiction issues, right Like. They don't see it as like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's doing cult leadership. They see it's like, oh, this
Speaker 1: kid is charismatic and understands people and as good at
Speaker 1: getting them to see their own flaws and their faults
Speaker 1: and help them work through in process their adding Um
Speaker 1: So he gets a lot of praise within day Top,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon he becomes like their most prominent member.
Speaker 1: He's giving speeches and raising funds for the organization and
Speaker 1: becomes their number one fundraiser. So he's like going outside
Speaker 1: of the group to like raise money for them and
Speaker 1: other and to talk about like how good they are
Speaker 1: like stopping people from being addicted and stuff. Um. And
Speaker 1: he later recalled that previously quote, I've done the therapy bit,
Speaker 1: but this blew my mind. In other words, he'd done
Speaker 1: therapy before, but therapy didn't give him the chance to
Speaker 1: like manipulate a bunch of people, and he really likes
Speaker 1: manipulating a bunch of people. Yeah, it's like in all
Speaker 1: you can manipulate buffet in there. I can't believe that's
Speaker 1: exactly the case. So he's happy at Day Top. This
Speaker 1: is an influential moment for him, but he doesn't agree
Speaker 1: with all of their therapy. For one thing, they all
Speaker 1: had to shave their heads, which was something that sent
Speaker 1: it on dead and he thought that was weird. He
Speaker 1: also butted heads with the administrators when they told him
Speaker 1: he wasn't ready to graduate, and eventually he ran away
Speaker 1: from the program. I think they wanted to keep him
Speaker 1: there because he was so good at raising money, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we get that guy up now at the time, like
Speaker 1: right around when he runs away from Day Top, he
Speaker 1: starts dating a woman named Sherry in New York. Now,
Speaker 1: Sherry was working at a travel agency, and she fell
Speaker 1: for Joe in part because she was that her parents
Speaker 1: were alcoholics, and he understood the issue she faced as
Speaker 1: a child of alcoholics. He understands abuse or not abuse,
Speaker 1: but drug abuse really well, right, he's just been counseling
Speaker 1: people he's actually able to like talk with Obviously, that's
Speaker 1: a thing that would like draw you to someone. You
Speaker 1: have this horrible experience, He understands. It makes sense why
Speaker 1: they why they get together. When Richie left Daytop, he
Speaker 1: moves right in with Sherry and her roommate, and at
Speaker 1: first she says things were great. He cleaned to the house,
Speaker 1: he would bring her little little gifts. He successfully wooed
Speaker 1: her so well that she canceled her plans to move
Speaker 1: to New York City and train as a stewardess. The
Speaker 1: two were engaged to be married, but early on there
Speaker 1: were unsettling signs about the man that he might really
Speaker 1: be quote and This is from duck in a raincoat.
Speaker 1: Richie sued Sherry's insurance company for injuries he said he
Speaker 1: sustained during a minor traffic accident. Sherry had run a
Speaker 1: stoplight and hadn't thought he was more and hadn't thought
Speaker 1: he was even injured, but her insurance company settled the claim.
Speaker 1: Richie used the money to buy her an engagement ring.
Speaker 1: So he shoes her insurance company in order to get
Speaker 1: money to buy her a ring, which is wow, this guy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is some for d scumbag ship. That's kind of
Speaker 1: a sign this guy might be a little bit that's
Speaker 1: that's a little slimy. Yeah, but hey, the rings beautiful.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's an insurance company, right, If
Speaker 1: that is the only I wouldn't judge a guy for
Speaker 1: that necessarily because like, yeah, I get whatever Mon's I
Speaker 1: find ways to extract things with very little effort and
Speaker 1: I don't care how underhanded it is. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: this says about him. Now, Sherry seems to have been
Speaker 1: fined about this um, but this bit of insurance fraud
Speaker 1: would prove to be the beginning of a fairly long
Speaker 1: career in insurance fraud. The two were married in December
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty nine. They were both twenty four. Richie
Speaker 1: needed a job, and since his only real life experience
Speaker 1: was either crimes or manipulating institutions, he decided to get
Speaker 1: a job working at the kind of place he'd been
Speaker 1: sent as a kid. He heard about a pilot program
Speaker 1: being launched for drug addicts in Connecticut. It was called Dartek,
Speaker 1: and it was one of the first programs to include
Speaker 1: both medical professionals and former addicts working side by side
Speaker 1: to counsel people, which seemed like a much better idea
Speaker 1: than the synnon method of addicts mentally abusing other addicts
Speaker 1: to keep them sober. The founder of the program, doctor
Speaker 1: Donald Pett, hired Joe Ritchie after a phone interview because
Speaker 1: he seemed persuasive. Quote, Joe had a very unusual way
Speaker 1: of getting many of the street people to follow him.
Speaker 1: He often got people to rally around him, kind of
Speaker 1: see things his way, do his bidding again some cult leadership.
Speaker 1: You know, wow, the street people that they said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're talking about all these people there now. One of
Speaker 1: the other staff members at Dartek introduced Ritchie to a
Speaker 1: Massachusetts psychiatrist, named Gerald Davidson. The two weren't coworkers long
Speaker 1: before Richie and Sherry moved again to another job at
Speaker 1: a drug counseling center called Survival Ink. But Joe clearly
Speaker 1: made an impact on Dr Davidson, one that was out
Speaker 1: of step with his actual skill in treating addiction. Evidence
Speaker 1: for this is that Joe brought three Dartek staff members
Speaker 1: with him to Survival Link and all three of them
Speaker 1: were fired soon after because they were caught using drugs
Speaker 1: while working as drug abuse counselors. Well, he may not
Speaker 1: be good at anything but manipulating people in reality. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: Joe is one who fired them, and he made a
Speaker 1: statement to the press saying their behavior was unacceptable, and
Speaker 1: it seems like the incident had an impact on him.
