Mel Sembler (0:00)

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The most difficult thing we've ever done would be the creation of the program straight, which is a drug rehabilitation program for young people. This is Mel Sembler, the founder and chairman of the board of Straight Incorporated. In Episode four, Sembler set out to transform Strait into a national franchise with branches all over the country. While he had absolutely no qualifications in teen rehabilitation, he was uniquely suited to the task. His expertise was in commercial real estate, specifically shopping malls. Something new was coming online in the early 60s called shopping centers, and I was watching that with great interest and convinced my father in law that perhaps it's time to bring a shopping center to the small community that he was in. So that's what Sembler did and it was a big success. So he built another and another. And before long, he set his sights on a new market. Well, I kind of ran out of towns in west Tennessee and I decided we'll just move to Florida. Why? Well, Florida had 6 million people then, but 500 people were moving to Florida a day. I said, hmm, maybe that's the place we ought to be. Because certainly the more people you have, the more neighborhoods you need, the more schools you need, the more hospitals you need, and the more shopping centers you'll need. It doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. Mel Sembler understood the age old principle of supply and demand. He used that insight to build a multimillion dollar commercial real estate empire from the ground up. He established himself as one of the leaders of the business community in St. Petersburg. It was then that he became aware of a new emerging business opportunity. Teen rehab. It hit home for Sembler after he caught his own teenage son smoking pot and enrolled him in the seed. When the SEED shut down, it left behind a void in St. Petersburg. And the former SEED parents looked to Sembler for guidance. They said, mel, could we start a program here for our local community? And I said, I'm sure you can, and here's how you would structure it and it's a good idea and I'm happy to give you a check, but I don't have time to get involved with that because I'm busy building shopping centers. To which my wife said, mel, you can build all the shopping centers you can build and still help this program, and you need to do this. The same principle of supply and demand that applied to building shopping malls worked for opening new straight locations. Mel Sembler targeted prime markets across the country. Affluent suburbs filled with anxious parents afraid that their teenagers were using drugs. After opening a second Strait in nearby Sarasota, he opened locations in Georgia and Ohio. But with every new facility came scrutiny, followed by controversy and backlash. That cycle was about to repeat when Strait opened its next location. But this time, all of its darkest secrets would come to light like never before. And it would jeopardize not only the program's experience expansion, but its very existence. My name is Cindy Ettler, and this is the Sunshine Place. By 1982, Mel Sembler had already identified his next prime market. Fairfax County, Virginia. In the suburbs just outside of Washington, D.C. fairfax is one of the most populated and wealthiest counties in the entire country and home to some of the most influential power brokers in the United States of America. There were already Plenty of eager parents in Fairfax helping Sembler put the plan in motion. But their kids had no idea what was coming. I thought it was a normal morning. I figured my dad was off to work and my mom was running in and out of the room trying to wake me up. She said, kathy, get up, take your pillow, go out in the car, we're going to Florida. I kind of woke up going, well, that was a weird thing for her to say on a school day. So as far as I knew, we were going on a vacation. This is Kathy. It was the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, 1982. She was a 15 year old teenager from Fairfax County. When she woke up that morning, she got in the car with her parents and they drove about 1,000 miles south to St. Petersburg, Florida. It was a lot of colorful buildings, you know, pinks and blues and yellows and greens and I'm talking bright and pastel crazy beach colors and lots of palm trees. I just fell in love with palm trees when we went down there. Florida felt like a much needed change of scenery for Kathy. She was a good student and an athlete, but she had a rebellious streak that caused a lot of friction with her parents. You know, life at home was not fun. As a teenager, I was always arguing with my parents and I thought, well, maybe this is the change, we need it. We need to just get away from the house for a little bit. Kathy's parents didn't think their family problems could be fixed by a beach vacation. They were part of the group of parents that wanted to bring straight to Fairfax. But since there was no facility there yet, the kids were being transported to the St. Petersburg location where Nancy Reagan had recently