Parents in Arms

Last updated

Parents in Arms was a community organization active in the 1980s in Seattle which petitioned the Seattle City Council for the creation of the Teen Dance Ordinance. Seattle-area attorney David Crosby established it in 1985 when his 14-year old son Ian ran away from home after various acts of teenage rebellion. [1] The closure of the Monastery, a church and disco with gay youth patrons, was an objective of the organization. [2]

Contents

Crosby family

In fall 1984 parents David C. Crosby and Maureen Crosby became concerned that Ian, their 14 year old son and only child, had been leaving their Renton, Washington home to party at teen nightlife clubs in Seattle. [1] Crosby was an attorney, and he used his knowledge of legal systems to organize a civic response. [1]

Ian began to engage in teenage rebellion [1] He offended his parents by getting a Mohawk hairstyle. [1] During arguments Ian recited lyrics at his parents from the David Bowie song, "Changes", which also upset them. [1] He became disinterested in school and got poor grades. [1] Because of arguments with his parents he preferred to spend as much time away from home as possible, only returning there to sleep when he had no where else to go. [1] He tried living at home with minimal parental interaction so his parents began to enforce rules on him. [1] After some time his parents gave him an ultimatum: he could join troubled teenager programs in either wilderness therapy or drug rehabilitation. [1] Instead, Ian ran away from home to live as a homeless youth on the streets in Seattle. [1] [2] When Ian was free of his parents, one of his activities was attending nightlife events at the Monastery. [2] Crosby eventually found Ian and promised that he would not send him away. [1] Instead he sent him to drug rehabilitation in the Midwestern United States, which was another region of the country. [2] Ian left that treatment facility as a runaway on December 31, 1984. [2] While a runaway, Ian moved in with an adult gay man in the Gay village of Capitol Hill, Seattle. [3] While his son was a runaway, Crosby asked George Freeman, who was operator of the Monastery, to prohibit his son from that organization. [2] In response, Freeman said that at age 14 Ian had a right to leave his parents' home if he wished. [2] Crosby gave Freeman a written letter making requests about Ian and the Monastery, and in response, Freeman made copies of that letter which he shared freely with anyone at the Monastery. [2] Crosby took offense at the publication of his requests. [2]

Organization goals

Because of Ian's behavior and his views on Seattle nightlife, Crosby established Parents in Arms as a civic organization to seek new city regulations. [4] Crosby set the tone of the organization as militant, ready to fight, in support of police and prosecutors, and in opposition to nightlife. [4] The first goal of Parents in Arms was to close the Monastery. [4]

Crosby complained that in Seattle, young people who wished to leave home could find support systems outside their families to help them do so. [4] He also complained that drug rehabilitation centers would only admit teenagers who consented to treatment, when he felt that parents should be able to involuntarily commit their minor children if they were engaged in substance abuse. [4] Crosby wanted a teen curfew law in Seattle. [4] Parents in Arms viewed teen nightclubs as corrupting to youth and sought to eliminate them. [5] Crosby said that the age for clubs should be 16. [6]

Good activities that Parents in Arms supported included joining youth farming organizations such as 4-H or Future Farmers of America. [5] Life as portrayed in the 1960s Andy Griffith Show was also good as a model. [5] Supporters felt that rural teenagers had better lifestyles because they were cleaner and healthier, and unlike the scruffy Seattle Center youths who had wild hairstyles and wore makeup. [5] While supporters recognized that rural teenagers also used illicit drugs, the parents felt that rural drug use was not as problematic as urban drug use. [5]

Reactions

Crosby said that after establishing Parents in Arms, he, his wife, and his son Ian became the target of death threats. [2]

In February 1985 George Freeman, chaplain of the Monastery, attended a Parents in Arms meeting with a group of supporters. [4] In response to accusations, Freeman said that he and the Monastery do not condone drug use. [1] Daniel Zimmerman, a representative of the Universal Life Church, offered to mediate the dispute between Crosby and the Monastery. [2] Parents in Arms compiled a large amount of evidence and accusations against Freeman, the Monastery, and Seattle nightlife. [3] Years later, Freeman reiterated that none of this evidence was true, and remarked that the accusations never led to convictions. [3]

