Speaker 1: The zoom Lady has commanded us, and we are back.
Speaker 1: This is behind the bastard, the podcast that exists entirely
Speaker 1: to glorify, elevate, and worship the zoom Lady are only
Speaker 1: God and Master, and in fact the only thing sacred
Speaker 1: in our entire cosmology of universal ethics. My guest today,
Speaker 1: Archbishop of the zoom Lady, Miles Gray, Miles, praise her, Oh,
Speaker 1: praise be to the z l the zoom Lady, that is,
Speaker 1: for without her contributions to our mortal galaxy, we would
Speaker 1: have nothing. Thank you for having me, Thank you for
Speaker 1: being on, Miles, and thank you for creating the first
Speaker 1: religious schism in our new cult that will eventually turn
Speaker 1: into a war that kills billions. Which is of course,
Speaker 1: whether or not we can abbreviate the zoom Lady's name
Speaker 1: to za Zo. Yeah, I know, and we've talked about
Speaker 1: this off Mike, and like I said, you come with
Speaker 1: your people, I'll come with mine, And well, I guess
Speaker 1: we'll see who's alive in the end. Yes, I am
Speaker 1: excited for when we both gain access to nuclear silos
Speaker 1: and can really really take this, this this disagreement over
Speaker 1: theology to an apocalyptic level. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: the one thing we both agree on and we're excited for.
Speaker 1: Secretly we are. It's just about the joy of starting
Speaker 1: a nuclear war, Miles. It's just about doing that thing
Speaker 1: we saw during a mushroom trip or were like, dude,
Speaker 1: what if you saw a mushroom cloud right in front
Speaker 1: of you, though, wouldn't that be look at us our zoom,
Speaker 1: Lady Colt, Now, praise be, praise be so Miles. When
Speaker 1: we were talking last time, if you remember, you might
Speaker 1: have forgotten. That's right. Kids spank to girls so badly
Speaker 1: she lost control of her bowels and had to be hospitalized.
Speaker 1: Because everything in a Lane was done communally, including physical punishments,
Speaker 1: which we're going to talk about a lot more today.
Speaker 1: There's a lot. It gets so much worse, Miles, so
Speaker 1: much worse. So. By the mid seventies, Allon had moved
Speaker 1: to the facility would occupy for the majority of its
Speaker 1: existence in Poland Springs. Most of its residents lived on
Speaker 1: the five acre facility, which included a lawn, one an
Speaker 1: administrative trailer, and six other numbered buildings that acted as dormitories,
Speaker 1: classroom space, etcetera. There were two other ALLAWAN facilities, including
Speaker 1: one in parson Field, Maine that had once been a
Speaker 1: TV sanitarium. The space for all these facilities was necessary,
Speaker 1: or all of this space was necessary because in the
Speaker 1: early seventies alone got a bunch of positive press reports
Speaker 1: which brought hundreds of new residents to the program. So again,
Speaker 1: what are positive press what's a positive press resort for this?
Speaker 1: That this is saving kids who whose lives are completely
Speaker 1: out of control, That this will give you back your kids,
Speaker 1: this will get them off of drugs. You know, nothing
Speaker 1: is worse than having a kid who's drug addict. So
Speaker 1: anything ALON does is just and the idea that this
Speaker 1: is this is like the best kind of treatment for them.
Speaker 1: Like this specific program is Joe Richie builded as the
Speaker 1: Rolls Royce of teen treatment programs. Okay, and I remember
Speaker 1: even like because this is even like with Kellogg right,
Speaker 1: like although just wacky remedies that were you know, just
Speaker 1: essentially ways to funk people up where there at least
Speaker 1: success stories that they would be like, oh and then
Speaker 1: check out this kid who means stopped neighing like a horse. Yes,
Speaker 1: throughout the throughout the existence of the program, there are
Speaker 1: kids who will claim it will save their life. There's
Speaker 1: even some kids who hated it but also will say like,
Speaker 1: it's saved my life because I was like really into
Speaker 1: heroin and I probably would have o'deed without it. It
Speaker 1: also has permanently damaged my brain like like that, like
Speaker 1: the positive stories tend to be like I would have
Speaker 1: died without it. Also, I am forever like changed because
Speaker 1: of this program in ways that are profoundly like negative
Speaker 1: and complex. Right, I feel deeply disconnected to who I
Speaker 1: used to be. This is not to say there are
Speaker 1: some positive stories and we can speculate on some of
Speaker 1: those people, um, sure, but when you go through reports
Speaker 1: of people who were there, the overwhelming warts are not positive.
Speaker 1: Now that said, this is the early seventies. Nobody is
Speaker 1: talking about this place online. You don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of former kids coming out and a lot of these kids.
Speaker 1: It's a mix of rich kids who go there and um,
Speaker 1: and generally if you're rich, you do get some kind
Speaker 1: of special treatment right and wards of the state, and
Speaker 1: so nobody cares what the wards of the states say. UM,
Speaker 1: and nobody is really able to check up on them
Speaker 1: to tell whether or not they actually have a high
Speaker 1: success rate. UM, which we're gonna talk about in a bit.
Speaker 1: So it was certainly the popular perception that the Allan
Speaker 1: School was like again the Rolls Roy's, like this is
Speaker 1: the nicest place you can send a kid for this
Speaker 1: kind of intense rehab facility. It's that this this beautiful
Speaker 1: compound in the woods in Maine, like it's like a
Speaker 1: summer camp, you know. That was kind of the way
Speaker 1: this was marketed. UM. Now, nineteen seventy five was a
Speaker 1: key year in the evolution of the Alan School. It's
Speaker 1: the year where a number of the most questionable aspects
Speaker 1: of early along procedures started to turn toxic, and one
Speaker 1: possible catalyst for the growing toxicity of the Allan School
Speaker 1: UM maybe the fact that Joe Richie had an increasingly
Speaker 1: severe drug addiction of his own. So Joe's friends seemed
Speaker 1: to be pretty consistent that he was not a heroin
Speaker 1: addict as a kid. But whatever the truth was, his
Speaker 1: old injuries from his car accident started bothering him while
Speaker 1: he worked prior to opening the Allan School. UM and
Speaker 1: a number of his colleagues they're mentioned to his wife
Speaker 1: that they were worried about how many pills he was
Speaker 1: taking Sherry confronted him, and he told her that he
Speaker 1: needed the pills because his pain was unbearable. Now, once
Speaker 1: the Allan School started, Joe kept using. Sherry eventually realized
Speaker 1: that Dr Davidson, their business partner, was prescribing her husband opiates,
Speaker 1: which again very ethical doctor. Here. She went to the
Speaker 1: doctor saying, hey, Joe is an addict and you should
Speaker 1: probably not give him a blank check for drugs, and
Speaker 1: he told her, Hey, I know what I'm doing. Don't
Speaker 1: tell me how to do my job. I'm a psychiatrist.
Speaker 1: Back off, lady, I'm running the Rolls Royce of abuse underdomes.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's about this is that
Speaker 1: later on, in like the late nineties, when Joe Richie
Speaker 1: stops being on working there most of the time, like
Speaker 1: he he eventually like the school is still running, but
Speaker 1: he's not really there most of the time, not involved
Speaker 1: in the day to day. The guy who replaces him
Speaker 1: running the program is also a heroin addict um and
Speaker 1: is using actively while he's running the school. Um. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: So Joe had a problem. Dr Davidson did not know
Speaker 1: what he was doing. Um. And although Joe didn't really
Speaker 1: drink much, his pill usage caused wild mood swings, irritable
Speaker 1: and abusive behavior. When he would have a mood swing,
Speaker 1: the easiest people for him to take it out on
Speaker 1: with the patients at his school. So by nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: this was becoming a serious problem. And that same year,
Speaker 1: his fifty four year old father bamboo shot one of
Speaker 1: his friends during a bar fight when his friend tried
Speaker 1: to de escalate things after he called another patron the
Speaker 1: in word. So Joe's dad goes to prison for shooting
Speaker 1: a dude. Um, And yeah, this is a So this
Speaker 1: is a bad year. Seventy a bad year for Joe.
Speaker 1: Richie's the point I'm building towards. And on July it
Speaker 1: got even worse. The state of Illinois sent a team
Speaker 1: of five investigators, a psychiatrist, and four social workers to
Speaker 1: Ellen for a surprise evaluation. This was standard procedure when
Speaker 1: more than ten wards of the state had been placed
Speaker 1: in a facility. So more than ten kids from Illinois
Speaker 1: gets sent to the law school, and they say like, oh,
Speaker 1: we have to send a team up there to make
Speaker 1: sure that it's like a good school, you know, very
Speaker 1: reasonable idea, right, Um, the team, Yeah, the team stayed
Speaker 1: for two days. They talked with staff and residents, and
Speaker 1: they observed daily activities. Now, this was the first inspection
Speaker 1: a law school had, um and so it came as
Speaker 1: a surprise and as a result, they hadn't prepared ahead
Speaker 1: of time. Um, they didn't cleaned anything down. We gotta
Speaker 1: stop hitting the kids until they ship themselves. Turns out
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist don't usually like that. Guys, we've been to in.
Speaker 1: This all wrong, according to them, so we can just return.
Speaker 1: We don't do so. The team found a number of
Speaker 1: horrifying things. One staff member, in charge of a house
Speaker 1: where seven Illinois residents lived, admitted he had a criminal
Speaker 1: history of assaulting women. His third such assault had seriously
Speaker 1: injured his victim, which is why he'd been sent to
Speaker 1: a lawn before graduating and being hired as staff there.
