how i was spiritually raped and left for dead (part 14)

to read this story from the beginning click here

i knew it before she said it.
“i'm leaving you.” she spoke, but her lips didn't move.
she stood sideways, gently pressed against george's hip, hand on the small of his back. she placed her other hand on his stomach and gently kissed the side of his neck. he looked directly at me, smiling, showing pity as she kissed his neck.
she looked back at me as well, a beat, another beat, both of them expressing pity for me.

my daughter was 20 feet behind them, sitting in a motorcycle sidecar. like an overexposed picture, the sun reflected off her blond hair and face. she was smiling, excited, anxiously awaiting the motorcycle sidecar ride.
i the distance was a castle like home atop a lush, emerald-green hill. the land was rich with trees and flowers. birds and butterflies flitted about giving the castle-like home and the land around it a magical storybook appearance.

“c'mon daddy,” my daughter called out to george, showing her closed teeth in an exaggerated, fake-looking smile. her lips didn't move either.
the motorcycle and sidecar sat on a black, paved road which winded up the hillside to the castle-like home. directly behind it was long safari-style, open-sided car with a striped canvas top and several rows of passenger seats where goerge's other “wives” sat smiling, waiting anxiously.
i wanted to beg her to stay, but i knew she was right to leave me. george was better than me. he would give her and our daughter, their daughter, a better life. who was i to keep them from having what they deserved, what anyone deserved? besides, how could they ever love me? i was nothing. the pity she felt toward me made it clear that she could never love me.

she dropped her hands from george's back and stomach, took a step toward me and placed her hand on the back of my head. then, she looked into my eyes. again, she looked at me with pity and, as she gently pulled my head toward her lips, she said, “it's time.” she kissed me on the forehead and with a flash of white light they were gone. i was standing alone in an empty house.

there was no furniture, nothing on the windows, nothing on the walls except blue and gray striped wallpaper. the windows were dingy so that i could not see though them. they allowed enough light to penetrate them to give the room a greyish hue.

i felt nauseous. to my right, through the open bathroom door, i could see a lonely mirrored medicine cabinet. the mirror provided a visual gateway into george's grand candlelit bedroom, where george stood behind my wife holding her in his arms.

she was wearing a black cocktail dress which landed high on her thighs. she was barefoot. he reached his arms around her, placing them on her stomach as she tilted her neck and reached back to kiss him.

as their lips touched there was another flash of white light and i awoke. i was in bed in our pennsylvania town home. it was still dark. i looked over to see my wife asleep beside me. i went to the bathroom and vomited.

the green digits on our clock-radio indicated that it was 5:14 am. i had to be at church in a couple hours to go over a couple pieces of music before the early church service, so i went downstairs and made a pot of coffee.

as my wife slept, i sat out back in the darkness drinking coffee and reflecting.
it wasn't the first time i'd had that dream, or at least dreams built on the same theme. these dreams exposed a loss of self with which i had continued to struggle, my manhood, my essence, even my right to exist.

i thought about all of the staff purpose meetings, in which i'd witnessed the female staff members sitting by george, near his end of the oval. vying for their seats next to the power, they were gathered closer or further from him depending on their status within the program.
the girls on staff belonged to bob and those with less status to george. like whores, they were handed out and repossessed as bob and george saw fit.

this dynamic was part of a more dangerous and insidious hierarchical system which existed within bob's organization where, throughout the years, we just came to accept that some were inherently better than others. within this system, justice was nonexistent. punishment and reward were handed out arbitrarily; more accurately, they were handed out based on what was immediately most beneficial to bob and his wife.

bob used twisted pieces of evolutionary biology concepts to justify inconsistencies in the way people were treated. he referred to himself as “the alpha male.” he justified his constant belittling of one staffer, who he referred to as “the warthog,” by stating that the young staffer was deformed, fvcked-up, born wrong. he had told us that if he had been a dog, the other dogs would have killed him when he was a puppy in order to keep him from dirtying the gene-pool.

if one got close enough to bob, for a long enough period, he was likely to hear bob's ideas regarding who deserved what based on their genetic markers and even their primal spiritual makeup. for his part, bob was at the top of the food-chain, both physically and spiritually.

mostly, however, these messages were insidiously hidden within the structure and doctrine of the program, as well as the actions taken by bob.



why hadn't i killed that mother-fvcker? why hadn't i used raw power to beat him? i had decided to employ my intellect, my cunning, to outsmart him and right now, i hated myself for it. what kind of a man allows another man to beat him down, to take control of his home and his marriage without confronting him directly and beating him to a bloody mash?

my feeling of nausea was replaced with anger, rage, hatred. i imagined beating him with a bat. making him beg me to stop, making him beg for his life. i wanted to become his master. i wanted to terrorize him in front of his wife and daughter, in front of my wife and daughter. i wanted to destroy him, while everyone who had ever witnessed him making a punk out of me watched. and while he died, traumatized and suffering, he would know that he had been beaten in front of all these people. he would know that they knew that he was nothing. but most importantly, i would destroy him, utterly and painfully, proving to myself that i wasn't a punk, that i mattered.
i went to church.



******



the bible.
i've read a lot of books, but the bible is, without any doubt, the greatest book i've ever read. it beats moby dick hands down.

within it's text one will find every conceivable form and measure of human evil. murder, kidnapping, adultery, theft, betrayal, rape, incest, it's all there. the bible doesn't shy away from exposing the darkness that often lives within the hearts of men. i have seen this darkness first hand.

2nd samuel tells the story of david, king of the hebrews, and bathsheba, the wife of one of his his trusted soldiers. while uriah, bathsheba's husband, was on the battlefield, david saw bathsheba and wanted her for himself. he sent an agent to fetch her and he slept with her, taking the only wife of his trusted soldier...because he desired her.

bathsheba later sent a message to king david, informing him that she was pregnant with his child. this is where things get really interesting.

in order to cover up his his betrayal of his trusted soldier, david sent someone to call him off the battlefield. he gave him a gift and sent him home so he could spend the night with his wife, bathsheba, before he returned to the battlefield. not only had he impregnated uriah's wife, now he sent him to sleep with her so that he would believe the child to be his own, causing uriah to raise another man's child believing the child to be his own.

but uriah refused to sleep in his bed and lie with his wife while the other soldiers slept on the ground. so he slept with the servants at the palace's entrance. king david's cover up was foiled. so he tried again. he asked uriah to stay one more night and got him drunk. still, uriah went to sleep at the palace's entrance.

king david continued to scheme. he ordered the general to put uriah on the front lines and to instruct all the other soldiers to retreat once the battle got underway. uriah was killed. david was in the clear.

then, david took in bathsheba and made her his wife.

david had many wives. he could have had any woman he wanted. yet, he took the wife of his trusted soldier and killed him to cover his tracks. now, that's evil.

but that's not the stuff that makes the bible great. many believe that the bible is a book filled with violence, vengeance, and death. sure, it has all of those things. those things exist in the world in which we live. evil has been alive in hearts of some men since the beginning of recorded history and almost certainly before recorded history.

the bible's real poetry is not in its record of evil, but in its message of love. deliverance, repentance, forgiveness, absolution, redemption, these are the primary themes of the bible. even david, when he was shown the magnitude of his evil, found redemption

i think that one's view of the bible, as either a message of vengeance or a message of love, depends upon one's perspective. and i don't mean to say that those who go to church or are raised in the church are more likely to see the bible as a message of love. i've spent way too much time around way too many “religious” people, who claim to have love in their hearts, but clearly demonstrate righteous indignation, legalism and bigotry. i should add, however, that the vast majority of christians that i've known have been loving people. christians have visited me and my children in the hospital when we've been sick. they've prepared meals for my family during times of grief. they've provided us with groceries and money. they've prayed for us and grieved with us.

but i've also seen evil in the church. i won't deny that.

still i don't know why, given similar experiences and circumstances, one individual would come out with a perspective that would cause him to see the bible as a book of vengeance, while another would see it as a book of love. i only know how i see it. i don't even know why i have the perspective i have.

bob was like king david...without the redemption part. taking away the wives of his trusted servants is among the many evil acts i have seen him perform. still, though i could rightly blame bob for a lot of things, i knew i couldn't blame him for the harmful acts that i had committed, even while under his watch.

as an agent of the program i had betrayed my faith, betrayed myself and my family and lied to the community. i had also committed other acts which directly harmed others and had done so in the name of love.

for the next few years i continued to attend church. i read the bible, attended sunday school and bible studies, prayed and took counsel with ministers. but i wasn't seeking redemption. repentance was my goal.



lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon:
where there is doubt, faith ;
where there is despair, hope
where there is darkness, light
where there is sadness, joy


o divine master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life ~st. francis of assisi

i had to get a grip, find myself. my nightmares had nothing to do with bob. they had everything to do with how i saw myself. he played his role in formulating my self image. he had aligned his pulse with mine, exploited my deepest fears and desires. he had used me and so many others as a means to his own ends. but it was up to me to take back my soul.

i knew it wouldn't happen overnight. and exactly where is the point of deliverance anyway? when does it happen? the jews escaped egypt, but then ended up wandering around the desert for 40 years. i had escaped bob's fold, but was i wandering around the desert...again?