Speaker 1: Not long after that, in nineteen seventy one, the couple
Speaker 1: decided to open a therapeutic community of their own. Joe
Speaker 1: reached out to Dr Davidson, who he had worked with briefly,
Speaker 1: and because he was a smooth son of a bitch,
Speaker 1: convinced the older man to be their business partner in
Speaker 1: starting a new facility. Because Dr Davidson is a psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: Andy has money, you know, you gotta love it, and
Speaker 1: you've got a license probably too. Yeah, he's got some licenses.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons. It's a good call. Now, Miles,
Speaker 1: you know what's an even better call than convincing a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist to fund your child abuse company program? Uh? That
Speaker 1: this seminar we're given on how to unload catalytic converters
Speaker 1: on Craigslist using that's right. Uh, and pick up Miles
Speaker 1: and I's new book, The Catalytic Converter Driven Life, which
Speaker 1: is all about how stealing catalytic converters called welcome converts.
Speaker 1: What a good cult this is gonna be. We're back.
Speaker 1: I'm just fondling a couple of cats and catalytic converters.
Speaker 1: That is um. That's what we call it around here.
Speaker 1: That's that's what we call it around here, in the
Speaker 1: in the in the verter biz um. So by nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, which is when Joe decides to start his
Speaker 1: own facility, Sin and On was a full on cult,
Speaker 1: but public awareness of that fact was not high. People
Speaker 1: were aware that drug abuse rehabilitation centners could save addicts,
Speaker 1: and such facilities had exploded in popularity. Now at the time,
Speaker 1: new York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts all had very stringent laws
Speaker 1: about what kind of professional qualifications you had to have
Speaker 1: to work in such a place. Right those states have
Speaker 1: like you consider it basically a hospital. If you're trying,
Speaker 1: if you're saying, I want to open a residential treatment
Speaker 1: facility for addicts, you have to like have medical, serious
Speaker 1: medical credentials in order to what if I just really
Speaker 1: want to do it, then you moved to Maine. You
Speaker 1: do with Shoe Joe Richie and Sarah and Sherry do,
Speaker 1: which is you move to Maine because Maine does not
Speaker 1: give a funk about anything. Now. At the beginning, the
Speaker 1: program was owned by Dr Davidson and another man, David Goldberg,
Speaker 1: who actually had the money necessary to start the business.
Speaker 1: The Richie's used their money to lease a former summer
Speaker 1: camp in Naples, Maine, which they turned into their facility.
Speaker 1: From the beginning, Dr Davidson's role in all of this
Speaker 1: was to be a doctor, right, not to actually do medicine,
Speaker 1: but to be a doctor who was professionally associated with
Speaker 1: the organization. Could put his name on advertising material and
Speaker 1: they can use it to claim that their facility has
Speaker 1: a basis in clinical therapy. And since Dr Davidson was
Speaker 1: the associate director of the Drug Clinic at Boston City Hospital,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of professional weight to throw around.
Speaker 1: But again, he's never there. He's not actually doing anything.
Speaker 1: It's he's giving money. He's like funding this, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: So from this start, it was agreed that Dr Davidson
Speaker 1: would not work on site. He would stay in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: working at a hospital and using his position as a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist to refer patients to the new business he'd started,
Speaker 1: which is not at all the conflict of oh my god, Okay,
Speaker 1: they're sucking radh it's so good, so good. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: need you need some help, you know. Actually I know
Speaker 1: this place. Actually, oh yeah, it's a it's out in Maine,
Speaker 1: you know. Um yeah, it's run by this guy who
Speaker 1: has no qualifications other than being a guy. He really
Speaker 1: wants to do it here. He's yeah, he's he's had
Speaker 1: no expertise, though all had no expertise. So Richie and
Speaker 1: his wife were supervisors, working for free room and board
Speaker 1: in a cut of the profits. But when one of
Speaker 1: their other partners, a guy who invested with the doctor,
Speaker 1: was caught embezzling, Richie and his wife bought their way
Speaker 1: into a full partnership by selling eight thousand dollars worth
Speaker 1: of stocks that Sherry had inherited from her grandma. So
Speaker 1: Richie but comes a partner because of money that his
Speaker 1: wife has. Right um. Now, the early years of this
Speaker 1: business are hard. The Richies were very poor, and by
Speaker 1: all accounts, Joe was obsessed with getting rich from the beginning.
Speaker 1: The Alan School, as they came to call it, was
Speaker 1: not about helping people. It was about making Joe Richie
Speaker 1: a fortune. Still, it does seem to have started as
Speaker 1: I don't know, somewhat genuine. It doesn't seem to have
Speaker 1: initially been horribly toxic, at least within the standards of
Speaker 1: the industry. And I'm gonna quote from Duck in a
Speaker 1: Raincoat again. They lived on the top floor of the
Speaker 1: rustic building in Naples with residents on the second floor.
Speaker 1: Everybody shared the ground level. They seldom had any private time,
Speaker 1: never went out to eat or to the movies. Every
Speaker 1: activity centered around the therapeutic community and making lots of money.