Speaker 1: He admitted to investigators that he had difficulty relating to
Speaker 1: women and was monitored by other staff to make sure
Speaker 1: that he didn't assault any female residence. Um My god,
Speaker 1: now that might be a mark against you. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe you shouldn't be in charge of a house full
Speaker 1: of teenagers, including teenage girls, if you have a history
Speaker 1: of repeatedly criminally assaulting women. Perhaps not right, maybe yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: I don't you're not. I don't think you that's a
Speaker 1: part of the evaluation that most people realize in general,
Speaker 1: that you you don't want to be Well, I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know whose fault that is. I mean, honestly, Like,
Speaker 1: they hired him, so they did hire him. Here's my truth.
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, I love criminally assaulting women. Well,
Speaker 1: good news about this job. So do we Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what, and and that's their fault for hiring you, honestly. Now.
Speaker 1: The investigators were also horrified by general meetings, the constant
Speaker 1: pattern of verbal abuse in a LAN, and the frequency
Speaker 1: of spankings. They eventually found out that the resident director
Speaker 1: with a history of assaulting women had spanked numerous residents.
Speaker 1: So the staff had claimed like, well, we make sure
Speaker 1: he doesn't assault women, even though he has a history
Speaker 1: of it, And then they were like, well, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but he gets to spank them. He's using a paddle, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's professional, Like what the funk are the team. Members
Speaker 1: of this Illinois monitoring team overheard constant verbal assaults from
Speaker 1: staffers to residents, including lines like you motherfucking whore, you
Speaker 1: cock sucking, titty sucking, motherfucking asshole, and other things that
Speaker 1: did not seem like therapeutic criticism. Oh my god, how
Speaker 1: this is so wild to me though, like you know
Speaker 1: how bad this is where outside observers come in and
Speaker 1: it's become so normal that they're like, yeah, okay, back
Speaker 1: to our regular scheduled programming, which is just tearing people
Speaker 1: down verbally and like with the worst language. Now. When
Speaker 1: they interviewed the nurse, she revealed that she had gotten
Speaker 1: vaginal smears and rectal exams from female residents before they
Speaker 1: started class, as well as semen samples from male residents.
Speaker 1: She said this was to test for v D. Semen
Speaker 1: samples were obtained by giving boys a small cup, directing
Speaker 1: them to a private room, and ordering them to masturbate.
Speaker 1: So the team from Illinois was like, this seems not
Speaker 1: like the way you'd test for STDs, And they reached
Speaker 1: out to several doctors to be like, is it normal
Speaker 1: to get a cum sample from kids to test for STDs?
Speaker 1: And all of the doctors that's exactly right. All the
Speaker 1: doctors are like, what the funk are you talking about?
Speaker 1: You don't need this loud, Yeah, you need to get
Speaker 1: this person away from children immediately. What the funk are
Speaker 1: you talking about? Almost fainted, Oh my god, what's so
Speaker 1: funked up? So the team from Yeah the Nurse also
Speaker 1: admitted to handing out controlled substances without prescriptions to kids,
Speaker 1: um and for what for whatever, mainly birth control pills,
Speaker 1: which were given upon request and without carrying out a
Speaker 1: physical exam first. Now, none of that's great, but what
Speaker 1: really freaked the investigators out was learning about the ring.
Speaker 1: Now the ring has become one of the most infamous
Speaker 1: facts about a lawn. The ring was a boxing ring
Speaker 1: where two people would beat each other up with gloves,
Speaker 1: but it was also a literal ring of people miles.
Speaker 1: The individual being punished would be forced to fight everyone
Speaker 1: in the ring, sometimes more than ten people, so that
Speaker 1: even if they were good at fighting and big, they
Speaker 1: would eventually be overwhelm by sheer exhaustion and beaten bloody.
Speaker 1: In interviews when this became widely known later, Joe Richie
Speaker 1: claimed that the ring was only given his punishment to
Speaker 1: bully's who had used your threatened physical violence against others.
Speaker 1: His argument was that you had to show these people
Speaker 1: that there was always someone bigger than them. So that's
Speaker 1: what Joe claimed. Yeah, either way, you teach children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, just shut up right there, you're still
Speaker 1: so you do admit you're making them fight each child format,
Speaker 1: Hold on, hold on, hold on the point isn't No,
Speaker 1: there's no point care about your reasoning, these kids doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't care about your reasoning. You're making children fighting
Speaker 1: a ring. Oh God, here we go. Okay, so what
Speaker 1: do you suggest? So here's the reality the team from
Speaker 1: Illinois saw. I'm going to quote from Duck in a
Speaker 1: raincoat again. Those used to defeat the person being punished
Speaker 1: were mostly large, well built boys fighting, both male and
Speaker 1: female residents. Two residents independent, Oh what's she's already? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they picked the big kids for it. Two residents independently
Speaker 1: independently talked about a young female being forced into the ring.
Speaker 1: When she resisted, she was held down while residents attempted
Speaker 1: to tie boxing gloves on her hands. When that failed,
Speaker 1: she was sent into the ring bare fisted and without headgear.
Speaker 1: Investigators also cited an incident where a pregnant girl was
Speaker 1: put in the wing and defeat it. Evaluators observed that
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad what The evaluators observed that residents could
Speaker 1: be sent into the ring for any infraction, including not
Speaker 1: sharing and discussion groups. So no, not just bullys. If
Speaker 1: you don't want to talk in the group about who
Speaker 1: you have a crush on, you're going to get beaten
Speaker 1: up by large teenage boys in a circle because you're
Speaker 1: not forthcoming with your pain in a fucking environment that
Speaker 1: is only meant to like exploit it and make you
Speaker 1: feel worse. And then you have to fucking yeah, beating
Speaker 1: your pregnant girl. This is I mean, this is happening.
Speaker 1: This is happening in the nineties, Miles, This evaluation seventy five,
Speaker 1: but the ring goes on for decades. The ring goes,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what the fuck? Yeah, please tell me,
Speaker 1: like just better have a good ending, man. It doesn't motherfucker.
Speaker 1: I mean, elements of it are good. So we'll talk more.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about the ring later. Another punishment the investigator, Yeah, Miles,
Speaker 1: so buddy, Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, we've got to
Speaker 1: talk about the kid it killer. Um. But first we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about another punishment the investigators discovered, which
Speaker 1: might actually be worse. Now. This was called electric sauce.
Speaker 1: You want to know what what again? Take a guess
Speaker 1: as to what electric sauce was? Miles, Dude, No, I know,
Speaker 1: really bad, yeah, Miles, No, I don't even I can't
Speaker 1: even don't do their brains like short circuiting, even trying
Speaker 1: to combine. It's it's a really bad school. Like we've
Speaker 1: covered some Like honestly, elements of this sound not as
Speaker 1: bad as the German school that raped all those kids,
Speaker 1: like Waldorf School, right, No, No, that was just that
Speaker 1: was the weird cult school. Um. Yeah, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: here's I mean, we've covered we've covered some bad schools
Speaker 1: between the residents. Definitely not as bad as the residential
Speaker 1: schools um Ireland. But I guess the residential schools like
Speaker 1: killed thousands, right, so much worse. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: it's this is there's an element of this that is
Speaker 1: more disturbing just because of in those schools they're killing
Speaker 1: kids systematically through neglect and through just a lack of
Speaker 1: caring about their health. This is what this is obviously
Speaker 1: less horrible, it's not an act of genocide, um, but
Speaker 1: the level of thought Joe Richie put into how to
Speaker 1: craft this engine of child abuse. There's something like uniquely
Speaker 1: unsettling about it in a way that I hasn't been
Speaker 1: present before in any of these other schools. It's just
Speaker 1: such an intricately crafted machinery of child abuse, That's what's like,
Speaker 1: so like the funk about this to me, Yeah, not
Speaker 1: trying to like play like which is worse than the
Speaker 1: obviously like again the genocide schools are worse, But there's
Speaker 1: something about this that's like primarily unsettling, like the level
Speaker 1: of thought this man spent decades designing an engine to
Speaker 1: abuse children. Again, like like so many of these like
Speaker 1: stories that it's just repeating cycles of abuse because he
Speaker 1: went to some who knows what the funk happened to
Speaker 1: the place he went. Yeah, Um, so you're ready to
Speaker 1: finally learn about what the electric sauce was, Miles, Oh god,
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about the Yeah, we still haven't gotten
Speaker 1: into the electric sauce quote. Electric sauce was term used
Speaker 1: to describe a mixture of garbage, catchup, mustard, cigarette butts,
Speaker 1: and other refuse which was poured over a person's head
Speaker 1: as a form of punishment. The report indicated that human
Speaker 1: feces was sometimes included in this sauce. What. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're shipping and coming into buckets and throwing in trash
Speaker 1: and pouring it on people's heads when they're bad. And
Speaker 1: again and if you're this is therapy, by the way,
Speaker 1: what is what is Richie saying? Yeah, And I'm sorry, Richie,
Speaker 1: electric fucking sauce do Richie denies that this is a
Speaker 1: part of the school, right, Like, this is not the
Speaker 1: kind of he'll defend, like the ring and stuff. And
Speaker 1: they do stop you in the electric sauce eventually, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's no defensively electric sauce than I would the ring.
Speaker 1: If we're going to get to know where you're lion
Speaker 1: Is smiles, Yeah, I mean I'm like, if I got
Speaker 1: to own one, I'm like, well, at least no kids
Speaker 1: dying from being in a fist fight ring. And it's
Speaker 1: just straight up well, I mean, I don't even actually
Speaker 1: like one's better than the other. Again, you get what
Speaker 1: this show is done to me. I'm gonna read you
Speaker 1: another fun quote about other punishments at the Allan School.
