Dark City

20. CULT: Synanon's Degeneration from Addiction Treatment to Violent Cult Pt 2

• Leah & April • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Tomales Bay, CA | What if the very institutions meant to rehabilitate and guide are the ones causing the most harm? Amidst egregious human rights abuses - mass sterilizations, institutionalized child abuse, violent threats and assaults on its critics - Synanon continues to get recognition from community leaders and tax dollars throughout most of the 1970s.  What’s more shocking than that?  Its many abusive practices are still very much alive today in the in the troubled teen industry.

But there are actions you can take to help change that.  Visit stopinstitutionalchildabuse.com and unsilenced.org for resources and how you can help.

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Our top sources for this episode include:
-Katherine, Kubler (Director/Executive Producer). (2024). The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping. https://www.netflix.com/title/81579761
-The Sunshine Place (2022). [Audio podcast]. Executive Produced by Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, and Emily Barclay Ford for Team Downey, together with Josh McLaughlin for Wink Pictures. https://www.audacy.com/podcast/all.
-Janzen, R. (2001). The Rise and Fall of Synanon: A California Utopia. Johns Hopkins University Press.
-That’s So Fcked Up (2024, April 17). TRENDING TOPIC: Synanon- Drug Rehab Turned Dangerous Cult [Audio podcast episode]. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thats-so-fcked-up/id1508752329?i=1000652758034  

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👏 Special thanks to our talented partners:
Paolo Sbrighi for Musical Composition (instagram.com/paulosbrighi/)
Mario Cintra for Logo Design (instagram.com/alacarala/)


Speaker 1:

Previously, we saw Synanon, initially a drug rehabilitation program, transform into a commune where most of the members weren't even former drug addicts, With members verbally tearing each other apart in organized sessions they called therapy. It's no wonder the story will not turn out well, and while you will be shocked and appalled at the details we will share with you, you might still think that that wouldn't happen today. But you would be wrong, because the core practices of Synanon are very much alive and well today, and their targets are underage kids. This is Dark City Season 1, Los Angeles.

Speaker 2:

I wanted to tell you about this new show that my husband and I started watching. What is it called From?

Speaker 1:

It's called From All right, have you heard of it? Okay, no.

Speaker 2:

Did you ever watch Lost?

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

Okay, did I watch Lost? I thought you did.

Speaker 1:

I may not have seen Mission Impossible or Jurassic Park, but I watched Lost. Sorry, guys, before we hopped on here we talked about all the famous movies literally everybody has seen except for myself. It's shameful.

Speaker 2:

Anyways, so do you remember? I think his character was Michael in Lost? He had the little boy.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah. Yeah, he was super annoying, but that was a really cute kid, okay.

Speaker 2:

Um, so anyways, he's the main character in this TV show. Well, one of the main characters in this TV show. You know, I was sick last weekend and I had my super long nap on Saturday. I woke up and my husband's like look, there's this new show and I'm two episodes in. We have to watch it because it's going off of. It was on Amazon prime. It's going off of prime like by the end of the weekend. And I was like oh my God, okay by the end of the weekend. And I was like oh my God, okay. So the premise is like this family's driving in their RV, they're going on vacation and they're driving down the road and they get to this point in the road where there's a fallen tree in front of them and they're like, well, crap, we got to turn back. So they turn back and it like takes them into this town. There's no way out of the town. You either, I think, go back to the tree or you go back in the town and that's it. Did you ever see wayward pines?

Speaker 1:

no, I mean, it's just like a supernatural thing going on kind of yeah it's like it's not the road, because the road reroutes you to something else. Yes, yeah, okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And so they get into this town and they're like look, this sounds, you know, crazy, but you have to come inside at night because there are things out there that will get us If, if you don't, they'll kill. You Are like are they vampires, are they zombies? Whatever they are, like you can't let them in, but they're like outside the window and they look like people and they'll like say things to mess with your mind, to like trick you into letting them in. Ew, it's like super creepy. And they're like kind of like lost. They're trying to figure things out and why are things the way they are and how do we get out of here? And like also, how do we survive in this community with all these different people?

