So long and thanks for all the fish

This blog is finished because it's just a way for Danny  to stalk and harass me

It's a shame because I liked this blog

I loved writing A Life Gone Awry and the whole experience posting it, but I've got little time left on this planet and won't waste time in the negativity he and the other Elan trolls drag me into. I won't get in the gutter with them any more. I lost respect for myself when I did

On the other hand, I learned a lot about myself. Though it was stuff I didn't want to learn, it's the first step towards self improvement

I believe everything bad about Danny exists in all of us. I believe Elan did this to him.

I was as bad or worse than Danny when I drank and did crak. I've done evil things. I believe Elan is responsible for the one regret I have in life and I've been working to have it removed from my record

I've filled out an application for a pardon for burning my family's house down in 1983. This is to get a hearing, where I can bring witnesses and evidence of the atrocities I saw and experienced at Elan, and of the brainwashing they turned into psychic murder.


-------------------------------------------

This is the letter I attached to the application

Dear Board Members,

In order to understand the reason why I’ve applied for a pardon for burning down my family’s house in 1983, you have to understand what happened in the years leading up to that day. I had never been in trouble with the law, and have not been since. A few convictions for drug possession when I was an active drug addict, but that’s all.

On April 1^st, 1983, I was arrested on Vista Drive hours after the fire, but to this day I don’t remember setting it. I only vaguely remember being arrested. I confessed because I knew I did it, but made most of the confession up. I had not done drugs or alcohol that day. For thirty years I haven’t been able to make peace with what happened because of my lack of memory. Though the conviction doesn’t affect my life, I need resolution because recent events have convinced me that this may not have been my fault. For two years not long before that day I had been indoctrinated into an abusive, brainwashing cult called The Elan School—one of the most infamous abusive residential treatment centers in history—and after hearing survivor stories, I’m convinced Elan is to blame.

Elan was a spin-off of the Synanon Church, which was closed by the federal government for abuse. During a 1978 trial to take away Synanon’s tax-free status, the form of therapy they used was called torture and brainwashing. The government brought in expert witnesses who said so.  But before Synanon was closed, it began to spread. The more infamous of the spin-offs were, The Seed, Daytop, Elan and Straight Inc. Of these, it is overwhelmingly agreed that the isolation factor made Elan the worst of them psychologically and emotionally.

Synanon called their brainwashing technique, “The Game,” but The Seed, Daytop, Straight Inc and Elan called it, “Behavior Modification.” This is what a Senate subcommittee had to say about it.

"Other forms of behavior modification techniques employ intensive "encounter sessions"

in which individuals are required to participate in group therapy discussions where intensive

pressure is often placed on the individuals to accept the attitudes of the group... Once the

individual is submissive, his personality can begin to be reformed around attitudes determined

by the program director to be acceptable. Similar to the highly refined "brainwashing"

techniques employed by the North Koreans in the early nineteen fifties, the method is used in the

treatment of drug abusers... "The Seed", a drug abuse treatment program in Florida that, until

recently, received funding from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, is based on a

similar philosophy."

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND THE FEDERAL ROLE IN BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION

by the COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, UNITED STATES SENATE, Subcommittee on

Constitutional Rights, November, 1974, pp. 15 - 16 describing The Seed.

 

Behavior Modification became popular when it showed success with hardcore heroin addicts and Synanon quickly began to use it on teens who were street-tough heroin addicts. Elan began using it on teens that were not on drugs, but considered the worst of the worst. Murderers, rapists and child killers.

By the time I got to Elan, they were taking anyone. I had never done drugs or been in trouble with the law, yet I was beaten, raped and tortured, and forced to watch atrocities no one should have to see. I was also forced to abuse others as part of the program.

In 2004, the National Institutes of Health released a ‘state of the science,’ consensus report concluding that get tough treatment doesn’t work, and that there is evidence it may make the problem worse. Typically, Elan survivors claim to leave with post-traumatic stress disorder and exacerbations of their original problems.

Marge Robertson, executive director of the Cincinnati chapter of the ACLU told the Cincinnati Post about Straight Inc, “They run very close to really committing psychic murder.”

Don Schlosser, a spokesman for the Illinois department of children and family services said to the Associated Press that “an evaluation team sent to Elan had never seen anything so bizarre and degrading and that the whole concept of the program seemed to be a brainwashing technique.”

The Supreme Court of California acknowledged brainwashing as torture in 1984 when Paul Morantz sued the Unification church and said that victims could sue for damages. In a recently declassified brief from J. Edgar Hoover to C.I.A. director, Allen Dulles about the F.B.I.’s investigation of brainwashing, he basically laid out the strategy of behavior modification programs.

The problem with the brainwashing we were subjected to at Elan is that our program directors were criminals and sex offenders who were not qualified to sell shoes. Like the Stanford Prison Experiment, the inmates had taken over the asylum. Unlike it, no one was there to stop them.

I was mentally ill as a child and Elan made it worse with their abuse. I don’t think they programmed me to be a bad person, like a Manchurian candidate. I just think they messed with the wrong troubled teen’s mind. I’ve been clean from crack-cocaine for almost ten years and have helped a lot of people get clean. I’ve also advocated for abused and mentally ill kids for a few years now. I’m a good person and always have been. I believe the arson was a mental break of some kind—temporary insanity—and that Elan’s sick therapy had something to do with it. If you give me a chance, I believe I can convince you. I don’t deserve for this fire to be part of my legacy. I didn’t do this. Some monster in my head did.

Thank you for your time and attention,

Best,

Wayne Kernochan