S2|E3: Start Again

Summary

The Sunshine Place: Season 2, Episode 3 – "Start Again"

Release Date: November 6, 2024

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Introduction

In "Start Again," the third episode of Season 2 of The Sunshine Place, Audacy Podcasts and Team Downey delve deeper into the dark legacy of Straight Incorporated, tracing its roots back to the controversial Straight Seed program of the 1970s. This episode meticulously examines how experimental rehab programs for teenagers can devolve into abusive cults, perpetuating cycles of control and manipulation.

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Historical Context: The Matrix House Experiment

The episode opens by setting the stage with the historical backdrop of drug addiction treatment in the United States prior to Synanon. The establishment of the United States Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, marked a shift from viewing addiction as a criminal issue to a medical one. This led to experimental treatments aimed at rehabilitating addicts through therapeutic communities.

Historian/Expert explains, “[00:48] When the United States Public Health Service Hospital was established at Lexington, Kentucky, the problem of narcotic drug addiction was put under the banner of medicine.”

Among these experiments was the Matrix House, a program inspired by Synanon, aimed at treating narcotics addiction through confrontational group therapy. Marcus Chatfield, a historian and former participant of Straight Incorporated, provides firsthand insights into the Matrix House’s operations and its eventual downfall.

Marcus Chatfield states at [05:01], “Bombs, guns, torture, sexual rituals. They tied a guy up to a cross. Just madness.”

The Matrix House's reliance on "therapeutic violence" led to its shutdown in 1972 after less than two years of operation. Despite its failure, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIM) continued to fund similar programs, overlooking the inherent dangers of such aggressive therapeutic methods.

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The Birth and Growth of The Seed

Following the Matrix House’s collapse, Art Barker founded The Seed in suburban Florida in 1973, positioning it as a progressive rehab program for troubled teenagers. The Seed promised life-saving transformations, attracting support from influential community members and parents desperate to help their children.

Cindy Ettler, the narrator, recounts, “At the end of the last episode, a teenager named Craig and his sister were dropped off by their father at the newly opened Seed in St. Petersburg in the summer of 1973.”

Craig, a former participant, describes his initial experiences upon entering The Seed:

Craig shares at [08:07], “When I came into the seed, I found that I could be a winner. I could set goals, I could be happy, and I could have a lot of friends.”

However, the reality of The Seed starkly contrasted its public image. Participants endured relentless "rap sessions," where verbal and psychological abuse were commonplace under the guise of therapeutic progress.

Craig elaborates at [09:54], “You're a pussy. You know, I would have beat the shit out of you, girl. Screaming at you that you're a joke...”

These sessions were designed to break down the teenagers before rebuilding them, employing fear and intimidation rather than genuine support.

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Operational Dynamics and Control Mechanisms

Art Barker, the charismatic founder of The Seed, maintained a façade of benevolence while exerting significant control over the program. His absence from daily operations delegated authority to men like John Underwood, whose authoritarian style starkly contrasted Barker’s charismatic approach.

Craig describes Underwood at [11:58], “John Underwood was very scary. He was a grown man and probably six foot three. Got angry, screamed at people. Very authoritarian.”

Underwood and other senior staff members orchestrated the confrontational therapy sessions, ensuring compliance and suppressing dissent among the participants. The Seed's structure was oppressive, with long hours dedicated to therapy and constant surveillance, leaving little room for individuality or dissent.

Craig reflects at [14:28], detailing the exhausting daily routine: “From 10 to 10 every day, 12 hours a day... it was emotionally exhausting, physically exhausting. It just seemed like I had been thrust into jail, but it wasn't jail.”

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Community Support and Public Image

Despite the rampant abuse within The Seed, Art Barker skillfully cultivated a positive public image. Open meetings showcased testimonials from "graduates," presenting a narrative of miraculous transformation that convinced many parents to trust and financially support the program.

Bernie, another former participant, shares at [20:40], “You would have thought that Jesus Christ had just come in the room... Here's this guy that's saving teenagers, saving their lives.”

High-profile visits from celebrities and politicians further bolstered The Seed’s reputation. However, behind the scenes, the reality was one of manipulation and control, with parents unknowingly becoming enablers of the program’s destructive practices.

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Government Scrutiny and the Irvin Report

As The Seed expanded, concerns about its methods attracted the attention of governmental bodies. Senator Sam Ervin, known for his role in the Watergate investigation, spearheaded a congressional inquiry into behavior modification programs, including The Seed.

Marcus Chatfield explains at [38:48], “Officials at NIM were concerned about Art Barker's lack of sophistication... He claimed publicly over and over again. That it was between 90 and 95% successful.”

Despite increasing scrutiny, Art Barker resisted federal oversight, leading to heightened tensions. The ensuing investigations revealed disturbing parallels between The Seed’s methods and unethical brainwashing techniques, culminating in the Irvin Report.

The report publicly condemned The Seed, likening its practices to North Korean brainwashing, and highlighted numerous constitutional violations, including:

• Free Speech: Participants were not allowed to voice dissent.
• Search and Seizure: Constant surveillance and control over personal freedoms.
• Due Process: Arbitrary punishments without proper legal procedures.
• Cruel and Unusual Punishments: Use of intimidation and fear as therapeutic tools.

