**Testimony of Jon Martin-Crawford**

Former Program Participant at the Family Foundation School and

Member of the Board of Advisors for the

Community Alliance for the Fair and Ethical Treatment of Youth

Committee on Education and Labor hearing on

"Child Abuse and Deceptive Marketing by Residential Programs for Teens"

April 24, 2008

I would like to thank the Chairman and the Committee for the opportunity
to present my side of this story. After watching the hearing back in
October, I was inspired by the clear case of morality that brought
together both sides of the aisle in this discussion.

We have been called "noisy complainers" we have been called
"manipulating troublemakers." After over 10 years, I finally have my
chance to speak. My name is Jon Martin-Crawford. I was locked up at the
NATSAP affiliated program, The Family Foundation School, in Hancock, NY,
from 1995 to 1997.

My life at home was anything but stable. This caused me to seek my own
release from it all. I created a persona for myself at school, the
troublemaker, always looking for the attention I didn't get at home.
Involved in drugs by the age of 13, I was lost. My only release was my
music, my writing, and my skateboarding. After being expelled from
public school and one private school for marijuana and writing an
underground newspaper, my parents sent me to The Family shortly
thereafter.\
\
Once I arrived at The Family, I knew I was there until I was 18. I went
through what seems like the ritualistic stripping of identity almost all
of us survivors faced. My clothes were taken and thrown away. My music,
my art, my skateboard all destroyed. What I didn't have with me, my
parents were told to destroy as well. I was left with only a letter from
my mother for the next 3 months.

I had been to some inpatient settings before, but this one was
different. Other places allowed phone calls, mail, and peer
communication. Here, I wasn't even allowed to call home the first few
months. Even after that, I only got that one phone call home a
week...nothing more... no access to Child Protective Services. Here I
was only allowed to talk to staff and kids that had been there more than
6 months. I was told I was denying the extent of my drug use, and I was
confused as to just how I would "get better" enough to just see my
family. I sat and watched, and learned to play the game of lies
necessary to get privileges, and eventually get out. I got lucky and
figured these rules out quickly enough to not endure what I saw many
kids endure. But I still witnessed it all.

Including:

1.  Staff punching students in the face while restraining.....not once
    but several times

2.  Typical restraint procedures were wrapping kids up in Duct tape and
    blankets. Kids were not let out of this wrap, even to use the
    bathroom, feminine hygiene, or just to move around and let the body
    out of the confinement, while in an isolation room (the 6X6 library
    room)

3.  Restraints were not only done by faculty, but many senior and junior
    members of students. Usually, this was even more brutal and was
    often done in front of all other students to show "what will happen
    if you act out"

4.  Kids forced to eat food they were allergic to, and keep eating even
    if vomiting as a result.

5.  Kids as young as 12 being taken out of school to carry out pointless
    manual labor such as shovel manure, carry wheelbarrows of rocks,
    sweeping the roof, etc. for days on end

6.  When kids tried to run away it was again, not only staff, but many
    students told to chase, tackle, restrain, and bring them back.

7.  Many things heard from staff, berating kids with high level verbal
    abuse, often of a highly derogatory and sexual nature, at times
    regarding sexual orientation

8.  An admitted sex addict was one of the high-up faculty and
    counselors, as well as a dorm monitor living above the boy's dorm

The rules I learned to avoid much of these problems were as follows:

1.  make up a horrible past to "cure yourself of"...our moral inventory
    was nearly always fabricated to make our problems seem worse, and
    the program seem like salvation

2.  Tell on yourself and your peers for things you may have never done
    to give the illusion you're getting better

3.  if you have certain "gifts" you can find ways to skate by. Me, I was
    the school's golden boy with my pen and my graduation speech, as
    well as others were used as propaganda at graduations as part of
    "family day" for all parents to hear.

4.  Under no circumstances tell your parents or prospective parents the
    truth about what you see happening.

Yes, I was fortunate enough to go home once a month after a while. All I
wanted for those weekends at home was to sleep, relax, and watch
television. I quickly learned that telling our parents the truth about
what happened at The Family would only be explained away as manipulation
and we would lose our privileges.\
\
While I had been fortunate enough to miss out on most of the horrors
personally, I unfortunately gave many tours to prospective parents,
always omitting the details of restraints, punishments, and lack of any
sort of communication or safeguards against the abuses that took place.
As a dorm leader, I was told to wake up one of the kids in my dorm with
the light from the lamp...that only had a flood light as a
bulb...burning his retina. I participated in the restraining, and took
part in the barrage of verbal attacks just as did many of my peers. I am
not proud of this, but we had no choice in any of this. If we did not
conform, we were "being negative" and subject to the same treatment and
lack of privileges.\
\
Once I left, however, I saw that I was now in the real world with real
problems again, and the school had never helped me with those problems.
After nightmares of The Family led to a relapse, I was soon out of
Vassar College and into the military. The training in the military,
although viewed by some to be harsh, was a cakewalk compared to the hell
endured at The Family School. My trust issues were never resolved after
leaving The Family, and the nightmares remained. Ultimately, all these
psychological flashbacks led to the need for my discharge from the Army,
something I regret to this day.\
\
For years, I thought all this was my fault. While the nightmares and
anxiety never wore off, getting high made it go away again. I will not
blame others for my choices, my mistakes. I take responsibility for
those. What I do blame The Family for is stripping me of my childhood. I
still have nightmares of being locked up and told I'm ruining my life. I
still read the monthly paper of lies the school puts out and get
nauseous remembering the stuff we witnessed.\
\
The only thing I can say to temper my disdain for these types of
schools, or at least for The Family is this:\
\
While the programs, as they are, have little positive effect long term,
I do believe that kids in my position need some sort of help. I do
believe there can be a safe solution, as some staff are genuinely decent
and caring people We need oversight and regulation of these facilities
with swift and severe penalties for those who stray from the standards.

What must be remembered through all of this is that the \"success
stories\" of programs tend to fall in the one to two year range after
leaving such program\...and usually are the opinions of parents. A true
statistic? Of the 25 kids from my graduating class and the one prior to
mine, maybe 4 remained sober. While many can now say they live
successful lives, it came anywhere between 5-10 years after leaving the
program and figuring out life on their own with psychiatric help.
Unfortunately, this cannot be said for all.

The programs are quick to take credit for a successful story, and are
just as fast to claim anyone that doesn\'t make it just \"didn\'t work
the program\" The truth? The nightmares and psychological scars of being
dragged from your home to a place in the middle of nowhere, restrained
in blankets and duct tape, assaulted, verbally and physically\....those
scars and that trauma never go away.

For my friends who have since died from suicide, and still suffer the
nightmares, our time and our voice will not be in vain. There comes a
time for every man to make amends and right their wrongs. This is a
lesson these programs preach, and it is a lesson they must now follow.