The Opperman Report'

Spare the Rod is a troubling look into the abusive and terribly under-regulated troubled teen industry; a shadowy network of private juvenile prisons, therapeutic boarding schools, group homes, wilderness camps, boot camps, conversion therapy centers, boarding schools, rehabs, etc. Thousands of kids are abused each year and many of them suffer in silence. Some sustain life-long injuries and struggle with things like trauma, PTSD, CPTSD, depression, anxiety, abandonment, nightly night terrors, chronic pain and more! Their ability to form healthy relationships is forever impacted and often their connection to the family that sent them away completely severed. You might think this can't happen in the U.S.! Oh yes it can! Oh yes it does! Authoritarian fascists who believe in tough love and forcing teens to assimilate to their culture and morals is nothing new. It's been going on for hundreds of years!

Join Brett, a 36-year-old survivor of Agape Boarding School as he tells you his story of how he survived two of these troubled teen industry torture centers and what he is doing to fight back against an abusive and predatorial industry. In Spare the Rod he tells his story of how he came to start the nonprofit by the same name and fight back against his father's transport business, fraudulent ed consultants, corrupt politicians, his abusers, and their enablers! Warning! This book is full of extremely sensitive and very raw and real content. Please read with caution.

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McStay's Taken Too Soon contains facts and evidence along with family information not seen on the TV programs or in newspaper and magazine articles. A whole family vanished on February 4, 2010 from their home in Fallbrook, CA. The San Diego Sheriff's Department led the public to believe that Joseph, Summer and their two little children had left of their own accord and moved to Mexico. Then the harrowing discovery of four bodies in the California desert nearly four years later shattered that illusion.

There was close to $100,000.00 in Joseph and Summer's bank accounts, a house just bought and tens of thousands spent on remodeling. A growing and thriving home-based waterfall design business had email orders pouring in that indicate millions of dollars in the pipeline. All calls and emails went unanswered. No one who knew them thought they would choose to leave without telling anyone. Everyone said Joseph would never leave his first born son from a previous marriage behind. Joseph would not just "VOLUNTARILY" walk away from all of this like the San Diego Sheriff's Office claimed.

This is the only true accounting of the McStay story written to date. Joseph's father sets the record straight about Joseph and his family.

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“We are not worth more, they are not worth less.” This is the mantra of S. Brian Willson and the theme that runs throughout his compelling psycho-historical memoir. Willson’s story begins in small-town, rural America, where he grew up as a “Commie-hating, baseball-loving Baptist,” moves through life-changing experiences in Viet Nam, Nicaragua and elsewhere, and culminates with his commitment to a localized, sustainable lifestyle.

In telling his story, Willson provides numerous examples of the types of personal, risk-taking, nonviolent actions he and others have taken in attempts to educate and effect political change: tax refusal—which requires simplification of one’s lifestyle; fasting—done publicly in strategic political and/or therapeutic spiritual contexts; and obstruction tactics—strategically placing one’s body in the way of “business as usual.” It was such actions that thrust Brian Willson into the public eye in the mid-’80s, first as a participant in a high-profile, water-only “Veterans Fast for Life” against the Contra war being waged by his government in Nicaragua. Then, on a fateful day in September 1987, the world watched in horror as Willson was run over by a U.S. government munitions train during a nonviolent blocking action in which he expected to be removed from the tracks and arrested.

Losing his legs only strengthened Willson’s identity with millions of unnamed victims of U.S. policy around the world. He provides details of his travels to countries in Latin America and the Middle East and bears witness to the harm done to poor people as well as to the environment by the steamroller of U.S. imperialism. These heart-rending accounts are offered side by side with inspirational stories of nonviolent struggle and the survival of resilient communities

Willson’s expanding consciousness also uncovers injustices within his own country, including insights gained through his study and service within the U.S. criminal justice system and personal experiences addressing racial injustices. He discusses coming to terms with his identity as a Viet Nam veteran and the subsequent service he provides to others as director of a veterans outreach center in New England. He draws much inspiration from friends he encounters along the way as he finds himself continually drawn to the path leading to a simpler life that seeks to “do no harm.&rdquo

Throughout his personal journey Willson struggles with the question, “Why was it so easy for me, a ’good’ man, to follow orders to travel 9,000 miles from home to participate in killing people who clearly were not a threat to me or any of my fellow citizens?” He eventually comes to the realization that the “American Way of Life” is AWOL from humanity, and that the only way to recover our humanity is by changing our consciousness, one individual at a time, while striving for collective cultural changes toward “less and local.” Thus, Willson offers up his personal story as a metaphorical map for anyone who feels the need to be liberated from the American Way of Life—a guidebook for anyone called by conscience to question continued obedience to vertical power structures while longing to reconnect with the human archetypes of cooperation, equity, mutual respect and empathy.

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From the back cover: The snake stuffed in attorney Paul Morantz s mailbox by acolytes of Synanon, a once-hailed drug rehabilitation center that had devolved into a paranoid, militaristic cult, was an early strike in what would become a 35-year war with nearly every major cult movement this country has ever known. Mr. Morantz has been involved under frequently bizarre circumstances--with such infamous sects as the Charles Manson family, Patty Hearst and the SLA, Jim Jones and the People s Temple, the Moonies and the strange world of Scientology. His efforts have helped many escape from lives of torment and contributed to a sea change in how courts deal with the little-understood issues of brainwashing and cults. Now, in this important and compelling book, Mr. Morantz offers a comprehensive account of the origins and activities of cults and how they prey on society s most vulnerable elements. It also recounts the very intimate tale of how these confrontations with threatening and often, violent forces cost him the woman he loved and nearly, life itself.

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