visited. My mom idolized Nancy Reagan. She used to try to look like her and dress like her. She had the Nancy Reagan do, really short and sprayed so that it would stay in place for an entire week. Kathy didn't make a habit of smoking pot, but she had tried it a few times. And on one of those occasions she got caught by her parents. They were alarmed and they decided they couldn't wait for Straight to come to them. So they enrolled Kathy in the program in St. Petersburg. We went from the colorful buildings and palm trees to an industrial area and pulled into a parking lot in front of what looked like an abandoned building. Kathy's parents got out of the car and told her to come with them. Her dad said he had a job interview. Once inside, Kathy was separated from her parents and brought to an intake room. There were two oldcomer girls her age in the room. Then they listed off all the drugs they used to do and told Kathy to do the same. And I go, well, I don't do drugs. And they're like, you don't know where you are, do you? You're at Straight incorporated. Those words seared into my mind the way they said that. Kathy didn't know that straight was coming to Fairfax, but she had heard that name before. About a year earlier, one of her friends had come up to her crying and said that her boyfriend Greg had disappeared without saying anything to her at all. Word around school was that Greg was sent to a drug rehab in Florida called straight. But Kathy didn't pay much attention to the rumors. She and Greg weren't part of the same crowd. Greg was a freak is what we called him back then. They were troublemakers, rarely went to classes, smoke pot and that type of thing. He wore kind of a dirty jean jacket and he had kind of an acne filled face and greasy hair. Beyond that, I didn't really know the guy. Kathy never thought of herself as a druggie, but that's what the girls in the intake room were calling her. And their questions had turned into an interrogation. But Kathy was defiant. So they called for reinforcements. A teenage boy. He was clean cut. He was kind of good looking. He was cute, but the way he was looking at me was strange to me. And he said, you went to my school. Why don't you get honest about the drugs you did? When he said that, I suddenly realized this clean cut, actually nice looking guy was Greg. There was no doubt in my mind. It's just that he had looked completely different. Greg had already been there for about a year, and the other girls in the intake room were from Fairfax, too. Now they were all yelling at Kathy, trying to make her confess so she could join them, but she refused. So they called for more reinforcements. This time it was an adult. He introduced himself as Dr. Newton. I was thinking, oh, finally, you know, an adult or a doctor or somebody who knows what they're talking about. We heard about Dr. Miller Newton in episode one from Valerie. Newton was the national clinical director of Straight Incorporated, which meant he was in charge of the entire program. Valerie said Newton would come out during open meetings and put on a show for the parents. Using those techniques of denial, we end up building a wall around ourselves that protects us from having to see what's really going on. But behind closed doors, when he was alone with the kids, he was angry, violent, and terribly abusive. He would come in during an intake when a kid refused to Comply. Half a second later, Dr. Newton was screaming at me and I could feel his breath on me. He was all red faced and he looked a little bit like the devil. Miller Newton was a master manipulator. He had an array of psychological tools at his disposal. Most effective was fear. He could intimidate kids into false confessions during an intake and report back to their parents, stoking their worst fears about their children, confirming that they needed straight and that they needed him. After all, he was Dr. Miller Newton. Most people assumed he had a PhD in psychiatry or medicine, but his degree was in public administration and urban anthropology. He got it from an unaccredited school with no attendance requirement or exams, and his dissertation focused on developing methods to increase the retention rate of straight parents. That's how he came up with the raps for parents where they were indoctrinated into the program using the same powerful form of persuasion as their kids. He conditioned parents to distrust their own children and question anything they said, especially about how they were really being treated at Straight. Dr. Newton was in on my intake. This is Ginger, who spoke in the last episode about the brainwashing and torture she experienced at Strait. His manner was that of a slimy salesman. He told me, with my parents present, I can tell by the telltale signs in your eyes that you've done coke and lots of it. I had never seen coke. So I looked at my dad and I thought, now you know he's full of shit. But he believed Miller. He just shook his head and went, oh, God, like worse than I thought. I could not believe that he was fallen for this con man. Miller Newton had crafted a Persona that radiated credibility. But