Speaker 1: Miles Digging ditches was apparently still another reprimand a day
Speaker 1: of digging ditches under surveillance was a common practice. After
Speaker 1: each ditch was dug, the resident being punished would be
Speaker 1: required to fill it back up again and repeat the
Speaker 1: process for the duration of the punishment. The use of
Speaker 1: handcuffs was also alleged. One resident explained that he had
Speaker 1: been handcuffed for about five hours for striking someone. Another
Speaker 1: had been ordered by a staff member to handcuff a
Speaker 1: girl to a table by placing the cuffs around her ankles.
Speaker 1: One of the Illinois awards had his shoes taken away
Speaker 1: during his six weeks at a lawn. He had made
Speaker 1: repeated requests for shoes, but the requests were denied because
Speaker 1: he was told that if he had shoes he might
Speaker 1: run away. When when this child was brought back to Chicago,
Speaker 1: he had blood poisoning in one foot, What the fuck? Okay,
Speaker 1: So all right, you might expect, Miles that when a
Speaker 1: government agency finds all of this ship out and writes
Speaker 1: a report on it in nine, the end of the
Speaker 1: program would come soon after, as would criminal charges for
Speaker 1: a lot of the people involved. Right, this would be
Speaker 1: a pretty full episode if this ended in night teen.
Speaker 1: Because we've talked about some bad shitt here um, but
Speaker 1: this is the United States of America. I need to
Speaker 1: remind you of that again, as I did an episode one.
Speaker 1: Miles and the Lawn School continue to operate for more
Speaker 1: than thirty years after this point. Um, because again, parents
Speaker 1: have a sacred right to pay people to torture their
Speaker 1: children if they think it's a good idea. That's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: So they they were just able to skate under that premise. Well,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how they got away with it,
Speaker 1: but the core of why they got away with it
Speaker 1: is there is a widespread idea that is particularly normative
Speaker 1: among conservative Americans, that as a parent, you are the
Speaker 1: ultimate arbiter of what happens to your child, and they
Speaker 1: don't have rights. You have a sacred right to do
Speaker 1: whatever the fuck you want to That kid is a punishment, right. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a popular refrain. I'm the adult, maybe or the child.
Speaker 1: Children should have equivalent rights to adults, even though we
Speaker 1: all agree children should not have equivalent responsibilities. Maybe shouldn't
Speaker 1: have access to all of the same things that adults do.
Speaker 1: For example, I don't think nine year old should be
Speaker 1: able to buy cars or guns, but perhaps they are
Speaker 1: entitled to the exact same human right. Come on down
Speaker 1: to miles as catalytic converter barn where you're walking out
Speaker 1: of here too stuff. Maybe I think we should be
Speaker 1: teaching kids because kids could get under the car easily.
Speaker 1: Their little hands can reach in there. We should range
Speaker 1: that's miles. We could start a teen rehab facility when
Speaker 1: we get kids off of dope by teaching them to
Speaker 1: steal catalytic converse. No, Sophie, you always stomp on my
Speaker 1: dreams to create residential schools for children. Is this one
Speaker 1: illegal to like the other fifteen ideas you said no to, Sophie, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she hates it when I talk about crimes. I like
Speaker 1: being able to pay my rent. Well, you could pay
Speaker 1: you rent in catalytic converters. Just drop a bag of
Speaker 1: them off at the manager's office. Sophie. There you go,
Speaker 1: be like, Hey, here's a bag of cats that's going
Speaker 1: to take care of me for the rest of the year. Right,
Speaker 1: give him a little wink. If he's smart, will take
Speaker 1: the deal. So the good news is that the Illinois
Speaker 1: instigators did take the kids who are Awards of the
Speaker 1: State away from the Allan School. They issued a damning
Speaker 1: report that includes these lines quote. Alata will argue that
Speaker 1: the evaluation team has taken occurrences out of context, and
Speaker 1: that contrary to the findings of the evaluation team, the
Speaker 1: incidents were in the best interests of the child, regardless
Speaker 1: of the reasons given by Alan excusing your justifying the
Speaker 1: instance incidents, Each and every incident reported is directly contrary
Speaker 1: to Illinois law and regulations, and under no circumstances can
Speaker 1: the agency permit any of its wards to reside at
Speaker 1: an institution where such events occur. These practices violate the
Speaker 1: child civil rights and liberties and deprive him of his
Speaker 1: self respected dignity. Under no circumstances can the Department of
Speaker 1: Education and Family Services permit any child to be subjected
Speaker 1: to allan which is good. Good on you guys who
Speaker 1: tried in the fucking state of Illinois. I don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of praise for the State of Illinois, but
Speaker 1: they did their best, and so at the very least
Speaker 1: that meant no more rewards of the state would be
Speaker 1: going to this program. No God, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: It just means I'll no, I won't send kids for
Speaker 1: a while, oh just for all well, and just that
Speaker 1: the state won't other kids from Illinois keep getting sent there.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that citizens canal endlessly indulgence. Yeah, very
Speaker 1: little actually changes, and I'm gonna talk We're about to
Speaker 1: talk about why. So there's a lot of blow about this,
Speaker 1: right this becomes very public. The news is like all
Speaker 1: the like the fucking electric sauce and the beating pits,
Speaker 1: like people are not wild about this, um, But you
Speaker 1: know what people are wild about, Miles this the new bottle,
Speaker 1: a line of electric sauces from hend exactly Heinz electric
Speaker 1: sauce now with eight percent more feces income squirted on
Speaker 1: a child's head when they disbehave, misbehave whatever. Shit. We're
Speaker 1: back and we're talking about how constant exposure to the
Speaker 1: horrors that this show exposes us to may may may
Speaker 1: have may cause as me to make some some off
Speaker 1: color comments that I ought not. Um, I have editors,
Speaker 1: we have these moments, we have these mind. It is
Speaker 1: like a real problem we had this with like the
Speaker 1: the Irish Schools episode where I think Sophia and I
Speaker 1: went a little bit hard on the dark humor because
Speaker 1: it's so you just get overwhelmed with this. Eventually there's
Speaker 1: nothing to do but like laugh about the electric sauce.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like you're like, you're like like someone
Speaker 1: who's been on the seas too long, like looking sharks
Speaker 1: in the eye, like at a certain time, like you're
Speaker 1: just like they're kind of you know, they've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of you. Ever looked into you? Ever looked into
Speaker 1: an Alan school teacher's eyes? Dead eyes? Like Dollykay sir again,
Speaker 1: I'm just here to take your order. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: have fun with the Wendy's girl. Um. So, Miles, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's this report comes out right, Uh, it's it's bad.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of bad press for the Alan School,
Speaker 1: and this prompts the Governor of Maine to visit the school. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously they have warning this time, and they clean up
Speaker 1: the school ahead of the governor's uh the Governor's visit,
Speaker 1: and he's like, oh, this seems fine. Um, but once
Speaker 1: he reads the report from Illinois, he has Mains Department
Speaker 1: of Human Services issue a very speedy interim report. And
Speaker 1: the purpose of this report was to protect the Allawan School,
Speaker 1: which had become a multimillion dollar business, and thus protect
Speaker 1: Main's economy as well. Right, his concern is this would
Speaker 1: be bad for Mains economy. Of this big business has
Speaker 1: to leave so good. Since Richie had warning before this investigation,
Speaker 1: he tasked his employees with making everything look squeaky clean.
Speaker 1: One teenage staff member later told Mark Curly quote, we
Speaker 1: lied through our teeth, but we couldn't cover up we
Speaker 1: admitted to is the exception rather than the rule. The
Speaker 1: residents were thrilled when the place was overrun with investigators
Speaker 1: because they had a real fun time. We laid off
Speaker 1: everybody then, but everything the Illinois investigators said was true,
Speaker 1: every last word of it. Now, the Illinois investigators found
Speaker 1: a bunch of horrible ship and they wrote about it
Speaker 1: very unsparingly, like this is a child abuse factory and
Speaker 1: should be oosed immediately um. The main investigators, who again
Speaker 1: were sent there specifically to exonerate the Allawan school to
Speaker 1: keep money in the state of Maine, found this quote.
Speaker 1: No evidence of unjustifiable denials of civil liberties, or of mistreatment, brutality,
Speaker 1: or anything that could be considered a born to all
Speaker 1: accepted standards of childcare. The residents of a law and
Speaker 1: interviewed usually expressed Newfounds feelings of dignity, self assurance, and
Speaker 1: mental well being. They attributed these feelings to the treatment
Speaker 1: they received at a lawan. Responding to the charges of
Speaker 1: the rings spankings into physical abuse, Main investigators wrote, one
Speaker 1: of the cardinal rules of the Allan program is that
Speaker 1: the use of physical violence by either a staff member
Speaker 1: or a resident is strictly outlawed. Again, Joe Richie had
Speaker 1: admitted to the using the ring like, it's just nonsense.
Speaker 1: It's just a report full of lies, paid for by
Speaker 1: the government of Maine to keep a business in the state.
Speaker 1: Because start Joe Richie's bribing, bribing people. He does that
Speaker 1: a lot. He's very involved in politics in Maine because
Speaker 1: he's a millionaire. After a sir, point right, oh my. Now,
Speaker 1: Since the ring had by this point gone viral as
Speaker 1: the most terrifying measure in Alan's arsenal, Main State investigators
Speaker 1: had to make a declaration on that too. They defended
Speaker 1: it after writing that violence wasn't used by saying, quote,
Speaker 1: only acts of repeated physical violence result in a person
Speaker 1: being placed in the ring where rounds last about one
Speaker 1: minute and where the participants are evenly matched. Again, all
Speaker 1: of this is a lie based on hundreds of reports.
Speaker 1: Like and now they're acting like, oh, but we've made
Speaker 1: that we've made it. The regulations are way better now.