the message of the bible was a part of me and to the degree i allowed it, it became evident in my mental and emotional state. i changed. the nightmares stopped. the “sightings” of bob and george went away. i no longer experienced bouts of dissociation. most importantly, my desire for vengeance, my desire to hurt bob was gone completely. i'm not exactly sure how this happened; it just did. it was a like a miracle. if there is a god, he did it. if there is a god, then he took away my burning rage and replaced it with the message of the gospel.

that's pretty cool if you think about it. i didn't necessarily deserve grace, but i really needed it. and though, according to evangelical christian theology, i'm lost, i've been delivered...and possibly redeemed. i don't mean to say that i was no longer angry at bob. he continued to harm people, unrepentant, and i continued to be angry. i see that as a healthy position.

when i speak of the message of the gospel, i'm not talking about the idea that only people who believe in jesus go to heaven and non-believers get sent to hell. in fact, from where i sit, the idea of a powerful god sending a bunch of people to eternal torment runs completely counter to the message of the gospel.

i've been to hell and the hell i was in was created by men, myself included. the message contained within the gospel, on the other hand, delivered me from hell.

there were things that happened in the church that i ultimately couldn't live with. at the top of the list was listening to the preacher stand in the pulpit and condemn gays. one couldn't be gay and also be born again, regardless of the state of his heart. even if one accepts the idea that it is a “sin” to be gay, which in itself is hard to accept since there wasn't even a word for “homosexual” in greek, hebrew or aramaic, why set this so-called “sin” apart from all others.*(see note)

i also had a bit of a problem with the idea that anyone who was a born-again christian could join the church, but first you had to go through an interview process with a group of church elders, presumably so they could determine whether or not you were really “born again.” that seemed a bit too similar to the early days of the christian church when the pharisees called for the gentile converts to show that they'd been circumcised in order to prove they'd been saved.

still, it wasn't my place to advocate within the church. i was there to take what i could, to focus on the message contained within the gospel.

in time, i reconnected with others who'd left bob's organization. i listened to some of the horror stories people told. bob and his programs were becoming even more brutal, more dangerous. i feared that people i loved, people who were still in, would be physically harmed or even killed. i began to think more about those i'd recruited into bob's group. i was also deeply troubled by the fact that there was no information about bob or his programs on the internet.

it had now been over 5 years since i'd left. i was healthy. my family was well. my rage was gone. i knew that i no longer had a desire for vengeance. i didn't want to hurt bob. however, i did have a desire to warn his potential victims. i also wanted to provide something for people who'd been harmed by bob and his programs. when i had left, there were no former members to talk to. there was no place to get information. i hadn't had an avenue to connect with others who'd been in the program and had left. there was nothing out there.

i thought about how great it would be to provide a resource to catch people after they left or were excommunicated, a support network where people could talk through things, reconnect with friends that had left at a different time, a place to get their stories out, to be validated. i also thought there should be a truthful resource for young people and family members who were considering joining bob's programs. the use of the internet for consumer research was becoming more common; yet, there was nothing about bob and his groups, other than their own propaganda, anywhere on the net.

then i heard 2 stories that brought me to the realization that it was time to act. the first was that of a young man i'd known since he was just a kid. his mother had been a friend of ours and had still been working for bob when we left the program. she left several years after us and visited our home. she recounted for us the story of how she nearly lost her son. we'll call him sam.

sam's parents and his older brother had entered the program when sam was just a boy. in time, sam's mother, who was active in the parent program, was brought on as the parent coordinator. his brother, though resistant at first, became indoctrinated as well and became a counselor for the program.

during this time, sam became victim to a form of inequity that existed among indoctrinated families where one child was involved in the program and another wasn't. sam's brother, because he was “with the group,” was granted the freedom to stay out all night, quit going to school and smoke cigarettes. the program's stance was this: since he was an addict, the only thing that mattered was “sticking with winners.” the staff and kids in the program were “winners.” kids outside the program (even those at school) were not. sam's mom and dad, like the rest of the parent converts, believed that, as long as their addicted child avoided drugs and drug users, everything would be okay. smoking, school, language, structure were unimportant in comparison.

since sam wasn't an addict, he had to comply with a curfew, go to school, etc. in addition, i imagine that he felt left out, at times. the rest of the family shared the “program experience.” he was not fully a part of that. i know his parents and i'm sure they did everything they could to insure that sam was not left out. but, truth is, this is one of the dynamics that exists with siblings of program members.

though he didn't have a drug problem, sam eventually convinced the counselors, his parents and probably himself, that he was an addict and needed the program. he went through outpatient treatment and became a full-fledged member, able to hang out all night, smoke cigarettes and attend the extravagant dances and parties hosted by the program.

i got to know him and couldn't help but love him. he was a vulnerable kid with a tender heart. he also had a sharp wit and a snarky sense of humor. the more he tried to defend his heart with his wit, the more his vulnerability became apparent. i knew he was the kind of guy you could count on if you were down and out.

the entire family was highly talented. so, bob exploited them. mom became a part of the national leadership elite, brother, a sr. counselor and dad, a seasoned detective with the city's police force, was drawn in by bob. bob personally took him on and became his sponsor. bob always kept “friends” in high places.

sam went through counselor training. in time, he was sent to another city and became the city's executive director. but sam had a secret; he was gay.

years earlier, struggling with sexuality issues, sam had tried to talk to his counselor about it. the counselor explained the program's stance. homosexuality is an aspect of the disease of addiction—the highest form of self hatred. it was unacceptable. he needed to stop entertaining any homosexual thoughts, stay sober, work his program. if he was on solid spiritual ground, he would be straight.

bob was more blunt. he claimed, “faggots are people who suck their own sh!t off other people's c0cks. being a fag is the ultimate form of self-hatred.”

sam buried the issue. to pursue it would surely lead to expulsion from the program and possibly the loss of his family. further, since he was compelled to break ties with the rest of the world, since seeking counsel outside the program was forbidden, he had nowhere to turn. he soldiered on.

as the director of a city, sam was perceived as the spiritual leader. serving in such a position with that kind of a secret must have been excruciating. sam was no hypocrite. he was a straight-shooter, a 'what-you-see' kind of person. so functioning in this manner must have been more than he could bear.

ultimately it was. and so sam, who was never an addict prior to joining the program, began smoking crack. it was the proverbial cry for help. as director of a militant, totalitarian, black-and-white, no questions asked drug treatment program he was using one of the most devastating, dynamic drugs available—a drug that no one could hide using for long.

his mother told us that sam would smoke crack in his car minutes before picking up bob at the airport. wasted, with glassy eyes and dialated pupils, he would drive bob from place to place, the car reeking with the stringent odor of crack-cocaine. bob had to know.

moreover, sam was calling rachael, who controlled the money, and made desperate demands for more and more money. instead of inquiring, she sent him blank checks. by all appearances it seems as though bob was allowing sam to continue to deteriorate until he could find a suitable replacement.

when he did, he took sam's checkbook and put him on the street. he convinced sam's family that they should not take his calls or help him in any way. they were convinced that this course was best for sam and for their family. in reality, bob was angry at sam. this was what bob wanted.

sam was left to die on the streets of a violent, unforgiving city 1600 miles away from home and family.

eventually, sam wandered through the doors of one of the city's charitable organizations. they did what bob couldn't...wouldn't. they helped him detox, nursed him back to health and allowed him to begin the process of embracing his sexuality. he was able to overcome bob's atrocious message regarding homosexuality which had been implanted within him since, as a kid, he first tried to discuss the issue with his counselor.

he became a man. but he almost hadn't.

the second story was told to me by someone who'd been one of my closest friends, until the time i had left the program. we'll call him ty. five years after i'd left, i received word from a mutual friend that ty was out too. i asked my friend to see if ty would give me a call. within an hour, my phone rang. it was ty.

it was great to talk to him and we made arrangements for both of us, along with our families, to meet up in new york city. we stayed at the embassy suites hotel in lower manhattan. our rooms overlooked ground zero. below, we could see the tremendous hole where the twin towers had stood just a few years earlier.

i had first met my friend in 1989 when he became a counselor in dallas. i had known his wife since 1987. i remembered when they'd gotten married, when their son was born. our children played together even before they were a year old. we believed that they would grow up together, that when they went to high school together he would be my daughter's “big brother,” watching over her.

ty was a devoted husband and father. his wife was his true love and best friend. years earlier, while working for the program, his family was evicted from their apartment because the program didn't have any money to pay him and he couldn't pay rent. with baby boy in tow, they found themselves sharing a hot dog they'd purchased, from 7-11, with the last of their pocket change. they didn't know where they would stay or where they would find their next meal.

as they ate the hot dog, ty told his wife that he felt ashamed that he was unable to provide her a home. without hesitation she responded, “my home is wherever you are.”

ty was able to find a place for his family to live. he purchased a no-money-down, take-over-payments town home and spent the next several years building a profitable program. the program put a lot of money in bob's pocket. he and i worked side-by-side as our children played together.

when i left, our friendship was over. in the program, that was the way

his wife, who had been considered a leader among the women, began to fall out of favor with bob's wife. she had asked some questions that weren't supposed to be asked. bob's wife saw to it that she was ostracized. she also began trying to drive ty away from his wife and child.