Marcus Chatfield summarizes at [40:18], “The Irvin report compared the treatment methods used by the SEED to, quote, highly refined brainwashing techniques employed by the North Koreans in the early 1950s.”

The fallout from the Irvin Report was swift and devastating for The Seed, leading to legal battles, loss of funding, and the eventual closure of facilities.

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Transition to Straight Incorporated

In the wake of The Seed’s downfall, influential parents, including Craig's father and real estate developer Mel Sembler, sought to continue the program’s mission without its abusive framework. This led to the creation of Straight Incorporated, aiming to replicate The Seed's success while ostensibly addressing its previous shortcomings.

Craig reflects at [48:37], “These parents, my father including, they felt like the Seed was saving children. The problem is the person in charge. We can fix it by taking the same kids that went through the program and throwing them all back in the same warehouse and saying, okay, do it again, but do it better.”

Despite efforts to reform, Straight Incorporated inherited many of The Seed’s toxic practices, exacerbating the cycle of abuse under a new guise.

Marcus Chatfield notes at [50:29], “All the kids were psychologically, verbally abused. A lot of the kids were physically abused. And there were people asking whether or not Straight was brainwashing kids.”

To safeguard its reputation, Straight Incorporated enlisted powerful allies and strategic public relations maneuvers, ensuring continued support from influential circles while masking internal abuses.

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Conclusion and Forward Look

"Start Again" serves as a crucial chapter in The Sunshine Place, illustrating how rehabilitative intentions can be perverted into oppressive regimes through unchecked authority and lack of oversight. The episode underscores the vulnerability of teenagers in such environments and the complicity of well-meaning yet misguided parents and community leaders.

As Straight Incorporated rises from The Seed’s ashes, the episode sets the stage for exploring the broader implications of such programs on family dynamics, societal trust, and the ethical boundaries of rehabilitation.

Bernie poignantly concludes at [51:36], “And we are beating him to death right now. I felt like I was leaving my body to actually do that. Like, that's something I did not want to do. I did not want to be there. I didn't understand it, and yet I.”

This harrowing testament encapsulates the personal toll of these programs, highlighting the urgent need for accountability and reform in the troubled teen industry.

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Notable Quotes

• Marcus Chatfield [05:01]: “Bombs, guns, torture, sexual rituals. They tied a guy up to a cross. Just madness.”

• Craig [09:54]: “You're a pussy. You know, I would have beat the shit out of you, girl. Screaming at you that you're a joke...”

• Bernie [20:40]: “You would have thought that Jesus Christ had just come in the room... Here's this guy that's saving teenagers, saving their lives.”

• Marcus Chatfield [40:18]: “The Irvin report compared the treatment methods used by the SEED to, quote, highly refined brainwashing techniques employed by the North Koreans in the early 1950s.”

• Craig [48:37]: “These parents, my father including, they felt like the Seed was saving children. The problem is the person in charge. We can fix it by taking the same kids that went through the program and throwing them all back in the same warehouse and saying, okay, do it again, but do it better.”

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Closing Remarks

The Sunshine Place continues to unravel the intricate web of power, manipulation, and desperation that fuels the troubled teen industry. In "Start Again," listeners gain a profound understanding of how initial good intentions can morph into systemic abuse, emphasizing the importance of vigilance and ethical standards in rehabilitation programs.

For more episodes and in-depth explorations of these compelling stories, please subscribe to The Sunshine Place on the Free Odyssey app or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

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[Narrator]

This episode contains descriptions of physical and emotional abuse. Please take care while listening.

[Historian/Expert]

When the United States Public Health Service Hospital was established at Lexington, Kentucky, the problem of narcotic drug addiction was put under the banner of medicine. Until that time, this problem had been regarded almost solely as a correctional one.

[Narrator]

In the days before Synanon, one of the only treatment options for drug addiction in the United States was at a federal prison hospital in rural Kentucky known as the Narcotic Farm. And it was there that for the first time, addicts were treated as patients rather than punished as criminals. But they were also regarded by the federal government as subjects of experimental addiction treatments.

[Historian/Expert]

Patients from the Clinical Research center volunteer for a variety of tests involving the actual intake of drugs. To the outsider, these tests may appear meaningless and, from a conservative point of view, immoral.

[Marcus Chatfield]

At Lexington, they were constantly tinkering with new methods, and they were trying to Figure out what works to treat narcotics addiction.

[Narrator]

This is Marcus Chatfield. He was in Straight Incorporated as a teenager in the 1980s. These days, he's a historian, writing his dissertation on the origins of the troubled teen industry. Marcus says that in the late 1960s and early 70s at the narcotic farm, the National Institute of Mental Health started funding a series of experiments to study the efficacy of therapeutic communities where groups of recovering addicts were made responsible for each other's rehabilitation without the intervention of trained medical professionals. It was a novel concept, and the experiments drew a lot of attention.

[Marcus Chatfield]

People from across the United States and the military, Department of Defense were coming there to study what they were doing.

[Narrator]

One of those experimental groups showed enough promise that the inmates were given their own building on the grounds of the prison hospital. It was called the Matrix House.

[Marcus Chatfield]

It was a therapeutic community explicitly based on Synanon.

[Narrator]

The role of program director was given to someone who had spent time at Synanon. And the therapy was based on the Synanon game, which was an intense and highly confrontational group encounter session where participants were expected to interrogate and verbally attack anyone who they thought was being inauthentic or dishonest. Very quickly, the line between treatment and abus at the Matrix House started to blur.