Speaker 1: Sherry center husband would often lie awake in bed thinking
Speaker 1: aloud about how they were going to make their first
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars becoming rich was definitely an obsession that
Speaker 1: seemed to drive Joe recalled an early staff member at Alan,
Speaker 1: money was extremely important to him, and when when he
Speaker 1: was earning ten thousand dollars a year and driving an old,
Speaker 1: Oldsmobile and represented the power to be somebody important who
Speaker 1: would be accepted by everyone around him, and that meant
Speaker 1: a lot. So from the beginning, his motivation here is
Speaker 1: to get rich off this not necessarily to determine any
Speaker 1: new method of actually helping people right right, And if
Speaker 1: even if it wasn't toxic at first, it seems like
Speaker 1: he probably felt some kind of momentum beginning with his
Speaker 1: ability to grift and manipulate. Yeah, and when I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know that it was toxic at first because
Speaker 1: we don't have a lot of detailers at the early
Speaker 1: times of the school. Now, from the at the beginning,
Speaker 1: most of the money that they made was put right
Speaker 1: back into the business. But it gradually started to make
Speaker 1: a major profit because they started drawing in and Joe
Speaker 1: would actually go out and like recruit people to join
Speaker 1: the facility, particularly troubled teens from wealthy families. Um so
Speaker 1: they would like Joe and dr Davidson would go out
Speaker 1: and like talk to rich parents whose kids head like
Speaker 1: we're in legal trouble, had like serious problems with addiction.
Speaker 1: Like because Davidson is a psychiatrist, he knows which rich
Speaker 1: parents have are paying able to pay for serious for
Speaker 1: their kids. And Joe will go out and like, because
Speaker 1: Joe's good at convincing people of things, will convince them
Speaker 1: to send their kid over to a laan and pay
Speaker 1: a month for treatment. In nineteen seventies money, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of um. So, the Naples Facility relocated
Speaker 1: to the former Potter Academy, a landmark in the town
Speaker 1: of Sebago, and another secondary style was the site was
Speaker 1: established in Waterford, Maine. So they expand very quickly because
Speaker 1: going after rich kids is good business. Throughout the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Joe Richie expanded his methods from you know,
Speaker 1: he started off just kind of ripping off the day
Speaker 1: top school and sent and on um to to building
Speaker 1: something new. And this happens gradually. We don't know the
Speaker 1: exact time frame in which this occurs, but it happens,
Speaker 1: you know, in the early years of the facility. UM So,
Speaker 1: initially all the therapy. You have these group talk sessions
Speaker 1: based off the game. You have various forms of labor.
Speaker 1: People are asked to, like do physical labor outdoors as
Speaker 1: part of like they're they're kind of like a punishment
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases. Um and Richie designed Allan's
Speaker 1: culture around a series of work crews. Each member started
Speaker 1: as a worker and was assigned a job in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: the business office, the communications office, or on the grounds
Speaker 1: based on what was considered to be their weakest area.
Speaker 1: So you get a job doing grunt level labor and
Speaker 1: what everything you're worse at. Uh. In a nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine article for Corrections magazine, Dr Davidson claimed this was
Speaker 1: quote to teach them to function under adversity and learn
Speaker 1: to accept failure. Now, from worker, which everyone starts as
Speaker 1: a worker, you move up to ramrod or foreman, which
Speaker 1: is like, you know, in charge of a small group
Speaker 1: of workers. After that you move up to department head
Speaker 1: and then up to coordinator. Joe felt that structure and
Speaker 1: communal living were both necessary in order to treat addicts,
Speaker 1: but while he was experimenting with new ways to counsel
Speaker 1: drug addiction, he was also experimenting with insurance fraud. So
Speaker 1: in January of nineteen seventy four, a fire destroyed his
Speaker 1: academy at Sobago. Thankfully no one was there at the time.
Speaker 1: Davidson and Richie were in Chicago recruiting residence. The building's
Speaker 1: owner told the press that he didn't have much insurance,
Speaker 1: but Richie bragged that the Allan School itself was quote
Speaker 1: adequately insured due to the extensive remodeling his residence had
Speaker 1: done to the building. Now, there was no evidence that
Speaker 1: his residence had remodeled anything, because the building had burned down,
Speaker 1: but he was able to successfully argue that this increased
Speaker 1: the insurance value of the property. Uh, and he makes
Speaker 1: a lot of money off of the insurance building that
Speaker 1: gets conveniently burned down. Yeah, don't worry about that. Don't
Speaker 1: worry about the no insurance, you know, because I'm looking
Speaker 1: at about probably four or five six hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: or the remodel work that I didn't sure anyway, So
Speaker 1: it's all. But it's all the insurance coverage. It's really
Speaker 1: it's fine, no problem. So Sherry would later claim that
Speaker 1: the fire was a turning point for Richie in the
Speaker 1: Allan School they purchased a new permanent location in Poland Spring, Maine,
Speaker 1: with seven large buildings that would each act as separate
Speaker 1: communities within the increasingly complex society Joe Richie was building. Now,
Speaker 1: at this point, I haven't given a lot of detail
Speaker 1: about what happened at a LAN because we don't really
Speaker 1: know about the early seventies all that much. It seems
Speaker 1: are to say that early on there was little to
Speaker 1: differentiate a LAN from other programs based off of Cynanon
Speaker 1: and day Top. They practiced the game, which tended to
Speaker 1: be regularly scheduled therapy sessions. Uh and yeah, the idea like,
Speaker 1: so it seems like they're kind of doing the same
Speaker 1: thing seventy three. At some point, though, it starts to change,
Speaker 1: and it changes in part because the LAN is very centralized.