Speaker 1:

and that sounds like a really cool premise. I don't know if I can watch more dark stuff, although it's spooky month so it's kind of obligatory, but we'll get into it. With Synanon I probably watched like eight hours of documentary, maybe four hours of podcast, like plus reading the book and a whole host of articles and it's depressing. And then I have to bring this up too. I also just read the book the Secret History by Donna Tartt. She wrote the Goldfinch.

Speaker 1:

That's how you would know her it is, so it's so good. There's critiques about how it's unnecessarily long in parts, among other things, but I just think she's such an amazing author. The characters were incredibly well-developed and it starts in the fall, so like it really got me into this fall mood that was subsequently spoiled by our you know, 95 degree plus heat wave going on for the next week. Oh yeah, it's like 112 here, but you're in Phoenix.

Speaker 2:

I know.

Speaker 1:

It'd be a premium to avoid that.

Speaker 2:

Well, you're 95 instead of 112. With humidity, it's actually not even that much more humid.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, but it just goes into like the description of the seasons too and the backdrop the winter break in the book, described as the coldest winter on record in like something 25, 30 years vermont history, and I literally felt like I was freezing and having pneumonia with this character. It was that vivid and it's such a dark book in general, but it's one of those things when you you listen to it, it just gets under your skin and stays there for a really long time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's how it was, so maybe some Derry girls what we do in the shadows, that's funny.

Speaker 2:

Oh yes.

Speaker 1:

Halloween vibey, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Selling Sunset. The latest season is out. You could you know.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's the whole other level of scary I'm not prepared to deal with.

Speaker 2:

I think, oh it's super. Well, there's a lot of drama, but it's like you get to see these amazing houses and you get attached to, like some of the main. You know people on the show.

Speaker 1:

I don't know, I haven't seen it.

Speaker 2:

That's my guilty pleasure.

Speaker 1:

I love selling sunset, I might be judging you a little.

Speaker 2:

Let's talk about all those movies you haven't seen.

Speaker 1:

Let's pass, all right. Well, let's get into this episode. Okay, guys, this is a really rough one. There's really just no way around it.

Speaker 2:

So first we're gonna do a little bit of a recap. In the mid to late 1960s, chuck made two dramatic changes to Synanon. First was the Squares, or Lifestylers. They were the individuals who didn't have an addiction to kick but just wanted to live in the Synanon community. They are allowed to join. For those joining to overcome heroin addiction, chuck declares actually there is no graduation. You have to live here permanently, otherwise you'll get back into heroin and you'll die. That's the second one. Each of these changes led to a major exodus of members. By the 1970s very few people in Synanon were former heroin addicts. Plus, one more key decision led to another wave of departures. From the very beginning, people were allowed to smoke in Synanon for free. Synanon bought cigarettes for its members and Chuck was smoking three packs a day.

Speaker 1:

When he quit. So much for addiction, I know right.

Speaker 2:

When he quit in 1970, he decided to ban smoking completely. Obviously, you know this is better for your health, but it was also good for the bottom line. According to an LA Magazine article, synanon spent $250,000 a year on cigarettes and a lot of people left with this change.

Speaker 1:

This is obviously, in the grand scheme of things, a really good change that Chuck makes and then he asks the rest of the community to make. It's also going to establish a pattern that is going to get more and more outrageous through time, where Chuck says what's good for me is good for the rest of the communities. This is like the last, one of the last stops of sanity before we go into the deep end here.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and I feel like gosh with almost any cult. Every time the leader decides to change their mind, there's new rules that everybody has to abide by. In its first decade, synanon expanded to additional cities. One of these areas was Tomales Bay in Marin County. To give you a sense of where this is geographically, marin County is on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. Tomales Bay is about 40 miles north of San Francisco. Chuck decided to permanently move to Tomales Bay to make it Synanon's headquarters in 1967. Chuck thought that this would be the best location to run his social experiments. It's a very rural area, so they don't have eyes and ears all over the place like they did in Santa Monica.

Speaker 1:

So we're moving away from Los Angeles basically for all of part two. Right, I'm also kind of amazed nobody's called us out so far, even though our season is season one Los Angeles.

Speaker 1:

It's like season one Los Angeles and other cities close by. Well, we mean like Los Angeles roughly, other cities close by. I mean like Los Angeles roughly Because they were technically I mean, they were based in Santa Monica on the beach. But I mean, but also to like interesting though, because like it was always rotten at the core and that rot was present in Santa Monica and everybody's like, oh, yeah, it's fine that they're sitting in groups and yelling at each other and, yeah, tearing each other apart. You know nothing to see here. They're treating people. But this is again where I just think these abuses that kept escalating and escalating. It's like, well, the culture was always horrifically awful from the beginning, so, yeah, it did help pave the way to toxic culture.