In a May 1985 protest attended by hundreds of teenagers, a counter-protest group called Youth in Arms got signatures of support on a written statement to counter the accusations of Parents in Arms. [7] The teenagers claimed that Parents in Arms was portraying them as drug-crazed perverts, when actually they were typical kids doing normal social activities. [7] The teenagers acknowledged that drug use exists and that some young people have sex, but that at the Monastery and in general they were normal people being blamed for extreme behavior. [7] One commented that if the clubs were closed, then suddenly the 1000 teenagers who go out for socializing will no longer have a place to go. [7] Many teenagers reported that they went to nightclubs and neither used drugs nor observed drug use, including a group presenting for the Lynnwood High School newspaper. [7] Another report shared was from the Washington State Board of Tax Appeals, which praised the Monastery for having a business model which was able to arrange housing and counseling to counter youth homelessness. [7] Another group which protested in favor of the Monastery was Kids in Action. [1]

Teen Dance Ordinance

In 1985 Seattle prosecutor Norm Maleng sought Nuisance abatement for the Monastery. [8] [9] Parents in Arms hired attorney William Lee Dwyer to advocate for their case. [3] At one point the judge assigned to the case was Terrence A. Carroll. [9] Carroll disqualified himself because he was a juvenile court judge with strong views on runaway youth. [9] Crosby persuaded Carroll to agree to join him as a witness supporting Parents in Arms in the trial. [9] In court Crosby said that his son was in drug therapy because of the Monastery and Seattle nightlife. [6] Freeman expressed that the pool of judges overseeing the case were biased against the perspective of youth nightlife supporters. [9]

The end result was that city closed the Monastery, and that closure began the planning of teen dance regulation in Seattle. [10]

After the closure of the Monastery, Mike Zeitner, the vice president of Parents in Arms, opposed the opening of other teen dance clubs. [2] Zeitner's two 17-year old sons had run away from his home earlier that year. [2] Parents in Arms also opposed another teen night club, Skoochies, from moving into the building formerly occupied by the Monastery [11] In 2006 a member of Parents in Arms made a racist remark at a civic event discussing the Teen Dance Ordinance. [12]

Related Research Articles

<i>Suburbia</i> (film) 1984 film by Penelope Spheeris

Suburbia, also known as Rebel Streets and The Wild Side, is a 1984 American coming-of-age drama/thriller film written and directed by Penelope Spheeris and produced by Roger Corman. The film's plot concerns a group of suburban youths who run away from home and adopt a punk lifestyle by squatting in abandoned suburban tract homes. The punks are played by Chris Pedersen, Bill Coyne, Timothy Eric O'Brien, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global Teen Challenge</span>

Global Teen Challenge is a network of Christian faith-based corporations intended to provide rehabilitation services to people struggling with addiction. It was founded by David Wilkerson in 1960. The global headquarters is in Columbus, Georgia, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ephebiphobia</span> Fear of youth

Ephebiphobia is the fear of youth. First coined as the "fear or loathing of teenagers", today the phenomenon is recognized as the "inaccurate, exaggerated and sensational characterization of young people" in a range of settings around the world. Studies of the fear of youth occur in sociology and youth studies. It is distinguished from pedophobia by being more focused on adolescents than prepubescent children.

Richard Allan "Ricky" Kasso Jr., also known as The Acid King, was an American killer who murdered his 17-year-old friend Gary Lauwers in Northport, New York on June 19, 1984. Two other teens, Jimmy Troiano and Albert Quiñones, were present at the murder, which took place in the Aztakea Woods of Northport while all four were under the influence of what they believed to be mescaline, but was most likely LSD.