[Marcus Chatfield]

They were using therapeutic violence every day on a verbal level. So the whole program was based on the infliction of pain. And what happened was an extreme version of what happens when you take that to its logical, fullest extension.

[Narrator]

The attitude of the program director went from democratic to authoritarian. Verbal attacks became physical, punishments became sadistic, and the Matrix House experiment became totally out of control.

[Marcus Chatfield]

Bombs, guns, torture, sexual rituals. They tied a guy up to a cross. Just madness.

[Narrator]

In 1972, after less than two years of operation, the Matrix House was shut down.

[Marcus Chatfield]

It was a great warning to what can happen when paraprofessional staff members rely on therapeutic violence day in and day out and what they will resort to to maintain control.

[Narrator]

But the National Institute of Mental Health didn't seem to view it that way.

[Marcus Chatfield]

The Matrix House scandal was really blamed on the bad apples in what was predominantly seen as a really good barrel. But they weren't scrutinizing the basic idea of the paraprofessional model. And the treatment methods themselves were not on trial.

[Narrator]

You would think that a form of therapy which leads to emotionally harmful, antisocial and violent outcomes would be quickly disregarded. But the very same year that the National Institute of Mental Health shut down the Matrix House, they funded another program that employed untrained professionals who used aggressive and confrontational peer pressure as a way to help people. This program was for teenagers and was located in suburban Florida. It was an unconventional rehab called the Seed. So why does a therapeutic approach that has so much potential for harm continue to persist? A look at the SEED offers some clues. Because the SEED turned kids, parents and entire communities into devoted followers and evangelists of the program, which set the stage for Straight Incorporated and thousands of other mutations of this toxic and volatile form of therapy. My name is Cindy Ettler, and this is the Sunshine Place. At the end of the last episode, a teenager named Craig and his sister were dropped off by their father at the newly opened seed in St. Petersburg in the summer of 1973. People from the community welcomed the program and its founder, Art Barker, with open arms. He promised parents that he could perform life saving transformations on their kids. And they believed him once they saw their kids stand up in open meetings and tell their miraculous stories of change. But what the parents didn't get to see is how that change happened. They didn't get to see what Craig was about to see. That behind closed doors, the SEED was heading down the same path as the Matrix house.

[Historian/Expert]

When I came into the seed, I found that I could be a winner. I could set goals, I could be happy, and I could have a lot of friends.

[Craig]

They were talking when we walked in, and then they stopped talking. And everybody looked at us and their eyes followed us all the way to the front.

[Narrator]

Craig looked around at all the other kids sitting in rows of chairs inside a huge warehouse.

[Craig]

There was 500 kids in there, easy. Then I start recognizing people I knew from my neighborhood, from my school. I just couldn't believe I was there. But I also couldn't believe that there was people there I knew.

[Narrator]

Then Craig was sat down on front row. There were two young staff members sitting on stools at the front of the room. They called on one of the kids who stood up and started talking about himself.

[Craig]

I wasn't really happy. I never really had anything out there. Nobody, nobody really gave a damn about me.

[Narrator]

Suddenly, it was like an argument had broken out.

[Craig]

You know, I knew you out there and you were nothing. You thought you were a hot shit, but you were just a little child.

[Narrator]

The kid was getting yelled at and insulted and verbally attacked by the other kids and the staff. Craig recognized it as a rap session from the SEED documentary that he had seen so many times on television. But watching it from his front row seat was much, much different in real life.

[Craig]

They were very vicious and mean.

[Narrator]

On tv, it looked like they were building each other up, but in reality, they were breaking each other down.

[Craig]

You're a pussy. You know, I would have beat the shit out of you, girl. Screaming at you that you're a joke. I wouldn't have anything to do with you. You've probably never even had sex. You're just a little child. No woman wants you, you know, called faggot. You'd be sucking cock on the street if it wasn't for hair. You know, just trying to rip people apart. And then when you were done with it, the entire 500 kids, they would all scream, I love you.

[Narrator]

But the viciousness of the raps wasn't the only difference that Craig noticed from the version of the Seed that he knew from tv.

[Historian/Expert]

And as your child progresses and gets well and you go through those various stages of watching a newcomer.

[Narrator]

When he walked into the room, he expected to see Art Barker leading the rap. But he wasn't there. In episode two, we learned how Art Barker had grown his program from a little yellow house next to a church into a budding empire. By the time Craig got to the seat, there were four locations across Florida. And Barker had ambitions to expand the program across the state and then across the country. He spent most of his time at the headquarters in Fort Lauderdale. When he wasn't out on mission trips with his Seedlings, proselytizing for the Seed in other communities around Florida. In his absence, he left the day to day operation of the program to his most trusted senior staff members. Like his right hand man, John Underwood.

[Historian/Expert]

I was all in on the Seed.

[Marcus Chatfield]

Heart, mind, body, 100%.

[Narrator]

We met John Underwood in the last episode. He was the ex heroin addict who came to the Seed in his early 20s and became a true believer. He helped Art Barker funnel kids from the criminal courts to the Seed. And when Barker opened the facility in St. Petersburg, he put John Underwood in charge.

[Historian/Expert]

I was the obvious choice.