maybe even more convincing to parents than his air of expertise was his veneer of relatability because he could talk to them about putting his own son in straight. I can remember that night we busted Mark. I wanted to go out in our small 120 home subdivision and I wanted to find the neighborhood pusher. And I wanted to kill the sob. I wanted to choke him to death and watch his eyeballs pop out. And I'm not a violent person, but I was hurting so bad inside as a parent. Shortly after enrolling his son in the program, Miller Newton accepted a role as assistant director of the St. Petersburg facility and quickly rose the ranks to become national clinical director, overseeing the therapy at every branch. Miller Newton became one of Mel Sembler's greatest assets in expanding the program. While Sembler focused on identifying new markets, Newton focused on the parents, luring them in cultivating loyalty and turning them into recruiters for the program. Newton would travel between Straight locations, making sure they were operating to his standards. But the flagship St. Petersburg facility was home based, where he was in total control. That was obvious to Kathy in her intake when he strong armed her into signing herself in. But she didn't yet know the full extent extent of his wrath. Like any Newcomer, she was still trying to process everything that was happening to her. She didn't understand why she was there, or why other kids from Fairfax were there too. Like Greg, the clean cut guy from her intake who used to be a druggie freak. But now he looked the same as everyone else in the program, except for one kid who Kathy noticed right away. His hair was curly and kind of long and he gave off a hippie kind of vibe. For years I thought about this. Had I known about the Grateful Dead, I would have ran away and hidden the tour. They would have never found me. Instead, I got shoved in Straight. That was the last time the real map ever existed, buddy. This is Matt, the hippie kid Kathy was talking about. Matt was from Fairfax too. I was probably the fifth kid from Virginia. I know I am the first person to be court ordered by the Virginia courts. Just like the seed before it, Straight was becoming popular with juvenile judges. Matt ended up in the courtroom of one of those judges after his own mom had him arrested when she found his stash of pot. My mom finding that weed just freaked her out like bad. And she was exactly what Straight was looking for. Matt's parents, just like Kathy's, were part of the initiative to bring Strait to Fairfax. And the momentum grew with every new kid sent down the pipeline from Virginia to Florida. When people came in, I took special note if they were from Virginia. For some reason, that gave me comfort. One of the Virginia newcomers got assigned to the same host home as Kathy. They became friends, at least as close as you could get in Strait. It was hard to trust people who were supposed to attack you, and it was hard to watch it happen to them. Kathy remembers one time when it happened to her Newcomer friend during an exercise wrap, which was like Straight's version of gym class. She decided she wasn't going to do exercise that day. And then Miller Newton came in and she was being a smartass to him, which does not fly with Dr. Miller Newton. You could see him lose it and he grabbed her by her hair and lifted her up off the ground and threw her. And you could hear all of her bones like clack on the hard warehouse floor. And he said, get this girl the fuck out of my group. Sometimes when Miller Newton was mad at one kid, he took it out on everyone. One time he said, we're going to have a bust ass wrap. And everybody had a bust ass. Which meant that you were going to put extra effort in. And it was a lot of confrontation, yelling, screaming, tearing each other down. Then Miller Newton fiddled with the thermostat. First I thought, oh good, they're going to turn on the air conditioning. And he decided to turn the heat on as high as he could. It started huffing hot and it got hotter and hotter and hotter. This was July in Florida with all the doors closed in the freaking heat and kids were falling over in convulsions and they eventually brought out these commercial sized trash cans and people were throwing up in the trash cans. Then the only doors to the outside were opened up and the air outside was colder than the air inside. And when the twain met, it filled the whole room with steam. You couldn't see in front of you, it was that thick. The walls started running with sweat and the dust particles on the cinder blocks would run. And it looked like a lady who had been crying with mascara on all over the walls. So you asked me if there were other cruel staff members. Oh yeah, there were. But none like Miller Newton. Anybody that was in St. Pete when I was in there knows what I'm talking about. That was a three ring circus of cruelty. I've heard too many horrific stories about Miller Newton, some of which I can't even bring myself to repeat. And this is the man that Mel Simler had put in charge of running the program that he was playing, planning to expand across the country. Next up was Kathy and Matt's hometown, where Street's poisonous culture had already seeped into their neighborhoods. Their schools had become recruiting grounds and their homes would become prisons where their captors would be their own parents. When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like aloe allbirds or skims, sure you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making, selling and for shoppers, buying. Simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. Home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell whenever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. 