Please note this is not the whole conversation in its entirety.  This transcription omits some parts due to auditory lapses, etc.

 

 

Van (00:00):

I'm off work now.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (00:03):

Wow.

Van (00:04):

Where do I start?

Clelia J. Sheppard  (00:06):

Yeah, I would love to hear about what you went through and just more of your perspective. 

Van(00:14):

You know what? So when I read about the website, the website, they offered a lot of things on their website and when I came to their facility and I went to the program, they didn't have any of what they offered on their website. So it was false advertising, a lot of false advertising and I felt like I got used there just to work six days a week for free.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (00:47):

Exactly.

Van(00:48):

I dunno, what's that word I'm looking for?

Clelia J. Sheppard  (00:52):

Trafficking, labor trafficking.

Van(00:55):

Yeah, exactly. I was told there to get help for substance control and they provided next to nothing practically. Let me see. At the end of my program they were, with all the stuff that they implemented and all the trauma that they brought towards the students and me, they were forcing us to do trauma release exercise. They got a lady covered to do trauma release exercises once a month.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (01:35):

That's it.

Van  (01:38):

It was kind of weird how after we found out they didn't let us inside the program when I was in there, I couldn't talk to my parents for the first six months or my family. They would make any phone calls.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (01:55):

Yeah, I think that's so extreme.

Van (02:02):

What they did is, I don't know how to say it was I felt like I was in a Mormon bootcamp.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (02:15):

Gosh, it's so surreal hearing you say all this because it's validating for me too because I feel like I've been screaming at the abyss for 10 years because see I was there in 2016 and it seems like it's gotten worse

Van(02:31):

And just the way, if you got in trouble there, they'd make you do extra hours on your day off on a Sunday and that's only day off and I don't know, it took me over a year. It took me about almost a year before they even let me start going to take online courses there to educate myself to get a job outside and it was kind of weird how they said education go to school, there is a privilege

Clelia J. Sheppard  (03:20):

And it's like,

Van (03:21):

I don't know

Clelia J. Sheppard  (03:23):

Ahead. The feeling that I get is that they have manipulated people who are not Well what your drug of choice was? I

Van (03:34):

(Redacted)

Clelia J. Sheppard  (03:36):

Okay. Yeah, mine was (redacted SNRI). So it's like their approach to this is very punitive and they don't really give much therapy or they try to, I was told by one of the mothers Don Johnson who lost her son to suicide after they closed down just this year.

Van (03:53):

Yeah, that was Kevin. I was really close to Kevin.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (03:56):

Really? Oh my god. Okay, so yeah, she was saying how

Van  (03:59):

Yeah, and what they put Kevin through, they put him in a manager's position and they promised, they promised Kevin so much stuff and they tried to put under the rug after because I knew everything about it and they told me in their office about that too and they trying get to know about the information that I knew that there was promised to him because he'd relayed to me I'd worked with him in the hay company.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (04:34):

I feel like they really used everybody so much and I was, they

Van (04:39):

Did. I don't know what you can provide for me, but I'm thinking about doing a law, kind of a civil lawsuit fee or something like that.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (04:52):

Yeah, well what I'm doing is I'm going to take mental notes about what you've been through and summarize them so that I can have a more robust picture of my goal of getting everyone together and hearing what they're going through is to see. I've found if you look at the recent petition updates, if you saw that petition, if we did a group tribunal complaint, it would have a very high chance of being heard and there's a lot you could do with that. I can send you what I sent in this morning

Van (05:31):

Because I was thinking about gathering people myself. I've been talking to a lot of the students after I got out DVA and I was thinking about bring 'em to court to get our intake feedback and then suing 'em for the labor six days a week for the labor that they put us through unpaid labor.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (05:56):

Yeah, I am glad to hear that you're determined to do this because unfortunately I haven't been very successful. I've got a lot of signatures and I've had some random emails, but I think you have this energy to you. I can tell that you're passionate about this because it's very, you've seen a lot

Van (06:15):

Of Yeah, they really, I talked out there and they manipulated me. They say they have changed my life, we changed lives, but really we there just to use me.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (06:30):

Yeah. That's why I think the, I'll send you via text. I think I need to get more organized and I know that my individual complaint will probably be ignored because it's out of time. But honestly I was practically suicidal when I left that place, but nobody I knew believed me and I, so I struggled with depression and it was just really all of their weird things. It sounds like Kevin, that you were close to, you all had to sacrifice a lot to blend in because they were the silent treatment and the no phone calls. This is like cult abuse and they're taking advantage of people.

