how i was spiritually raped and left for dead (part one)

this story begins at the end.

the year was 2008. i had just finished reading a book written and published by bob's son in law (we'll call him george), a leader in bob's organization. i had been out of bob's organization for about 10 years and was involved in an internet community that provided support for those who had been victimized by his groups.

our community had received national attention and as a result several print and television news stories had been produced, exposing bob and his programs. bob saw me as the ringleader of a campaign to destroy him.


knowing his followers and some of his detractors would read the book, george used it to try to discredit me. in the book, he claimed that i was an angry, troubled person that had been saved by bob and his organization. he said that, since i had never resolved my intimacy issues, i was attempting to destroy the program and people who had saved my life. in his book, he claimed that i was so angry that my coworkers and subordinates finally had to confront me.

as i stated in “god has a purpose for me,” i was off drugs and on the right path before i ever met bob. he can hardly be credited for getting me off drugs or saving my life. also, i never set out to destroy anyone. i simply told the truth. and the truth proved to be damaging to his organization which thrives on secrets.

it had been 10 years since i had last seen bob and i was still under attack by his followers.

i began writing a series of posts, not so much to t set the record straight, but to expose the truth. this story begins with those posts.

2008—in response to george's claims

first, i’ll give george this much: when working for the enthusiastic sobriety programs, i did have a reputation for being hard on my staff. i was also angry and depressed. many people claimed to be afraid of me.

i’m not going to try to blame these things on the program or anyone else. it was not my nature to frighten people or hurt them prior to getting involved in the recovery movement. in 1983, confrontation and “tough-love” were considered to be essential aspects of d & a treatment. in rehab, one of the treatment goals established by my counselor was that i needed to demonstrate the ability to confront others.

as i became enmeshed with enthusiastic sobriety, i became more and more stressed, frustrated, and critical. maybe i had no business counseling anyone.

in the early 90’s, i moved to phx to run bob's inpatient treatment program which was housed at a psychiatric hospital that was part of the country's largest chain of psych hospitals. the day before i was to start work, after i'd already moved my family to arizona, the hospital's administrator called and said that the hospital was going to back out of the contract. why? bob's staff could not show up to work on time. they constantly forgot their keys and i.d. badges. they repeatedly trashed the hospital van, drove the van dangerously, forgot to make legally required chart entries, and undermined the psychiatrist that was responsible for the clients' well-being. (when a patient enters a hospital based program, they are the psychiatrist’s patient. the rest of the staff is supposed to support the doctor’s treatment plan).

none of bob's staff knew how to function in any environment outside of bob's organization. they could not fulfill simple job requirements like, “ this is a locked facility where people who may harm themselves or others are housed. don’t lose your key!”

i was able to convince the administrator and psychiatrist that i would fix these problems. we were allowed the opportunity to continue with the program on a probationary basis. it could be ended at any time.
it was a complete nightmare. no one was qualified. no one was able to be responsible. they had nothing but disdain for mainstream counselor ethics, hospital policies or general workplace values. they saw everyone outside of bob's fold as idiots at best and evil at worst. this is what bob had taught them.

to make matters worse, bob made it clear to everyone on staff that i had no authority. i did not have the ability to hire or fire staff. the staff, which consisted primarily of people who none of bob's other program leaders wanted, were chosen for me. they were told i was a “broke-dick” who had too much “white folk,” college shit in my head. i had been put in that position only because i had some formal education. i was well-versed in the traditional schools of therapy, pharmacology, counselor ethics, regulatory laws and insurance reimbursement requirements.

this was the message that was sent to the people i was supposed to lead, while transforming a hospital program, bob's primary source of income, into something that could exist in an environment that required real accountability and professionalism.

nevertheless, i was honored to be trusted with the responsibility of running bob's inpatient center. it was more than a job; it was my salvation. this opportunity was to be my spiritual revival.

when i arrived in arizona, bob saw to it that i was broken-down. over a weekend, in a hotel suite, he guided his people while they verbally attacked me. i was told that the 10 years i had already devoted to working with drug abusers was wasted—that i had helped no one. my “spiritual shortcomings” had infected everyone who had ever come in contact with me. i was evil.

bob and his people made a good case. they dragged up all kinds of failures from my past. wherever there had been success, bob was able to take the credit and make it his own. using his philosophy on life, counseling and spirituality, he was able to paint a picture wherein, even those i had helped, had really been harmed in some way. i had been so spiritually bankrupt, according to bob, that i had actually believed that i was helping, when, in fact, i was harming.

i remember his opening statement that weekend. he said, “seekingintongues, you are completely and totally f#cked up. and if you don't see that you're completely f#cked up, you're even more f#cked up than i thought.”

at the end of the weekend, they decided they would let me stay in bob's circle. since they loved me so much, they were going to fix me. i would be allowed to keep my position as director of the inpatient center. they would watch every move i made to insure that i didn't infect others.

i was thankful.