[Craig]

John Underwood was very scary. He was a grown man and probably six foot three. Got angry, screamed at people. Very authoritarian.

[Narrator]

John Underwood brought a very different energy to rap sessions than Art Barker. Barker wielded a lot of power in raps, but his power came from his charisma. He worked the group with an expertise forged in comedy clubs in New York City and Miami. There was humor and humanity in his raps. Art Barker wanted you to feel the love. John Underwood wanted you to be afraid.

[Historian/Expert]

I understand perfectly how some people would see me as being intimidating.

[Marcus Chatfield]

I'd be lying if I said I.

[Historian/Expert]

Wasn'T aware of that. At the time, and on occasion didn't use that to my benefit.

[Narrator]

Rap leaders had a lot of control in the session. They could choose who to call on to confess and who to call on to attack and what emotional buttons to push or triggers to pull so a rap could take on the personality of the person in charge. People like John Underwood and the other senior staff members weren't professionals. They were young people with troubled pasts, barely older than the hundreds of teenagers at their command, whose only qualifications came from excelling at the Seed.

[Craig]

They could really rip you up and they were really good at it. It was just terrifying.

[Narrator]

In the beginning of this episode, Marcus Chatfield talked about the therapeutic violence that led to the spectacular failure of the Matrix house experiment in Lexington, Kentucky. And now the same form of therapy that had been so destructive for adult prisoners was being used on kids at the Seed in those emotionally brutal raps that went on all day, every day.

[Craig]

From 10 to 10 every day, 12 hours a day. In the morning it goes from 10 to 12. Then there would be a lunch break, you to eat a sandwich and some Kool Aid in your chair. And then it would start again and they would go to two. And then we'd have a 15 minute break outside, which was mild calisthenics, dances like the Hokey Pokey and things of this nature. And then you come right back in, there's an afternoon wrap, then 5 o'clock or so there was another break for dinner and it would start another rap. It was just this incessant rapping all day and you could be attacked at any moment on any day. It was emotionally exhausting, physically exhausting. It just seemed like I had been thrust into jail, but it wasn't jail. And I could only think about how to get out of there. I didn't know what to do. I would glance at the door, maybe I can go that way. And then I'd see there was two big 18 year old boys at that door. And I knew, no, I can't do that. Like, maybe if I went to the bathroom, I could dart out. I was always a really fast kid. But then what do I do? Where am I gonna go? You know the place is gonna be looking for me. My mother lived six hours away in Fort Lauderdale. I didn't know how to get down there. I felt trapped. And I was trying to figure out how to get out of the trap.

[Narrator]

It didn't take long for Craig to realize that the version of the Seed that Art Barker was selling to was not as advertised and he wanted out. But he was about to come to the same conclusion as everyone else who had come before him that the only way to get out of the seed was to go all in.

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[Narrator]

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[Historian/Expert]

Most of these kids portray a role in the outside world, and in here they suddenly learn they can be themselves and be loved for being themselves. And that's the most important thing that can happen to a kid here. That's one of the most important.

[Narrator]

As the seed continued to grow, Art Barker gave more control of the rehab to his staff while he focused on spreading the gospel of the Seed to the public because every parent was a potential future stakeholder in the next seed location. And Barker had an unusual gift for knowing exactly what those people wanted to hear.

[Craig]

Our Barker supposedly had this hyper awareness. You couldn't get anything past him. He knew what you were thinking. And everybody in the seed was trying to obtain the level of hyper awareness that Art Barker had.

[Historian/Expert]

When you learn the games you're playing, and you don't have to play these games anymore, that means you're aware. And that's what's happening to these kids. They've become aware.

[Craig]

They would say, you know, our Barker can read your mind, even right now. And I was scared to look the guy in the eyes when he would show up.

[Narrator]

The first time Craig saw Art Berker in person was at an open meeting. And he immediately understood what all the hype was about. Barker was in total control of the room, and it was a packed house. There might have been a thousand people there between the 500 seedlings, their parents, and other people from the community who showed up to watch Art Barker.

[Craig]

He was coming twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. He'd show up for some of our open meetings in his limousine.

[Narrator]

Art Barker's limousine was a gift from a friend, the actor and comedian Jackie Gleason, star of the Honeymooners. Art Barker knew a lot of high profile people, and sometimes they would drop by the seed. In 1972, a senator from Maine named Edmund Muskie visited the Seed while he was campaigning for president. Sammy Davis, Jr. Visited that same year, and he had tears in his eyes when the kids sang the Seed song. And Art Barker had become a local celebrity in his own right, and he certainly looked like one when he would pull up to open meetings in his limousine, chauffeured by one of his seed staffers.

[Bernie]

Art would walk through the building, and it was just like. And everyone would go, love you, Art.

[Narrator]

This is Bernie. She was in the seat around the same time as Craig, but she was at the location in Fort Lauderdale.

[Bernie]

You would have thought that Jesus Christ had just come in the room, and we were so grateful. The general public was like that with Art. You know, here's this guy that's saving teenagers, saving their lives. Art had a good instinct. He understood that desperation and that need of helpless parents wanting their kids to be better. You take this surly, unpleasant, hormonal being, and voila, we were all cleaned up and shiny now and smiling and singing what a wonderful thing. What parent wouldn't go, oh, my God. You see something like that, and it's like a miracle?