Van (07:16):

They make us fight each other. They make us hold in how they have their system where you go up to somebody to go check yourself and then whatever, you got to reply back and then you bring it to encounter and it would be just a shit show. We'd be just, it's supposed to be therapeutic and we're fucking down each other's throat and we're going to punch each other out in an encounter. Almost gotten a fit by twice in an encounter.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (07:51):

Yeah. This is not how you're supposed to be dealing with people. It creates this, you're surveilling each other. It's not a very, and also they lacked real experts. They claim they're a treatment center for mental health and substance abuse, but then they have people who hardly know anything about prescriptions telling you to get off your meds abruptly and hardly handing out meds with no privacy or confidentiality. That's another thing is that they have very unsound medical practices and substance abuse technically, it's not like you can't overcome it, but it's classified as a disability and they were not treating it as a disability. They were treating it as something to exploit. And

Van  (08:40):

While I was in there, I had a medical issue while I was in there and I was admitted to the hospital and I was diagnosed with vertical and I was in the hospital for day and they didn't even contact my emergency contacts. My family tell me that I was in the hospital.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (09:02):

Geez.

Van (09:04):

I kept it a secret for my family. I had to call them myself and tell 'em that's how bad it was, how

Clelia J. Sheppard  (09:09):

Disorganized

Van (09:10):

They are there, God.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (09:12):

And what really pisses me off is that I still see them on LinkedIn doing public outreach stuff. They're pretending like everything is fine.

Van (09:22):

That's

Clelia J. Sheppard  (09:23):

Why I want to go to the tribunal with a group because I think they think, alright, well we had this bad media press this year, it'll go away and we can start over again. And they're still operating here in the US and I just think that they haven't really faced their judgment day, in my opinion, a couple bad news articles and getting shut down. That's not enough. People are pissed, I'm pissed off.

Van  (09:50):

They hold us accountable for everything we do, but when we point out certain things that how they run their program and it's not healthy for people, we get shut down and they deflect so hard, but when we deflect in their program, we get learners.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (10:05):

Yeah, I can imagine staying there for a longer time gives you a major PTSD too. That's another thing to note is that if there's ever

Van (10:14):

Yeah, no, I started starting getting things that I never thought I'd have and I chase out not the pain. I have more, I'd have anxiety attacks about this, about me being in that place.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (10:31):

I became very withdrawn afterwards because when I tried to leave, they locked me in a room for 18 hours and only gave me these burnt gross tater tots and they were just so mean to me the whole time. I felt like

Van (10:48):

When you're sick and you're rude

Clelia J. Sheppard  (10:50):

When

Van (10:50):

You're not feeling good, that's not at all.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (10:55):

I think that because we have addiction or mental health that we're stupid and that we can't stand up for ourselves and we go there because it was a good price. I don't know, when I went there it was $6,000 and you're like, Hey, that sounds a lot better than 30,000 per month. And you kind of think the way they advertise themselves, they pretend like it's false pretense. They're pretending to be something they're not. All they want is to

Van i (11:23):

False advertisement for false advertising. There's another thing. So when I looked up on their website, it was five grand for the intake fee and then when I got there they charged me 7,500.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (11:37):

Oh my God.

Van  (11:38):

They told me I didn't have a incidental fee.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (11:42):

So it's like there's changing, they're not consistent with their

Van (11:46):

Yeah, they're changing stuff and they haven't changed their website. So that's false advertising.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (11:53):

And you know what Don Johnson, who was very nice to speak to me, she's still very upset, but she was saying that they were taking from some students versus others, they were getting subsidized by the government, like a thousand dollars per student per month or something like that depending on their Yeah, that's correct. Diagnosis. So they were really benefiting from getting really sick people there and they were,

Van  (12:20):

They were taking most of the money and I would only get a hundred dollars a month, a hundred, $115 a month out of that money for my personal hygiene stuff and stuff that I needed.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (12:33):

It's like nothing in today's world that barely.