with no support, no friends and knowing the leadership was pushing her husband to leave her, ty's wife became increasingly more depressed. she needed help. but bob and his wife weren't in the business of helping people. those in need were cast aside, lest they become a burden.

ty got sick once and passed out. his wife was terrified and called an ambulance. the doctors didn't find anything wrong, but bob's wife did. she explained that ty's marriage was making him miserable. because of his devotion, he was unwilling to leave his family, she said. she convinced him that since he refused to divorce his wife, he was trying to die instead. she told him, “you don't have die to get out of your marriage.”

she convinced him that, by staying with her, he was doing a great disservice to both his wife and son. she said he was preventing his wife from getting her act together—that for her to get well, he needed to leave. his son was suffering too. how could she meet his needs when she was spiritually sick? and ty, because of his selfish need to be dutiful, was standing in the way.

they sent ty to st. louis to spend some time with another director who'd been divorced at bob's and his wife's direction. that's how they sealed the deal.

broken-hearted and ashamed, ty returned to his home town and told his wife he was divorcing her and that there was no hope of reconciliation. then, he sat down and told his son he was leaving. it broke his son's heart. he left his family and rented a townhome 45 minutes away.

his wife and child were devastated.

ty was the director of bob's biggest and most profitable program. he was responsible for most of bob's personal income. he had faithfully served bob for years. bob repaid his efforts by destroying the thing he loved the most, his family. and why? because bob's wife didn't like his wife.

ty, continued to serve bob, but he was miserable...every minute of every day. he missed his family, but continued to do the “right thing” day after day, month after month.

ultimately, he couldn't stand it any longer. he believed that he had done what was necessary in leaving his family, an idea that was continuously reinforced by bob, his wife and their minions, but the pain was more than he could endure. so, admitting that he was a spiritual failure, he resigned his position, turned over the program (his business and sole source of income) to one of bob's minions and returned to his wife and child.

this is the story he told me in the hotel overlooking ground zero.

i hung my head. first sam's story and now ty's. again, my thoughts returned to my friends who were still under bob's control. something had to be done.

i was happy. my family was doing well and intact. i had put my life with bob's cult behind me. i had found peace, deliverance. but how could i rest knowing that people i loved were still being torn apart. they believed that they were by choice, but i knew they were captive. brainwashed and manipulated, they were being led down the road to hell which was paved with their good intentions and railed on both sides with bob's insatiable manipulative powers. standing on the side of the road, looking the other way, while others were driving unknowingly toward the cliff, wasn't an option.

is there a road to redemption? in his letter to the ephesians (eph.2:8-9), the apostle paul says, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith; and not of yourselves; not as a result of works, so that no one should boast.”

i believe what paul says. forgiveness is never earned. redemption is never earned. it is given not because we deserve it, but because we need it. whatever peace i had gained came as the result of a gift that i could never have deserved. though i hadn't spoken to my parents and siblings in years, when i left the cult, they never asked me to earn their forgiveness. they welcomed me and my wife and children back into the fold, no questions asked. even my old friends, which i'd abandoned when i entered the program, accepted me without reservation.

the issue of redemption is really beside the point anyway. as i stated previously, i wasn't seeking redemption, but repentance. i had learned ephesians 2:8-9 as a child, but i had just recently read what james had written in james 2;15-17:

if a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? so faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

taken together, the message seems clear. forgiveness, deliverance or redemption, whatever the case, is a gift, but it is useless without repentance. the greek word for repentance is metanoia, which means a change of one's conduct following a change of heart.

i don't claim to know many things (actually that may not be an accurate statement, but stay with me here), but i do know one thing for sure. a person can be wealthy and successful, a great athlete, writer, thinker, scientist, artist or academician, but if he turns his back on his brothers and sisters, if he neglects them when they need help, he is nothing. his life means nothing.

i knew there was nothing about me even approaching greatness. the love i had been granted was a gift. the peace i'd found was not of my own doing. any happiness i had was the result of being blessed with a loving wife, great kids and a loving family. to simply resign any humanitarian efforts to enjoy my newly found peace would be a waste of a human life, my life.



the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing ~edmund burke



my family didn't want me to do it. they were afraid for my safety. my mother warned me to always check my car before i started it...to make sure no one had tampered with it. they were worried that it might destroy my career as a drug abuse counselor—that my reputation would be attacked—that i would slip back into ptsd. there was a risk of losing myself completely.

i knew that people would come after me. those i'd harmed while i was in the program wouldn't care that i had believed i was acting in accordance with a higher purpose. they wouldn't care that i'd been manipulated. they would want their pound of flesh, and rightly so. i knew this. those who were loyal to the program would spread vile rumors about me. they would try to discredit me. secrets i'd shared with my program peers would be exposed. they would hurt me in any way they could. maybe bob would send one of his goons to rough me up. maybe he'd dig a hole in the desert.

i didn't know it at the time, but this simple step, that of speaking the truth, would lead to a national movement. it would result, for the first time ever, in an environment where thousands would be allowed an opportunity to tell what happened to them--where victims would receive validation. i also didn't realize that these people would come together and provide a loose network in which virtually anyone who had been harmed by bob and his organization could find someone to talk to.

it never crossed my mind that these people, these program castaways, would draw national media attention. that the media would inquire and they would respond, telling their stories to newspapers and tv reporters.

in the children's fable, “stone soup,” three of soldiers, returning home, came upon a village. they were carrying nothing but an empty pot. the villagers, who were poor themselves, closed their doors and windows. they knew the soldiers would be hungry and they didn't want to be asked to share their scarce supplies.

the soldiers built a fire, placed the pot atop the flames, filled it with water, and dropped a large stone in it. as the soldiers sat before the boiling pot of water, a few of the villagers became curious and came out to inquire as to what the soldiers were doing.

“we're making stone soup,” they replied. they invited the villagers to have some soup once it was done. then, as the villagers stood watching, one of the soldiers dipped a ladle into the soup, and tasting it, he said, “it's a bit bland, i wish we had some carrots to give the soup flavor.” one of the villagers spoke up, “ i have some carrots, let me run and get them.” the villager returned with the carrots and placed them in the boiling water.

after a bit, the soldier tasted the soup again. “it's almost ready,” he said. “if only we had some onions. another villager went to fetch some onions. and so it continued, parsely, beans, potatos, etc. when the soup was finished all of the villagers along with the soldiers feasted.” everyone was nourished and satisfied.

late one night, in 2004, i sat down before my computer and began writing the text for a website which i would launch. the website would provide a spark for a movement that would provide healing for thousands, expose bob and his entire organization, warn would be victims, and ultimately drive bob to his knees, destroying his credibility and forcing him into retirement.

i can't state emphatically enough that i am not the one who achieved these things. they were achieved by the people he'd harmed, the children he'd abused, the junkies he'd cast aside, the brokenhearted who'd been crushed by lies, the parents who continued to look toward the horizon hoping for the return of they're children whom they'd lost to the program, the castaways.

all i did was drop a rock in the soup.

and when the broken hearted people living in the world agree
there will be an answer,
let it be ~the beatles

(to be continued)

*note: please do not send me bible verses in an attempt to demonstrate to me that the bible condemns homosexuals. i am surely familiar with most of these verses, namely genesis 18-19, leviticus 18:22, leviticus 20:13, dueteronomy 23:17, romans 1;26-27, 1 corinthians 6:9, 1 timothy 9:10. if you just can't help yourself, you might want to review the original greek and hebrew words used to write these and other biblical passages that have been translated by english biblical translators in a variety of different ways. a good starting point? in hebrew: qadesh, quadeshaw, to'ebah.  in greek: akatharsia and arenokoitai. there are others, as well. in the original languages, verses which seem to be a wholesale condemnation of homosexuality, when read in most english translations, generally refer to male and female prostitution within the temple, pagan sex rituals, anal rape, sex with pagan idols, and same-sex relations between heterosexuals during mystical orgies.


in any event, it's just not a debate i'm interested in taking on.


thanks for understanding (or at least for shaking your head and biting your tongue).
oh...and, don't tell my mom what i wrote. i'll never hear the end of it.

how i was spiritually raped and left for dead (part12)

click here to read this story from the beginning


the men who committed the atrocities of september 11 were certainly not 'cowards,' as they were repeatedly described in the western media, nor were they lunatics in any ordinary sense. they were men of faith - perfect faith, as it turns out - and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be. - Sam Harris

is faith a virtue as pope gregory i proclaimed?

in 1632, galileo galilei published his book, dialogue concerning two chief world systems, a comparison of the copernican and ptolemaic views. according to the ptolemaic view, the earth was the center of the universe. copernicus, on the other hand, claimed that the earth orbited the sun. as a result of his book, galileo was convicted of “grave suspicion of heresy” by the inquisition. he was condemned to hell and sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

and although copernicus' ideas were verifiable through observation, parishioners were not only forbidden from believing that which could be proven by mathematics and observation, they were denied access to writings which even mentioned these ideas. publication of all of galileo's works, past and future, was forbidden.

what was the basis of the rejection of copernican thought? a book called genesis, written by an unknown author and determined by the political powers of the time to be inspired by an unseen and mysterious “holy spirit,” who, as one-third of a triune god, had placed these men in a position of authority to rule over the lives and wealth of the masses.