Speaker 1: From the beginning, there's the strict hierarchy, these different jobs
Speaker 1: everybody has, and you move up or down if your
Speaker 1: behavior is bad. That seems to be kind of everything
Speaker 1: else is spawned from this idea. So one of the
Speaker 1: first things that Joe develops that's different from what other
Speaker 1: facilities has done is he takes the game and he changes.
Speaker 1: Isn't this something different? So the game two or three
Speaker 1: times a week. In these other communities, everyone sits down
Speaker 1: to play the game, right, um, and that's the way
Speaker 1: the game works. Joe replaces it with something called a
Speaker 1: general meeting. Um, And rather than being a regular scheduled
Speaker 1: part of the week, a general meeting was unpredictable. Instead
Speaker 1: of it being a thing everyone does together, it's often
Speaker 1: an unpleasant thing that everyone does it together. A general
Speaker 1: meaning is something that's done to you. If your behavior
Speaker 1: is bad, Joe or one of the other supervisors will
Speaker 1: call the general fucking meeting against you. And it's usually
Speaker 1: done because, like Joe or a supervisor decides, this person
Speaker 1: has done something bad. So in the game, every individual
Speaker 1: pretty much is going to get called out for some
Speaker 1: sort of bad behavior. Right. You go around the circle
Speaker 1: and everybody spends some time getting you know, ship talked basically, Right,
Speaker 1: A general meeting isn't like that. Only one person is
Speaker 1: getting yelled at and they're getting yelled at by everybody. Wow,
Speaker 1: So it's just like all right, feeding frenzy, here we
Speaker 1: go just for this person. Yeah. Um. The frame the
Speaker 1: term that we used for this was get your feelings off, right,
Speaker 1: So everyone's called It's like get your feelings off on him,
Speaker 1: get your like how is he hurt you? Basically, how
Speaker 1: is his behavior his he fucked up at this thing?
Speaker 1: Like how did it affect you negatively? Um, And obviously
Speaker 1: you can't not say something. I found one record of
Speaker 1: audio that is purported to have been recorded secretly during
Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties of a general meeting at a
Speaker 1: lawn school, and the law graduates have said some people
Speaker 1: argue that maybe this was staged, but either way, they say,
Speaker 1: this is accurate to how it sounds. So here is
Speaker 1: a general meeting at the law school. Back expects. So
Speaker 1: the game, it's kind of debatable as to how therapeutically useful.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of criticisms of the game, this
Speaker 1: is just abuse. Like, I mean, the game was pretty
Speaker 1: abusive in a lot of cases, but like this is
Speaker 1: just pure abuse. Like great screaming. Yeah, you can argue
Speaker 1: even though there's abusive elements to the game, going around
Speaker 1: in a circle everybody, like there's elements of that that
Speaker 1: could be helpful. This is just this is just abuse, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just as screaming meat grinder and like also that that
Speaker 1: what the fun. The person's inhalations too, were like so labor.
Speaker 1: And this point that former students will make is that
Speaker 1: you learn how to yell in a specific way unique
Speaker 1: to the Alan school. Because of the way in which
Speaker 1: you are trained to yell at people and abuse people,
Speaker 1: there's like a specific cadence, specific kinds of terms that
Speaker 1: you use. Um, you know, exhaust on a Harley Davidson man.
Speaker 1: You know, so you can tell Alan scream Yeah, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what what former I don't makes will say. So.
Speaker 1: One of the difficulties in preparing this episode is that
Speaker 1: the system of abuse that Joe Richie crafted for Alan
Speaker 1: was extremely complicated in a way. What he built over
Speaker 1: the first few years was like an engine designed to
Speaker 1: be self perpetuating and maintaining. We don't have a good
Speaker 1: data on the order in which it all came together, um,
Speaker 1: but we do have bits and pieces of that story.
Speaker 1: One of these comes from the nineteen seventy one interview
Speaker 1: with Dr Davidson from News and World Report, in which
Speaker 1: he claimed, quote, therapeutic communities largely are run by X
Speaker 1: addicts who have become extremely sanctimonious. Like all converted heathens.
Speaker 1: They shave their patients heads, make them wear diapers, hang
Speaker 1: degrading signs on them, things like that. In our therapeutic community,
Speaker 1: we do not do this. Our approach is to build
Speaker 1: self esteem and regard for others. Now, this is a
Speaker 1: lie um at least it runs counter to what we
Speaker 1: know Alan was doing in this same period of time.
Speaker 1: But also Dr Davidson was never there, so maybe he
Speaker 1: was just didn't know um. That same year, Joe Richie
Speaker 1: did an interview with a local TV news station where
Speaker 1: he claimed that the goal of a Lawan was to
Speaker 1: instill self reliance, self respect, and a capacity for love. Quote.
Speaker 1: We tailored the program to fit the individual, not the
Speaker 1: individual to fit the program. This was also not in
Speaker 1: line with what we know was going on at a LAN,
Speaker 1: but it was consistent with Joe Richie's desire to market
Speaker 1: his school to the parents of rich kids. In the
Speaker 1: early years, he did a lot of direct sales to
Speaker 1: these parents, and he would even offer to fly his
Speaker 1: private plane out to them to pick kids up. He
Speaker 1: called a lawn the Rolls Royce of adolescent treatment centers.
Speaker 1: So again, I can't tell you how this all came
Speaker 1: together exactly, but I can tell you that by nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, when General when Corrections magazine did a profile
Speaker 1: on the Allan School. Uh it had already developed a
Speaker 1: number of unsettling characteristics, including an internal secret police force quote.