Speaker 1: We're seeing a way, we're getting fair ones. Now, we
Speaker 1: got kids engaging in fair ones. Even if it was
Speaker 1: like a school where it's like, well, we only have
Speaker 1: one minute boxing matches for kids, Like why do you
Speaker 1: have children fighting? Yeah, but they're but they're matched based
Speaker 1: on their weight class. Okay, I mean again, if you
Speaker 1: do have a boxing class, that's fine. But boxing is
Speaker 1: a punishment I would call child abuse. Yeah. Absolutely, Also,
Speaker 1: we should have a conversation about whether kids should be
Speaker 1: able to box or play things like football that will
Speaker 1: damage their brains when they're too young to make an
Speaker 1: informed decision about whether or not they want to damage
Speaker 1: their brains. But that's a that's a subject for a
Speaker 1: different day. Not that you shouldn't be able to box
Speaker 1: or play football, but maybe not as a child. I
Speaker 1: don't know. So, since the ring had by this point
Speaker 1: gone viral, is the most terrifying measure in Allan's all right,
Speaker 1: sorry then, so we'll talk more about the ring later.
Speaker 1: What's important for now is that hundreds of former students
Speaker 1: have come forward, representing decades worth of time at a
Speaker 1: law and all claimed that this is bullshit. The report
Speaker 1: had a bunch of other frustrating nonsense in it, but
Speaker 1: the gist of it was that Joe Richie and his
Speaker 1: school get a clean bill of not committing crimes against
Speaker 1: humanity from their host state. They used this to a
Speaker 1: post back at Illinois, filing a civil complaint and alleging
Speaker 1: that the evaluation team had defamed Alan and done six
Speaker 1: point one million dollars in actual damages and four million
Speaker 1: dollars in punitive damages. Illinois filed suit in response, suing
Speaker 1: a district court and is charging that a lot of
Speaker 1: employees had abused wards of the state. They requested damage
Speaker 1: to A flurry of lawsuits followed, and in the end
Speaker 1: both sides settled without any money going anywhere except into
Speaker 1: the pockets of lawyers. The state kind of gives up
Speaker 1: after a point, because again, these kids are wards of
Speaker 1: the state. They don't have anyone behind them. Right, it's
Speaker 1: not worth it, right, purely, just yet statistic, because our
Speaker 1: legal system is perfect now. Earlier I quoted a teenage
Speaker 1: staff member, one of the people who was technically an
Speaker 1: inmate but reached a high position within the program. That
Speaker 1: person's name was kin Zaretsky. He was part of the
Speaker 1: architecture of violence at a lawn, organizing the ring verbally
Speaker 1: abusing and physically abusing other children, and making sure it
Speaker 1: all ran smoothly. Years later, he told Mark Curly, quote,
Speaker 1: but I was brainwashed. I may have abused someone, but
Speaker 1: I was a victim too. It can be compared to
Speaker 1: a mother in the concentration camps pushing the buttons on
Speaker 1: her children in the ovens. How can you falter for that? Now,
Speaker 1: this is not a thing that ever happened at concentration camps.
Speaker 1: They just didn't work that way. That's nonsense. Ki didn't
Speaker 1: have an education though, So yeah, I'm like, what's I'm sorry?
Speaker 1: What was that? His His ron point there there, actually
Speaker 1: is if he'd known anything about the Holocaust. There's a
Speaker 1: better point you can make, which is that a lot
Speaker 1: of the actual, the physical work necessary to make the
Speaker 1: death camps run was done by Jews who were interned
Speaker 1: in the camps, right, And these were Jewish inmates who
Speaker 1: got some kindest privileges, more mainly the privileges that they
Speaker 1: didn't get killed as quickly. But they were the ones
Speaker 1: who are like pushing, shoveling the bodies in, like literally
Speaker 1: making the gas chairs. The poison was always put in
Speaker 1: by a doctor, but they were necessary to make it work,
Speaker 1: and these guys did obviously, even though they're making a
Speaker 1: concentration camp work, you can't judge them for it. Like,
Speaker 1: he's right about that when you are, yeah, and when
Speaker 1: you and at that point, I think he's right about
Speaker 1: If you're a child forced into this and you do
Speaker 1: horrible things to other kids in order to make your
Speaker 1: own experience less terrible, because that's what this place is
Speaker 1: designed to do, you're not really at fault, you know.
Speaker 1: I think there's a certain point, especially if you grow
Speaker 1: up and you come back to as an adult, where
Speaker 1: you become culpable, but like a fucking sixteen year old,
Speaker 1: like agreeing to beat kids up in the ring, because
Speaker 1: like otherwise you're gonna get the ship kicked out if you,
Speaker 1: like I can't, it's not you're going to beat out
Speaker 1: that yeah, self interest. Yeah. And in the same way, like,
Speaker 1: if you're forced into a death camp and your chance
Speaker 1: to avoid getting murdered is to help the death camp operate,
Speaker 1: you're not morally responsible to that. I would argue, um,
Speaker 1: But Zaritsky again received no education, so I don't think
Speaker 1: he knows much about the Holocaust, UM heard if he
Speaker 1: heard some interesting things along. So Zaretsky provides us with
Speaker 1: some interesting context for how the whole system functioned outside
Speaker 1: of the school itself. He was a private referral sent
Speaker 1: to a lawn by a doctor named Marvin Schwartz. Marvin's
Speaker 1: nickname was Mr. Adolescent Illinois, which is one of the
Speaker 1: worst nicknames I've heard about in my life. He is
Speaker 1: said to have single handedly built a lawn with his
Speaker 1: private referrals. Schwartz was a friend and colleague of Dr Davidson,
Speaker 1: and he received a kickback for every child he sent
Speaker 1: to a lawn. We now know that Dr Zaretsky was
Speaker 1: only wrong in his statement that Schwartz built Alan single handedly.
Speaker 1: Dr Davidson was also responsible for referrals, and they were
Speaker 1: a whole network of other psychiatrists like Dr Schwartz who
Speaker 1: knew Dr david He would basically go to his friends
Speaker 1: in other states and be like, Hey, I got this school.
Speaker 1: Every time you send a kid to us, I'll kick
Speaker 1: you a few hundred bucks. You know. That's that's how Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how this place works, Um. And it's just multi
Speaker 1: level marketing for you know us. Yeah, it's in the same,
Speaker 1: you know, very similar models now And one of the
Speaker 1: most funded up things about the work of those Illinois
Speaker 1: investigators is that, like, ultimately you could argue it helped
Speaker 1: the school because it brought them a lunch of press
Speaker 1: and they were able to defend themselves. Journalists went to
Speaker 1: them for the state. They were able to make statements
Speaker 1: in their defense, and a lot of people decided, oh,
Speaker 1: it sounds like this tough love approach works. Like it's
Speaker 1: just some weak liberals in the Illinois state don't want
Speaker 1: it to keep going. So they got yeah, they got money,
Speaker 1: um yeah, and they got to make statements like this
Speaker 1: to the press. And this is Dr Davidson speak into
Speaker 1: the Corrections magazine in nineteen seventy nine about the Illinois investigation.
Speaker 1: What happened was we got some conventional middle aged mental
Speaker 1: health workers who saw certain things they did not understand.
Speaker 1: The other thing was that the governor of Illinois at
Speaker 1: the time was a self righteous guy who was trying
Speaker 1: to make political hay by bringing all the juveniles back
Speaker 1: to the state. They were disrupting. There were disrupting things,
Speaker 1: asking kids, why do you obey Now? In the same interview,
Speaker 1: Joe Richie was asked about the Illinois team, and he
Speaker 1: claimed it was a raid from the start. They were
Speaker 1: very unprofessional. They got drunk at one meal and then
Speaker 1: came back to Alan to work. I didn't like that.
Speaker 1: Richie would also claim accurately the three of the kids
Speaker 1: removed from Alan by Illinois eventually fled back to the
Speaker 1: Lawn school. He claimed that this was evidence that the
Speaker 1: program helped those kids. I think there was more evidence
Speaker 1: that when you abuse someone enough, they can't exist outside
Speaker 1: of the system of abuse that you built for them,
Speaker 1: which is why so many kids went to work there
Speaker 1: as adults. Um, because you break people in such a
Speaker 1: way that they can't exist outside of this weird little
Speaker 1: society you've built in your Yeah, would be my argument. Now,
Speaker 1: this does, however, bring us to a very valid question,
Speaker 1: is there any evidence that a Lan's program worked. That
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine Corrections Magazine article notes that at the
Speaker 1: time it was written, Alan had only been doing follow
Speaker 1: up checks on former residents for two years. They claimed
Speaker 1: that of the five hundred people who had been admitted
Speaker 1: to a law at that point, three hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: six had been tracked down. Of these hundred, of these,
Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety had graduated the program, seventy eight
Speaker 1: percent of these people had stayed out of trouble with
Speaker 1: the law. On that strength, Alan claimed that nearly eighty
Speaker 1: percent of their graduates were successful, right percent success right Basically,
Speaker 1: Now that's a lie based on their own data. Um,
Speaker 1: because they tracked down three six kids, right, a hundred
Speaker 1: ninety graduate and they say seventy eight percent of these
Speaker 1: people stayed out of trouble with the law. That makes
Speaker 1: it a success. But a hundred and thirty six of
Speaker 1: them didn't graduate, and only twenty six percent of those
Speaker 1: kids were arrested or jailed again, which means dropouts had
Speaker 1: an identical success rate to aduates basically, So number one,
Speaker 1: that makes it seem like maybe it had nothing whether
Speaker 1: or not you graduate. The allow school didn't have anything
Speaker 1: to do about your success um. But Corrections Magazine and
Speaker 1: they're right up gave further reasons to doubt that data.