[Narrator]

Bernie was a lot like Craig. She wasn't a hardcore drug addict, but she smoked pot, got into trouble, hung out with older boys, and generally made her parents worried, because her parents were a lot like Craig's parents.

[Bernie]

My parents were very strict and very conservative, very straight. They were not even an ounce of cool.

[Narrator]

Bernie's father was a battalion chief in the Fort Lauderdale Fire Department. Craig's dad was in the insurance business, and he was starting his own firm in St. Petersburg. The chief of police in St. Petersburg was a SEED parent, too. And that's just a small cross section of the kinds of influential people that Art Barker was preaching to in open meetings every week.

[Historian/Expert]

How many of you were stoned in front of your parents, and your parents didn't even know it?

[Craig]

And he knew the questions asked the kids in front of the people that matter. He was a window into this supposedly secret world of drugs and societal destruction. It just reinforced that these kids needed to be there and the community needed him, because how else would they even know these things?

[Narrator]

At every open meeting, Barker was speaking directly to the kinds of people who could help him grow the program. They were also people who could do favors or make problems go away. And many of them considered him a personal friend.

[Bernie]

Art spoke at my dad's retirement party, and his place at the table was next to my mom.

[Narrator]

Art Barker was becoming part of the fabric of these communities to the point that he and his seedlings were being welcomed into people's homes. At the end of each day, newcomers went home with oldcomers to live with their families. And SEED parents were so bought in that they offered this service at their own expense.

[Marcus Chatfield]

I don't mind them coming into my.

[Narrator]

Home because they behave well when they're here. The old comers see that they behave well. And I honestly think, in a way, they're helping my younger children. The parents allowed Art Barker to operate the SEED like an inpatient facility without the cost. And so the SEED parents were like unpaid staff on top of providing housing for the seedlings. They fed them and drove them to and from the building every day, morning and night.

[Historian/Expert]

And at the end of a couple of weeks, most of the parents come to us and they say, well, I think we gotta keep this kid another week. And you know what it is? They fall in love with those newcomers, and they don't want to part with them.

[Narrator]

Technically, a parent could put their kid in the program free of charge, but without their full support and participation, none of it would have been possible, including Art Barker's lifestyle. He lived near the facility in Fort Lauderdale, along with members of his inner circle in a six bedroom house with a swimming pool that was donated to him by a seed supporter. The st. Petersburg facility was a donation as well, as was the limousine he drove around in. And he still had his sailboat. So Barker was living pretty well. But John Underwood doesn't think that's what motivated him.

[Historian/Expert]

I mean, he wasn't in it for.

[Marcus Chatfield]

The money, but he wouldn't turn any down. If you're giving the children.

[Historian/Expert]

How many of you come from very poor families? How many come from middle class families? How many come from very rich families?

[Narrator]

Craig says that a lot of those middle and upper class parents who came to the open meetings showed their support and gratitude to art Barker with their wallets and pocketbooks.

[Craig]

They passed the basket just like a church through the parents, and they'd all drop money in. I'm sure a lot of them were dropping 50s and hundreds in there. A whole bunch of money was coming into that place.

[Narrator]

Open meetings were about putting on a show for the parents and convincing them to support the program. But they were also about sending a message to the kids that compliance was in their best interest.

[Craig]

At the end of the meeting, they say, so and so stand up, you're off your program. And these were kids that had graduated.

[Narrator]

In order to graduate from the seed, you had to make progress in the program. And to make progress, you had to comply with what you were told to say and do. As you made progress, you moved backwards down the rows of chairs in the group. When you first arrived, they put you in the first chair on the front row. The goal was to work your way toward the last seat on the back row closest to the door. But the only way to get there was to prove to everyone in the group that you deserved it by demonstrating progress in your rehabilitation. Every day for 18 months, I fought to stay straight. As far as I'm concerned right now, I'm gonna keep fighting her. I love you all. Now this is where it paid to be. Someone like John Underwood, who was a hardcore heroin addict and criminal before he got to the seed, he had a lot to rehabilitate, and the progress he made was impressive and plain to see. But it wasn't as easy for someone like Craig.

[Craig]

If you came in there and said, well, I smoked pot five times and, you know, I don't really need this place, you would never get off the front row. So if you're a smart person, the idea was to embellish your story enough to where it sounds like you had a problem. Because the bigger your problem, the Bigger the change, the more you've been a good seedling.

[Historian/Expert]

Done everything from pot to heroin, pot to acid for the last cocaine for about five years.

[Narrator]

Cash, speed downs, MDA and acid.

[Craig]

Let's say you had done some tab of acid one time that goes on your list. When I was on the streets, I did acid. As if you're doing this all the time. Well, I did THC and PCP and marijuana and anything I could get my hands on. I remember saying that one time. And anything else I could get my hands on. These are the kinds of things you would just hear ad nauseam from each kid as they got to the point where they were ready to assimilate into the group. They sounded very much like the robots that everybody thought they were. And the more you assimilated, the easier it got. It was going to be rough if you didn't assimilate. Very, very rough. You assimilated or else. So at some point I decided my way out was going to be to try to blend in. And as I was pretending to go along with the program, I got moved off the front row to the second row.