Speaker 1: There are no clinical offices at a LAN, No fifty minutes,
Speaker 1: see you next week. Couch sessions six days and nights
Speaker 1: a week. Each LAN residence is a hotbed of raw,
Speaker 1: supercharged emotion. When the house is functioning, working at therapy,
Speaker 1: the expediters are at work keeping a written record of
Speaker 1: negative behavior. They have a lot of status like a
Speaker 1: secret police force. As one resident, they take attendance all
Speaker 1: the time and book incidents like if you Talk Back
Speaker 1: or Fight. Each book is a strange collection of names
Speaker 1: or narratives, attention seekers, googers, manipulators, nonrelators. At eleven ten today,
Speaker 1: Diane was called out for obnoxious behavior. Incidents are collected,
Speaker 1: reviewed and dealt with appropriately, and appropriately usually means severely.
Speaker 1: You're not dealing with your feelings at all, screams a
Speaker 1: dominutive girl to a massive boy in a lawn. Seven
Speaker 1: he has talked back to a coordinator. Why don't you
Speaker 1: grow some guts and brains instead instead of just balls?
Speaker 1: You blockhead and just as quickly as it began, the
Speaker 1: confrontation is over. Both peacefully shuffle off to work again.
Speaker 1: So you have this, You have these people keeping track
Speaker 1: of everyone, writing down in a notebook every bad thing
Speaker 1: they do, so that it can be there can be
Speaker 1: a meeting at some point in the day where you
Speaker 1: yell at this person over it, like where every single
Speaker 1: piece of behavior you do is being monitored at all times.
Speaker 1: And this is true of everybody, including the people who
Speaker 1: are giving out punishment. They're also always being monitors. So anyone,
Speaker 1: if you have status, you can lose it for bad behavior. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you don't have status, you can report people
Speaker 1: who might be above you and get them in trouble.
Speaker 1: Like it's this whole it's an assent of abuse, right
Speaker 1: and it's not necessarily Like when you said internal police rs,
Speaker 1: I felt like they're ordaining people to be these snitches.
Speaker 1: But it's just the the ecosystem operates and such that
Speaker 1: it self police is to be able to gotcha each
Speaker 1: other at the general's that's part of it. There is this.
Speaker 1: This is a position. Expediter is a job. There's just
Speaker 1: always kids with notebooks taking down what everyone does. Um.
Speaker 1: But can you come for an expeditor. Yeah, what you have,
Speaker 1: I mean you would have meetings throughat like once a day.
Speaker 1: You're going to be like called into a room with
Speaker 1: kids above you and to talk about your bad behavior.
Speaker 1: And you're also generally asked if you saw anyone else
Speaker 1: doing anything. And you also have these slips of paper
Speaker 1: that you can write down a bad behavior you saw
Speaker 1: from someone else and put it in a little like
Speaker 1: basically like a notebox, and it those get read and
Speaker 1: people get punished for that snitch suggestion box. Yes, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so all of this stuff. Like again, the whole goal
Speaker 1: here is to create is to make the kids lock
Speaker 1: each other down so much that no one can misbehave
Speaker 1: that the program runs just based on all of these
Speaker 1: kids trying to either get back at each other or
Speaker 1: avoid punishment themselves. And any way to do that is
Speaker 1: to punish other people like live in some like panopticon
Speaker 1: where they all feel like they're also they can never
Speaker 1: hide either. Yes, that's a huge part of it now.
Speaker 1: In cent and on, people who broke major rules were
Speaker 1: given haircuts, which was initially just like a dressing down,
Speaker 1: but was turned into literal haircuts, like eventually they would
Speaker 1: start shaving your head for bad behavior at a lan.
Speaker 1: The haircuts were metaphorical, but somehow much more abusive than
Speaker 1: forcibly shaving someone bald. Haircuts were basically lesser general meetings.
Speaker 1: They could take the tear the form of a blast
Speaker 1: where one person would scream at you for bad behavior,
Speaker 1: or a round robin where a dozen people would do it,
Speaker 1: or a twenty one gun salute, which involved two dozen
Speaker 1: people berating you. These lesser reprimands were called for bike
Speaker 1: kids against other kids, rather than being doled out by
Speaker 1: any kind of administrator. In nineteen seventy nine, when Corrections
Speaker 1: magazine covered a lawn, so called experts touted this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that made a law revolutionary. That
Speaker 1: article quoted the headmaster of a Montessori school who claimed
Speaker 1: it works. The kids disciplined themselves with haircuts. The result
Speaker 1: is that there are no discipline problems in school. It
Speaker 1: would be more accurate to say that a lawn successfully
Speaker 1: transformed most discipline problems into institutionally supported abuse, because the
Speaker 1: only way to have any kind of control over your
Speaker 1: life at a lawn was to play along and raise
Speaker 1: through the ranks, at which point you would be able
Speaker 1: to give haircuts, or eventually called general meetings. The system
Speaker 1: was built to encourage kids to join it in order
Speaker 1: to dish out the abuse they'd had to suffer for months,
Speaker 1: and to suffer less abuse themselves. Alan punishments included signs
Speaker 1: which listed the perpetrators supposed sins, and again, Davidson has said,
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that makes us different
Speaker 1: from other We don't hang signs from people's next. They
Speaker 1: totally did h Kids are forced to make signs themselves,
Speaker 1: but the wording was created by the student students who
Speaker 1: are punishing them, and by employees of the school. I
Speaker 1: found one example online and I'm gonna my ows. You
Speaker 1: want to read the sign that young woman's care is
Speaker 1: holding around her neck? Okay, this is my name is
Speaker 1: Phyllis Cohen. I behave like an emotional cripple. I consistently
Speaker 1: seek people's attention and try to get them to prove
Speaker 1: they care about me. I play games and continually usurp
Speaker 1: people's emotions in order to make myself feel special. Please
Speaker 1: confront me, because if I don't change, this attitude will
Speaker 1: always I don't know, it says, we'll always something the
Speaker 1: scared and lonely. Yeah, what the fuck? That's pretty bad ship.