Speaker 1: Allan's recidivism figures are so low, especially given the fact
Speaker 1: that many of their referrals are from state from state
Speaker 1: agencies are hardcore delinquents that most researchers would find them suspicious.
Speaker 1: Perhaps one explanation is that most of the follow up
Speaker 1: was done by questionnaire without any attempt to confirm the
Speaker 1: information the former residents applied through official records. Of the
Speaker 1: twelve states who refer children to a lawn, only four
Speaker 1: have ever done any follow up, and that was limited
Speaker 1: and informal. Maryland, Rhode Island, Oregon, and Vermont surveyed a
Speaker 1: total of seventy one former Allowan residents. They found that
Speaker 1: twelve seventeen percent of them were in jail, seventeen were
Speaker 1: working or in school, and forty two were, in the
Speaker 1: words of one official, living marginal lives that included some
Speaker 1: petty crime, frequent unemployment, and overuse of alcohol their drugs.
Speaker 1: So that doesn't sound like a great success rate to me,
Speaker 1: not it. Also, again, they're basing this whole no trouble
Speaker 1: with the law. They're basing our students. Went on to have,
Speaker 1: you know, law abiding lives based on self reporting from
Speaker 1: those students, rather than actually confirming anything. All of their
Speaker 1: data is bullshit. Basically, there's no evidence the school helped
Speaker 1: any There's no evidence this school helped anyone. Um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: individuals will say it helped me, but there's no evidence that,
Speaker 1: like as a population, a Laan students were less likely
Speaker 1: to commit crimes or have drug abuse problems than any
Speaker 1: other group of kids in a similar situation. It's almost
Speaker 1: like it's a total crop of sadistic ship that wasn't
Speaker 1: intended to do anything that make money, just a child
Speaker 1: abuse factory. Rhode Islands sent a team of investigators to Alan,
Speaker 1: who were horrified to find that not only did the
Speaker 1: business lack a board of directors, it lacked any oversight
Speaker 1: mechanism to review tactics or employee behavior. The investigators talked
Speaker 1: to Dr Davidson and were shocked to find out that
Speaker 1: he spent no time at the facility and was unable
Speaker 1: to provide answers about stuff like the ring. There were
Speaker 1: three m A psychologists on staff, but all were recent hires, who,
Speaker 1: like Dr Davidson, knew nothing about how the school function
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. And some students will claim that
Speaker 1: like those people were very were protected from knowing anything
Speaker 1: about the school. They were brought in to do therapy sessions,
Speaker 1: and like you never got to do therapy alone. There
Speaker 1: would always be a student watching you, so if you
Speaker 1: said anything, you would get punished, so you would only yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: They would do this for every visit. You're talking to
Speaker 1: your parents on the phone, someone's listening. They'll disconnect it
Speaker 1: if you say anything bad is going on. Um, we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that later. Six of former residents were
Speaker 1: found too were later found to have been arrested for
Speaker 1: criminal violations. UH. They noted that this was likely to
Speaker 1: be a conservative estimate of failure because criminal records did
Speaker 1: not reflect child abuse, neglect, mental health, institutionalization, or a
Speaker 1: variety of other factors. So Rhode Island finds six former
Speaker 1: alt residents go on to be arrested for something, and
Speaker 1: that more are probably lee having some sort of issue.
Speaker 1: It's just wasn't reflected by the criminal justice system because
Speaker 1: they were just beating their own kids, right Like, that's
Speaker 1: literally what the state says. Um. None of these investigations
Speaker 1: did anything to stop Joe Richier Dr Davidson for becoming millionaires.
Speaker 1: Joe and his wife Sherry bought a mansion, They got
Speaker 1: all the status symbols of success, a bunch of fancy cars.
Speaker 1: But the wealthier Joe gets and the more expansive the
Speaker 1: Alan School becomes, the more abusive and deranged he gets
Speaker 1: in his own relationship. I'm gonna quote from Duck in
Speaker 1: a Raincoat again here. In his marriage, Richie began employing
Speaker 1: the techniques he used at a lan. If his wife
Speaker 1: annoyed her angered him, she'd be punished. One punishment was
Speaker 1: embarrassment and humiliation in the presence of other staff members.
Speaker 1: According to one former staffer, he'd shoot her down in
Speaker 1: a law term to describe the taking of authority away
Speaker 1: from someone who had misused it by humiliating her at
Speaker 1: staff meetings, or he'd purposely exclude her from decision making,
Speaker 1: instructing people not to tell her something. At first, we
Speaker 1: were led to believe that they had the perfect marriage,
Speaker 1: a former resident recalled, But after a while it was
Speaker 1: apparent to some of us that it was far from it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Richie would disappear, and when Sherry called Alan to
Speaker 1: find him, he wouldn't speak to her. Once she was
Speaker 1: informed that he'd taken a blonde social worker with him
Speaker 1: to Las Vegas. Yeah, there's a lot to say about
Speaker 1: like his kind of sexual relationships. It doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: he mostly wanted to fuck. It was just kind of
Speaker 1: a power thing. He wanted these young women around doing
Speaker 1: what he was saying I don't know. Um. Richie would
Speaker 1: insist on forcing attractive female residence of Alan to ask
Speaker 1: act as babysitters for his children. If Sherry complained, he
Speaker 1: would call her neurotic. One of these nannies later admitted
Speaker 1: to burning their son with a cigarette. When Sherry complained,
Speaker 1: Ricky told Richie told her that the staff member had
Speaker 1: changed or the resident had changed, and he wasn't being
Speaker 1: fair to her by not giving her another chance. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, he's a weird Yeah. Cool. So Sherry had
Speaker 1: a number of nervous breakdowns for what she was hospitalized
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six. While she was in recovery, Joe
Speaker 1: should up to present her with a diamond and a
Speaker 1: sapphire necklace in full view of the nurses, in order
Speaker 1: to like make the nurses so the nurses wouldn't believe
Speaker 1: anything she'd say about him being abusive, because look at
Speaker 1: this necklace. He's the dream husk. I mean, yeah, this
Speaker 1: looks like the husband of the year. I mean those
Speaker 1: are chocolate diamonds by Jane Seymour. Yeah, Like, we're mostly
Speaker 1: going to focus on the lawn school here and not
Speaker 1: Richie's personal life. But he's just a comprehensively abusive person.
Speaker 1: So you know, who isn't a comprehensively abusive person unless
Speaker 1: it's a Koch Brothers yeah, or I don't know, Volkswagen
Speaker 1: kind of gasol at all of us with the like
Speaker 1: literally actually with the diesel, with the diesel stuff. So
Speaker 1: unless it's one of yeah, everything's fine, we're back. Um.
Speaker 1: So Sherry started going to therapy and came to accept
Speaker 1: how fucked up Joe Richie was and how unhealthy their
Speaker 1: marriage had become. By night, they'd filed for divorce. The
Speaker 1: following year, Joe bought a year by race track. The
Speaker 1: details of this transaction sketchy as hell, and it seems
Speaker 1: like he was involved with the mob. Um. The FBI
Speaker 1: certainly thought he was. Um. Also, at one point the
Speaker 1: race track burnt down conveniently, and he made a bunch
Speaker 1: of money burn a race track down. Yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: sort of anyway, we're not going to dwell too much
Speaker 1: on that. I want to tell a couple of stories
Speaker 1: of other kids who were sent to the A Lawn School. First,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Phil Newell. In nineteen eighty one, Phil's
Speaker 1: father beat their mother, his ex wife, nearly to death
Speaker 1: with a pipe. She spent the next twenty eight years
Speaker 1: almost insinsate in a nursing home. Phil and his sister
Speaker 1: became wards of the state and were sent first to
Speaker 1: a foster home. By nine two, Phil had grown into
Speaker 1: a sweet but troubled team. His sister later recalled, he
Speaker 1: was beautiful. All the girls liked him, and I remember
Speaker 1: I used to get mad because that was my brother
Speaker 1: and I didn't want any girls around him. We were close,
Speaker 1: we were really close. But he also dealt with fits
Speaker 1: of anger, which is very understandable and expected from a
Speaker 1: kid whose mom was beaten so badly by his dad
Speaker 1: that he had to become Award of the State. Right,
Speaker 1: of course, you're going to have some anger issues and
Speaker 1: mostly hurt himself. He would slam his head into walls
Speaker 1: and such. Migraine seemed to be a trigger for his violence.
Speaker 1: He had horrible migraines, and at one point during a migraine,
Speaker 1: he swung his foster brother by the ankles into a
Speaker 1: couch like he just has a fit, and he attacks
Speaker 1: his foster brother. Um not a serious injury, but he
Speaker 1: gets sent to a youth center as a result of this,
Speaker 1: and when that didn't work, the States sent him to
Speaker 1: the Alan School. His sister continues, quote, we were told
Speaker 1: Alan was a step up from the Youth Center because
Speaker 1: he got transferred, and that he was doing well and
Speaker 1: that everything was going good, and that he was going
Speaker 1: to come home. He came home in a box. So
Speaker 1: at the time when he dies and like I think
Speaker 1: it's seventy six, is when he dies. Um, she's told
Speaker 1: that it was an aneurysm, Um, which is I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't Andy, But she was just told that he
Speaker 1: had an anears and while he was at the school,
Speaker 1: and that's what she believed for thirty three years, that
Speaker 1: he had just had a freak aneurism at this normal
Speaker 1: school until in two thousand sixteen, a former Alan resident
Speaker 1: named Mark Babbitt's tracked her down and I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from the Sun Journal here. He tracked down Newell and
Speaker 1: put her on the phone with a witness who said
Speaker 1: Phil didn't just collapse one day, as the family had
Speaker 1: been told he had been forced into a Lawns infamous
Speaker 1: boxing ring and beaten by other teenagers because he complained
Speaker 1: of a headache. The witness saw Phil collapse, spasm and
Speaker 1: turn blue. Eventually, staff took him away. He was dead
Speaker 1: within a day. Now The Sun Journal spoke with that
Speaker 1: witness in another and although some of the details differ,
Speaker 1: their stories are essentially the same. And it turns out
Speaker 1: that stories of Phil's death had begun circulating online and
Speaker 1: communities of a lawn survivor starting in two thousand three.