[Narrator]

Craig was now one row closer to the door. And he had realized that the more kids acted as if, the closer they would get. And he noticed that other kids were getting rewarded along the way. They could go to the bathroom by themselves without an escort. They could go to their own homes at night, get a home cooked meal and sleep in their own beds. Even the kids that were guarding the doors were there because they earned that responsibility. They could be trusted. They were good seedlings.

[Craig]

I like getting duty like guarding the bathroom because it would separate me from the group. I still had to sit in a chair over there and raise my hand, but I was so far away that I felt like I was 100 miles away. And so to me, that was the best assignment ever. But you couldn't say that if they asked you. You'd have to say something like, well, I can't wait to get back in the crew. You know, there was one moment where the kid made a break for it and he was running through the parking lot. And I actually helped chase the kid down and bring him back. I honestly thought at that moment I was doing the right thing. If you get locked up and told what to think, feel, say, do, at some point you become what you're pretending to be. I guess that's something in human nature that I don't fully understand. But I lived it and I got lost in it for a while.

[Narrator]

When Craig first got to The Seed. There were a lot of questions running through his mind. First and foremost was, how do I get out of here? So he started acting like the other Seedlings. But at some point, it became hard for him to separate make believe from reality. And the longer he was on the program, the harder it got until eventually he stopped asking questions. And that's exactly what Art Barker wanted Seedlings to do. It was the intention behind the methodology of the program and how Barker was able to deliver on his promise of teenage transformation. But as the Seed kept growing, there were people on the outside who were just starting to ask questions about what exactly was happening behind closed doors at the Seed. Want to shop Walmart? Black Friday Deals First Walmart plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one year annual membership. Shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart plus see [e-mail] is your cold making it hard for you to get to.

[Greenlight Representative]

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[Narrator]

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[Historian/Expert]

And as your child progresses and gets well, you can't wait to come back to the next open meeting to see where he's sitting now, where she's sitting now, and how much that newcomer has progressed.

[Narrator]

For Craig, as days turned into weeks at the Seed, he kept complying and making progress down the rows of chairs. Then after about a month, at the end of an open meeting, he noticed that one of the staff members was looking in his direction.

[Craig]

And then they called my name and I stood up and they said, you're going home.

[Narrator]

To be clear, Craig wasn't graduating, but they were telling him that he wouldn't have to live in a host home anymore. At the end of every day, he could go home to his father's house. Craig's father was a true believer in the Seed. He was actively involved in the program and the community of influential people who had rallied around it. He and Craig had a very tense relationship before the Seed. So Craig had mixed feelings about going home, but it was still better than the alternative.

[Craig]

It was a big step in feeling more free and I felt like I had earned it and then I didn't want to lose it.

[Narrator]

That's how Bernie felt too when she got to go home until she found out that she couldn't just pick up her life where she had left it before the seed.

[Bernie]

When I got home, I wanted so bad to reach out to my best friend and to my boyfriend, and I knew that I couldn't. My boyfriend was just right down the road. One day he called, and I answered the phone, and I just said, I can't talk to you now. And I hung up the phone, and I was just devastated.

[Narrator]

Art barker didn't want his seedlings exposed to any alternative thought, Contrary to what they were being told in the program. As difficult as it was for Bernie to shut people out over the phone, she was afraid of what it would be like when she had to do it in person. Once she hit her next big seedling milestone, Going back to school. Craig was anxious about going back, too. For him, it was the first day of School in 1973. He was going into his freshman year of high school. And that's nerve wracking enough for anyone without the added stigma of being a newly minted seed robot, the kind of kid that he and his former friends used to joke about.

[Craig]

I got there, and I was immediately alienated by everybody that I thought was my friend. Before they were heckling me as I was walking down the hallway, I was being called in dark.

[Narrator]

Part of a seedlings responsibility at school Was to recruit more seedlings for art barker. They did that by identifying druggie behavior in other kids and reporting it back to their parents at home.

[Craig]

The other kids, you know, they were getting phone calls to their house from seed families Telling their parents that they were on drugs, and they were pissed off it was us or them on both sides. And all I could do was just refuge myself with the other c kids. We even had a table we sat at at lunchtime away from everybody else. If somebody saw you talking to anybody that was not one of the sea kids, then that was an actionable offense. So there was always eyes on you everywhere at school. There was really no way to get the seed away from you at any time. And any little perceived violation of seed protocol, you, would be in big trouble. They could take all your time away from you and throw you back on the front row.

[Narrator]

There were a lot of consequences for breaking the rules of the seed, but there was one that loomed so far above all the others, and that was getting sent back to front row. Because no matter how far you advanced in your program, if you did one thing wrong, they could decide to start your program over like it was your first day at the seed.

[Craig]

The seed song that we had to sing every day Contained the lyrics. Go each day from 10 to 10, and if you screw up, you start again, which was the scariest thing of all because you could potentially be there for years if you kept getting started over.

[Rosetta Stone Representative]

You call each day from 10 till.

[Historian/Expert]

10, and if you screw up, then you'll start again. Beautiful.

[Narrator]

At the end of every school day, you were expected to go directly back to the seat where you would rejoin the group until it was time to leave again at night. But the farther along you were in the program and the more they trusted you, the more time you got to spend away from the perpetual wrap session.