Bruce Ritter was a Catholic priest and one-time Franciscan friar who founded the charity Covenant House in 1972 for homeless teenagers. By the 1980s, it had grown to an $87 million agency, operating numerous large centers in New York and six other major United States cities, as well as locations in Toronto, Canada, and Latin America.

Tough love is the act of treating a person sternly or harshly with the intent to help them in the long run.

Ross Aaron Malinger is an American former actor and automobile salesperson. He is best known for his roles as Jonah Baldwin in the 1993 movie Sleepless in Seattle, starring Tom Hanks, and as Bobby Jameson in the 1997 Disney comedy film Toothless, starring Kirstie Alley. He and Alley co-starred in the 1995 television film Peter and the Wolf. He played Adam Lippman, the Bar Mitzvah boy who liked Elaine's "Shiksa appeal", in the Seinfeld episode "The Serenity Now".

The Teen Dance Ordinance was a controversial Seattle law which severely curtailed the ability of concert and club promoters to hold events for underaged patrons. The organization Parents in Arms advocated for its creation.

<i>Streetwise</i> (1984 film) 1984 American film

Streetwise is a 1984 documentary film by director Martin Bell chronicling the lives of homeless youth on the streets of Seattle. It followed in the wake of a July 1983 Life magazine article, "Streets of the Lost", by writer Cheryl McCall and photographer Mary Ellen Mark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Élan School</span> Private therapeutic boarding school in Poland, Maine, United States

Élan School was a private, coeducational, and abusive residential behavior modification program and therapeutic boarding school in Poland, Androscoggin County, Maine. It was a full member of the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs (NATSAP) and was considered to be a part of the troubled teen industry. The facility was closed down on April 1, 2011, due to reports of abuse, many from former students, dating back to its opening in 1970.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drug Free America Foundation</span> Drug policy organization

The Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by former US Ambassador Mel Sembler, his wife Betty Sembler (née Schlesinger), and Joseph Zappala as Straight, Inc., renamed The Straight Foundation, Inc. in 1985 and Drug Free America Foundation in 1995.

Bill Riccio is a leader in the white power skinhead movement in the United States who gained public notoriety for his appearance in the 1993 documentary Skinheads: Soldiers of the Race War. He has been convicted numerous times on illegal weapon possession charges, the most recent of which was in 1992.

<i>Help at Any Cost</i> Book by Maia Szalavitz

Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids is a non-fiction book by Maia Szalavitz analyzing the controversy surrounding the troubled teen industry. The book was published February 16, 2006, by Riverhead Books. Szalavitz focuses on four programs: Straight, Incorporated, a copy of the Straight Inc. program called KIDS, North Star wilderness boot camp, and the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools. She discusses the background, history and methodology of the troubled-teen industry, including techniques drawn from attack therapy and Synanon. She uses first-person accounts and court testimony in her research, and states that no evidence exists proving that these programs are effective. The book also includes advice for parents and an appendix with additional resources on how to get responsible help for teenagers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CEDU</span> American private boarding school company

CEDU Educational Services, Inc., known simply as CEDU, was a company founded in 1967 by Mel Wasserman and associated with the troubled teen industry. The company owned and operated several therapeutic boarding schools licensed as group homes, wilderness therapy programs, and behavior modification programs in California and Idaho. The company's schools have faced numerous allegations of abuse. CEDU went out of business in 2005, amid lawsuits and state regulatory crackdowns.

<i>Unwind</i> (novel) 2007 novel by Neal Shusterman

Unwind is a 2007 dystopian novel by young adult literature author Neal Shusterman. It takes place in the United States in the near future. After the Second Civil War, which was labeled "The Heartland War", was fought over abortion, a compromise was reached, allowing parents to sign an order for their children between the ages of 13 and 18 to be "unwound" — taken to "harvest camps" and dissected into their body parts for later use. The reasoning is that, since 99.44% of the body is used, unwinds do not technically die because their individual body parts live on.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virgil Miller Newton</span>