at that time, we had 2 patients in bob's inpatient center. the cost of operating the program was far greater than the revenue coming in. bob was making $6000.00 a month, plus expenses. the rest of the staff was underpaid. i was making $1700.00 per month as the sole provider with a family of 3 to support. at that time, mom’s didn’t work in bob's organization. the hospital's nurses and school teachers also had to be paid. so did the doctor.

bob also repeatedly said, “seekingintongues is doing his job when i don’t get any phone calls.” i had to make sure that he was never bothered with any problems that arose at his program.

i was completely overwhelmed. i couldn’t make ends meet. the staff considered everything i tried to teach them “white-folk bullshit”, things like don’t forget your i.d. badge, don’t lose your key, don’t violate driving laws when transporting the patients, don’t show up for work an hour and fifteen minutes late with wet hair wearing a t-shirt with a confederate flag on it (the confederate flag part came later). i was blasted by bob and the rest of the leadership, because no one seemed to understand why african hospital employees and patients were offended when bob's staff started showing up wearing t-shirts with huge confederate flags on them.

trying to go around to the entire mainstream hospital staff and all of their patients to explain bob’s version of why the confederate flag was not a symbol of racism, was not, in my opinion, the best approach to take. call me crazy, but i determined it was best to ask bob's employees—the one’s i had no authority over—the stop wearing those shirts to work.

the hospital administrator was a good man. bob had been able to convince him that his (bob's) approach to drug treatment was superior to anything else available. bob had convinced him putting his program into the hospital would save kids' lives. this administrator took a huge risk working with bob. he put up with a lot. he put his own career on the line. the hospital had lost a lot of money early on. and bob's fee was outrageous.

in private, bob referred to the administrator as “my punk.”

one day, i was called into the hospital administrator’s office. he yelled at me for 30 minutes straight. he had several complaints, but the primary complaint was that our counseling staff had destroyed one of the hospital vans. the fabric was torn off the ceiling of the van. the upholstery was torn from the seats. the side-view mirror had been broken off. there were cigarette burns on the armrests. the floor was littered with cigarette butts (due to arizona and federal laws smoking was not allowed in the van). trash, including half-eaten, fast food items covered the floor. drinks had been spilled with no attempt to clean them.

the administrator was furious. he could not understand why any employee would treat a $30,000.00 piece of property this way. i was dangerously close to having to deal with bob receiving a phone call. bob didn’t give a damn about the van. he just wanted me to make sure it wasn’t his problem.

worse, we were once again in immediate danger of losing the hospital contract. i would have lost my job, been blamed by bob and everyone else, and probably would have been cast aside.

the counseling staff saw the van problem as “a bunch of white-folk bullshit.” they thought i was an asshole for even being concerned. not only was i concerned for our program and our reputation, but this, the hospital administrator, was signing my paycheck. i had an obligation to them.

i asked the staff, over which i had no authority, to meet me at the hospital. they showed up within 45 minutes after the designated meeting time.

when i talked about the van problem they laughed. i yelled at them. i became livid. i honestly couldn’t understand the connection between bob's approach to sobriety and the destruction of property. rather than backing me on these issues, bob ridiculed me. “seekingintongues is all caught up in that white-folk bullshit.”

he used me as the scapegoat…the bad cop. i was to make everything work, while he played the role of “cool, loving, messiah. when i had to try to get people to behave professionally, i was ridiculed.

i should add that this was just one example of me having truckloads of the leadership's problems heaped upon me.

here are some others:

-in 1986,i was given the position of running another hospital in st. louis and keeping the beds full. the staff, myself included, were all under-qualified. i wasn’t even a certified counselor at the time. ultimately, i was summoned to testify before a grand jury. they had been using illegal billing practice—billing insurance companies for services that were never performed. my testimony, which was fully truthful, caused the hospital administrator to go to prison. to this day, i believe he was set up by the cult leadership to take the fall. he was married with 3 kids.

-in 1988, i was sent to atlanta to start an outpatient program…against my will. i delivered pizza to make a living while licensing the program and getting it up and running, with no support from bob or his top lieutenants.

when i would call with concerns and questions, primarily financial, because we did not have the start-up capital needed for the operation, the response was always the same. “just send people out to our residential center, now located in texas, and we will send you $1000.00 per kid to pay the bills.” needless to say, when i did send people, they never sent any money. they always seemed to be “struggling financially.” they always promised to pay later, even though they lived in lavish homes, drove nice cars and traveled frequently.

i was asked to start a program in houston, while still running atlanta. i had to travel back and forth at my own expense. i had to maintain a house in atl and an apartment in houston, at my own expense. there was no start-up money for houston. i was personally responsible for all the operating expenses for these programs, rent, payroll, accounting, etc.
when bob's organization was kicked out of the 3rd houston hospital, i was expected to hire all the hospital staff so that, until a new hospital deal was set up, they didn’t lose the employees. additionally, bob's right hand man took the most profitable part of the houston program from me and my most valued employee. they had been the primary revenue generators for the houston program. but…bob's guy needed to feed his kids. since there was no hospital deal, he had no income. he was, however, living in a beautiful home, with a swimming pool, in a golf community, owned by a rock star that was loyal to bob. he ate at expensive restaurants several nights each week always billed to the program. he also traveled all over the country and even to russia.