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What I want to share today is a technique that we've developed that has helped get beyond that wall of parent denial and help a parent face the problem that their kid has a problem and to do something about it. You're inviting them into your process emotionally. This is Dr. Miller Newton and because they love their child the public facing version. This is the side of himself that he put on display for the parents every week in open meetings. He was completely different from the Miller Newton that was in my face and reminded me of the devil on my intake. Cathy was surprised the first time she saw the other side of Miller Newton he was extremely charismatic and he had a very melodious voice. He would turn around and smile at us and say, love you, group. And the parents seemed to eat up every word he said. Kathy's parents were among them. They made the trip down to Florida once a month to attend open meetings and parent wraps. But that was about to change. During one of the open meetings, Miller Newton came in and he had some guests. Newton walked in next to a man in a suit and a woman pushing a baby stroller who caught Kathy's attention. She had a familiar look, and I stared at her a little bit longer. I was like, that lady looks a lot like my 8th grade home ec teacher. Then Miller and Newton introduced the couple as Mr. And Mrs. Riddle. Riddle. Riddle. Her name was Mrs. Riddle. Kathy had gotten used to the Fairfax to St. Petersburg pipeline, but up until now it had been kids. Tonight she was looking at one of her former teachers. It was a moment of recognition for Matt as Well. Not about Mrs. Riddle, but about her husband, Dr. Mel Riddle. I was Dr. Riddle's client before I got stuck and straight. So I had a relationship with this man. Dr. Mel Riddle was the coordinator of substance abuse prevention in Fairfax county public Schools, and he had been Matt's counselor back home. Matt was just as confused as Kathy about why the Riddles were at that open meeting in St. Petersburg. Then Miller Newton made it clear and he said, all kids from Virginia, stand up. I'm proud to tell all of you that the Northern Virginia Straight building is a reality. Mel Riddle had been observing the program in St. Peter's and training with Miller Newton because he was about to become the director of Strait Incorporated's newest facility. In October of 1982, Straight opened its fifth branch in Springfield, Virginia, part of Fairfax County. About a week later, everybody that was in the Virginia program's bags and everything were all laying out in the group room and all the newcomers and oldcomers lined up and we single filey went into the bus to take us to the airport. The bus went right onto the tarmac and we went straight to the airplane. It was a private airplane to Virginia. We didn't land in the normal area of Dulles Airport or it was some private area. And there were several school buses lined up and parents were driving them, the Virginia parents. And from there they drove us to the new building. The first group of kids at Strait in Virginia were called the Mayflower Group, nicknamed by the parents who were instrumental in bringing the program to Fairfax County. It was the culmination of a plan that was years in the making and set in motion by Mel Sembler. He recognized that the affluent suburbs of D.C. were the perfect place to put a straight. But first he had to break into the market. And to do that, any good businessperson will tell you, you have to meet your customers where they are. My parents learned about Straight through a PTA meeting. About a year before Kathy's parents enrolled her in Straight, the program was being pitched to them at her school. At the PTA meeting, there was a kid who was in the program who was doing a speaking engagement. When Mel Sembler wanted to open a new Straight location, he borrowed a page out of Art Barker's playbook. He sent emissaries from the program into the communities he was targeting. So that night in the PTA meeting, Kathy's parents listened to a kid from Straight tell a story about how the program had saved them from a path to prison and an early grave, and that the kids of the parents in the PTA meeting were surely headed down the same path. At the end of the meeting, a straight parent passed out a flyer with a long checklist of warning signs to look for things like trouble concentrating, uncaring attitude, irritability, changes in friends, changes in dress, unusually large appetite, interest