Virgil Miller Newton is a current Chairman and Director of Christ at the Sea Foundation in Madeira Beach, Florida; a priest in the Antiochian Orthodox Church ; and the former Director of several rehabilitation centers for youth with drug problems, behavior problems, eating disorders and other compulsive behavior. His rehabilitative methods have been criticized.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Partnership to End Addiction</span>

Partnership to End Addiction, first known as the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) then later as the Partnership at DrugFree.org, and The Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, is a New York City-based non-profit organization which runs campaigns to prevent teenage drug and alcohol use in the United States. It is notable for mobilizing volunteer talent "against a single social problem" to help young people "live their lives free of drug and alcohol abuse," and to assist parents in prevention efforts. The organization gets input from scientists, specialists in communication, researchers and others, and offers resources for parents and teenagers on its website. It focused efforts to "unsell" illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin, prescription drugs, marijuana, MDMA, and others, as well as discouraging the use of alcohol and nitrous oxide, by breaking away from a standard public service approach and doing a coordinated media campaign. While the organization has focused drug prevention advertising on broadcast media such as television, there are signs in recent years that it is shifting media support to emerging channels such as video-on-demand, digital technology and particularly the Internet. The organization's marketing experience was written up as a 58-page marketing "case study" for study by students at the Harvard Business School. The organization is perhaps best known for its iconic TV ad This Is Your Brain on Drugs, but it had made over 3,000 ads by 2011 while pursuing a flexible strategy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ginna Marston</span>

Ginna Sulcer-Marston is an American advertising executive who has worked on anti-drug public service advertising campaigns at the Partnership for a Drug Free America, a nonprofit consortium of advertising professionals which ran targeted media campaigns to unsell illegal drugs. She was a founder of the organization in 1986. As research director, she studied the consumer motivations of drug users by means of marketing research methods. She has served as the organization's spokesperson.

<i>Runaways</i> (TV series) 2017–2019 Marvel Television series

Marvel's Runaways, or simply Runaways, is an American television series created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage for the streaming service Hulu, based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), sharing continuity with the other television series of the franchise and acknowledging the continuity of the franchise's films. The series is produced by ABC Signature Studios, Marvel Television and Fake Empire Productions, with Schwartz and Savage serving as showrunners.

The troubled teen industry is a term used to refer to a broad range of youth residential programs aimed at struggling teenagers. The term encompasses various facilities and programs, including youth residential treatment centers, wilderness programs, boot camps, and therapeutic boarding schools.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Grant, Meg (May 31, 1985). "A parent's crusade - troubles with his son prompt an attorney to rally support to help keep kids off the streets". The Seattle Times .
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Wilson, Marshall (June 12, 1985). "Father tells of frustration in search for runaway son at Monastery". Seattle Times . p. B11.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Jacklet, Ben (September 2, 1999). "The Return of the Demon". The Stranger .
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Whitely, Peyton (February 25, 1985). "Militant parents organize to fight 'street kids' problem". The Seattle Times . p. B2.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Lacitis, Erik (June 13, 1985). "For these teen-agers, life in the country is a breath of fresh air". Seattle Times . p. G1.
  6. 1 2 Suzanne, Hapala (June 6, 1985). "Clubs given praise, blame". Seattle Times .
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Whitely, Peyton (May 2, 1985). "Young supporters oppose Monastery closure". The Seattle Times . p. D2.
  8. ↑ "Teen-agers' disco - `shocking' assertions in police investigation". Seattle Times . May 1, 1985. p. A14.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Quintana, Joe (June 4, 1985). "Monastery owner says fair trial impossible". The Seattle Times .
  10. ↑ "The closed Monastery - a rotten place that exploited the young". The Seattle Times . June 24, 1985.
  11. ↑ McNerthney, Casey (26 September 2012). "'Skoochies kids' reminisce as former underage club is torn down". Seattle Post-Intelligencer .
  12. ↑ Howland Jr., George (9 October 2006). "A time to dance". Seattle Weekly .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.