-while running the inpatient center in arizona, i was given the responsibility of running bob's counselor training school. no one else wanted to teach all that “white-folk crap.”

the school was set up so that young people that had been clients in bob's programs could clock the educational hours required to turn them into legally certified drug and alcohol counselors and go to work for bob.

ultimately, it became a vehicle for indoctrination. young people were separated from their families, subjected long daily session where bob and his people would tear them down and rebuild them over months while they were used as free labor, allowed little time to sleep, and forbidden from having meaningful contact with the outside world. their parents paid for them to go through the training program, mostly because they believed that becoming one of bob's counselors would insure that they would never use drugs again.

also, i was given the responsibility of serving as clinical supervisor for bob's arizona outpatient program, a program that had been seized by another bob follower through brute force and given to bob's son-in-law to run as his own business.

i was told to find a house to purchase, handle all the inspections, write the policy and procedure manual, and license and launch a free-standing residential treatment center...and serve as the center's program director. i also worked shifts at the residential center when they needed someone to fill in. i was given the responsibility of launching a similar residential center for kids 18 and over as well.

also, bob came to me and asked me to merge my side business, a d.j business, with another staff person. i had been doing d.j. work to supplement my income, because i wasn’t making enough to pay the bills. another staffer had started a coffee shop, but was not making money. bob felt that if we merged the shop would be more successful. i also took on partial responsibility for the coffee shop and the functions.

i stalled when bob asked me to write the second edition of his book, a book on drug rehab which had been a new york times bestseller. he offered me $1000.00 and no title credit.

I was forced to hold all these positions simultaneously, and at the same time, i was constantly criticized by bob for using work to avoid my family!

in fact, i was just criticized…all the time. bob humiliated me, teasing me, ridiculing me, calling me names, both privately and publicly. while i was in charge of the operations that were bringing in millions in revenue and assuring that he made a fat salary, he went from one end of the country to the other talking shit about me.

at the same time, he was obsessed with the idea that i was secretly critical of him. he thought i was passing judgment on him, when in reality, i was trying to justify his insane behaviors and ethics both in my mind and to others. i wanted him to be the hero i had initially believed him to be.

on top off all of this, i was expected to stay home on many of my nights off to be with my daughter while my wife was hanging out with bob's wife and daughter. on some weekends, my wife would go out of town with his daughter.

every other friday night, we had to attend meetings led by bob's son-in-law. these meetings were billed as a time for us to work on our own spiritual growth. during them, we were often subjected to long hours of verbal attack. after those meetings, when the men and women would gather at separate houses for social time, i was sent home to care for my daughter, while my wife went to the home of bob's daughter-in-law--again leaving me alone to watch my daughter. if bob's daughter wanted to hang out with my wife, she damn sure got her way.

they were attempting to drive a wedge between my wife and me.

i sat at home many of these nights with the full knowledge that bob's wife and her crew were working on my wife, trying to get her to take my daughter and leave. we had no communication between us. our intimate life was halted by bob and his wife.

bob's wife had a rule. when trying to split a marriage, never be the first one to use the word “divorce.” the idea was to manipulate the target to believe that she was the one who had decided that she needed to leave her spouse. she would patiently and subtly convince the target that her spouse was the source of all her problems and insecurities, problems and insecurities that she herself had created in within the target.

my wife was forced to report my actions to them. they created deep fear within my wife, a sense of dread and impending doom. then they attempted to make her believe that i was the source of those feelings.

i had no friends, no spouse (we were, for all intents and purposes separated but still living in the same house). my wife now belonged to bob and his wife.

these were my work conditions.

was i angry? depressed? afraid? overwhelmed? yes to all these.
should i have yelled at people? no.

did i want people to fear me? no. i hated it.

i also hated the fact that the program that i fully believed in, because of all its dirty little secrets, was unable to be honestly presented to mainstream society. i knew we didn’t stand a chance of becoming the “leaders in drug treatment” under these conditions. the counselor training school would never train the counselors of this country. it would never be accredited. nothing would be published in any journals. no one in the industry would adopt our approach. we had too many secrets. we were unprofessional.

in my mind, it was a travesty.

i take full responsibility for the way i treated others. it is one of my greatest regrets. it is probably part of what drives me to try to amend the past and end the damage being done by the program. it is very personal for me.

i have spent years making amends to people for my transgressions. i know i am at fault. i am not trying to run from that. i was working under horrible conditions. i reacted to these conditions in a horrible way. the reaction is mine.

did my coworkers and subordinates confront me the way george explains it in his book?

that part next…