Speaker 1: This is so this is someone they're like, okay, this, okay,
Speaker 1: we figured you out. You're an emotional cripple. That what
Speaker 1: the that's not you have around your neck? Yeah? Then
Speaker 1: this sign is massive. It's gonna be what two and
Speaker 1: have three feet. It's like a poster board. It's it's
Speaker 1: bigger than her almost. But also like, like why is
Speaker 1: it like colorful to like there's like a it. Well,
Speaker 1: she had to make it. Somebody get wrote that down
Speaker 1: for her. I don't think it's handering. It think those
Speaker 1: are like cut stickers or something, cutout stickers. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's like rainbow. Yeah, unnecessary flair for such an abusive
Speaker 1: sign though. Also yeah, they had a lot of flair.
Speaker 1: They had the whole school. One of the things you
Speaker 1: would have to do constantly is like right posters and
Speaker 1: stuff that they would put in everywhere. So there's always
Speaker 1: these posters with like batshit motivational slogans over all the walls.
Speaker 1: It's just the worst cripple. It's like a rainbow and
Speaker 1: like a pot of gold. Yeah. I kind of want
Speaker 1: one of those actually from my own office. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from that Corrections magazine. Right up again, Miles,
Speaker 1: where's your sign? Get that sign on all right, will
Speaker 1: break it over your head, barks Mark the staff member
Speaker 1: running the general meeting at a lawn five or at
Speaker 1: a lawn four in Parsonville and parson Field, a lawn
Speaker 1: four is the residence for the toughest of the tough.
Speaker 1: It is the only locked facility. For over a week now,
Speaker 1: a lawn four has been in a tight house, all
Speaker 1: privileges suspended because of a poorhouse attitude. Mark Zero's in
Speaker 1: on a few offenders as sixty pairs of cold eyes
Speaker 1: look on in the cafeteria. Paulson, get up here, he
Speaker 1: screams in a thirteen year old with a tossal of
Speaker 1: brown hair. You know why you're up here, don't you? Well,
Speaker 1: after this morning, you're never gonna not do your homework again.
Speaker 1: You're gonna want to be dead. Where is your dunce cap?
Speaker 1: Get him a dunce cap that will touch the ceiling,
Speaker 1: he says. And again. They would like give these people
Speaker 1: like dunce caps as big as their bodies and stuff like.
Speaker 1: They would make people wear costumes. They made one kid,
Speaker 1: uh dress up as Jesus. I think it was like
Speaker 1: a horse. They like chained his feet to a ball
Speaker 1: and like dressed him up as an animal like it
Speaker 1: would get fucked up. Um damn. Yeah that's and and
Speaker 1: you're saying this is in Corrections magazine, where they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: look check out the work they're doing here. It's actually
Speaker 1: pretty critical, to be honest, like the Spotlight wasn't like
Speaker 1: you know, like this is just a magazine for like
Speaker 1: critical is it should have been maybe, but it was nine.
Speaker 1: They didn't know. I don't know, we'll see they could
Speaker 1: have been more critical, but it's like not positive, like
Speaker 1: it doesn't pay to Maybe the fascists who read Corrections
Speaker 1: Magazine were like this sounds like that, but like I
Speaker 1: thought it was a pretty dark portrayal of this facility.
Speaker 1: You just never know, like considering the odds are like wow,
Speaker 1: did you see that? Right up? At one point, Um.
Speaker 1: The article discusses encounter sessions, and these are a result
Speaker 1: of one of the weird programs Joe Richie developed for
Speaker 1: his school over the years, and encounter sessions students are
Speaker 1: so students are required every day to write little fill
Speaker 1: out slips of paper admitting their guilt, which is like
Speaker 1: every day you have to write what rules you violated
Speaker 1: during the day that you didn't get caught for, and
Speaker 1: then you would have to come in and talk to
Speaker 1: a group of your fellow student and a staff member
Speaker 1: about the different things that you've done that you weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to dosional. Yeah, and when I'm talking about rule breaking, miles,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about like, well, it's horrifying. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read you a brief, non comprehensive list of
Speaker 1: the different guilts. And guilt is called you have guilt, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's the term they would use it, like have
Speaker 1: you've done something bad? Talking too loudly, talking too quietly,
Speaker 1: talking to someone without authorization, talking to a non strength
Speaker 1: while being non strength. So eventually one of the this
Speaker 1: is one of the they keep adding like different sort
Speaker 1: of rule, like different sort of classifications, so it's sort
Speaker 1: of like workers or ramrods. And eventually they add in
Speaker 1: strength or non strength, So all of the low ranking
Speaker 1: students are non strength and all of the once you
Speaker 1: reach a certain point your strength and then there's high strength,
Speaker 1: and so certain jobs only open up when you become
Speaker 1: strength or high strength. When you're low strength, you can't
Speaker 1: talk to anyone else who's low strength. You can only
Speaker 1: talk too high strength people or listen to high strength people,
Speaker 1: So you can get in trouble for listening to someone
Speaker 1: who's also low rank. It's this weird. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of weird ship with the system. So in these rules,
Speaker 1: like who's who's defining, like what's too quiet and what's
Speaker 1: too loud, and what's too much and what's too little?