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it's not so hard to understand why i was able to suspend critical thought and blindly follow bob, even to my own peril. i, like most of us, had always considered faith a virtue. many of our greatest artists, thinkers, leaders and humanitarians were men and women of faith. mother theresa, martin luther king, johann sebatian bach, benjamin franklin, george s. patton, ronald reagan, mahatma ghandi, anne frank, harriet tubman, malcolm x and muhamed ali all relied on their faith in god.

when faith clashes with observable fact we are often asked to deny that which we can see, touch, taste, smell and hear, or at least reinterpret our observations, retrofitting them to support faith in that which cannot be physically observed.

bob was a master at manipulating one's faith. he understood the extremes to which a faithful individual might be willing to go. he depended upon it, exploited it to achieve his agenda.

speaking of clayton's death, bob said, “he chose it.” rejecting the fact that clayton suffered from a life-threatening illness which had been diagnosed using state-of-the-art, replicable, scientific techniques and ignoring the fact that bob himself, had denied clayton the treatment which likely would have saved his life, he claimed that clayton's death was due to a deep-seated spiritual shortcoming—the desire to take the easy way out.

as evidence, bob cited his own previous bout with hepatitis. but he failed to mention the fact that he had contracted a different and very curable form of hepatitis, hepatitis-a, or that his hepatitis was cured using mainstream medicine.

nearly everyone in the program began saying, “clayton chose it.” in fact, it was the explanation for any one who died in the program.

i remember one kid, a 15 year-old boy, who had been banished from the program following multiple relapses. the boy died as a result of huffing glade room deodorizer. when i asked a young girl, a friend of his, how she felt about losing her friend, she shrugged her shoulders and said, “he chose it.”

i had not lost my faith, just my faith in bob. in fact, it wasn't that i'd lost faith in bob, but instead i came to recognize that he was lost. i vacillated between the belief that he was a sociopath, who had been a con-artist from the very start, and the belief that he had been pure at one point, but had lost his way, adopting machiavellian methods to protect his power and wealth.

he had begun his career as a drug rehabilitator in 1971, when he was employed by an episcopal priest to lead a group of teenagers in a church-sponsored, youth support-group. a woman, who later became his wife, was running an alateen group at the church. many of the kids in the alateen group were smoking pot and using other drugs, so they became some of the first members of the new support-group.

bob would hang out with the kids. he would tell wild stories about his experiences on the streets of baltimore and his time in the federal penitentiary. the kids would hang out at night and prank the local community. when someone in the group reached 30 days without using drugs, bob and the group would get drunk and celebrate. bob told me this. he also said that he slept with some of the girls and that he even dropped acid with some of them. he claimed that his soon to be wife straightened him out, telling him he could no longer use alcohol and must remain true to her. abstinence from alcohol became part of the program's view of recovery.

the program continued to mushroom, partly due to bob's charisma, but also due to the hard work and deep pockets of local businessmen who were the beneficiaries of houston's oil boom.

bob helped a local up and coming rock star break his heroin addiction. the star achieved national fame shortly thereafter and it is through this individual that bob may have become connected to one of the nation's most well-known actress/comediennes. she was seeking help for her daughter who had been using drugs, so she sent her child to houston to be treated in the program which bob now claimed to have personally founded.

impressed with her daughter's progress, she went on national television and plugged bob and his program. this caused parents from around the nation to inquire about the program. kids were coming in from around the country. new chapters began to pop-up throughout texas and in other states.

bob had also begun working for a houston-based hospital, where he was being paid to oversee an inpatient unit which worked side-by-side with his support groups. he was making good money. he was also becoming somewhat of a celebrity.

all this came to a halt when, in 1979 and early 1980, he became the focus of two national news expose`s, one on 60 minutes and one on 20/20. when it was determined that he was being paid to use his position with a non-profit organization to fill hospital beds for a for-profit hospital and that he had been using harmful cultic practices to maintain control, he was fired.

he then exploited another celebrity who had befriended him to start another non-profit program in california. he opened a private for-profit treatment program and again used the non-profit group to funnel kids into his for-profit fee-based program.

in time, his for-profit program was shut down by the state and he was fired from the non-profit. he was found to be promoting racist ideals, using cultic methods and attempting to circumvent the state's authority.

we knew he'd faced these challenges, but we were never told the whole story. instead, we were told that he'd been run out of the texas-based program by a manipulative rival who had lied to the board of directors and that his problems in california were due to a local investigative reporter (who bob claimed was also a child pornographer) that went after him in order to start his own youth group, presumably as a means of getting close to kids.

it was easy to imagine that bob had started out pure, but had become tainted as a result of being victimized in the past. he was terrified of the media. he maintained that no news reporter or news organization could be trusted—that he had trusted them in the past only to be destroyed by them. we were taught defensive measures. no one was allowed to talk to the media under any circumstances. if the media contacted anyone from the program for any reason, bob would hold an emergency meeting to discuss the “threat.” all of the programs became private, for-profit entities so that we could maintain control. we were careful about what we said to outsiders.

at times i would think, perhaps bob had just become too insulated. there were no checks on his power. he was paranoid. then, i would put the pieces together again. he had been released from the penitentiary just prior to being hired by the episcopal priest. he had a long history of illegal and unethical activity. he was hurting people. he lied without hesitation. he never expressed remorse. he was glib in the face of others' trauma. he had left a path of destruction behind him everywhere he went. in fact, there was not a shred of evidence that he had ever demonstrated a single genuine act of altruism, only his claims and those of his followers.

his philosophy for treating drug abusers was unconventional and there were no studies to demonstrate its efficacy, only his claims to have saved the lives of thousands. still, even after seeing failure, destruction and death, even after recognizing that most of the kids we worked with eventually returned to drugs, after having to defend the organization from those who called us a cult, after realizing that all of bob's most loyal supporters had left or been cast aside, after my awakening in the santan mountains, i believed that his philosophy regarding drug rehabilitation was sound.

i was waiting for my opportunity to connect with my wife and get my family out, but was still mired in confusion about bob, his initial intent and the validity of the program that we were delivering to the kids.

it was excruciating at times. i had set out to help people and i still held the belief that his approach alone could save the lives of dying teenagers. i had been so indoctrinated to believe that nothing else worked that i feared what would happen if this program no longer existed. it would be years before i would realize the truth: that very few kids were actually dying from drugs use, and; that scores of other doctors, therapists, and programs were succeeding in helping kids get off drugs.

my internal struggle continued--guilt, fear, anger, loneliness, loyalty, love. is leaving the right thing to do? is there any way to stay and lobby to correct the mistakes we were making? perhaps, as bob had often stated, i was using my intellect to destroy myself. he had told me that my intellect was my worst enemy—that i needed to stop thinking, to have faith, to trust the universe.

i was torn..observable evidence vs. longstanding faith.

to make matters worse, i was still undergoing constant indoctrination. though i'd made a decision to leave, i still had to go to work every day. i still had to attend staff purposes, as well as all of bob's lectures. i still had to endure frequent confrontation. i had no meaningful contact with the outside world. perhaps most devastating was the fact that the only tool i knew for resolving my internal conflict was the program's doctrine.

i had to turn the doctrine around. up to this point, faith had meant sticking with the program, accepting bob's ideals even in the face of contrary evidence. fear was the opposite of faith. to reject or question bob was to give in to fear. now, i had to tell myself that to stay with the program was to give in to fear. i determined that perhaps god had intervened—maybe he had given me the clarity to see bob for the sociopath that he was. maybe i needed to depend on god to help me escape with my family. maybe god was watching over me.

i couldn't maintain these thoughts for long periods. i would stop my car on my way home every day and take time alone to clear my head--to return the truth. i was not yet free, but i began to be able to imagine what it would be like to be free.

each day i struggled with these conflicting thoughts. each day i hit the streets on my rollerblades. each day, i parked my car on the way home and cleared my mind, reminding myself of who bob really was. each day i placed dominoes.

a year after i had returned from my sabbatical in the santan mountains, the opportunity arose. after lying to my wife for a year, i decided that this was the time to tell her the truth. this would either be the beginning of our escape from this cult which had destroyed virtually every part of our essence, the beginning of a new life, or it would be the end of our family.

i was about to lay some heavy stuff on my wife. i was about to tell he that i'd been conning her and everyone else she considered dear to her. over the last year, i had stashed nearly $10,000.00 in cash, escape money that she didn't know about. i would show her the money. i had no way to know whether she would agree to leave or whether she would take our daughter and run to bob and his wife. this could be the last time we'd ever speak to each other.

things had not been going well between us. we had recently been allowed to take an overnight trip to the grand canyon. it was our first vacation in years. we had arranged for one of the young women on staff to take care of our daughter so we could be alone.

just prior to our trip, my wife had consulted with bob's wife. she had gone to her seeking her blessing to have a baby. my wife desperately wanted another child and this desire was growing each day.

i don't know exactly what bob's wife told her. it was between them, not for my ears. i do know, however, that my wife returned from her discussion terrified. as a result of her conversation with bob's wife, she was unable to be intimate with me. it cast a cloud over our vacation. bob's wife had planted seeds, causing my wife to be afraid that, if she let go, i would impregnate her as a manipulative means of gaining control over her.

this carried over after we returned home. bob's wife was able to convince her that becoming pregnant would destroy all of my her spiritual progress. further, she claimed that i was somehow manipulating my wife, causing her to have the desire to have a baby, so i could keep her down and maintain control. she told her that she looked to men to make her happy and that she needed to learn to be happy on her own.

my wife had had long standing issues with her own mother, who had neglected her throughout her life. bob's wife accused my wife of being, “just like your mother.” she ultimately tore my wife apart and used the other girls in the program to break her.

my wife had approached her with the desire to have a baby and she had responded by launching a total push effort to destroy our marriage.

i was not privy to any of this, but i could tell my wife was devastated. she had begun to withdrawal from bob's wife, her longtime mentor. she was afraid.

so i told her everything. “i'm not happy,” i said. “this is not the life i want. i've lost my passion.”

i reminded her of our lives before the program, the intimacy we shared, our dreams for the future. we talked for hours. it was the first time in years that we'd talked openly. i told her everything.

from that point forward, we were no longer alone.