in rock music. The list goes on. And it would be hard to imagine a teenager in America that didn't check most of those boxes. There was a flyer that went out that said, our kids have each other as a support group. As parents of teens, we need to support each other, so let's meet. And the home ec room where Mrs. Riddle taught my eighth grade class. So the future director's wife's classroom. I was lost and I couldn't get help. Nobody knew how to treat this disease, and it was a disease. My kid had the disease and it was killing him. Finally, we were fortunate enough to have entered the program that I, I am now a member of. And I could stand here and talk to you for hours on the changes we've made and the miracle that he's become. The process of indoctrination began that night at the PTA meeting for parents like Kathy's and Matts. Well, before they put their kids in the program that was part of the dupe, they went to PTA meetings because that's where moms go. So my mom went, she got the flyer, she went to the meeting and got convinced to send me to a drug program 900 plus miles out of the state of Virginia that nobody knew anything about. My parents had to come down to Florida once a month for the open meeting on Friday. So our parents were literally getting off work, Catching a red eye down to florida. After a year or more of this, they say, are you all tired of coming down here? Of course, all the parents are saying, yes, well, start raising money and buy a building. And so that's what all the parents in strait did. They flipped houses, they bought cars and flipped them. They did car washes, they did whatever they could to make a buck. And then when they had the building, Mel sembler gave them a franchise called straight incorporated chalk, with executive staff, group staff, the chairs, the warehouse, the whole bit. It was a franchise, and the parents were the franchisees. They raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring the program to their community, and they donated their time and energy into making it happen. So not only were they active participants in the program, they were literally invested in its success. Matt's mom even became an employee. Her job was to help with the intakes. My mom dealt with helping the parents, Easing them down, Relating to them about how she felt when she put me in there and all that kind of thing. The parents were tasked with making sure that the program ran exactly the way it did in st. Petersburg under miller newton, not just in the building, but at home. Matt's parents hosted newcomers at their house and made sure that the security measures were up to straight standards, unescapable. The door locked from the outside in, Fire alarm on it, the windows were secured, all of that stuff. You know, people used to say you could always tell a straight home because one room would have metal bars on the outside of the windows, Like a jail. Here is what one straight parent was told about securing his home. We were very carefully instructed that the home would have to be totally secured, and as a matter of fact, the home would be inspected by somebody from the program. Every bedroom that the children stayed in, it was a dead bolt that was only accessible from the hall. Lois and I carried the keys around our neck for several months. One of the questions that I asked in the early training sessions that we were going through was, what if my home were to catch on fire during the night? The standard answer was, if your child was on the street, the child would die. In case of a fire, the child would die, so you're not any worse off. As usual at strait, Compliance was a matter of life or death for the kids and the parents. They had to become the wardens of their in home prisons, where house rules were replaced by program rules. But something was about to happen in one of these homes that would threaten to cause Straight Incorporated to come crumbling down. Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can send money to kids instantly, set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications, kids get to earn, save and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for greenlight today@greenlight.com Odyssey Holiday magic is in the air and DSW's got all the shoes to make your season extra merry. Believe you've got parties to attend and lists to check twice. So DSW is taking care of the details like gifts to make their eyes all aglow, styles that bring joy to your world, brands everyone wants like Ugg, Nike, Birkenstock and more and deals to make your budget bright. Find the perfect shoes for you and yours at a DSW store near you or dsw.com all the outside doors were deadlocked with a bolt from the inside with a key. I checked every single window and they were locked from the inside. Also, at night I was locked in my bedroom with an alarm on the door. I was watched constantly if I showered. This is Fred Collins talking about being a prisoner in his own home in Virginia when he was at Strait in the early 1980s, Fred was part of the Mayflower group, along with Kathy and Matt and the other kids who came back from St. Petersburg. Not