Speaker 2:

Remember. The one rule, though, when the members played the game is no physical violence. That ends in 1973. So here we go. We're changing the rules again. When, according to a former Synanon member, phil Ritter, chuck was playing the game with the woman that Phil describes as the type of person that just will not let go once they think they have something on you. In this particular game, she was really going after Chuck. Chuck got so angry he walked across the room and poured root beer over her head, and when I first when I first was was like reading about this part, I was like, oh my God, what is he going to do? I thought he was going to like knock her out or something, and so root beer. I was like, oh okay, that's not that bad. I was, I don't know. I'd like built it up, I think, in my head.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he'll get worse, don't you worry. But yeah, for now it's just childish and also awful.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So here's a quote from Chuck, kind of debriefing, after the incident happened. He said when you try to practice democracy, you get an animal like that pure, half cured, drunk, that menopausal goddamn fool that was talking when she should have been listening.

Speaker 1:

I mean, it's executive presence at its finest, Lord.

Speaker 2:

Seriously, I just yeah, let that soak in for a minute.

Speaker 1:

This is why like this is who's?

Speaker 2:

leading them.

Speaker 1:

I know, and for the people who still like are like the game was really liberating really. Let me read you let me read you a few quotes. I think you might need some therapy from the game. That was like if you felt like that was liberating. Something's gone wrong somewhere.

Speaker 2:

So after this he decides physical violence is the policy as long as it works for them and it's like feasible. So it's just basically like if he deems it OK, it's OK.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so basically, physical violence is not banned anymore. It's the punchline.

Speaker 2:

Here we go. Like we're starting in again.

Speaker 1:

Now, in regard to the woman he poured his root beer on, chuck said that if his wife Betty had not let her out of the room, he would have thrown her out the window.

Speaker 2:

Which is much worse than the root beer.

Speaker 1:

Correct. Let's talk about Betty, because I don't think we've mentioned this before. Betty is Chuck's wife. As I mentioned, it's his third wife. She joined Synanon because of her heroin addiction. She was one of the early members of the program. She was also a former sex worker. You know, from the perspective of treating her addiction, getting away from that old life, she did really turn her life around. She is very well liked by the group and described as having a very calming presence. If someone got really upset during the game, she would be the person to follow them out and make sure they were calmed down and brought back into the fold.

Speaker 1:

The role Betty played in Synodon is a really common role in cults. There needs to be. There's probably an official term, I just haven't come across it. I think of it as like Kool-Aid sweeteners. They are like this calming presence, this balm that tempers the cult leader and can make them seem, you know, not that bad. I mean, she's nice and she's married to him. But they become like this emotional anchor for members and they provide a sense of nurturing and, you know, frankly, cleanup crew on the leader. They create a complex web of loyalty where members might not stay for the leader but for the warmth and understanding projected by this key figure. Now they're not the face of authority, but they become an indispensable part of the cult's power structure. I think it's interesting how their gentleness paradoxically reinforces the very system they seem to temper when you see the vow. You still have not seen the vow, have you I?

Speaker 2:

have not.

Speaker 1:

The NXIVM cult. Everybody needs to see the vow because it's so good and so crazy. So good and so crazy. The leader, keith Raniere. He would have never. He would never have had not the number of victims and the severity of abuses that were committed if he hadn't had these wing women who were surrounding him the entire time, helping to attract other attractive women and bringing him in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you've got to see it, but it's like this Betty character is like that they are. I know cult mind control is complex, but I feel like there is a level of guilt though that they have for making the damage and dangerM case they made deals with some of these women and they got off on such light sentences and it was like oh, you know, they were all under cult influence and I definitely can see that.

Speaker 1:

I can see that to a certain extent. Betty, I think I think she was, she was just, she was such an enabler. I don't think she was an innocent bystander at all.

