Jun 2, 2021

CultNEWS101 Articles: 6/2/2021

Re-Evaluation Counseling, Youth on Board, QAnon

Boston Globe: Inside the unlicensed counseling that led Boston students to allege emotional abuse
Boston Public Schools allowed students to be subjected to unorthodox group therapy for years.

"As a Boston high school sophomore, Keondre McClay said he was pressured by the head of a district-sponsored youth advocacy program to attend an overnight retreat in Newton, where white adults asked the Black teenager to wrestle out his emotions on a gym mat with them. They said it would help him purge his trauma from experiencing racism.

McClay fled to his room. Jenny Sazama, the program leader, and other retreat participants chased after him. For more than an hour, he recalled recently, they hugged him on his bed and entreated him to return to the group "counseling" session while he hid under the covers screaming, "Please leave me alone!"

When they eventually left, he locked the door, but someone got the facilities manager to unlock it. McClay called someone to help him get home at midnight.
"I was, for lack of a better word, assaulted," said McClay, now 21, a former student representative to the Boston School Committee.

The retreat was part of an unorthodox brand of group therapy Sazama introduced to the Boston Student Advisory Council, a prestigious student government group that advises the superintendent and School Committee on education policy. In a report released by the school department Monday, an independent investigator wrote that students described the "Re-Evaluation Counseling" sessions as "weird, uncomfortable, and cult-like." But the report barely scratched the surface of students' experiences."

Boston Globe: Boston schools superintendent announces changes after investigation finds students were pressured into unlicensed counseling
"Boston schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said Monday she has ended the district's relationship with a nonprofit program that ran a prestigious student advisory group for two decades, following an independent investigation that showed students felt the director stifled their voices, emotionally manipulated them, and pushed them to attend inappropriate group counseling sessions.

Cassellius said the system is ending its relationship with a group called Youth On Board, whose founder had practiced an unorthodox type of group therapy called Re-evaluation Counseling, or "RC," which students described as a cult. RC, which is both a type of group counseling and an international organization that practices and promotes it, encourages people to relate difficult experiences and release emotions by crying, screaming, or laughing.

The 10-page report, released Monday, confirmed many of the allegations made during a news conference in March by six students, including the then-student representative of the Boston School Committee, who resigned in protest from the Boston Student Advisory Council. The students said that Jenny Sazama, the adult co-director of the council, censored their policy positions and pressured them into attending Re-evaluation Counseling.

The investigator, Alan Oliff, a former Weston schools superintendent now working for private Jewish schools, took no position on RC's therapeutic techniques and did not explore the "cult" allegation, but his report said students described RC in interviews as 'weird, uncomfortable, cult-like.'"

" ... The head of the national RC organization, Tim Jackins, has denied that the organization is at all cult-like."

Boston Student Advisory Council: Investigative Report (PDF)
"... The 10-page report, released Monday, confirmed many of the allegations made during a news conference in March by six students, including the then-student representative of the Boston School Committee, who resigned in protest from the Boston Student Advisory Council. The students said that Jenny Sazama, the adult co-director of the council, censored their policy positions and pressured them into attending Re-evaluation Counseling.

"Since social media companies cracked down on QAnon content following the January 6 Capitol riot, catchphrases and secret messages related to the conspiracy theory have all but disappeared, a new report finds—an indication that Big Tech has the power to squash dangerous online movements when it wants to."

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