long after he got home, Fred figured out the code to the alarm on his door, and one night he got ahold of the key at about 3 in the morning. I snuck up, opened the door, turned off the alarm and I threw a table through the window and I smashed through the window to escape. Fred got into a car that was waiting for him outside. He had made arrangements with a friend and they drove through the night to Virginia Tech University, where Fred was in college before he ended up in Straight. He decided to lay low at his fraternity house when his father came to look for him, along with a gang of old comers from Straight. Fred hid in the clothes dryer. Fred was afraid to call the police because he thought they would turn him over to Straight. So he decided he needed a lawyer, and one of his friends was able to put him in touch with an attorney named Philip Hirschkop. When Fred first came to the office, he had broken out of his father's house several days before. The police were looking for him. He told us this incredible Story. It was just something from Lord of the Flies. This is Philip Hirschkop. Fred told him about how he ended up in the program. He was 19 years old and home for the summer after a successful freshman year of college. While he was away, his parents had sent his younger brother to Strait in St. Petersburg. Fred went down to Florida with them on one of their mandatory visits. When they got there, the people at Strait told Fred that before he could see his brother, they had to talk to him first. They took him into another room and they asked about school. But they weren't as interested in his good grades as they were about how often he drank alcohol or smoked pot. Fred was candid with them about his typical college lifestyle because he didn't know that the conversation was actually an intake. They told me, well, Fred, we've decided that you need the program and we think that you need to be here. And I said, what do you mean I need to be here? I don't have a drug problem. If I have a drug problem, you might as well take the rest of Virginia Tech in. Fred refused to sign the consent form. So they went to his parents and told them that he had admitted to druggie behavior. And then they were reminded of Strait's policy that the entire family must be drug free. And if Fred didn't sign himself in, his younger brother would be thrown out of the program and that would be a death sentence. At least that's what Fred's parents had been made to believe after months of indoctrination. So Strait went back to Fred and delivered an ultimatum. If you don't sign in, your parents will stop paying for college and they'll disown you. I just begged them, I said, I can clear this up. My parents know I don't have a drug problem. Just let me talk with them for a little bit. They say, nope, you can't see your parents until you sign yourself in. After an exhausting 10 hour intake, Fred finally signed himself in. He figured it wouldn't take long for them to realize they'd made a mistake and he'd be out of there in plenty of time for his sophomore year at Virginia Tech. But as the days turned into weeks, reality set in. And when he told them he wanted to leave, they wouldn't let him. Fred was a 19 year old legal adult and they were holding him against his will. For that moment, Fred was kidnapped and a felony offense has clearly occurred. At that point, Hirshkopf understood that what Fred had told him was an obvious and severe violation of his Civil rights. I picked up the phone, I called Straight Incorporated. I told him I represented Fred. He was over 18 years old. If they went near him, it would be a federal kidnapping offense and I was going to prosecute him and come after them. Strait was used to getting phone calls like that from lawyers, but never anyone quite like Philip Hirschkop. I'd handled some notorious cases by then, so I'm sure they did their homework. Philip Hershkop is a world famous and historic civil rights attorney. We fail to see how any reasonable man can but conclude that these laws are slavery laws. When he was just a few years out of law school, he represented Mildred and Richard Loving in the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage. We asked that the court consider the full spectrum of these laws and not just the criminality. By the time Hirshkopf was 46, he'd built a reputation as an attorney who took on challenging cases that other lawyers didn't want to touch. He defended the rights of convicts in the Virginia state prison system. And he represented, he presented anti war protesters as the chief counsel of the Vietnam peace movement. But his reputation wasn't enough to convince Strait to leave Fred alone. So he took on Fred as a client pro bono. And he was going to take Strait Incorporated to federal court. He charged them with false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and assault and battery. Straight executives responded by holding a press conference outside of the facility in Fairfax County. They boasted that no investigation of Straight anywhere by any individual or any group has ever stood up. The only thing of which we have been found guilty