“what should we do?,” she asked. i showed her the money. “we have to leave,” i said.

i laid out a plan.

leaving wouldn't be easy. in the real world, if one wanted to quit his job, he would simply put in notice and leave. coworkers might hold an office party. employers would provide a letter of reference. everyone would wish him well. but this wasn't the real world.

in this world, to leave meant to die, if not physically then at least spiritually and symbolically. leaving bob was tantamount to betrayal. we would lose all of our friends. in fact, they would ultimately see us as the enemy, part of the “them” in the group's us and them worldview.

we lived in a world where bob's wife used hypnosis to plant phobias in others, a world where she could enter one's dreams and cause emotional catastrophe, affecting one's thoughts actions and sanity. those who had left, often experienced devastating health problems, a return to addiction, incarceration, insanity, and death—or so we were told.

upon leaving, we would enter a world we did not know. for years, we had been separated from the outside. we'd come to believe that it was a dangerous place, filled with evil. no one could be trusted. we had no connections. no friends. no family. no job prospects. no resources. no history.

after devoting my entire adult life to this work, this program, this man, i would leave with no verifiable employment history. i knew bob would never give me a letter of recommendation. he would not make himself available to verify my employment. in fact, he would do everything within his power to insure that i would fail in any endeavor i undertook. it was his way. he simply couldn't tolerate the idea of anyone having any success for which he could not take full credit.


my wife was afraid that they would take extreme measures to make us stay...or that they would try to separate us and try to get one of us to stay. bob's wife was trying to end our marriage, and she wasn't accustomed to failure. she understood the the tremendous ability of bob's wife to influence, to spin one's head, creating doubt and confusion. she also knew that bob's wife was capable of quickly employing and exploiting the one's peers to manipulate them. her power should not be underestimated.

bob would not see it coming. as far as he was concerned, i was a loyal follower who saw him as near deity. over the past year, i had been calculated in fostering this idea. i had sat at bob's feet while he told me of his plans to go overseas and spend a month with the buddhist monks, a trip which would be paid for by one of bob's wealthy followers.

“you're going to be disappointed,” i said. “i think you will find that you're lightyears ahead of all of them. while they've been sitting on the mountain, you've been changing people's lives, changing your life, my life. if you go, you go to teach...that will be your lesson.”

in order to manipulate me, bob would need information. he would need to understand my motivation, why i was leaving. i would make sure he remained in the dark. i wouldn't allow him to read me. i would not demonstrate anger or give him any reason to believe i doubted him.

i told my wife that i would call bob and tell him that i needed to speak with him immediately. this would cause him to panic; it would throw him off his game. then, i would go to his house and give 30 days notice, simply stating that i was unhappy.

he would need to try to come across as though he knew where i was coming from, that he was cosmic enough to know the answers without asking questions. since he didn't know what was motivating me, he wouldn't attempt to try to explain or counter things. he would look for cues, but i wouldn't provide them. he would, in fact, be shocked by my announcement. he'd be off balance, confused. this would prevent him from trying to manipulate me.

my wife decided that she wanted to avoid any further contact with anyone from the program. she had been working with rachael, doing the books for the program. she decided that, once i talked to bob, she would drop off all of her bookkeeping materials at rachael's house with a letter of resignation, effective immediately.

i would go to work every day for the next 30 days. i would also look for work outside the state, where they couldn't find us. at the end of my 30 days, we would leave, moving wherever necessary to obtain a job.

the next day, i called bob. my phone call and conversation with bob went exactly as planned. he was thrown. he offered to send me to pennsylvania where he was trying to launch an outpatient program. he also offered to contact a friend in branson, missouri to help me obtain a job in the live entertainment industry, a line of work which he knew i'd had a passion for.

after i left his house, i picked up my wife and we dropped the bookkeeping materials and resignation letter in rachael's foyer, using the key she'd given her to access her office when she was not home.

the smear campaign started within days. bob spread rumors, one that we were running away because my wife had gotten pregnant. he said that i was a pedophile, that i had been stealing, using drugs. he searched for reasons why i would simply walk in and announce my resignation without seeking his approval. where he could find no answers, he created them, filled in the blanks. without reservation, he said whatever he wanted to say about me and my wife. he couldn't possibly accept the fact that i was on to him.

from my perspective, everyone in the program was an agent of bob. i assumed that when i was speaking to them, i was speaking to bob. i knew that bob was telling them exactly how they should interact with me, how they should treat me, where they stood with me.

when i walked into a room, everyone would stop talking. people would leave.

i was responsible for the counselor training school, but they wouldn't let me anywhere near the trainees. so i focused on making sure all the paperwork and records were up to date. i also made sure that the curriculum was organized for whomever might take over the training program.

i was told that i no longer needed to attend clinical staffing at the residential center, staff purpose, or clinical meetings for the outpatient program. i went to the hospital every day and met my responsibilities there.

i had one other responsibility as well. i was writing the policy and procedure manual for the new pennsylvania program and working on getting it licensed for bob.

the push to open the program had begun with several pennsylvania parents, some of whom had sent their children to arizona for treatment. they had created a loosely structured committee to raise money. bob had agreed to send a director to run the program and to provide the counselors. he had asked me to get the program licensed.

i tried to reach bob, to remind him that, since i was leaving, he would need to inform the people from pennsylvania that i wouldn't be completing their policy and procedure manual. he would need to find someone else. he wouldn't take my calls. since i couldn't reach bob, i tried to go to george. he wouldn't take my calls either. i showed up at his office, but he closed his office door and instructed his staff to inform me that he was busy. after several attempts, i gave up.

a couple weeks passed and i knew that no one had informed the pennsylvania families that i was not going to get the program licensed, soi decided to call them myself.

i told them that i was leaving bob's organization and that i would not be completing the p&p. to my surprise, they offered me the job as director of the program. i explained further. “i don't think you understand,” i said. “i'm not going to be working with bob in any capacity.”

thay responded, “so what?”

i was not accustomed to this kind of response. no one did anything without bob's blessing. how could these people decide that they would simply move forward without him. i tried to be more clear.

“i am leaving bob's organization because of philosophical differences. if i were to come there and run the program, it would be my program, not bob's. we would have no affiliation with bob, no support from him. he would interpret it as though we stole his program.

bob had already sent 2 young counselors who had just recently graduated from training. they had been holding support group meetings and sending paying clients from pennsylvania to bob's arizona programs. he had made at least one trip to pennsylvania to meet with the parents, young people and community leaders. he had invested a lot of time and energy and considered the pennsylvania operation to be part of his national organization. if he lost the program, he would be livid.

the families in pennsylvania felt no loyalty toward bob. in fact, they thought he was a nutcase. not only had they found him obnoxious and arrogant, but they had been waiting months for him to send a director and were beginning to believe that he wouldn't be able to produce one. they told me they had asked for me, but that bob refused to let them anywhere near me. bob had never discussed this with me.

the truth is, he didn't have anyone to send. opening a program in pennslvania was legally and politically tricky. no one within the organization had the experience and knowledge needed to make it work within pennsylvania's tight regulatory environment.

i agreed to fly to pennsylvania and meet with the families that were backing the project. i would fly in over the weekend (i was still working for bob—fulfilling my 30-days), meet with the parents, tour the area and discuss the terms. if we all agreed, we would move forward.

it would be critical that no one other than the parents who were backing the program knew anything about my coming to pennsylvania. everything was done cloak and dagger style. the pa staff and many of the kids in the pa support group were communicating with folks from phoenix on a regular basis. if bob found out that i was considering taking the program, he would immediately pull the staff, leaving the group with no guidance. further, he would likely attempt to sabotage the entire pa operation. he would also instruct the counselors to exploit their relationships with the kids in the support group, causing them to believe that i had malicious intent.

i knew bob couldn't be trusted. interestingly, so did these parents who were backing the program. bob had thought he had them completely convinced that he was the solution to their local drug problem. he was wrong.