Speaker 1: Like what what are is there like some kind of
Speaker 1: like ranking system. No no, no subjective yeah, uh, talking
Speaker 1: too much, not talking enough, talking about subjects that are
Speaker 1: not a lawn related This is called being loose. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sex and this doesn't just mean talking about sex. This
Speaker 1: means looking at someone of the opposite gender. So they
Speaker 1: would make you write down and confess if you were
Speaker 1: attracted to anyone else in the school, and then if
Speaker 1: you did that, they would bring it up. They would
Speaker 1: call everyone together and say, hey, so and so thinks
Speaker 1: Susie is hot, Like like, Susie, you don't think he's hot, right,
Speaker 1: you think he's fucking hideous? Yeah, And like they would
Speaker 1: do that in front of the whole school, Like you
Speaker 1: have to admit that you have a crush on someone.
Speaker 1: So they can make fun of you about it in
Speaker 1: front of everyone else, quite literally, like the nightmare you
Speaker 1: have as a junior high kid. Yeah, it's like exactly
Speaker 1: nightmare is the whole school comes around and goes and
Speaker 1: they and they make the person who's a crush on
Speaker 1: you tell you that they think you're disgusting. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really bad. Right. Um, you could get in trouble
Speaker 1: for looking at someone of the opposite sex, But you
Speaker 1: could also get in trouble for avoiding looking at someone
Speaker 1: of the opposite sex, because that clearly means you have
Speaker 1: a crush on them. Um, it's so good. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could get in trouble for basically anything. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: looking outside. Yeah you can't be looking outside, but you
Speaker 1: can't all. But also the next one is looking at
Speaker 1: the floor. Yeah, you have to be like constant state
Speaker 1: of observation. Yeah, constant state of observation, always looking at
Speaker 1: your fellow inmates. Robert, what does being sideways mean? Um? Okay,
Speaker 1: when you sile, that's what I was thinking. I think
Speaker 1: it just basically means like not following some sort of
Speaker 1: like not not being on the program. Right, Like the
Speaker 1: whole the only thing you're supposed to talk about with
Speaker 1: each other. Is the program is like either what a
Speaker 1: disaster your life would be without it, how it saved
Speaker 1: your life, or like how someone else needs to do
Speaker 1: a better job of following the program. Anything else is
Speaker 1: being loose right, and you're not You're not supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing that. Ship um every God. Yeah. The rest
Speaker 1: of these are I think these are worse than the
Speaker 1: first couple of ones you read, to be honest, which
Speaker 1: one is having negative body language, reacting to insults, slouching
Speaker 1: or yawning, looking at not falling asleep or sleeping for
Speaker 1: too long so you can't be a person. No, they
Speaker 1: keep you sleep deprived and they don't feed you enough,
Speaker 1: because that's a great way to have a cold. Work
Speaker 1: says it just says drawing. You can't draw. I'd be
Speaker 1: done with the three books either I am? I am?
Speaker 1: I am? What? Or school? Yeah? How do you? Okay? Whatever?
Speaker 1: Go on? I mean, it's a about the kind of
Speaker 1: school you do. Eventually, if you get to a high
Speaker 1: enough rank, there's a library and you can even read
Speaker 1: books if you get to a high enough rank, which
Speaker 1: you get to by abusing your fellow students and maintaining
Speaker 1: this this order, So again, that's part of the like,
Speaker 1: after a couple of months of fighting back, you're so
Speaker 1: fucking desperate to have a single like privilege that lets
Speaker 1: you feel like a person that you will destroy the
Speaker 1: people around you to get that right, right, And yeah,
Speaker 1: you just made it a gladiator ring. Yeah, exactly for
Speaker 1: just the slightest bit of stimulation that isn't total abused.
Speaker 1: It's cool and good, miles cool and good. Every day
Speaker 1: inmates would participate in in counter groups. These were smaller,
Speaker 1: more focused versions of the game, where three to four
Speaker 1: higher ranked inmates would sit down with a worker or
Speaker 1: Ramrod and discuss their flaws. In ninety nine, the author
Speaker 1: of the Corrections magazine article claims some sessions focused on
Speaker 1: building up the self esteem of inmates and having peers
Speaker 1: discussed their good qualities. This seems to have occurred at
Speaker 1: some periods, and I've even found former allowance students who
Speaker 1: will say that there were specific employees who were decent people.
Speaker 1: Um Most of the accounts I found do not report
Speaker 1: that building up self esteem was as common a task
Speaker 1: for encounter groups as the opposite, which is breaking down
Speaker 1: people's self conception of themselves. This was evident even in
Speaker 1: nineteen quote. Encounters can run for ten minutes. They can
Speaker 1: also go on for half a day. There are other
Speaker 1: less frequent group sessions whose purposes to build up self
Speaker 1: esteem rather than tear it down. Tears off. Tears often
Speaker 1: flow in these sessions where residents talk about their good qualities.
Speaker 1: It is moving to watch tears flow and encounter sessions too.
Speaker 1: You want a knife, Bruce, you want to kill yourself,
Speaker 1: asks Alice. Matter of factly, Bruce's lower lip is quivering.