Van  (12:37):

Yeah. I like, hey inflation right now that's nothing at all.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (12:41):

It goes by and yeah, they have really exploited. I got some weird messages from somebody on LinkedIn who was saying they were using this as some kind of money funneling thing and that they were

Van(12:55):

Yeah, he uses the foundation to funnel all his money from all his businesses

Clelia J. Sheppard  (13:00):

So

Van (13:00):

He doesn't pay taxes.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (13:01):

Yeah, exactly. And he's done,

Van (13:04):

He has a moving company at John Volken Academy. He had a store right beside John Volken Academy while I was there too. We have the farm and they have, I don't know what else business he owes, but he just funnels all his money through his foundation, doesn't pay any taxes. And then he cleared all his money from his academy too and he says he doesn't make any money there and all the work that we do to stay the week to amount to anything, no professional help at all.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (13:37):

They really misled people and I think it's a travesty that there hasn't been more done for the people who survive. I mean I think people are still in denial of that. It's truly a cult and that really disturbs me. Another thing that I just thought of now is John Don was telling me how Kevin would only be given you all wouldn't be given enough food and you would be doing this really intense manual labor and that seems

Van  (14:06):

Our portion when we do labor intensive of work and our lunches are really small, our dinners are really small. They're just a certain size, our portion and I'm like sometimes there's barely any protein in our dinners and we work so freaking hard

Clelia J. Sheppard  (14:30):

Day

Van(14:30):

After day, six days a week there and I felt like I was really malnourished there.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (14:38):

That's not,

Van (14:40):

They take government assistant money, living assistant money and it would go, fortunately it would go to food and they would take the rest.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (14:56):

God, I just remember

Van (14:58):

They would for your room

Clelia J. Sheppard  (14:59):

Was someone named Chris Szulc there because he was someone and Darren Philips, they were there when I was there and they were telling me they were like, so

Van  (15:08):

I've seen him around. He wasn't there in the program, went out there

Clelia J. Sheppard  (15:12):

Because when I was there I was like, yeah, I want to be a photographer. And they're like, your photography business is going to fail. And then they were like, you're a charlatan and there's all these negative things. That's what cults do. They try to beat you down because they want you to stay so they can keep using you. I think it was crazy that if you make one mistake that your graduation is prolonged. So some people end up staying so long because they don't do well. They've come up with the perfect plot to exploit people and call it help. It's pretty genius on their end for a while, but it's not genius. But I'm just saying they have the perfect trap. 

Van (15:43):

In there for after being there for three months already. Already the infrastructure and how they run the program already knew exactly what I was going through already.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (15:54):

Yeah, no, they are,

Van  (15:57):

You know what, when they advertise on the website, they don't accept people after a certain age. They were accepting guys that are 55 years old, older

Clelia J. Sheppard  (16:10):

People

Van (16:16):

About the money and free labor,

Clelia J. Sheppard  (16:19):

The

Van (16:19):

Government money and getting free labor.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (16:21):

They didn't care at all about the synergy or how you feel because most places that are substance abuse, you are in your own age category with other people or like you because it just makes more sense. But when I was there, they had a couple guys that were out of prison. One guy who had

Van (16:38):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (16:39):

It's

Van  (16:39):

Not like a good environment.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (16:41):

It was just

Van  (16:43):

They're accepting criminals out of prison to go into the rehab center who have done a few years at jail time. That's not an environment you want to be in and there's a lot of bullying there and anybody around to control, it's all students who have to handle this.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (17:03):

Yeah,

Van (17:03):

It doesn't make sense. Yeah, very. It was a big mind fuck there practically. They got what they wanted out of you and once you don't provide for them to kick you out.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (17:23):

And I just felt like another thing that really upset me is that, look, I'm not going to say I'm this staunch Catholic. I was raised Catholic, but especially then I was 25 at the time when I was there. I was still a lot closer to my religion. And I remember someone at the grocery store from the outside community gave me a Bible and they made me throw it away and never once did I have an opportunity to go to church, but then they would all go to Mormon church together. So that's another thing I brought up in my case, I'll send you a screenshot of what I wrote and what I might work on this weekend is coming up with a statement, gathering what you've saying now and what I know to be true too and coming up with an official complaint and maybe we could get a bunch of people to sign it. Maybe that would work on Google Docs.

Vani (18:18):

I have a lot more stuff that in the program. I just need to remember everything. I blocked a lot out. 

Clelia J. Sheppard  (18:23):

I

Van 18:24):

Just had a long day, a long week at work. I work as a construction worker these days and

Clelia J. Sheppard  (18:29):

Wow, good for you, that's a tough grueling job. 