[Bernie]

Let me see, I cleaned the bathrooms, then I was allowed to clean the offices than I was put on the phones. There were very, very few of us that were actually allowed to answer the telephone. And a lot of times it was media wanting information. People would say, you know, I want to know what goes on there and how you're regulated. And people would try and get personal, you know, are you happy there? And I would just have to say, I can't answer that question.

[Narrator]

As the Seed continued to grow, and as Art Barker attracted more and more attention, it came with an increasing level of scrutiny. And for as many gracious parents as there were who supported the program, there were a growing number of them who were concerned because stories were starting to come out about the truth behind the transformation. The media was starting to pick up on it, and so was the medical establishment. This gets us back to where we started at the beginning of the episode with the disastrous failure of the Matrix House experiment at the prison hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. That experiment was federally funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, or NIM for short. NIM blamed the problem on a few bad apples, but it hadn't discouraged them from funding experimental programs across the country in the emerging field of drug rehabilitation. And in 1972, not long after the Matrix House shutdown, NIM awarded a $1.4 million grant to Art Barker and the Seed. This was a very substantial grant. It would be worth over $10 million today. But in 1973, after a year of funding the program, the people at NIMM were starting to have questions of their own. Here's the historian, Marcus Chatfield.

[Marcus Chatfield]

Officials at NIM were concerned about Art Barker's lack of sophistication. He's not keeping track of data. He has no records for a lot of the kids in treatment. He's not doing follow up studies. They kept explaining, you need to have data recording methods so they could see how effective the Seed was. He claimed publicly over and over again. That it was between 90 and 95% successful. And he was really irritated that Nim wanted proof of that.

[Narrator]

Almost immediately, there was tension between Art Barker and Nim. He didn't want to take any suggestions. He didn't want to cooperate with other rehabs in the area. He didn't want to open his book, and he didn't want to share his records, if he even had any that could substantiate his claim of a 90% success rate.

[Marcus Chatfield]

The officials at NIM did not like Barker. He was making their agency look bad because he was so unprofessional, and they were giving him so much money. They don't like how Barker's doing things, but they're invested in the method, and they're trying to work with him, trying to get him to follow the rules. And he's saying, to hell with your rules. You know, I'm saving lives, and you're just trying to tear me down.

[Narrator]

Despite all the conflict, Nim kept the money coming in, and Art Barker didn't have much trouble keeping them at arm's length. He had enough support in the communities to handle the concerned parents, and he had allies in the media that could counter the bad press. But it wasn't as easy for him to talk his way out of trouble once he started getting letters from the American civil liberties union.

[Marcus Chatfield]

Attorneys for the ACLU are starting to get complaints about the seed. And there were lots of potential constitutional questions coming up. You know, questions of free speech, search and seizure, the right to privacy, due process, being held without a jury trial, being subjected to cruel and unusual punishments. These were all elements of the seed that were inherent to treatment. This is why the seed worked, but it's finally being articulated. This is why it's illegal.

[Narrator]

So now all those rumors and stories and questions about what was happening to kids at the seed were turning into lawsuits, and all of it was about to become fodder for a congressional investigation. In 1974, a senator from North Carolina named Sam Ervin had caught wind of the seed. Ervin had just headed up the congressional investigation into the watergate scandal that would lead to the resignation of president Richard Nixon. Now he was in charge of a senate subcommittee on civil rights that was investigating the government's involvement in behavior modification programs.

[Marcus Chatfield]

The federal government was pumping unprecedented amounts of money into experimental projects. It was all framed in terms of national security, deinstitutionalization. Prisoners should not just be punished endlessly. They should be rehabilitated. There was a new medical approach to crime. The trade off with that Is there's legal limits to the punishment that a criminal could be subjected to. But when you medicalize criminal behavior and you say the prisoner shouldn't be punished, they're sick, so they should be treated. At that time, there were no limits to what kind of treatment could happen behind closed doors. Prisoners, patients in mental hospitals were being subjected to pharmaceutical experiments, experimental medical devices, experiments with contagious diseases. All of this was coming to light. One of the key points that Sam Irvin makes is the technology of behavior modification had evolved a lot faster than the ability to grapple with the ethical questions. So Ervin's big question is, does the federal government have any business supporting behavior modification, knowing that a lot of these methods involve violations of constitutional rights? So he started reaching out to the national institute of mental health to find out what's the deal with the seed.

[Narrator]

Senator Ervin started putting pressure on the national institute of mental health to take a harder line with Art Barker if he wanted to keep getting government money.

[Marcus Chatfield]

And so Barker took a preemptive step. Barker says he's done with federal funding. It seems like he thought he would be free to make whatever claims he wanted to make. He'd be free to operate with the cops. However he wanted to operate, he'd be free to continue. If he just rejected federal funding. He was telling authorities that he could do a better job saving lives if he was independent from federal requirements. That's what he claimed, but really it's that he was being called out.

[Narrator]

Senator Ervin published the results of his investigation in November of 1974. The seed was cited alongside hundreds of other notoriously harmful behavior modification programs around the country. The Irvin report compared the treatment methods used by the SEED to, quote, highly refined brainwashing techniques employed by the North Koreans in the early 1950s. The report validated the experiences that kids like Craig and Bernie were having at the seed. The Irvine report became a national news story, and it was a damning indictment on the seed. A lot of parents started pulling their kids out of the program that had just been compared to a communist re education camp by a United States senator. Hartburger was forced to close down two facilities. And in the wake of the report, the parents of St. Petersburg started calling him out and demanding change. On October 12, 1975, Art Barker closed the seed in St. Petersburg. By then, Craig had already graduated from the program. He had been through months of therapy at the seed, but he felt worse off than when he went in.