my plane circled over the statue of liberty as we approached newark international airport. below, i could see the twin towers through the window. as we touched down, i felt excited, fearful, apprehensive and hopeful all at the same time.

a couple, one of the sets of parents who'd been funding the pennsylvania program, picked me up at the airport. we drove across the new jersey/pennsylvania border and stopped at a restaurant to meet two other couples, also program supporters, for dinner.

that night we all met in my hotel suite. we talked for hours. i was deeply impressed with these fine folks. they were committed to helping their kids and the community.

the next day, they took me to tour the area. the trees and the grass were a stark contrast to the arizona desert. the local parks were filled with children and families. the community was vibrant. it seemed like an excellent place to raise our daughter.

we had dinner and more discussion. i had insisted that they review my c.v. and ask me questions. we also discussed the terms, if i were to come to pennsylvania.

i went home on sunday night and discussed everything with my wife. together, we decided that moving to pennsylvania was the right thing to do. so, i contacted the folks in pennsylvania and accepted the offer.

we all decided that, since bob couldn't be trusted, we wouldn't tell him anything until after i had arrived in pa to take over the program.

ten days later, our cars and belongings having been transported to pennsylania, my wife, my daughter and i boarded a plan to the east coast to start a new life.

i had had my first contact with one of bob's programs 16 years earlier. i had devoted nearly my entire adult life to his organizations. i had joined forces with bob accepting his promise of love—believing that through the principles of love and honesty we would change the world.

we were walking away from the only life we had known and into a world we didn't understand--one we had been taught not to trust.

i had given everything to bob, to this dream of setting free those who had been enslaved by drugs, fear, emptiness and trauma. i was a true believer. not only did i believe that unconditional love for others had the power to affect the world both physically and spiritually, i believed in bob's love for me.

now, at age 35, i was escaping his torturous love, saving my own life. saving my family.

i showed our daughter the glorious statue of liberty, through the window, as our plane approached the newark airport. it was the first time she'd ever seen it.

you said
love is a temple
love's a higher law
love is a temple
love is a higher law
you asked me to enter
but then you made me crawl
and i can't keep holding on
'cause all you've got is hurt ~ u2


to be continued

author's note: part 12 of how i was spiritually raped and left for dead was one of the most difficult parts to write, because it represents the death of a dream. for 16 years, i had devoted my life to a dream, that of saving lives, changing lives, changing the world.

though i made many mistakes along the way, hurt a lot of people (right now, i'm thinking of you steve s. and willie v.), i was always motivated by that dream. i often worked 12 and 16 hour days...sometimes longer. i endured sleepless nights, bouts of true poverty, frequent moves from city to city, self flagellation, criticism, loneliness and brutal confrontation. i sacrificed my own health, both physical and mental, to tend to the needs of my brothers and sisters, to serve a higher purpose.

i had known, without any doubt, that this was my purpose.

i loved the people who, for 16 years, had been my family. i was devoted to them and to bob.

i had loved bob deeply.

i'm not a saint. i never was...not even close. but i had a dream.

enjoy the video.

seeking in tongues

how i was spiritually raped and left for dead (part 3)

part 1 is here

part 2 is here

prior to my move to arizona, i had hired george to serve as program director for the atlanta program. i had also arranged for bob to begin doing seminars for kids and parents.

bob had approached me, saying that his car was about to be repossessed and he was on the verge of losing his house. the houston hospital deals had fallen apart and his california residential was all but dead. the state of california had forbidden him from any involvement in drug and alcohol treatment and he had “sold” the center to former employees. he was trying to get them to make payments to him, but they weren't able to get any paying clients. he had turned the center into a “retreat” and was trying to run it, secretly meeting with the staff behind the state's back. to make matters worse, he was apparently caught by some staff members naked and in bed with a client. it was reported that he had threatened to use his influence to see to it that the client would lose her child if she didn't keep her mouth shut. additionally, some insiders claimed that his wife suspected he was sleeping with the client and that, in an attempt to catch him, she had secretly followed him to palm springs where he was supposed to be speaking at an na conference. “if i could just do seminars for the kids and parents [in all the cities where bob's organization had programs], i could make enough to get by.”

he claimed he needed $10,000 per month to “make [his] nut.” it was 1992.

bob was not well-liked in houston, so i arranged for his first seminar to take place in atlanta. i contacted george, gave him specific instructions, and although i was about to lose my own home to foreclosure (remember, i had taken on the hospital staff, and lost my best employee and older group to the guy who lived in the rock-star's house.), i paid his expenses to fly to atlanta and give seminars to the kids and parents.

what i didn’t realize at the time was that bob’s plea for help, was actually a con. he had started the process of creating a new hospital contract in arizona—a deal which would exclude his partners . he needed to take full control of at least some of the existing programs, wrestling that control from them and jim. the seminars were his vehicle.

he began in atlanta. when he got there, unbeknownst to me, he met with the staff and told them that i was “fvcked up.” he convinced them that george, my employee, should take over the program. he told them that he would arrange to get the parent group to finance the take over. he instructed them that, if i refused to allow george to take the program, they would all resign immediately, reopen under a new name, and take all of the clients with them.

next bob held his seminar with the kids and parents. the primary topic was seekingintongues is “fvcked-up.” he slandered me. “the program is going to fall apart,” he claimed. “the kids will be left with nothing. they will return to drugs and die.” then he convinced the parents to donate money so george and the staff could take control of the program. he threw his partners and long-term friends under the bus as well.

this was the start of meehan’s conscious and systematic split/hosile take-over of this national organization, controlled by bob and his two partners.

he went to st. louis, dallas, austin, and threw his partners and me under the bus in those cities as well. he convinced the the city directors to side with him. he had already managed to take over phoenix and put his own person in the directorship position there. he now had every city, except houston, to use as a referral base for his hospital contract. he realized that he could not take houston because, even though i was the “owner” on paper, the program was really controlled by one of his partners who lived there. i was the owner only in the sense that i had the legal and financial responsibility.

bob returned to houston, on my dime, and layed out the con. “atlanta is just a thorn in your side,” he said. “george is a mess. he’s not invested. if you want to survive, you need to sell atlanta to george. maybe if he owns it, he’ll pull it together and make the program work. right now, things are worse than you realize.”

of course, he neglected to tell me that george had already incorporated and taken over the program, that they had become bob’s staff, that they would simply walk away from the building we had leased and reopen in a new suite under george’s new corporation, and that i had already been “fired.”

i asked bob all the right questions, including, “are you going to split with jim and al?” he lied.

i agreed to sell atlanta to george on a payment plan which would allow him to make payments based on the amount of revenue generated. this would allow him to pay less if money was tight, more when things were good.

george never paid a dime. never.

when i was recruited to go to phoenix, shortly after i arrived, i was beaten into the ground by meehan and the other directors i was told that i didn’t deserve anything from george. i was not to be paid. i had lost my home, which had been paid for with inherited money, left houston and turned over the program to jim, was living with the current arizona director's house (i had no money), and was thrown under the bus by jim, who told everyone that everything that had gone wrong in houston was my fault.

jim painted himself as the hero who was going to fix houston (in the long-run, his entire staff ended up quitting and he was later investigated for medicaid fraud). bob painted himself as the hero who was going to fix everything else. i was held up as the source of all the problems.

the ironic part, regardless of what anyone has said, is that my programs brought more money into the organization than all the others combined. i kept the referral records for all the programs. no one, besides jim, al, and bob ever saw any of that money though. they didn’t pay me, which meant that i had great difficulty paying my staff (including those i had inherited from the hospital). i could not pay my bills. i lost my house and all the equity i had in it.

it was the culmination of all these events that allowed bob, under the preplanned, orchestrated attack delivered by all the directors, to tear up the sale contract and allow george to take the atlanta operation for free.

a side note: george has since “sold” the atlanta program and then, together with bob, beaten down the individuals he had sold it to and taken back ownership at least 2 times. in each of these “sales” the “marks” have made payments to george and received nothing back after they were ousted. their equity was simply taken away.

now i'm in arizona, having lost everything.

the arizona program was limping. the director was someone for whom i had tremendous respect.

very little money was coming in, many of the staffers were on the hospital’s payroll, allowing them to do work in the outpatient/support group program for free. in addition to my other responsibilities, i was also running older group meetings. the arizona program had several free, 12-step support groups for young people and parents that served as feeders for the inpatient, residential and intensive outpatient programs. young people and parents would come to the free support groups for help and ultimately would be shuffled into the expensive fee-based treatment programs.

the tempe support group was fledgling. the tempe parent group was dead. so i began doing parent education groups as well.

one other “slight” problem…the program was not licensed. it was/is illegal to run an unlicensed treatment program in arizona.

one day we were told that the state would be coming in to do a licensing inspection…tomorrow. i knew that the state would either grant us a license or shut the program down. it generally takes months to prepare a treatment program to be licensed. we had about 18 hours.

there was no policy & procedure manual (the first thing the state inspectors look at). there was no acceptable system for keeping client records. there was no acceptable employee file system. if i remember correctly, there was not a single person in the city who had ever written a p&p or licensed a program. except me. remember, i was the broke d!ck guy who was worried about all the “white folk crap.”

i quickly put together a team of people and, with the state regulations in hand, began writing a policy and procedure manual that was in line with state regulations. sometime after midnight, i sent the director home. he would have to be fresh at 8 am when the state came in. i created employee files and a client file system. we worked throughout the night to bring the facility up to code.

i left the following morning, finishing the job an hour before the state arrived. i went home, took a shower, and went to work at the hospital. for this effort, i was paid exactly $0.00.

that day the arizona program received its license. the state was so impressed with the policy and procedure manual and client files that they asked for copies to use for training purposes.

to this day, i have never received even a thank-you from bob or anyone else. more likely, bob ridiculed me for being “damaged” enough to be able to pull it off.

back to the story.