Van  (18:30):

For you on all day.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (18:31):

You're a strong person. That's not easy to keep working and then also take public transportation. 

Van (18:36):

No. Yeah, I came out of rehab and I had a hard time finding a job and then I was working for a temp agencies for a while and then I went through surgery, I had an ulcer and I went through surgery and I've been out of, I just got the hospital three months ago.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (19:02):

That makes sense. That have ulcer in an emotional level because being in a place like that would give anyone an ulcer in a way. It's so stressful.

Van (19:16):

Nobody had food safe there for the first year out there.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (19:19):

Nobody had what?

Van (19:21):

Food safe. The kitchen was so dirty. Their facility is so freaking dirty. There's no janitor. It's all student run. The students got to clean after full days of work. We got to come back, cook, clean. It doesn't make sense. Real rehab there, just using up to run their facility and run their businesses

Clelia J. Sheppard  (19:43):

And they have the perfect front and they haven't faced nearly enough lashback for this. And I think all the people who went there should be, we should. I honestly, this tribunal, I'll send you the paperwork and I'll come up with some statement to write, but honestly, all the people who were abused by this place deserve a lot more than what we got. We put our hopes in this, we were taken advantage of and I don't think people understand that the long-term damage of being in a place that's run like a Stanford prison experiment, that's what it became.

Van(20:21):

Yeah. We're exploited there for free labor.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (20:26):

That's

Van  (20:26):

The word I was looking for. So I really, I'd like to get my inate be back and assume for a few million dollars for all the bullshit they put us through and not having alt advertising, not having a proper structure just using it, exporting free labor.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (20:50):

Yeah, I agree. Well, I spoke to the BC short service clinic. They're like the lawyers that work with the tribunal and they offer free consultations to people and they were saying that they help people get settlements from places like this based on discrimination. So it's usually based on religious and disability. They have their certain way of framing it. But I think what they told me is that if a bunch of people did a group complaint that it would definitely be heard. It's much more likely that it will raise the flags in their system and be heard because it's more believable when a group of people are all saying similar things and that's the evidence instead of a bunch of individual cases where even though there's been all this publicity and we know something went wrong when it comes to a court of law, it's difficult when it's one person against this giant corporation who has millions  and that I think we would all be stronger. I know you're more fresh out of there than me. I've had a few emails that are very anonymous, but I think people are scared because they're afraid of being the retaliation from this cult. And I did a deep dive. I've spent a lot of hours looking at news articles and reading comments and I've found that they have this little weird group of supporters that are just blind to what they did and think that anyone who challenges them are just trying to cause trouble.  

(22:28):

So I think that they

Van  (22:29):

Don't see the truth that well,

Clelia J. Sheppard  (22:32):

They don't

Van (22:32):

Know the truth, they haven't been through it and they don't understand and they just hear what people say about it, all the good things, but they don't put bad things in good perspective.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (22:43):

That's what pisses me off the most about them is how fake they are on social media because they put this and they have all these survivor stories like, oh, John Wilkin turned my life around and it's like every single person that did well there is because they're devoted fanatic Mormons and they did well because they just completely gave up their soul and just never questioned anything. And it was like, that's what cults do. And it's just like, I would like to work on this if you want to work with me 

Van  (23:24):

You know what, this weekend I'm going to start jotting all my memories from being there on paper and then I can run you through a lot, give you a lot more detail about what I've been through there. What they forced me to do when they're shorthanding people at the farm and I was working in the store, they forced me to go to the farm to work.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (23:55):

It's like

Van  (23:56):

To do intensive labor. There

Clelia J. Sheppard  (23:59):

Are

Van 24:00):

Forced, forced people in rehab to do intensive of labor.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (24:03):

You're supposed, when the idea of rehab is that you're supposed to be relearning and getting to the root of your addiction and not just compartmentalizing and solving it with work addiction. That's another addiction in itself is that's they're promoting is that, hey, the solution to your addiction is just working all day. That's not actually any kind of form of rehabilitation emotionally or socially. And also they created this tattletale environment. I'll never forget that I was put on a speaking ban because I said the wrong thing and they made me put something on my shirt. I don't know if they still did that with you all, but it's like they made you put up your

Van (24:44):

Down with the female community the first month I was there too.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (24:47):

Yeah, it's insane. I mean, I'm like, this is not okay. This is not normal. We are not reverting. 