Speaker 1:

And now we get to the part of the story I'm dreading the most, and that is talking about the kids in Synanon. Now, remember, it's communal parenting. After your baby is six months old, biological mom and dad don't see their children very much. You're sort of turned over to the responsibility of the group because Chuck believes it's unnatural to put such a priority on your own child. Now the repeal on the ban on violence of course means you have what essentially ends up amounting to institutionalized child abuse. Now, even before this, kids participated in the game, which is absolutely a form of psychological abuse, but now you add in the physical abuse too. There are so many examples, it's heartbreaking. I can't stomach recounting all of, but just like to give an example. There was an instance of a kid that didn't do their chores and they were slapped and punched by multiple other kids in front of a whole group. Oh my gosh, kids would try to run away from the group, understandably, and if they were caught they were severely beat in front of the group. We have a really harrowing story about this coming up soon.

Speaker 1:

One of the kids that was in Synanon, at least until the age of six, cassidy Arkin, is now a documentary producer and director. She documented her experience and reflection on Synanon in a series called Born in Synanon. When I started to watch this and I saw a lot of the same cast of characters I saw on the Synanon fix, which is what I watched first, I remember thinking I don't think I can listen to these people talk again about oh, this happened with you know. Little to no emotion. Cassidy, like it's really clear at the very beginning, she's still idealizing this group and she still really loved her experience. She does bring in Richard Offshe, a sociologist. He was a professor at Berkeley, might still be one of the collaborators on a book called the Light on Synanon, and when she tells him in the interview that she's filming, you know she loved it, she had a great experience. He challenges her and he tells her look, talk to your friends who lived through it and see if they feel the same. Your impression of the group is from ages zero to six. You're looking at it through a child's eye and she does do that. She really does invite her friends and contacts that were children and they tell her about. Yeah, this was a really messed up experience, but one crucial difference is that Cassidy's mom saw her more frequently than a lot of these other kids. Parents didn't, it probably like, provided a little bit of an oversight that those other kids didn't get.

Speaker 1:

Finanon also created what they called the punk squad. This was a boot camp for kids that had behavioral problems. The abuses of the kids in this squad are just horrific. Again, cannot stomach recounting all of them, but they were full-on beat up by adults. One of the members of Synanon recounted in one of the documentaries. One of the first members of the squad later in adulthood tried therapy to recover from the trauma and ultimately decided to kill himself and overdosed on heroin. Oh, that's so sad. Juvenile agencies and the California court systems continue to send teenagers labeled juvenile delinquents to synonyms. Quote re-education camp throughout the 1970s.

Speaker 2:

Gosh, did they not have any oversight at this point? Gosh, did they not have any oversight at?

Speaker 1:

this point I mean, if they did, it was a joke, like I said, still goes on today. I'll talk about it Now. One of the sit-in on members, buddy Jones. He was one of the leaders. He said, quote I didn't abuse kids. I wouldn't abuse a child. The older I get I don't truly know if that's the right way to treat kids, but I don't see a swat on the butt as a big deal. Now a Synodon member, marshall Carter, had noted yeah, he whacked me around a lot, but he did say like he did seem to know where the line was, but others didn't. I don't think any of these people know where the line is. Buddy had a paddle, he called his assistant and okay, you're on these documentaries decades later and you're still not sure if what you did is child abuse. Let's do a little palate cleanser.

Speaker 1:

I have to share this example of deep thoughts with Chuck Diedrich. Chuck loved to share his angry ramblings of an asshole he thought was genius philosophy in person and over the wire, which is Synanon's radio station, broadcasting all throughout their locations. He also made special tapes, broad jams and notes in the rise and fall of Synanon. A popular Synanon tape was Naked Ape, where Chuck tells the story of two hitchhikers who had jumped onto the back of a truck that was traveling at high speed carrying a coffin. When the coffin came open en route and a hand was extended, the frightened hitchhikers jumped over the side of the truck and one died instantly. It turned out that the hand belonged to sorry, I'm going to have to keep a straight face. The hand belonged to an employee who was taking a nap inside the coffin. Diedrich used the story to demonstrate that reality is sometimes deceptive, that the eyes may deceive the brain sometimes deceptive that the eyes may deceive the brain.

Speaker 1:

I don't know what to say to that.

Speaker 2:

That is the most random ass parable, I mean. Okay, sometimes my eyes deceive me in the dark as well. Okay, sinanon had a practice where they would make people who broke certain rules shave their heads.