Speaker 1: The first reference to his death came from a friend
Speaker 1: of his, who said that on Christmas weekend, Phil was
Speaker 1: forced to go three rounds in the ring before he
Speaker 1: passed out and started vomiting. He lay on the floor
Speaker 1: for an hour before being given medical attention. Another former
Speaker 1: student and Bowen gave a slightly different story. Um. She
Speaker 1: agrees that they thought he was manipulating the system by
Speaker 1: pretending to have a headache, so they put him in
Speaker 1: the ring. Um. And basically the only difference with her
Speaker 1: argument is that, like she think, she doesn't recall him
Speaker 1: passing out at first, he was just like walked away
Speaker 1: from the ring having like head issues and then a
Speaker 1: vantage having a migraine. Yeah, he went to the ring
Speaker 1: for having a migraine, was beaten and died soon after. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again possible he would have died without the ring.
Speaker 1: But also possible that if, for example, they'd treated his
Speaker 1: migraines seriously, he might have gotten medical care or something,
Speaker 1: or at least wouldn't have had his last experience before
Speaker 1: death getting beaten by a bunch of children in a ring. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So there was an investigation into Phil's death, but
Speaker 1: it occurred so late h and five years after allan
Speaker 1: itself closed that nothing conclusive came of it. Um. It
Speaker 1: is worth noting that this network of former students who
Speaker 1: are the reason that his sister finds out about this,
Speaker 1: were eventually what brings the Alan school down. They start
Speaker 1: to organize in like the early two thousand's and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and carry out a campaign to to report this place. Um.
Speaker 1: It was a long process, like killing the alaw On School,
Speaker 1: and it took years and years and years to do. Um. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: throughout the eighties and nineties, a lawn style saw hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of new students. Joe Richie ran for governor
Speaker 1: of Maine several times. He never quite pulled it off,
Speaker 1: but he was very influential in the state. Research for
Speaker 1: this episode was actually sparked by a graphic novel I
Speaker 1: found online called Joe Versus a law school. It was
Speaker 1: written by a former student who goes by Joe Nobody.
Speaker 1: He went to a lawn in the nineteen nineties, and
Speaker 1: I really recommend his story to everyone. It's a fascinating
Speaker 1: graphic novel and it gives a lot of context on
Speaker 1: how the school had evolved by that point. The electric
Speaker 1: sauce was gone by then, and safety gear in the
Speaker 1: ring was at least more common, but the whole experience
Speaker 1: was just as brutal. Solitary confinement had been added to
Speaker 1: the repertoire, and kids could be sentenced two months of
Speaker 1: being forced to live and sleep within the confines of
Speaker 1: a space roughly the size of a broom closet. The
Speaker 1: goal was to break you, because solitary confinement does that
Speaker 1: to people, so you'd be desperate enough to yield to
Speaker 1: the program just to get human contact again. In fact,
Speaker 1: for the course of the nineteen eighties, the strict hierarchy
Speaker 1: of jobs within the law and evolved for a dual purpose.
Speaker 1: It existed to police behavior and ensured that everyone was
Speaker 1: watching everyone else um and it existed to encourage people
Speaker 1: to buy into the system by working for better positions
Speaker 1: in order to get more privileges. For more on that,
Speaker 1: I want to quote from a Reddit post I found
Speaker 1: from a former student. Education was considered a right, but
Speaker 1: those of us who earned the right were still robbed
Speaker 1: of in education. School was from seven pm to eleven pm.
Speaker 1: No homework, no test, no projects. Example, math class consisted
Speaker 1: of grabbing a math book and handing the teacher at
Speaker 1: least one page of work. You're supposed to read through
Speaker 1: the book and like write a page of stuff like.
Speaker 1: It was never graded, it was never you didn't learn anything, right, Um,
Speaker 1: it was all like basically pantomime. We have to have
Speaker 1: these kids in a room with like a teacher who
Speaker 1: just I don't know, it's probably an alcoholic living in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere and isn't going to care. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the other twelve hours of the day consisted of constant
Speaker 1: conditioning and brainwashing. In the beginning, you obviously rejected it,
Speaker 1: but then you would be dealt with. You would not
Speaker 1: be able to rise through the ranks of the program
Speaker 1: to earn more rights until you could prove yourself to
Speaker 1: be a good candidate for more brainwashing. Eventually, it became
Speaker 1: your responsibility to begin indoctrinating the new rear residents Basically,
Speaker 1: you six months later or six months earlier, you had strength,
Speaker 1: and non strength. Non strengths were not allowed to talk, interact,
Speaker 1: or communicate in any way with other non strengths. It
Speaker 1: took a minimum of six months to earn the title
Speaker 1: of strength. It took some kids years to earn strength.
Speaker 1: Some kids never did. Alan made money based on the
Speaker 1: amount of time it took for you to graduate the program.
Speaker 1: You had to have a minimum of seven promotions before
Speaker 1: you wear a candidate for graduation. Each promotion took a
Speaker 1: minimum of three months, and nine of the kids never
Speaker 1: made it past the fifth promotion. These kids had to
Speaker 1: wait until they turned eighteen and could legally sign themselves out.
Speaker 1: Other kids stayed past their eighteenth birthday, which is a
Speaker 1: true testament to the effectiveness of the brainwashing. I remember
Speaker 1: one dude was twenty three, and some of them didn't
Speaker 1: have a choice. This wasn't all brainwashing. If you're sent
Speaker 1: there at seventeen or sixteen because you broke a law,
Speaker 1: if you don't graduate, you go to prison, right so
Speaker 1: you and they can keep you there as long as
Speaker 1: they won, because they decide when you're ready to graduate,
Speaker 1: right unless you and then again just like even with
Speaker 1: incarcerated people, it's like if you're treated a certain way,
Speaker 1: sometimes you know no other way to live except within there.
Speaker 1: And and keeping kids after a eighteen wasn't only a
Speaker 1: manner of brainwashing. Joe, who wrote that graphic novel, did
Speaker 1: eventually yield to the program after escaping. He escaped at
Speaker 1: one point and got to as far as New York
Speaker 1: City before being captured UM, and he spent months in
Speaker 1: solitary after that. So he eventually just buys into the
Speaker 1: program because he can't stand how miserable his life is
Speaker 1: in solitary right like he has to now. His plan
Speaker 1: was to sign himself out when he turned eighteen. He
Speaker 1: didn't care about graduating UM. But before that day came,
Speaker 1: he had a call with his parents. Now I should
Speaker 1: note here that according to Joe and other students, phone
Speaker 1: calls and visits with parents were tightly controlled. They would
Speaker 1: in the call if you seem to be about to
Speaker 1: say anything negative about the Alan school. Alan administrators carefully
Speaker 1: choreographed parent visits and coached parents ahead of time, preparing
Speaker 1: them for the idea that their child might lie to
Speaker 1: get out of a program that they desperately needed to
Speaker 1: be in when. Of course, if now students could have
Speaker 1: visits back home with their families if they earned them.
Speaker 1: But during those visits, how your strength, students were sent
Speaker 1: with them to police their behavior, so you're never alone
Speaker 1: with your parents and have a chance to convince them
Speaker 1: of what's being done to you. So Joe is about
Speaker 1: to turn eighteen, and he gets a call from his
Speaker 1: parents and they've been talking to the administrator, who says
Speaker 1: he's doing great, but that he really needs to graduate
Speaker 1: the program. And they tell him if you leave when
Speaker 1: you turn eighteen, will cut you off from any financial assistants,
Speaker 1: any college funds, whatever. Um, because we love you and
Speaker 1: we've been told this is best for you. UM. By
Speaker 1: the way, Joe was sent to a lawn because at sixteen,
Speaker 1: he and some friends got arrested with weed. Like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk more about Joe's story in a bit, but
Speaker 1: before we get to that, I want to read you
Speaker 1: the story of another adult, of another student. Tatiana Karam
Speaker 1: attended a lawn from nineteen to nine, and in her case,
Speaker 1: the fact that she was sent there by her parents
Speaker 1: was the result of a tragic error. From the New
Speaker 1: York Times quote ms. Karam a student at the Northeastern
Speaker 1: University in Boston, said she was sent to a lawn
Speaker 1: from her home in Dubai after her parents, who were
Speaker 1: looking for an American school that would shelter her from
Speaker 1: Western sexual mores, saw a school brochure featuring idyllic photographs
Speaker 1: of the outdoors and students on horseback. At one point,
Speaker 1: when her parents sent a fact to the school saying
Speaker 1: they planned to pick up their daughter, ms Karam said
Speaker 1: she was pressured to call them and ask for more
Speaker 1: time at the school. When she refused, a school official
Speaker 1: called her parents and told them their daughter was not
Speaker 1: ready to leave. It was only after she left her
Speaker 1: a lan. Ms Karam said that she was able to
Speaker 1: give them the details. My mother, when she found out
Speaker 1: what happened, was so disgusted. Ms Karam said. She tells
Speaker 1: me she's sorry all the time, like that was just
Speaker 1: a freak nightmare accident in her case, Like Jesus, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like they're not they're not Americans, Like they don't
Speaker 1: they can't vet it, maybe as much they don't speak
Speaker 1: the Lang that they think they're doing the nice thing
Speaker 1: for their kid. She wipes up there. Um, she she
Speaker 1: backs up a lot of the details about like phone
Speaker 1: calls being monitored and all of that stuff. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things that's amazing about Joe's story is
Speaker 1: that he escaped. For a while. Now, a lot had
Speaker 1: an intricate system to stop escape e's. They had men
Speaker 1: in the woods waiting for people who might flee. Um.