Van  (25:07):

It. Yeah, no, you know what? We're stronger standing together and our voices as a group to fight this and get a proper settlement for what they did to us.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (25:22):

And I'm glad that you're not afraid to say that because honestly it deserves a settlement because I was not okay for years after this. And I'm sure that luckily the newer people, I think you all went through something worse, but at least now you know that you weren't just imagining the abuse because for so long I was just thinking I was just a weak, horrible person. They told me I was. That's what they do to people. 

Van Han Dai (25:50):

Program

Clelia J. Sheppard  (25:50):

Yeah,

Van  (25:51):

Program you went through was the LCP program and the program they ran on us was totally different.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (25:59):

Really.

Van (26:00):

And it was a lot more strict and it was more fucked up.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (26:05):

What else? It

Van  (26:07):

Was all about production. Production and production.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (26:10):

Yeah. Well, I mean, we did a lot of stuff too. I remember scrubbing a house at 4:00 AM with a toothbrush. We had our fair share of a lot of work. I mean we were working in uniform all day long, but it seems like things reached an apex with your cohort. 

Van (26:25):

No, they kind of forced uniforms on me too. I told 'em to fuck off.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (26:28):

Yeah, no, I mean, trust me, when I went there, it was pretty bad. But it just seems like the aggressiveness increased. That's what I'm noticing from some of the recent accounts is that it became so

Van  (26:40):

Much stress on the students. It all on the students, and we have to deal with it an encounter. And they would teach every month. They would teach only maybe an hour, two hour tops of classes on a Monday, like 15 minutes to 30 minutes tops for a class every Monday. And that's only four times in a month. And our encounter group sessions would be fucking really long.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (27:08):

And it's like you're this interrogating people. And that's what communist regimes do where they reward people for tattling on each other or a forced confession where you have to say something about someone in order to be fitting in it

Van  (27:24):

And instead of helping people, they're interrogating us there. They're making a fight with each other with their rules they're implementing. It was really fucked up.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (27:36):

Yeah. Well, I don't want to, I'm sure you're exhausted, so I know that I kind of blocked this out for a while. It makes you angry but also drained at the same time. That's what I've noticed with myself. Oh

Van (27:49):

Yeah, does

Clelia J. Sheppard  (27:50):

It does. Yeah. I feel like this guy, he's such an arrogant man. He even put on one of the headlines that he doesn't feel bad. He doesn't feel any remorse about this. He's like a freaking Nazi. He doesn't care

Van  (28:10):

Why he's just there to use people as use him, export him for free labor and run their program that has no structure for rehab.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (28:25):

Yeah. It's a total farce. It's a mockery of mental healthcare and it is very scary. So few people besides a couple newspaper outlets have done anything that it took this long. That's the frightening to me is that it took 10 plus years and it's been the same. I mean it might've been more strict with your group, but the overall treatment and overall philosophy and their attitude has, they need to be stopped at all of their operations, including the US ones. The US ones have been swept under the rug, but I'm sure the same thing is kind of going on there too. And

Van  (29:04):

That's even worse in the US because of all the different over there.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (29:07):

The US just puts stuff under the rug when they don't like it. They don't really, at least Canadian authorities, I imagine would be somewhat receptive. And anyway, like I said, now you have my number, you can text me anything. I will come up with a draft of a group thing and I'll make a Google Doc and we can get names and a date and we can work together on this and this weekend you can give yourself your own personal assignment of writing down when it comes to you. Specific examples of abusive treatment that's not normal for rehab. And instances where you felt, where you noticed that maybe there was favoritism towards people who were of the Mormon background. Oh yeah. When you were saying, oh, it's a Mormon bootcamp, find in your brain. I remember that too. But then enough time, it is hard to prove to people how they did that. It's very insidious and sneaky how they do it.

Van  (30:15):

You know what? They don't let us have a cell phone there at all, so we can't record anything that happens there. They're really, the way they implement the program, you know what? They're getting away with all this shit that they're not supposed to be.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (30:34):

Yeah, I agree. I think

Van  (30:38):

What kind of places, I expect you to have a cell phone.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (30:42):

In today's world, that's pretty unheard of. And it's a form of protection now because especially in a situation like that where you're vulnerable and hoping that you're going to get real care and

Van  (30:53):

Both in front,

Clelia J. Sheppard  (30:54):

Front

Vani (30:55):

In front of other people.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (30:58):

And I think one of the worst things is that they never, when you're dealing with abusive people, they won't be held accountable unless forced. It won't be until this tribunal actually petitions them that they do something. Oh, are you driving?

