Steve Gottlieb at The Familiy Foundation School (From:Youthrights.org)

This story was originally written on a webpage created to provide statements for a GAO hearing in 2007. The address is cafety.youthrights.org and it waits for your statement if you believe that your stay at a boarding school included unfair treatment or even abuse. All rights and credits goes to the author Steve Gottlieb, who posted the original story on cafety.youthrights.org

My name is Steve Gottlieb and i went to FFS from December 2004 to June 2007.

I was 15 when i got there...17 when i left. I would like to start by saying that no paper, no book, no text, and no way of expression could ever be enough to give an explanation of how disgusting the Family School's program is. From day one, they start to conform you to their perfect poster child. Cut hair, polo shirt, jeans;everyone looks the same after a while.

Without a chance to really answer the question, you are labled as an addict. Weather you smoked pot once or did heroin 2,000 times. The school viewed all drug usesers as abusers. Most of the staff were either non using addicts or x-convicts.

The school was built like this: kids confront kids too look good for staff. If kid does not confront kid, staff uses emotionally abusive methods too punish the more "senior" student. The school is run off fear and the staff know that they can get away with anything they want. They called us manipulators, however if we ever told our parents the actual truth about what was going on, the school would acuse us as manipulating them...than go manipulate themselves. Come on! Who is our parents going to believe? Their juvenile deliquent or the "professional boarding school".

That place is a house of abuse. Many of the staff members fall into the catagory of those who abused the children. Specifically Tommy Cummings, Jeff Westby, Joe Ragalovich, PAUL GEER!!! Let me stop at Paul Geer. Paul Geer, an admitted sex addict and ex-convict for tax fraud, is the family leader for Family 6 and instructor for mixed chorus. He favors those in chorus and if you are not on his favorite list, he will find any excuse to make you feel incompitant and a much lesser person than you actually are. Staff knew that kids couldnt react to them as if they were on the street, so staff took advadtage of that and "tried" me and many of my friends.

Thank God i have a good head on my shoulders, if i didnt, i might have been brain washed with the rest of them. I had a group of friends who all understood that FFS was a joke...we knew this...however, it was never spoken of; much like a mental pact between friends. I stuck with them until the day i got the day i got out. Finally, done with the useless punishments and intense mental and emotional abuse.

I sit here a year and a half later and am now on medacine again because the trauma caused by FFS is still imbeaded in my brain. I hope that one day they will never allow a soul to enter that false utopia

2013 the school changed its name to Allynwood Academy due to the bad press.

References:
Datasheet about the boarding school at Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
The original statement on cafety.youthrights.com