Speaker 1: But Joe got away. He actually he went on a
Speaker 1: visit with his parents and another kid, and he maced
Speaker 1: his parents and the other kid and fucking ran for it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Wait, and you're saying they're people just
Speaker 1: stationed in the perimeter woods, like in like a hunting
Speaker 1: blind kind here to sweep up any runaways. Yeah, holy ship.
Speaker 1: So he gets he escapes and he like he's like
Speaker 1: in the woods and he finds a guy. And there's
Speaker 1: a couple of cases. There's another dude in a documentary
Speaker 1: who escaped into the woods and met like like a
Speaker 1: crazy hermit out there who had just been living off grid,
Speaker 1: and like this guy just adopted him and taught him.
Speaker 1: And now that and now that dude, the kid who
Speaker 1: escaped is like a wilderness survival instructor. Like he just
Speaker 1: like spent years living alone with this guy in the woods.
Speaker 1: Of Maine outside of civilization stuff. After escaping. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: in a documentary called The Last Stop. It's fucking amazing.
Speaker 1: Like he was just like, yeah, I was just lost
Speaker 1: in the woods that I meet this guy who's like
Speaker 1: living off the land and he just teaches me how,
Speaker 1: which is actually rad. Yeah, and like in my mind,
Speaker 1: like that guy had also escaped school and like, but
Speaker 1: you and they've got their own civilization, understand young young man.
Speaker 1: I'll give you the skills to live out here. What
Speaker 1: a story? Now, So Joe gets away and he's in
Speaker 1: the woods and he probably would have gotten caught again,
Speaker 1: but he found there's this drifter in a van who
Speaker 1: drives up and like the way Joe recalls the story
Speaker 1: his graphic novel, he's like certain he's going to be
Speaker 1: aped um, and this guy like is clearly doing a
Speaker 1: drug deal. Like they stop in Boston, pick up a
Speaker 1: huge bag of something, and then the guy has a
Speaker 1: bunch of cash. But like the guy the guy Like again,
Speaker 1: Joe was like really worried about this guy at first
Speaker 1: and thinks like something horrible is going to happen, but
Speaker 1: the dude just winds up giving him a bunts of cash.
Speaker 1: And saying like like good luck, don't get you know,
Speaker 1: caught again, like apparently just like a nice man who
Speaker 1: was just doing some drug smuggling but realized this kid
Speaker 1: is in a bad place and needs some help. So
Speaker 1: he made it to New York City. But after a
Speaker 1: day or so, he gets spotted by employees of the
Speaker 1: day Top school because Joe Richie had put out a
Speaker 1: bolow for his missing student, and he gets kidnapped again
Speaker 1: and dragged back to Maine. He was literally like trust
Speaker 1: up in the back of a van, and at one
Speaker 1: point when they get back into Maine, they stopped at
Speaker 1: a gas station and he gets the attention of a
Speaker 1: cop who immediately assumes this is a kidnapping and like
Speaker 1: starts to like try to arrest the guys for kidnapping him,
Speaker 1: but Joe claims that the men kidnapping him gave the
Speaker 1: gave to call the cop Joe Richie's name, and the
Speaker 1: officer's attitude completely changed. Right, because this guy is a millionaire.
Speaker 1: He's bought a lot of politicians in the area. Now,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you that Joe Richie was bribing the cops,
Speaker 1: because I don't know that he was um, but that's
Speaker 1: what this kid claims, and that like the cop and
Speaker 1: there's there's others. There's at least one story fucked up
Speaker 1: story of a cop encountering an a law runaway. And
Speaker 1: um is this guy Max Ashburne, this police lieutenant like
Speaker 1: picks this kid up, and he'd been hearing fucked up
Speaker 1: stories about the Allan School for years, um, from like
Speaker 1: former inmates and from just people in the area, and
Speaker 1: had been kind of sketched out by it, but like
Speaker 1: also couldn't do anything about it, because again, they're a
Speaker 1: very powerful force in the community. So he picks this
Speaker 1: kid up, this runaway, and he's supposed to hand this
Speaker 1: kid back to the Alan school legally, that's his job.
Speaker 1: But he's so horrified by this kid's story that he
Speaker 1: drives the kid to a truck stop and hands him
Speaker 1: off to a random group of truckers. And it's just
Speaker 1: like someone here will take you away. That's the best
Speaker 1: thing this police lieutenant can fake to do. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to hand the kid to some truckers.
Speaker 1: It's better than sending him back to a law in school.
Speaker 1: What a fucking binary to choose between. Yeah, which suggests
Speaker 1: that this guy assumed there was nothing that law, the
Speaker 1: law was going to do about this, like you in
Speaker 1: your capacity as a lieutenant. Yeah, my best option is
Speaker 1: hand this kid to random truck drivers. Truck drivers seemed
Speaker 1: nice enough. So Joe Richie's story does not get a
Speaker 1: lot happier after the nineties. At least he does that,
Speaker 1: that's I guess. The good thing is he is pretty miserable.
Speaker 1: It seems his drug abuse seems to become an increasing problem.
Speaker 1: At one point he has like this. He goes on
Speaker 1: a rant over the p A system and his horse
Speaker 1: track against a main racing official. UM. He suit three
Speaker 1: times for sexual harassment and once for threatening to kill
Speaker 1: a female employee. He dies in two thousand one at
Speaker 1: age fifty four. The harm caused by a lawn lives on,
Speaker 1: and it's here I should note that you can find
Speaker 1: a number of people again who will say that the
Speaker 1: school helped them. UM. More common are people who will
Speaker 1: say the program made them into the person they are today,
Speaker 1: but also left them with lasting trauma. And Joe's story,
Speaker 1: which I really recommend reading, and Joe versus a law
Speaker 1: in school, makes it clear that this could teach children
Speaker 1: very specific kinds of strength and coping strategies. You get
Speaker 1: smart and a very specific way to survive a place
Speaker 1: like this um. They're not necessarily good for living in
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. Now. I've made a conscious
Speaker 1: choice not to read any of the positive stories about
Speaker 1: a lawn here for a couple of reasons. They are dwarfed,
Speaker 1: absolutely buried by the horror stories. And two, I don't
Speaker 1: think the fact that some kids later were like I
Speaker 1: think I benefited from this experience makes it less criminal.
Speaker 1: I do want to site before we go. The story
Speaker 1: of Stephen Smith. He was fifteen years old when a
Speaker 1: Connecticut social workers sent him to a lawn. He'd been
Speaker 1: a Ward of the States since age six, when his
Speaker 1: mom was convicted of armed robbery. Stephen was sent to
Speaker 1: a lawn after his neighbor kicked his dog, and he
Speaker 1: responded by shooting him in the butt with a pellet gun.
Speaker 1: His social worker gave him the choice of jail or Alan,
Speaker 1: which she framed as a summer camp in the woods.
Speaker 1: From the beginning, he had trouble with the Alan system
Speaker 1: and was subjected to numerous haircuts in general meetings. Quote
Speaker 1: they asked, they'd asked me if I hated my mother.
Speaker 1: They'd read my file in front of everyone in the group,
Speaker 1: things about my mother and her criminal record. I didn't
Speaker 1: dig that, so I just didn't say anything. Then when
Speaker 1: I shut up, they accused me of intimidating the group,
Speaker 1: said I was doing some violent act against group members
Speaker 1: for not opening up so everyone. Once in a while
Speaker 1: they'd set up a general meeting and then throw me
Speaker 1: in the boxing ring until I lost. I tried to
Speaker 1: run away all the time. It's the only thing I
Speaker 1: ever did. Tried to run away every chance I got.
Speaker 1: I tried about seven times, but they always caught me
Speaker 1: because they had this posse that would go out and
Speaker 1: be rewarded by Richie if they caught someone trying to
Speaker 1: run away. Now, Stephen Smith said that the first time
Speaker 1: he met Joe was at a general meeting called by
Speaker 1: a staff member named Jeff Gottlieb. Here's what he said
Speaker 1: about that day. Richie came in and I was called out,
Speaker 1: along with a girl named Nancy and another girl, Marie,
Speaker 1: two guys Ray and Johnny, and another kid named Sean.
Speaker 1: We were all sitting around a table and Richie announced,
Speaker 1: we have some cancer in this house, and any good
Speaker 1: surgeon knows the way to get rid of cancers, to
Speaker 1: cut it out before it spreads. Then he called us
Speaker 1: all up in front of the house and asked for
Speaker 1: everyone if they had any feelings for us. Then Richie says,
Speaker 1: now we're going to put you upstairs in one of
Speaker 1: the rooms. It was a room about the size of
Speaker 1: a cell. They boarded up the windows in the door
Speaker 1: and locked it. Richie said, whatever goes on, and there
Speaker 1: goes on. It was July. I know it was in
Speaker 1: July because it was my sixteenth birthday. The next day
Speaker 1: it was horrible. Six of us all stuck in there together.
Speaker 1: The guys, Ray and Johnny would take turns beating each other.
Speaker 1: Ray would pound his head until he got tired, and
Speaker 1: then they'd take turns having sex with the two girls.
Speaker 1: One of them didn't care, but the other girl didn't
Speaker 1: want to, but they made her. Sean and Ray would
Speaker 1: keep her food, and that's how they got her. The
Speaker 1: day I turned sixteen, I mentioned it was my birthday.