Speaker 1:

I mean already right there, I'm out.

Speaker 2:

Yes, in 1974, everyone started shaving their heads men, women, children. So there are conflicting stories on how this practice came about. The one that seems maybe the most probable is this one Synanon was redesigning a prefabricated building and the architect decided not to remove a beam that was about five foot six feet high on a new mezzanine level. The architect said people could just duck under it. This comment royally ticked off Chuck, who declared that anyone who'd hire such idiots should have their head shaved. One guy took this literally and shaved his head. I don't, I don't see the logic. I I personally, would be like I don't see the logic. I personally would be like no, I'm good, I'm just going to sit like this, I'm going to be the most boring person in the game and I'm going to keep my hair. Sometimes they went on extreme diets too. When Betty was diagnosed with diabetes, there was a ban on sugar. Chuck held a fat-a-thon.

Speaker 1:

That's a great name, so inspiring. I don't feel insulted at all. I feel really great about myself, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Shaming and punishments were intense if people did not drop a set amount of weight. Once life got really bad for the kids, a number of them tried to escape Synanon, which good for them. One of the families that lived by Synanon's property, the Gambaninis, started getting kids showing up in the middle of the night. Alvin Gambanini, who is a third generation cattle rancher, tries to help however he can. He would take them to the bus stop and give them money so they could go home. The Synanon community figures this out.

Speaker 2:

One night in the summer of 1975, alvin drives up in his truck with his wife and his three kids and they're going to go check on their neighbor's kid while the parents are out of town. This neighbor lives on a property that also borders Synanon. All of a sudden a bunch of cars filled with Synanon members pull up. 30 people swarm the vehicle. They're throwing punches at Alvin. They're trying to pull him out of the vehicle. Alvin's son, robert, miraculously gets out of the vehicle and runs to the neighbor's house to get help. Alvin has severe injuries to his head but amazingly they all get out of the situation alive.

Speaker 1:

And I thought I read too that they'd even push their car into a ditch.

Speaker 2:

So the fact that they were able to escape is just and can you imagine his other kids were in the car like how terrifying watching this happen to your parent and feeling like people are trying to get you.

Speaker 1:

oh my gosh and you have a mob of people doing this. You know, not one person in this mob is like Maybe this is completely messed up, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're still a few years away from any real accountability for Chuck and the violent group that he's now cultivated. In the fall of 1976, chuck and Betty got a personal invitation to meet with Governor Jerry Brown. Betty gets invited to become a member of the California State Youth Authority's Board of Directors. 1976 is also a year that Chuck decides kids are a bad investment and there will be no more babies born in Synanon. Men get vasectomies and a few women who are pregnant get abortions and a few women who are pregnant get abortions. One of the members of Synanon, phil Ritter, is extremely upset by this and goes to the sheriff for help. The sheriff calls Synanon and he says he has one of their crazies over here. Synanon forces Phil to move out, but his wife and children remain in Synanon, and after he left Synanon the organization severely limited how much he could see his daughter, which is kind of heartbreaking. He tries to contest this. A group goes to his house and beats him with wooden mallets and then I mean he lived, fortunately.

Speaker 1:

But it's just all out insanity Forced sterilizations attacking innocent people. Synanon cannot completely escape some attention and questions and challenges from the government and the media. When they reached astonishingly low numbers of community members that had drug addiction, the government questioned their nonprofit status. So Chuck was like that's easy, we're now a religion. Now I don't have to answer silly questions like quote when do they graduate? And quote why do they have to obey? He says nobody graduates from a religion or a cult or that. And when do they graduate? It's called, I don't know, basic accountability and is what you're doing even worthwhile, chuck?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, in 1973, there was a grand jury investigation into allegations of fiscal impropriety and child abuse which piqued the interest of local newspaper publishers, dave and Kathy Mitchell. They ran an investigative series through the early 1980s. Their publication point raised light. They even collaborated with the Berkeley sociologist I mentioned earlier from Cassidy's documentary, richard Offsheet, and eventually they won the Pulitzer Prize for the series in their paper oh my gosh. Which is why, guys, local journalism is so important. This was incredibly brave for such a small publication, considering Synanod went after any publication that challenged them. In 1972, the San Francisco Examiner published an article that calls them the biggest racket of the 20th century. Now they do make good points, as they are not focused on drug addiction treatment anymore and they do fundraise under false pretenses. But some of the accusations do go a little too far. Plus, it does cause reputational damage. Synanon successfully sued the paper for $600,000.