[Craig]

I just felt lost after I got out of there, but now I was Also angry. I was angry for what I had been through, for what my father had put me through.

[Narrator]

Before the Seed, Craig's father resented him for the kind of teenager he was becoming. After the Seed, he resented him for not wanting to be the kind of teenager that the program had made him into. Because even though Art Barker had made an unceremonious exit from St. Petersburg, the Seed had changed Craig's father's life for the better. It had given him access to the upper echelon of St. Petersburg society.

[Craig]

My father was trying to social climb, obviously, and all of a sudden he's got all these rich and powerful people around him. I think that meant a lot to him.

[Narrator]

Craig remembers going with his father to meet one of his new friends from the Seed who had a house on the water.

[Craig]

There's some island communities in St. Pete where you have these little bridges you have to cross, and they weren't gated, but there wasn't a good reason to be over there unless you lived there. Those waterfront communities were for the people with money.

[Narrator]

The man's name was Mel Sembler. Like Craig's dad, he had also put his teenage son through the program. And he was one of those rich and powerful people that Craig's dad liked being around. Mel Sembler was a prolific real estate developer in St. Petersburg and a very influential person in the business community.

[Craig]

My father was very enamored with malsembler types.

[Narrator]

Craig's father and Mel Sembler were among the group of parents who lost faith in Art Barker, but not in the treatment method itself. And they felt that the departure of the Seed had left a void in St. Petersburg that needed to be filled.

[Craig]

They saw the Seed as failing, and I think they started to talk about replacing it.

[Narrator]

On April 19, 1976, the articles of incorporation for a new nonprofit organization were filed in the city of St. Petersburg. The stated purpose, to develop and administer programs for victims of drug abuse. It included the names of the board of directors. One of them was Craig's father. The president was his new friend, Mel Sembler. The address for this organization, 200 Pasadena Avenue South, St. Petersburg, Florida, had previously been registered to Art Barker and the Seed. And Article 1 reads as follows. The name of this corporation is Straight Ink.

[Craig]

These parents, my father including, they felt like the Seed was saving children. The problem is the person in charge. We can fix it by taking the same kids that went through the program and throwing them all back in the same warehouse and saying, okay, do it again, but do it better. The initial idea, the Seed was such a polluted idea and something that was already so obviously awful and abusive and Orwellian. And it became the same thing, but even worse.

[Narrator]

What Craig just described was a series of events that allowed the Seed to not only pave the way, but to mutate into Straight Incorporated. But the story of how the Seed became Straight wasn't just a cautionary tale. It was a roadmap that would eventually lead the way to an industry. And while Art Barker had a vision to turn the Seed into a nationwide program, he would never get there. But Mel Sembler, the man who exiled Barker from St. Petersburg, was starting to build Straight from the ashes of the Seed. And Mel Sembler had access to power beyond Art Barker's wildest dreams. Next time on the Sunshine Place. Everything was the Seed under a new name.

[Bernie]

But I was looking around going, okay.

[Narrator]

This is way, way more intense than the Seed. The Seed mutates into Straight Incorporated, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.

[Marcus Chatfield]

All the kids were psychologically, verbally abused. A lot of the kids were physically abused. And there were people asking whether or not Straight was brainwashing kids.

[Narrator]

If Strait is going to avoid the same fate as the Seed, it has to control the narrative. So the program's founder enlists the help of a strategic ally.

[Marcus Chatfield]

He was the guy for parents concerned about drug abuse. He was incredibly powerful. He had a lot of clout, and he had connections with the White House.

[Narrator]

Street's public image reaches new heights, but behind closed doors, its abusive form of therapy descends into pure evil.

[Bernie]

And I just realized, oh, my God.

[Narrator]

We are beating him to death right now. I felt like I was leaving my body to actually do that. Like, that's something I did not want to do. I did not want to be there. I didn't understand it, and yet I.

[Bernie]

Was a part of that.

[Narrator]

The Sunshine Place is an Odyssey original podcast. It's written, directed and produced by Perry Crowell. Our writer producer is Margot Gray. Our story editors are Maddie Sprung Keyser and Lloyd Lockridge. Executive produced by Robert Downey Jr. Susan Downey and Emily Barclay Ford from Team Downey, Jenna Weiss Berman and Maddie Sprung Kaiser from Odyssey and Josh McLaughlin. Edited by Perry Crowell. Mixing and mastering by Bill Schultz. Production support from Sean Cherry and Paul Anderjack and narrated by me, Cindy Ettler. Special thanks to J.D. crowley, Leah Rees, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Curt Courtney and Hilary Schuff. If you want to hear more of the Sunshine Place, please take a moment to rate and review the show. It really helps.

[Greenlight Representative]

You might think financial crime is all about money, but sometimes it ends in murder. I'm Nicole Lapin, host of Money Crimes, a Crime House original podcast. Each episode features a thrilling story about the dark side of finance and how to protect yourself from it. Follow and listen to Money Crimes, an Odyssey podcast in partnership with Crime House Studios, available on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.