is turning adolescent drug users into highly motivated, goal oriented, drug free members of society. And that was at least partially true. Streete had never lost a case before a jury, and the jurors in this case were from the same community that had worked so hard to bring the program to their neighborhoods. Even Fred's own parents were against him. Fred's father was so indoctrinated into the program, he responded to the lawsuit in a statement released by Strait saying, I have no sympathy with his claim. He needs the help Strait was giving him. When the case of Fred Collins v. Strait Ink went to trial in May of 1983, Philip Hirschkop set out to demonstrate that his client was a successful and well adjusted young adult who was manipulated and imprisoned by Straight without just cause and against his will. We have no record whatsoever of Fred Collins asking to leave this program at any time. The attorneys for Strait intended to convince the jury that Fred Collins was a drug Addict who voluntarily entered the program and chose to stay. If an adult wants to leave this program, they can walk right out the door. Straight's attorneys called on the program's head of admissions to explain the intake process. He said he had personally diagnosed Fred Collins as a marijuana addiction. In a gripping cross examination, Philip Hirschkop took on his claim, asking him how exactly he made a diagnosis. He said he could look into a teenager's eyes and tell if he'd smoked marijuana in the last 30 days. So I had him step down and look into Fred's eyes and say, tell me, has he smoked in the last 30 days? He admitted he didn't know, and then he admitted he had a total lack of knowledge about the effect effective marijuana. Strait's head of admissions was a priest with no professional education. But their expert witness was someone far more qualified, the former White house drug czar, Dr. Robert Dupont. In episode four, we learned that Dupont had been hired by Strait as a paid consultant. He helped pave the way for national expansion by convincing Nancy Reagan to visit. Dupont described Fred's drug use as pathological. When he took the stand, he was very cocky, and that went away. It was clear he had never examined Fred. He had not even looked through Fred's medical records. He couldn't point to one element as to why Fred should have been in that program. Once again, Philip Hirschkop caught their witness in a bind. And Robert dupont was forced to admit on the stand that Fred did not fit the criteria for the standard definition of drug addiction. Philip Hirschkopf's witnesses were much more effective. They were kids who had been in straight with Fred, including the girl who Kathy had seen get picked up off the ground by her hair and thrown to the Floor by Dr. Miller Newton. They corroborated Fred's allegations and reinforced Hirshkopf's argument that even if Fred had needed the program, even if he was a heroin addict, Strait had no right to kidnap him and hold him against his will. Fred and a number of people like him were over 18 years old. They didn't have to stay 14 days or one hour. They had the right to walk out anytime they were physically restrained from doing that, which was straight kidnapping. Hirschkopp asked the jury, if Fred really had the freedom to leave, why was he held in such a tight prison? If he could walk out at any time, why did they have two or three guards at every door? Why did they lock his bedroom? Because he was there against his will. On this front, the jury sided with Fred Collins unanimously. Now A jury in this federal court in Virginia has found that straits methods in the case of one young man constituted false imprisonment. The message seems to be that even in the name of fighting drug abuse and even if harsh measures are necessary, parents and children must recognize that the cure may be far worse than the disease if an individual's rights are violated. On May 10, 1983, Straight was found guilty by a jury in a court of law. For the first time in its history, the jury awarded Fred Collins $220,000 in damages. Straight had reached settlements before, but they had always been out of court, away from the public eye. The Collins trial had put Strait's controversial treatment methods in the national spotlight. It led to even closer critical attention from major news outlets, including investigative features by 60 Minutes in 2020. Miller Newton is national clinical director of Straight. I don't like the word imprison. Imprison implies punishment, and I've never seen anyone. In the aftermath of the trial, Dr. Miller Newton, the national clinical director of Strait Incorporated, resigned from the organization. Ding dong. The witch is dead. The witch is dead. The witch is dead. Everybody was glad Newton was gone. And on paper, it looked like a victory. But it wasn't a victory. It was a victory for Straight. They had Newton fall on a sword and say he held Fred against his will, and we were told the monster is gone. But the treatment modality never got the scrutiny that it really should have. That was their golden chance to take that entire place down, and they didn't. Straight