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

it was fall of 1995, november if i remember correctly.

bob's inpatient center, which i was running, was going strong. i had built relationships with many of the insurance companies and succeeded at increasing the average length of stay for hospital patients from 5 days to 16.5 days, which was unheard of for adolescent inpatient treatment. we were receiving referrals from a variety of sources. even the other hospitals were referring patients to bob's center rather than treating them in their own facilities

i had managed to get the center moved to its own hospital wing. we painted the wing so that it did not look like a drab hospital unit. we were able to mount stereo speakers in the hallway so the kids could wake up to music. i had battled with a member of the hospital’s administration to prevent him from setting up his office on our unit, allowing us to have an office and hang-out for all of our staff. i had also arranged for breakfast to be served outside on the lawn.

each morning the kids woke up to great music. they went outside to a table with clean linens and various pastries, juices and coffee, for breakfast and a morning meditation meeting.

this was my idea of how a young person should be treated while having to live away from home and while participating in rehab. i felt that this set-up would help them maintain dignity and self-respect and serve as constant reminder to everyone who was responsible for their treatment that they were human beings rather than “dope-fiends.”

i had also begun hosting huge christmas fund-raising dances. we raised thousands of dollars each christmas to buy toys for the children living in residential treatment at the hospital. this was important to me because these kids, some as young as 4 years old, could not spend christmas with their families. many of their parents were in prison. they did not get presents, except for socks, toothbrushes, and other essentials provided by the hospital.

i was well-liked and respected by the hospital administration and the 'non-bob' hospital employees. they consulted with me on other cases, made it a point to introduce me to corporate executives, and even talked to me about concerns related to their own children.

bob never got a phone call. no complaints. more telling, no one called him to consult on other cases, meet with corporate execs, or on concerns related to their children. he was seen by the administration and the corporate execs, as a necessary pain. at that point, i could have walked away with the center, though it never would have crossed my mind to betray bob and my friends in this way.

this concerned bob's wife. she felt that i had too much power, though i had no authority over anyone.

joy also voiced concerns about my involvement with the parent support-group. i had been doing parent ed for quite some time. parent-ed sessions were standing room only. she clearly stated, to me and others, that she thought that i would use my influence with the parents to take control of the entire program.

she was paranoid. these thoughts never would have occurred to me. moreover, she was wrong. the arizona program had an exceptional parent coordinator. if anyone could have taken control, it would have been her. she also would never have betrayed anyone in such a way.

george presents it as though some of my subordinates and coworkers got together and decided they needed to confront me. that is a lie!

here’s what really happened.

george was about to marry bob's daughter. we'll call her muffy. george was living in atlanta, running the atlanta program that he'd taken from me. bob's wife was determined to see to it that muffy did not move away from her to be with george. she had to bring george to phoenix.

she created an insidious plan. she would ultimately set it up to steal the the arizona program from the current director and give it to her soon to be son-in-law. she would also set it up to send away the director and his family and move george and muffy into his house, which was in the same neighborhood where joy and bob lived.

bob initially arranged for george to be the program director, working under the current arizona director, who would be the executive director. the problem that i saw in all of this was that there was no way bob's wife was going to allow her son-in-law to be second man on the totem pole.

one option would be to get rid of me, move the current arizona director to the hospital, and move george to the position of ultimate authority in arizona. bob's wife had already begun campaigning against the current director behind his back.

bob's wife, with bob’s help, hatched a 2 part plan to drive me into the ground, probably hoping i would either leave or commit suicide.

part one: she arranged for my wife to be ostracized from the group and then harshly confronted. for months no one would talk to my wife. she had been told, without my knowledge, that i was unhappy with her, that she was flawed and on the verge of losing her family and all of her friends. after a long period of anguish and loneliness, bob's wife took her back. she befriended her, “rehabilitated” her, and took her under her wing.

part two: she set up staff to confront me. everyone involved with the phoenix program was told that i needed to be harshly confronted. it was explained to them what was wrong with me. many reported to me later that they had said that they had no complaints. they were told to come up with some. they were told to go all the way back into my past and come up with whatever they could. i needed to hear everything i’d ever done wrong, they were told. they were told that it had to be harsh. i had to be destroyed and, if i survived, rebuilt.

bringing my wife into her fold, bob's wife, who was now directing her every move, convinced her that the “defects” for which she had been previously ostracized were the result of being married to me. i was the source of all of her problems. i had held her back all these years and would continue to, not only hold her back, but destroy our daughter as well, unless i changed everything or unless my wife left me.

i should also point out that george was conveniently out of town when the confrontation took place. later, both he and bob's wife blamed the whole thing on the the arizona director, the guy who was doing what he was told to do by bob and his wife. it was part of what was used to discredit him and to take the arizona program and give it to george.

the confrontation

it was a fall evening in arizona. my wife, my daughter and i had moved into a modest 3 bedroom house in scottsdale. i was standing in the backyard, just outside the sliding glass door which opened into the family room. to my left was my daughter's swing-set. the sky was strange. unnatural streaks of pink and burnt orange stretched out from the western horizon as though the colors were struggling to escape the darkness which was drowning the sun in the desert dust.

the wind was gusting, blowing the empty swings, twisting them slightly, as though an invisible hand was holding them out in front of their natural lie. toxic oleanders formed a lovely and inviting hedge, enclosing the yard and hiding the 6-foot tall cinder block fence. something didn't feel right.

it was “purpose” night. every other friday night, at 7 pm, every staff member in every city, along with their spouses would gather for pseudo-therapy groups facilitated by the city directors. we called these meetings “purpose meetings.” the idea was that we would gather to expose and resolve any personal shortcomings which interfered with the program's “primary purpose.” what was our primary purpose? “...to carry our love and understanding to others and practice the principles of love and honesty in our daily lives with the help of god as we understand him.”

there was always some degree of anxiety associated with purpose meetings. one never knew when the the attention would be focused on him or her. anyone could be charged with spiritual corruption at any time. often, the consequences were severe.

through the glass door, i could see my blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter playing play-doh on the floor. my wife was greeting the baby-sitter who had just arrived. the baby-sitter had been chosen for us by linda, bob's “spiritual daughter” and the most trusted member of his inner-circle. linda's husband arrived a little later. he was also part of bob's innermost circle and was bob's best friend.

i later learned that his job was to take my daughter and hide her if i tried to leave during purpose. they had arranged a scenario where, either i would endure an orchestrated attack and demonstrate that i “got it,” or i would be put out on the streets without my family. if i tried to go home without their blessing, linda's husband would take my daughter. “bob's girls” would take my wife.

i knew something was up, but i didn't realize the extent to which they had gone to set me up.

my wife and i backed out of the carport and drove silently south, out of our neighborhood and then west, toward the struggling sunset on our way to our purpose meeting. we were both anxious. we knew something wasn't right, but neither of us knew what was about to happen.

we parked in the side lot and entered the building through the steel door which separated the meeting room from the back alley. the floor was covered with bluish industrial carpet. the walls were textured and painted off-white. about 30 folding chairs lined the walls, making a sloppy oval. there were a number of other staffers milling about. they had been prepped for the meeting.

the air was filled with trepidation. in a forced gesture of betrayal, several staffers hugged me and smiled at me, though none would look me in the eye.

a couple of “bob's girls,” members of his inner circle, immediately guided my wife to one of the offices and closed the door. the director led me to his office. he closed the door. we sat down.

he said to me, “dude, this purpose is going to be about you.” he attempted to hold a compassionate facial expression. he continued, “some people have some things they want to say to you. it's going to be tough.” he explained that they were doing this because they loved me and that it was going to help me. after a speech that sounded as much like a justification as it did an explanation, he said, “you don't have to go through this if you don't want to.”

at that point, i got it. what choice did i have? if i didn't go through with it i'd be put on the streets. bob's wife, who was pulling the strings over the telephone would convince my wife that i had gone crazy. they would whisk her away and take my daughter as well. besides, if they said i was this screwed-up, i'd better pay attention. this group was my lifeline, my family. they knew me better that i knew myself. they loved me unconditionally. that was what i'd been taught.

then the director said, why don't you stay here and pray. i'll come get you when we're ready.

so, i prayed.

a short time later, the director returned. he escorted me to the meeting room and motioned for me to sit in the only available folding chair. the other chairs were filled with about 30 of my friends--thirty staffers who had called themselves family, people who had professed their love for me.