Speaker 1: Someone get me a knife. There's a rattle of a
Speaker 1: drawer and someone hands Alice a silver blade. Here, Bruce,
Speaker 1: kill yourself. Bruce whimpers. He cannot shout as the others do. No,
Speaker 1: I don't want to change. I don't know why. I
Speaker 1: just don't want to change his eyes redden, Alice sees,
Speaker 1: is the chance to toughen this newcomer. Let me rip
Speaker 1: your stomach out for a second. Okay, Bruce, you don't
Speaker 1: think anyone likes you, do you? That's because you don't
Speaker 1: think you're worth being liked. She turns to the group.
Speaker 1: How many people feel that Bruce has an insatiable desire
Speaker 1: to be loved but won't let that be because he
Speaker 1: hates himself. Six hands grow up. If you're crying now, Bruce,
Speaker 1: you should be. If you aren't crying, now Bruce, you
Speaker 1: should be. He is. It's just like what the fun
Speaker 1: mind game ship absolute torture, And again, Alice is just
Speaker 1: like another kid right like this to like be Yeah,
Speaker 1: physical abuse was just like, yeah, that's so weird. Like
Speaker 1: you're just sort of nurturing the same fucked up skills
Speaker 1: within everyone and it's just becoming this like a Petri
Speaker 1: dish of dysfunction that you're just watching all the bacteria
Speaker 1: like replicate and grow and geez. I mean it past
Speaker 1: a certain point. All of the staff pretty much are
Speaker 1: people who went to a law as kids because like
Speaker 1: they can't do anything else, you know. Um. Physical abuse
Speaker 1: was also extremely common in a Land. At its lowest levels,
Speaker 1: it involved spankings administered by other students via ping pong paddle.
Speaker 1: Administrators and employees were not supposed to partake in corporal punishment,
Speaker 1: although whether or not they did is something that seems
Speaker 1: to have varied from person to person over time during
Speaker 1: the decades the school operated. Now, I was spanked in school,
Speaker 1: and when I say students were given spankings. Depending on
Speaker 1: your background, they may that may not sound too horrible.
Speaker 1: Right At a laan, spankings were administered the way therapy
Speaker 1: was in groups. Sometimes as many as a dozen students
Speaker 1: would spank a single person, taking turns until the child's
Speaker 1: buttocks was bruised and often bleeding. I found one account
Speaker 1: from an a law and alumnus, Gregory Coleman, who actually
Speaker 1: gave this account during the murder trial of another former
Speaker 1: law student. At the time he gave the statement, Coleman
Speaker 1: was in maximum security prison for criminal trespassing, which might
Speaker 1: be a hint as to how well the program really worked.
Speaker 1: But that's a story for another day. And you're saying
Speaker 1: he was testifying at the murder trial. Yeah. Now, Back
Speaker 1: in the seventies, Gregory had been sent to a lawn
Speaker 1: for stealing a TV. He was one of many students
Speaker 1: who participated in the mass paddling of a female student.
Speaker 1: Decades later, he could not remember what she had done
Speaker 1: to earn the punishment. Here is how his testimony on
Speaker 1: that was described in a federal court document. She was
Speaker 1: paddled so violently with open hands in a wooden mallet
Speaker 1: that she had to be taken to the hospital. Coleman
Speaker 1: nonchalantly testified that the assault was so horrific that she
Speaker 1: went into shock and lost the ability to retain her
Speaker 1: bowel movements. Pretty bad stuff. So fucking and then beginning
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, man, this dude was just
Speaker 1: a grifter insurance. And then I'm like, yeah, here we go.
Speaker 1: Now we're getting to the bastard part. As I turn
Speaker 1: away because I can't even focus him. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 1: to from it's like it's not enough of all the
Speaker 1: psychological ship and now we're talking about create eating you know,
Speaker 1: generations of kids who probably needed actual, you know, professional
Speaker 1: help that was more centered around their humanity rather than
Speaker 1: some dude getting off on creating like the Thunderdome of abuse.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's a lot. So Miles, how are you.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling today after all this good? I'm sweating, sexy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the just I'm just trying to focus on my catalytic converters.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie right now. The only thing catalytic converter.
Speaker 1: Catalytic converters don't abuse kids. You know, they would never
Speaker 1: spank a child. All they do is get stolen by
Speaker 1: us in order to make profit and it's beautiful. I
Speaker 1: think that's beautiful. Miles. We saw him for fifteen roses
Speaker 1: on Craigslist. All right, well we're going to talk more
Speaker 1: about a law in school in part two, including its
Speaker 1: most notorious therapy, the Ring. But that's gonna have to
Speaker 1: wait till Thursday. Oh Miles, you are not going to
Speaker 1: have a good time. Yeah, it's real bad, buddy. I
Speaker 1: don't I take these fucking like w w E event
Speaker 1: names like you know, Harry Ring a general like like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well it's all right if it helps. It's a lot
Speaker 1: worse than the w w E. Okay, yeah, that's that's true.
Speaker 1: I guess that doesn't help me. Yeah, well that's the episode, Miles.
Speaker 1: You got any you know if you like? I feel
Speaker 1: like nicey nice stuff, right, I just get high and
Speaker 1: talk about trash reality TV like Fiance checkout for twenty
Speaker 1: day Fiance. Also, so if the Alexander somebody you have
Speaker 1: here on the time, that's my co host. So that's
Speaker 1: where we do that and daily Side check out for
Speaker 1: twenty day check it out, check out for twenty day
Speaker 1: and um check out Catalytic Converters by crawling up underneath
Speaker 1: a Toyota Prius with a set of bolt cuts, and
Speaker 1: just start cutting, just start cutting until you get the
Speaker 1: good ship. There you go, cutting for gold. That's how
Speaker 1: it works, baby, all right,