Van  (31:22):

Say that again. Sorry.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (31:23):

Are you driving?

Van (31:25):

No, no. I'm about to take the bus.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (31:27):

Oh, okay.

Van  (31:31):

Yeah. I sold my car before I came to the program.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (31:39):

Well, you know what? They've put you through enough hell, and here you are working your ass off  having to take public transportation.

Van (31:48):

I was there. I didn't even get the same. Or after they got shut down, all the people that stayed there, they had to pay the minimum wage. Everybody. Dang. Everybody that paid after March.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (32:02):

Yeah, I think you might have yourself a  lawsuit, especially because you were there a long time

Van  (32:08):

There for 15 months.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (32:09):

Yeah, yeah. That's how many months? Yeah,

Van  (32:12):

I left a month before it got shut down.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (32:15):

16 months or a month

Van  (32:17):

In one week. 16 months. Yeah. And if I would've stayed there for another month in one week, that was their date, the mandatory date to be shut down.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (32:28):

Wow. What was it like? Were you picking up on the fact that they were in trouble?

Van  (32:38):

Oh, so you know what? When we found out about that, when they don't let us listen to news or watch TV or anything like that, we're only allowed to have one movie a week on a Sunday.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (32:54):

Yeah, I remember that.

Van  (32:55):

A movie, not news or anything. We don't have a device where we're going to watch the news. But after being there, after a certain time, I make phone calls to the outside world and I talk to people and they'd update me on certain things that are happening. And then we found out about their mandatory shutdown that they're supposed to have in the summertime when I was there and what was that word I'm looking for? I don't know. They went to court and they got an extension on their shut down date four times.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (33:40):

Geez. So they were,

Van (33:42):

And then finally in March there was Ministry of Health stepped in and said this, it don't have any more chance.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (33:53):

And you know what I noticed in some of the articles that they were like, Hey, we were doing fine until the government interfered. And I'm like, well, duh. Yeah. It's like they're trying to turn this into a political thing is what I've noticed. They're trying to make it seem like, oh, it's this liberal lefty thing. That's why people are, they just, they're trying to make up excuses. I got so mad reading some of the comments and I was like, I just can't listen to this anymore. I have to remember that these people are sick people. And their worst nightmare came true where they got all this negative press and anyway, I'm just so sorry that you had to stay so long. I stayed a couple weeks, I think I was there about four or five weeks, and that was enough for me. And I actually had to sneak out.

Van (34:43):

Yeah, no, getting forced to work six days a week, eight hour days, like three as volunteers, weird or anything like that we're not covered.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (34:59):

And another thing too is the psychological abuse on top of that. Usually if you were in a positive environment, you would feel good like, Hey, I'm being productive and doing this. But it was never enough for them. They were always finding ways to cut you down and make you feel like you were a bad person. That's what I hated about it. And there were some people that seemed to do so well. They were so freakishly happy and it was like they were not, I don't know. It was very interesting how some people only seem, it's like they really have this selective process that creates this cult-like acquiescence. No, where

Van (35:42):

I just jumped on the bus.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (35:44):

Okay. I'm

Van (35:44):

Really noisy in here. I can barely hear you. You know what? After the weekend I will, I contact you probably on a Monday after work and I will update you on more things.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (36:01):

And I'll tell you everything I've

Vani (36:01):

Been through,

Clelia J. Sheppard  (36:02):

Hopefully by then I'll have this Google doc ready that I will text you and you can look over it and we can add stuff to it and create this formal movement. And perhaps when that's done, if you can, I think Dawn Johnson, we can make it so that it's even for the parents of survivors because there's been some people who are not on this planet anymore because of this place.  Anyway, I know you're on the bus, you can't talk. But we will have to find a way to encourage other people to come forward too because

Van (36:38):

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (36:39):

But hey, I'm really thankful that you called me. That gives me a lot of hope too, because it's been very lonely trying to do something about this. So thank you. And we'll talk on Monday.

Van  (36:53):

Okay, sounds good. You have a good day.

Clelia J. Sheppard  (36:54):

Okay. Bye. Okay.