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Book Review
Book tells story of a
straightened-out victim
Straightling: A Memoir
By Cyndy Drew Etler
Lucky 17 Publishing, 2012
Paperback, 229 pages
ISBN 978-1469902807
List: $9.99 Amazon: $9.99
By Richard Morchoe
Dissident Vladimir Bukovsky
related a story about the Soviet regime, “One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that
his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti
Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it
in his desk and called off the search. "But, Comrade Stalin,"
stammered Beria, "five suspects have already confessed to stealing
it."
We can only imagine the brutality of a
totalitarian regime that could make people confess to things they never did and
be glad it could never happen here, except that it could and did. Not only that, those who admitted to
things they never did, came to believe their own guilt.
There were no guard towers surrounding the
installations in this country.
Barbed wire did not encircle the venues. Rubber hoses and truncheons were not used to force
confessions and yet, they occurred.
A Gestapo or KGB did not search for deviations from orthodoxy to ensnare
the deviant. It was much more
effective because of whom the betrayer was, mom and dad.
Cyndy Drew Etler spent 18 months in
Straight Inc. She was willing to
confess to near anything except the Soviet Dictator’s pipe and she might have
done that if it could have conceivably held marijuana. Not that she had vast experience with
cannabis.
Cyndy was a teenager from Connecticut with
a few problems, but she was not a hardcore drug user or alcoholic. Not untypical of her contemporaries,
she had been drunk once and stoned twice.
She was guilty of having a troubled home life. Her stepfather molested her and her mother was not
notable for being aware or interested.
She dealt with the unpleasant
domestic situation by staying away, crashing with friends until the authorities
became involved. Her time at Janus
House for Youth in Crisis, a place for a short-term stay, felt like Nirvana
compared to home.
Given a choice, she chose foster
care over being sent home. Home
has to be pretty bad for a child to want to be placed with strangers. Most 14 year olds think parents the
enforcers of unreasonable rules and regulations. In spite of that, few would want to leave the familiar
hearth for the unknown.
It was not to be.
Apathy Mom all of a sudden got involved and signed her into an
organization endorsed by Princess Di, already a living saint, but not yet a dead
goddess. Nancy Reagan had also
given her imprimatur. What could
be more wholesome?
Sold to her as a boarding school,
the truth dawned soon after arrival when the system of restraint, holding belt
loops, was used on her. There were
no artsy, cool hippy type teachers as she had anticipated. Instead, an intake interview was an
inquisition to start the policy of breaking her down.
Cyndy didn’t have a clue as to what
was happening to her. For a while
she thought that they would see she is not a druggie and let her go home. That hardly worked so she figured to
give them what they wanted.
In one of the group sessions she
“shares” her account of the beating and molestation at the hands of Jacque, her
stepfather. She felt support and
understanding and that will lead to her liberation.
Boy was she deluded. In the next group session, she was told
to stand and was asked, “Why’d your father beat you, Cyndy” It does not go
well. The inquisitor screams in
her face, “Parents don’t put a hand on their kid for no reason! What did you do to make him beat you?”
In the same vein, he accuse her of
initiating the molestation by being a flirt. The Borg now has her soul.
Years ago, I read the book,
Prisoner of Mao by Bao Ruo-Wang.
He was able to escape the Chinese Gulag because he held French
citizenship, being half Corsican.
His account of how a prisoner is broken down is eerily like
Cyndy’s. Still, at its worst, he
never believed in his own guilt as fully as Ms. Etler would. Even when Cyndy is released, she accepts
she is a druggie.
Straightlings did not stay at
Straight at night. They were sent
out to homes in the community for a good dose of family. Just your average clan that locks and
alarms every door and window through a confirmation process and observes even
your bodily functions. So what’s
the point of dispersing everybody?
Why not just have a residential community?
This is where it gets really
cute. By sending the kids out,
Straight was officially non-residential and thus needed only a day treatment
license. Inspections and oversight
were lighter for that. The
creators of the program had thought of everything.
Cyndy and others who went through
the programs generated enormous amounts of cash for Straight. Her mother used the money her father,
Smith College music professor and composer, Alvin Etler, had left her for her
education.
Did it ever do any good? Judging by the number of suicides of
former Straight attendees, the program’s efficacy may be in doubt.
Eventually, Cyndy was able to shake
herself out of the Stockholm syndrome and realize that she had admitted to
things that had not happened. The
result is her book. Stylistically,
it is almost stream of consciousness.
This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but you feel you are with
her. If you are old enough to have
been around the block a few times, you almost want to yell, “Hey, Cyndy, you’re
being set up.”
Cyndy’s relationship with her mom
is minimal. Jacque was
litigated, but not prosecuted.
Straight is out of business, but successor operations are out
there. The question becomes is our
national paranoia about drugs worth it? One hopes there is a path that can be followed with
more wisdom or less foolishness.
What is being done now is not working.
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