Speaker 2:

It's more than two years worth of cigarettes Go ahead.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, it is also the largest libel lawsuit awarded in US history.

Speaker 2:

Wow.

Speaker 1:

Chuck pockets half of that and then he distributes the remaining half $10,000 each to 30 of the most tenured members of Synanon. Synanon becomes concerned with potential outsiders attacking members of their community, which isn't unfounded, because there are instances of outsiders threatening members, threats of potential physical violence, and remember, this is a rural community in Tomales Bay. They're not assured protection from the police department. So Chuck organizes his own private security force called the Imperial Marines A prosecutor would later describe it as a quote combat-ready paramilitary unit trained in martial arts, weapons, high-speed automobile chases and the like. They spend about $60,000 on guns and ammunition, which is over $300,000 in today's dollars, which was the largest single firearms purchase in California history. The group, by the way, active membership was always like somewhere between 1,300 and 1,700 people. Another screwed up thing Chuck does his wife Betty dies of cancer in 1977. Being on the market, he literally says I'm taking applications to be my wife. Six women apply. He picks one. Oh no.

Speaker 2:

One who's in her, it just gets worse and worse and worse.

Speaker 1:

Go ahead. He picks one that's in her early 30s, he's in his mid-60s Honestly, who cares? Because, more importantly, he orders everyone to get divorced. What? Literally a mass divorce. And also, guys, you've got to switch partners every three years.

Speaker 2:

Oh, here it comes Like first it's, you know, attract everybody in with these really fun parties. That's how it always is.

Speaker 1:

You start doing this in and on dance. Next thing you know you're shaving your head and getting divorced and getting vasectomies, I mean, and a new partner every three years.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

All right, Not all organizations that have dances do this. Also, not all organizations do attack therapy either. So you know. Also, Chuck decides to start drinking again. He's become a full alcoholic and everyone else can drink too, so they have an open bar, which is really great. When you think about the ammunition stockpile, oh no. And that's also really awesome for the former addicts, who also have hep C and some die. And that's also really awesome for the former addicts who also have hep C and some die, oh gosh. The inventory of human rights abuses committed by Synanon continues to grow and there are more challenges. The attorney, Paul Marantz, especially, goes on a crusade to bring down this organization. He wins a $300,000 award for his client, Francis Wynn, on charges of kidnapping, brainwashing and torture when they tried to keep her from leaving the program.

Speaker 1:

When they found her she was just walking on the beach. They brought her over to the program and then just tried to keep her. How did she get out, do you know? Well, the lawyer intervened and I don't know all the details, but imagine it wasn't a straightforward process.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, that's awful.

Speaker 1:

Now Paul Morantz in general, is going after Synanon, and he's got clients, former Synanon members, which means he's living his life in fear because they are. He is getting a lot of threats. He has to carry a gun, he has to check under his car for car bombs, but the attack ultimately comes in a form you would least expect. One day he gets an irregularly shaped package that looks like it could be a scarf in the mail, so he opens it, but what he finds is a four and a half foot rattlesnake that bites him right away. He lives, he lives, but they had even removed its rattler so it wouldn't make noise. Chuck is not going to go scot-free on this one Almost though, in my opinion, on December 2nd 1978, he is arrested. He's also totally wasted when the cops show up, so he avoids jail by pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and promising to permanently remove himself from Synanon.

Speaker 1:

The attack itself was carried out by two members one named Lance Kenton he was a 20-year-old who grew up in Synanon and Joseph I think you pronounce it Museko, joseph Museko, 28 years old. He was a struggling heroin addict and a combat veteran who liked to tell everybody about how, when he was in Vietnam. He would wear a necklace of human ears. Oh no, which makes you a psychopath. The government. Eventually they yanked their nonprofit status and things do fall apart and they close. But it literally takes 13 more years for the organization to fold. Holy cow 1991, officially, synanon is no more. So many former Synanon members note. Synanon is no more. So many former Synanon members know.

