Postby Witness » Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:58 pm
Dear All,
I stumbled across this message board this morning and cannot tell you how pleased I am to have done so. Congratulations to all of you who have obviously survived terrible experiences at St James and St Vedasts and yet still have the strength of character to see that justice will be done.
The metaphor of Hitler and the Nazi party has already been used on this board to describe the crimes of SES, its leadership and its schools.
I have met a few brilliant, free-thinking and humanistic people from SES. Let us say, to return to the metaphor already used, that they are the Oscar Schindlers, or Hitler?s would-be assassins. But for every Schindler, there were thousands of brainwashed Nazi Party members. The word needs to be spread about what SES really is, how dangerous it is in the wrong hands, and how much suffering it continues to cause.
I want to bring a new element to this discussion by extending the metaphor. If St James and St Vedasts are the Hitler Youth of SES, then the broader SES itself (the Nazi Party) must be brought to book, not just the schools.
Beyond the child abuse at the schools, this forum must (with equal energy) face the crimes of the broader SES itself.
SES is the first cause of the abuse, we must not only single out individual abusers. Because, metaphorically, that would be a Nuremberg Trail of Nazi war criminals which left out a denunciation of the Nazi Party and Mein Kampf.
The danger is that Debenam and the likes of him become SES's scapegoats, and the organization will live on as a leaner, more PR-savvy variant without ever really giving the national apology and acceptence of wrongdoing that is needed.
The child abuse at the schools is surely the most foul crime that SES is guilty of. It is certainly the crime with the most evidence.
But justice does not stop there. Membership of SES is vastly bigger than St James. So there must be hundreds of lives that have been destroyed by SES without the St James or St Vedasts experience.
I believe that the pressures SES imposes on lives and families is responsible for mental breakdowns, suicides, divorces, juvenile drug abuse and more.
SES's link to these tragedies can be hidden because (1) they are the opposite of what the SES proports to stand for and (2) these tragedies take place in homes and not in public institutions such as schools and (3) SES recruits by stealth, calling itself ?The School of Philosphy? or ?Art in Action? or ?St. James? and one can walk in and out without noticing anything sinister at all. It is only after time, and disaster, that you know what has hit you.
In spite of convenient clouds of smoke hiding its true nature, SES will not get away with it for ever.
Of course, I form my perspective from personal experience. Personally I never went to either St James or St Vedasts, but I had many friends who did, and my parents were in SES. I attended SES "Philosophy" classes. As a child I was psychologically abused by the SES teaching and adults who adhered to it. The teaching brought a cruel and inhumane streak out in the adults around me. My abuser felt empowered and sanctioned by SES.
I was horrified and terrified as I witnessed the brainwashing in my family when I was a teenager. Their once fun-loving and warm identities have been replaced by obsessive, patronising, anti-social and narrow-minded clones. For a while, like many with the St James and St Vedasts experience, it was so awful that it sent me off the rails for a patch.
There's nothing special about my case. I believe I am just one very average example of hundreds, if not thousands of children of SES parents who did not go to St James and St Vedasts but must also want justice to be done.
I was never physically abused as many of you on this message board have been, but the SES organisation took my childhood and my family away from me. When I was a defenceless child, it caused me deep emotional pain.
Like the victims of St Vedasts here, I have now grown up into a free adult who is equipped to stand up to authority. I want to look the culprits in the eyes on an equal level.
If they are deluded into thinking that they are on the right path, I want to give them an education. I want them to know what their organization has done to families and to children. I want SES to stop meddling in families, telling people who they should love and how they should live.
The root of SES injustice is the lie that they tell: to themselves, to newcomers. SES does not teach philosophy at all. Philosophy is about questions. But SES have all the answers. There is therefore a huge insulting lie on every "Philosophy" poster one sees on the London Underground.
That first big lie, that first big delusion, opens up all the rest of the lies and malpractices. It is precisely how Hitler caught peoples' minds: with an enourmous lie. So if you're a good person or a bad person and you're in SES it doesnt really make any difference: you are playing with your own head and everybody else's.
SES is a group of people often including the power-hungry who before membership felt weak and powerless. It warps peoples minds, lives off the weak, the damaged and the friendless, and seems to object to the strong minds that stand up to them. There are well-meaning individuals in the group. But many sinister organisations began with good intentions. I learnt that at school, and it wasn?t at St James.
If anyone has any bright ideas how we go about extending the Inquiry to the entire SES, please reply to me here.
Good luck to you all.
Last edited by
Witness on Sun Dec 12, 2004 10:08 am, edited 1 time in total.