Speaker 1: Sean picked me up and said, oh, it's your birthday,
Speaker 1: I have something to give you. He started to hit
Speaker 1: me in the face and stuff, and then well he
Speaker 1: raped me in there. Oh my god, yeah, there are
Speaker 1: other stories of rape. Um, there are other stories of
Speaker 1: rape at the Alan school. I'm not going to just
Speaker 1: go through and read them all. What I do want
Speaker 1: to read is so Stephen later gets arrested. He goes
Speaker 1: to prison as an adult, right, and when he was
Speaker 1: interviewed by the author of Duck in a Raincoat, he
Speaker 1: was asked how a law in school compared to maximum
Speaker 1: security prison, which is where he was incarcerated at the
Speaker 1: time of the interview. Quote, Alan is much worse here.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of ship. But I get a chance
Speaker 1: for some solitude to read, and I'm going to college,
Speaker 1: and I've also gotten to learn woodworking and make some
Speaker 1: money in the prison store. At a LAN, there was
Speaker 1: nothing positive. It was pure hell. You know. The worst
Speaker 1: thing is the judge that sentenced me there for ten
Speaker 1: years lectured me, uh centured me here for ten years,
Speaker 1: lectured to me, telling me I blew the opportunity I
Speaker 1: had it a LAN. I don't understand how the courts
Speaker 1: can legitimize a guy like Richie who has harmed so
Speaker 1: many mixed up kids. What the fuck? Yeah? Now there's
Speaker 1: also yeah, I mean it's pretty bad, right, Miles were
Speaker 1: not great and he's just fucking out here still No,
Speaker 1: he dies in two thousand one. Um yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: I think, I think cut out. Yeah, he dies in
Speaker 1: two thousand one. The school shuts down in two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven after the last ten years or so. It's it's
Speaker 1: gradually degrading. Um. There's a campaign from a bunch of
Speaker 1: former students to shut it down, and like the State
Speaker 1: of New York does uh like goes after them too
Speaker 1: for to some extent, Like it's a process, but it
Speaker 1: finally closes its doors in two thousand eleven. Um yeah, uh.
Speaker 1: And there's you know, there's more, if there's so much more, dude,
Speaker 1: Like there's stories that Joe Richie and other staff slept
Speaker 1: with teenage girls that were incarcerated at the school, Like
Speaker 1: obviously he did ship like that. It's just the bottom,
Speaker 1: bottomless well of horror. I think it's best to end
Speaker 1: with a quote from Steven Smith, which I think acts
Speaker 1: as a fine eulogy both for Joe Richie and for
Speaker 1: the Alan School. The most important thing is that the
Speaker 1: truth comes out about Richie. He has no business screwing
Speaker 1: up kids and making a fortune doing it. The state
Speaker 1: takes kids from messed up families, but they put them
Speaker 1: in places worse. If I was not messed up before
Speaker 1: I got to a lawn, I certainly was afterwards. Good stuff, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think, yeah, important to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: we still have things like this. Oh yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: ton of other school like now. Yeah, there's still the
Speaker 1: team troubled. Team industry is a huge business. Um. Every
Speaker 1: year there's a bill thrown into Congress to try to
Speaker 1: regulate it, and every year the Republicans make sure that
Speaker 1: nobody's going to be voting on that motherfucker um Because yep,
Speaker 1: how do you feel, Miles oh Man? Thoroughly fucked, to
Speaker 1: be honest, But I think I more than anything, I
Speaker 1: think it gives some layer of context understanding, like these
Speaker 1: schools that exist, like and what that this is part.
Speaker 1: It's not just sort of like it doesn't end with
Speaker 1: this thing we just talked about, like we're this is
Speaker 1: still continuing. Um. So in a way, I'm in a
Speaker 1: very broad sense, I'm grateful for the awareness that I
Speaker 1: have on the subject, but it's doesn't make it any
Speaker 1: less completely horrifying. Yep, it's good stuff. I don't know, Miles,
Speaker 1: what are you? What do you what do you do
Speaker 1: about this industry? Like how do you? Actually, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It just feels hopeless because there's there's so many people
Speaker 1: have vested financial interest and it continued to exist. And
Speaker 1: this like culture of like coercion and power that we
Speaker 1: exist in, Like it's just allows for that sort of
Speaker 1: dimension of our culture, like manifesting like the ugliest fucking
Speaker 1: way to I mean, honestly, I feel like, more than
Speaker 1: anything people, I think we just need to be comparing
Speaker 1: everything to this school, so people have an idea of
Speaker 1: like truly like what it means to help someone, um,
Speaker 1: not in like this sense that you've got from like
Speaker 1: your grandparents who were like mainlining like Kellogg books, um
Speaker 1: and like that kind of philosophy, and actually like what
Speaker 1: it means for someone to develop what you know, cycles
Speaker 1: and patterns of abuse look like, and how to interrupt
Speaker 1: those and end those. But yeah, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll just stick to smoking weed and talking about reality TV. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think I'm I don't know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just uh, you know. I started to make kind
Speaker 1: of like my bones and journalism. Some of the first
Speaker 1: stories I did were with like people who had gone
Speaker 1: to these these teams back when I was still working
Speaker 1: at Cracked, these team troubled team schools, and um, it
Speaker 1: just keeps going on right like it's been. It's it's
Speaker 1: the central problem. Like the Allon school is fascinating because
Speaker 1: you've got this uniquely fucked up guy and he builds
Speaker 1: this uniquely fucked up system for abusing children. But the
Speaker 1: whole reason why it's able to exist at all is
Speaker 1: there's this broader remant with a lot of people in
Speaker 1: American culture that it would be fundamentally evil to take
Speaker 1: away a parent's right to choose absolutely everything for their child,
Speaker 1: and that that child doesn't get to say, but the
Speaker 1: parent is the sovereign of their child. Um, and I
Speaker 1: think that's bad. I don't think parents should be the
Speaker 1: unquestioned sovereign of children. I don't think the state should
Speaker 1: be either. Um. I don't entirely know what the solution
Speaker 1: to this is, but clearly there are problems with the
Speaker 1: way we do it. Yeah. I mean, at the very least,
Speaker 1: you can you can fundamentally create laws or at least
Speaker 1: guardrails to what you cannot do or things that we
Speaker 1: can all agree on that child should not experience no
Speaker 1: matter what the prerogative of a parent, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm certainly not saying we should give the state more
Speaker 1: power over kids instead of the parents. We should we
Speaker 1: should limit parents power certainly to do this, right, can
Speaker 1: we agree, Like you don't have the right to hire
Speaker 1: men to kidnap your children into the woods, right and
Speaker 1: then turn a blind eye to abuse because for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: do you feel that that's the solution to your inability
Speaker 1: to do something or whatever? Maybe the Yeah, it's all yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very complex but so simple at the same time,
Speaker 1: because most people can say children do not deserve any
Speaker 1: kind of existence like that. Yeah, absolutely, no one does.
Speaker 1: Like I wouldn't be supportive of this if I thought
Speaker 1: we should have prisons, I wouldn't want them to work
Speaker 1: this way because this is not rehabilitating people. This is
Speaker 1: just hurting them and making them more dangerous to everyone.
Speaker 1: I think, because you know, we to to to address this,
Speaker 1: we'd fundamentally have to address like a lot of these
Speaker 1: societal ills that we have, like that are deeply ingrained
Speaker 1: in our psyches and our culture. And that's what it takes.
Speaker 1: It takes this like tremendous reckoning to have to say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're still manifesting these cycles of abuse infinitely
Speaker 1: in every single way, and like it's weird that we
Speaker 1: can find these rationalizations in our minds. Whether it's like
Speaker 1: you broke the law quote unquote and that's why you
Speaker 1: deserve this, or a parent is the one who decides
Speaker 1: what's best for their children. You mind your child, I'll
Speaker 1: mind my I'll mind mind sort of thing that you know,
Speaker 1: will it keeps going on, but yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: keep I think the ultimate solution, Miles, is that we
Speaker 1: should adopt nationwide my program of hollowing out the center
Speaker 1: of the United States, take all children away from their
Speaker 1: parents and make them live in the middle of the
Speaker 1: country is a big, open air child prison where they
Speaker 1: just grow feral and either survive or you know, thrive
Speaker 1: based on their their skillstews, no no internet, nothing but
Speaker 1: like sharpened sticks and bows and arrows. Uh. That's where
Speaker 1: I'm That's where I'm got a little more modern takes. See,
Speaker 1: and this is where people are seeing the schism in
Speaker 1: the zoom lady called or you believe the massive crater
Speaker 1: in the middle should be technologically free, mind should be
Speaker 1: technologically advanced in TikTok based. Well, I think TikTok will
Speaker 1: come into mine when when they turn eighteen they have
Speaker 1: to be brought back into society and adults get to
Speaker 1: hunt them on helicopters, And you can put that on
Speaker 1: TikTok shooting kids with dart guns is and they run
Speaker 1: in their feral packs and then dragging them back to
Speaker 1: San Bernardino where they work as accountants for four years
Speaker 1: before being for the adults. Um, we can talk about dentists,
Speaker 1: we can talk Miles, but Miles, it's time for it's
Speaker 1: time for replicable goodness. Me. Yeah, look, check me out
Speaker 1: talking news on Daily's Nightgeist every Day with your former
Speaker 1: co worker at Cracked, Jack O'Brien. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you like weed and ninety Day Fiance, check out my
Speaker 1: reality show podcast four twenty Day Fiance with Sophie Alexandra. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's always a good time. That's not the only bummers
Speaker 1: we have are maybe some of the bad accents will
Speaker 1: do sometimes, but it's times over there. Well that's that's
Speaker 1: that's that's that is the episode. H m hm