Speaker 1:

The host of the podcast, the Sunshine Place, notes and many other mainstream sources that Synanon was a great thing until Chuck ruined it. Okay, guys, after reading hundreds of pages on this cult, honestly I don't think you even need to do that. I literally think you just have to watch a session of the game. Guys, this was never good Hearing so many people to talk about it like oh you know, this was such a great time. We're just not really seeming completely horrified and traumatized by some of the things that happened. Maybe they are in their head, I don't know. I mean, I started to question myself what am I missing? The attack therapy is so messed up so I go to other sources to confirm I'm not crazy.

Speaker 1:

I found the best response to the documentary Synanon Fix from Brian Talerico on the Roger Ebert Review site. It's fairly reflective of what cultic studies professors, experts and psychologists also had to say about this cult. So direct quote from him cults form because people ignore the bad and focus only on the good that they're getting from that organization. When a gentleman speaks of being forced into a vasectomy in his 20s, during a time when Diedrich thought their group should be childless, women were forced into abortions too there's almost no anger in his voice. It's startling to hear how many of the people involved in this organization still speak about its origins positively, noting that they wouldn't be here without it. And yet, watching the Synanon fix, one can see the rot at the core of this approach to sobriety from the very beginning. It's noted in the book the Rise and Fall of Synanon that, unlike most successful American communes, synanon experienced high defection rates throughout its entire history, exceeding 95%. That's not just true of heroin addicts, but the lifestylers throughout its histories.

Speaker 2:

Or people that I feel like that's pretty telling, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

People that, like they also organize games for the community and people never came back. I found it very troubling on the Synanon fix and the Sunshine Place that neither one neither one brought on any experts to talk about and debrief cult mind control. Why attack therapy is so damaging? I mean the explicit goal of the sunshine place was they wanted the people who are part of synodon to tell the story in their own words. Cassidy argadon, who produced born in synodon, did this, but it just for me, it just didn't feel like responsible. It didn't feel like responsible documentary practices to not do that, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Now, if we haven't completely destroyed you by all of the abuses of this cult, here is the kicker. Synanon's method of attack therapy and physical abuse is still very much alive today in the troubled teen industry. The troubled teen industry is a series of different schools, wilderness programs, for example, that their goal is expressed to help reform troubled youth Troubled youth, but troubled youth is anything from. It could just be. Parents're highly unregulated because they're private institutions. If you watch the documentary the Program on Netflix, which is about one of these programs, that used to exist.

Speaker 1:

The Academy at Ivy Ridge. The people who run these things are often not trained no former teacher credentials, or credentials in psychology or just anything so like. Think of all the requirements just to go and teach in a public school or to do mental health services.

Speaker 1:

In a lot of places. They are literally taking what they say is like the most challenging group of kids to help redirect or get on a better path. They've got literally no background in doing it. Now there's estimated around probably 100,000 kids in these institutions today. There is significant issue. If you just Google troubled teen industry, you're going to see there's so many reports of so many deaths, so many cases of abuse, and not just one. A lot of them trace their roots back to Synanon, because what they do is they use attack, therapy and physical abuse to get compliance from members.

Speaker 2:

I didn't see the whole documentary of the program. That was really heartbreaking to watch, though, how they described their day-to-day and how they were treated. Didn't Paris Hilton go to one of these also? Yes, okay.

Speaker 1:

Yes, she did. Is that in?

Speaker 2:

her book? I haven't read her book.

Speaker 1:

I believe. So I haven't read it either, and she's done a ton of advocacy we will put in our notes and link on social media. There's a lot of organized efforts. She's part of them. Other groups that are trying to get legislation to get at least some accountability and oversight into this. What's so tough about that too is that a lot of them they make it impossible for the kids to go and tell their parents or anyone what's really happening because they can control so much of their communication and a lot of the kids are afraid to talk because they're afraid then they won't graduate the program Right and they just want to get out Exactly.

Speaker 1:

So it's like they're trapped there. These organizations exist. They're out there. Sometimes they take tax dollars. Often, you know, parents pay tuition fees for them. But looking at just the academy at Ivy Ridge, 40 kids from that program either committed suicide or drug overdosed. Oh that's so sad. So that's some history from the past that is still very much a reality today. So check out our show notes, Check out our social media. There's something you can do to help change the situation and we have resources there. To conclude, stay away from the dark side, because if you don't, you won't do what you can to help make this right. Thank you.