one Straight versus Collins was very successful, but so many I've spoken to feel they have no recourse. And so Straight won. With respect to them, there's nothing they can do about it. They're not getting their money back. They're not getting their mental health back. Even for Fred Collins himself, his historic win was a hollow victory. Strait had torn his family apart. He had to watch his own brother and father testify against him. During the trial, Fred said about the money you can't buy back your parents love. After the Fred Collins trial, Kathy's family was never the same either. The same day that the verdict was announced is the same day that my father passed away. I went into his room. The light was on next to his side of the bed, and I could still see the outline of where he was laying. And I was thinking, I can't believe my dad died, thinking, I'm a druggie. The official cause was arterial sclerosis. But my opinion of why he died was the stress. Kathy thinks that the Fred Collins trial had caused her father to have doubts about Straight and whether or not he had done the right thing by putting her in the program. I do wonder if he was questioning his decision at that time because he was following that trial. Maybe there's no connection, but I always thought that was very strange. Kathy says that in recent years, she found documents from that time at her mom's house, and she discovered that her dad had been saving newspaper clippings from the Collins trial. She also found a formal letter addressed to her father from a Straight board member thanking him for all of his work in bringing Strait to Fairfax and for his extra effort in working to get the building into shape before the young people arrived. As a civil engineer, he worked on getting the building up to code and inhabitable, but the building was full of asbestos. I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't take a toll. Kathy also found her father's obituary. It said, in lieu of flowers, give donations to Straight. Kathy often says that her father died bringing straight incorporated to Fairfax. But it wasn't just dedicated parents like him who Mel Sembler had convinced to buy into the program. We got to be friends with the Reagans and frankly, got Mrs. Reagan involved in the drug war, brought her to St. Petersburg, showed her what we were doing with the young people. And during that visit, she committed to take on this issue. Mel Sembler always had the right connections to make problems go away for straight Incorporated. In September of 1984, a little more than a year after the Fred Collins trial, Nancy Reagan made her second visit to the program, this time in Cincinnati. She attended a three hour open meeting. She hugged the kids on front row. She told the parents she was proud of them. When she was asked about the controversy surrounding the program, she replied, I don't push one method or another, one group or another. My main purpose in life is to make people aware of the drug problem. It wasn't the first time that Straight's most important evangelist had given the program her seal of approval in the wake of controversy. And it wouldn't be the last. But Nancy Reagan's next visit would not only invite the national spotlight, because next time, the eyes of the world would be on straight Incorporated first lady Nancy Reagan. And right behind her, the Princess of Wales, her royal highness. Next time on the Sunshine Place. It was a magical moment to be in the same room with royalty. It made Straight a household name. Straight gets the royal treatment and enrollment numbers explode. But more kids to rehabilitate means more parents to indoctrinate. Parents were conditioned to accept whatever any staff member says is what needs to be done. That's exhilarating. At 17 years old, teenage staff members are all powerful. But in order to earn a coveted spot, the abused must become the abusers. Straight convinced us to want to be in the role of the people that had caused us our own trauma. How the hell did he do that? Searching for the origins of the troubled teen industry leads to a deeply frightening discovery. I bought into that myth for a long time and it's actually a much larger story. And the actual story is almost more sinister. 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 Reese, 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 review the show. It really helps. Hey, I'm Kelly Corrigan. You probably haven't heard of me, although maybe I did write a few New York Times bestsellers. I gave a TED Talk. But the reason I'm in your ear today is to invite you to listen to my podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders. We talk about purpose and creativity and well being and really what makes life worth living. With people like Bono and Amy Schumer, Spike Lee and Rainn Wilson, Krista Tippett and Bryan Stevenson, Kelly Corrigan Wonders will leave you optimistic, informed, and maybe a little bit more ready for the next big day in your life. So follow and listen to Kelly Corrigan Wonders, an original podcast available now for free free on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.