my wife was positioned across from me. to her sides were “bob's girls.” she was obviously terrified. they comforted her. they had convinced her that she had to be tough on me—that my life was on the line. that i was spiritually bankrupt and that my condition threatened the well-being of both her and our daughter. they were doing this to save them and, if possible, save me. if she showed any compassion, she would sabotage the entire process.

for the next 7 hours each person in the room, including my wife, took turns verbally assaulting me. they confronted me with every unkind word or action, real or imagined, that i had spoken or taken over the last 10 years. they assigned nefarious motives everything i had done, good or bad. they told me how the evil deep within me had caused me to harm everyone and threatened the very existence of the program, even though i was unaware of any desire to cause harm.

they provided long and painful explanations of how i was harming my wife and daughter, holding them back from spiritual and financial freedom. they said i was unconsciously trying to “keep them down,” so they wouldn't leave me.

the director's wife, whom i had considered to be one of my most trusted friends, said to me, “i know i'm supposed to love you unconditionally, but i can't find a single redeeming quality in you. i look at you and all i see is pure evil.”

at some point, my wife left the room with linda. they went into an office and got on the phone with bob's wife. she returned a few minutes (or a few hours) later.

after she returned, flanked by “bob's girls,” she made it clear that if i didn't “get it” and have an immediate change, i wasn't coming home. a stream of bob's wife's ideas came out of her mouth. she said she'd worked hard to get where she was (spiritually). she said that she had worked hard to develop the close friendships she currently enjoyed. (these were the friends who had ostracized her just a few months earlier, refusing to even answer a phone call, no matter how much she was hurting.) she told me she would no longer allow me to hold her or our daughter back.

there was blood in the water. at some point, the confrontation went beyond anything that was supposed to be helpful to me or anyone else. instead, every fear, every bit of anger, all the desperation, dread, hurt and betrayal perpetrated upon these people by bob's dysfunctional totalitarian regime was directed at me. these people had devoted their lives to bob's program. in return, they had been made to work endlessly for little or no pay. they had been forced to move from city to city to do “god's work.” they lived in poverty. they were constantly afraid.

but no one dared to admit their fear, dread, hurt and anger, not even to themselves. on this night it would be vomited on me.

also at some point, i realized that i was floating above my body. it was strange, but i was actually able to look down on myself. people in the room were getting increasingly angry at my lack of an emotional response. but i was powerless to respond. i wasn't there.

sometime around 2 a.m., linda decided that i “got it.” she told my wife that it was okay for me to go home. she said that i hadn't responded because i was “in shock,” which was true. also true was the fact that enough of my real shortcomings were mixed in with everything that was said about me that i believed that everything they said was true. since i was pure evil on the inside, i had little hope that i could change.

later i was told that some of the them had expected me to commit suicide that night. they were happy that i had "chosen life."

for the next year, i suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. i wouldn't say that i changed so much as that the experience changed me. gone was my creativity, passion, sense of humor, desire to help others. i didn't watch tv, read a book (other than program literature) or see a movie. i didn't feel i was worthy to even have a desire to do anything enjoyable.

i didn't dare laugh or smile. i didn't allow myself even a single pleasurable thought. for a year, i was a zombie. i had spells of uncontrollable sobbing. whenever, my daughter acted out, i had to leave, because i couldn't stop crying. i had destroyed this beautiful child that i loved more than anything in the world. i had brought evil upon everyone with whom i had come in contact, even when i thought i was trying to help them. as one staffer put it to me, i was “toxic.”

i was broken.

one night, a few months after that purpose meeting, i was with a couple of other staffers when they decided to stop for ice cream. as they ordered their ice cream, i became afraid. i wasn't sure what to do. was i supposed to have ice cream? was i allowed to? i finally worked up the courage to ask them, “am i allowed to eat ice cream?”

i was 33.

part 4 coming soon—(just when you thought it couldn't get any worse)

how i was spiritually raped and left for dead (part 2)

part one is here

before i continue, it's important that i give a brief explanation of how bob's organization was structured.

bob had two partners, jim and al. jim had been a client of bob's and later worked for him before becoming his business partner. al was a business man who had made a good bit of money working with bob in the past. bob had tremendous influence over jim and al. both saw bob as a kind of spiritual genius who had a remarkable ability to get people off drugs. in fact, they believed that bob's approach to drug rehabilitation was the only thing that worked—that all the doctors, psychiatrist, therapists and counselors “out there” working with troubled teens were complete imbeciles that did far more harm than good. we all believed that.

bob, jim and al owned, partially owned, had a financial interest or were paid to fill beds in various high dollar inpatient and residential treatment centers. initially, bob and jim set-up free, community-based 12-step support groups for young people and corresponding parent support groups. al would broker deals with psychiatric hospitals wherein, the support groups would feed patients into the hospitals and the hospitals would in turn allow bob and john to staff a unit and establish the treatment model to be used. the hospital would pay them as much as $10,000.00 for each kid they placed in the hospital.

bob and jim had support groups in various cities around the country, some with several hundred kids and parents at any given time. to establish a new support-group to feed the hospital and residential programs, they would take one of their clients, usually a young single male in his early to mid 20's and send him to a city where a family had shown an interest in having a local support group—usually a family that had sent one of their kids to bob and jim for drug rehab.

bob and jim would convince the family to come up with some seed money to start the program. when i went to atlanta, the family there had agreed to loan me $10,000 to start a program.

the twenty-something director would be told that the new program would be their own business. they would incorporate, choose a name, take on the loan, sign a lease for a storefront property and have full legal and financial responsibility. the new “director” was led to believe he was being placed in this position because he was spiritually ready. in reality, directors were folks who had an extreme level of commitment and showed a strong ability to recruit.

although there was some seed money. it wouldn't last long. in order to continue to fund the support group, the director would set up an intensive outpatient modality. the directors were expected to send as many kids as possible to bob, jim and al's inpatient and residential programs. production was synonymous with spiritual growth. those who had the biggest support groups and referred the most kids were seen as the spiritual giants. it was a spin on the concept that god will send people to those who are spiritually powerful enough to help them.

those of us who worked for these programs had virtually come of age within them. we wholeheartedly believed in bob's approach. bob's concept was “sobriety must be fun or kids won't stay sober.” we believed (and learned to convince parents) that drugs were at the root of all youth problems. as long as kids stay off drugs everything would be okay. we also believed that the main ingredients for staying clean and sober were “sticking with winners” and having fun. a winner was a kid or staff person in our program.

teenagers were allowed to drop out of school, hang out all night, smoke cigarettes and go just about anywhere or do anything as long as they were with other kids who were in the program.

all of the programs were staffed by clients. they initially came for free 12-step support groups, hung around because of the fun and freedom they had and avoided anyone who wasn't in the program. their parents encouraged this because they themselves were indoctrinated to believe this was best for their kids.

when a kid came to the support-group, he would be drawn in. the staff would encourage other kids to “reach out” or “rock the newcomer.” this meant giving the newcomer lots of hugs, inviting them to hang out, calling them on the phone and talking to them about how great the program was and how it had saved them. kids who were the best at reaching out were publicly praised by the staff. they were also placed on steering committee, a leadership group that served as a reward for “giving back” to the program.

the staff would contact the parents of the newcomer and try to convince them to pay for their child to go into one of the fee-based programs. we believed that the higher the level of care and the longer the treatment lasted, the greater the chance that the child would stay off drugs.

also, if a kid relapsed, was found to be hanging around kids who weren't in the program, had an unsanctioned romantic relationship or simply didn't seem committed to the program, he would be sent to inpatient or residential care. if the family couldn't afford that, the child would be placed in intensive outpatient, which was less costly.

all of these different parts of the program, the support-groups, intensive outpatient, residential, and inpatient treatment, were staffed almost entirely by clients who had stayed sober and been chosen to become staffers, were put through a program-run training/indoctrination program and sent to another city to work. this system was all they knew. all of their friends were in the program. they had little meaningful contact with outsiders. they'd learned not to trust outsiders. they had come into the program as teens, showed that they were good at recruiting (“rocking the newcomer”), had been placed on steering committee, and then ultimately placed on staff in a city far away from home and family.

every kid wanted to become a staff member. most parents wanted their kids to get on staff. being on staff was like being a rock star...a rock star who had no life besides working 80 hours a week; associating only with other staff and clients; having no outside contacts; living in constant fear of being beaten down or thrown out on the streets; being told when and who we could date, sleep with or marry; having no money; being forced to move to another city without notice...again; never getting a vacation, being forced to be friends with everyone else on staff; and being on call 24-hours a day, seven days a week.

but that part was the dirty little secret. we all thought that everyone else on staff was filled with joy. being unhappy wasn't allowed. any expression of fear, depression, sadness, loneliness, or doubt could lead to one being demoted, sent to another city, separated from his romantic partner, being ostracized by the rest of the staff, or being publicly humiliated. of course the greatest fear was that we would be excommunicated. we had lost contact with the outside world. once we were on staff, we broke ties with our families, which we were convinced were not “winners” for us. we had no prospects for employment, no support for our “recovery” from drugs and alcohol, no friends. no connection to a higher power.

leaving the program meant losing everything. to leave meant to die.

we kept our desperation to ourselves.

(see you tomorrow)