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The L.E.A.D. accident. What happened?


HCW
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HCW - please don't stop... I had no idea. All I recall hearing was there had been a bad accident during a LEAD session. Period. Nothing about how many people were involved or what kind of injuries they incurred. I didn't even know it was a car accident. All I knew is that everyone who was involved was going to be fine. For some reason - I thought it was an accident that happened on a climb or on some other LEAD exercise. I had no idea until right now. I'm sure I'm not the only one - Corps or non-Corps - who was in the dark about this. Please go on....

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HCW, I considered Rochelle a friend of mine, through a mutual friend. Thanks for telling this story.

The TWI management philosophy is: "deprivation + believing = abundance." The top leadership applies this philosophy (a.k.a., magic formula) to everyone but themselves.

By hand-picking their high-maintenance Corps people (by their own cold, cynical reckoning) for LEAD Group 104 (and whose bone-headed, foolish idea was it? Lynn's? Martindale's? - whatever, they had to approve it), TWI management over-burdened the competent but small staff at Tinney.

Management's expectation, as usual, was they would be well-served by the magical "believing" of the staff, or if not, they could blame the staff for its failure to "believe" (practice effective magic). No believing (magic) required on their own part - pretty convenient.

For crying out loud, the LEAD program was in the wilderness! That was the idea for creating a "challenge." Screw-ups anywhere are dangerous enough, but even minor accidents in the wilderness can become deadly.

So dumbass TWI leadership sends this (supposedly) issue-prone "losers" group - all together. To a virtual survival camp?? And you ask the bare-bones staff, in one session, to keep them all safe, enable them to climb vertical rock walls, AND do your vetting work for you - the work that should have been done on the field, one-on-one, or in residence?

If TWI leaders couldn't "believe" to get the vetting done in a safer, controlled environment, what made them think LEAD would be such a nifty idea? They were f-ing STUPID, that's what. They were also thoughtless, or callous, or even cold-blooded, mercenary bastards, where people's lives were concerned. They made a show of "loving" people, but the love-dove stuff went down the crapper when personal priorities or ministry goals were at stake.

What TWI was hoping to do with LEAD 104 was save time, letting the LEAD program shake you all loose as efficiently as possible.

I'll be honest here. I don't think Rochelle was ever meant for the Corps program, neither for what it was supposed to be (and never was), and especially, not for what it was - from the 6th Corps(approximately) on. I believe she was looking for a place to belong, where her talents and intelligence could be put to the best possible purpose, and hoped the Corps would provide it - not just a "place," but a family.

Had TWI been a truly Christian group, and not the fraud it quickly became as Wierwille realized his ambitions, she might have found it, and herself. To the Way Corps program, as it was, she was a throw-away, along with so many others, caught in the net but to be tossed out, unwanted.

I hope you'll continue.

Regards...

Edited by satori001
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When I got there, my first year, Clyde what's his name said he'd gotten "revelation" that our group hadn't had "team work, but were self-centered on our way out there," so he kept three of us girls back, loaded us with backpacks so heavy we could barely walk, and then sent us to the camp.

I've had back problems ever since.

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quote:
Everything was like slow motion in the movies.
HCW, I can relate to this feeling very well when I went down on my bike on Highway 29, the first day of Rock of Ages 1985 no less. ha! My head and body crashing on the pavement, then I roll all slow motion like into the ravine, bike goes forward end over end. They rushed me to the Sidney hospital and I had some scrapes and bruises, but my sister got me to the evening's opening services, clothes all torn. ha! Thank God I had my helmet on! I relaxed all week at the Sidney Days Inn, recuperating.

For those who are blaming twi for HCW's traffic accident, I guess I'm missing something, but I fail to see how anyone is to blame other than the drivers of the vehicle. Most accidents are 95% driver error anyway, especially bikes.

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I don't if its really about the blame, as much- at least to me. What I find highly disturbing, is how these kind of things seemingly disappear, swept under the rug so to speak.

I can honestly say that I NEVER heard anything about this stuff. Never- after twenty years involvement. Why?

Is it possible that the BOD and minions do not want to admit that if they are cut, that they will bleed, just like anybody else? What happens to their claim of superiority and "abundance"? Apparently it did not work this time. Or that da debil somehow had access to this supposed pure, clean protected bunch? How could this be? Same stupid junk- "that da ministry be not blamed".

Anything that had a remote potential of giving them or their doctrines a black eye seems to have had a habit of vanishing in the night.

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oldiesman,

The driver was responsible for the accident. Yes. Nobody would question that, so your real point is that you are missing the point.

Who was the driver's employer? What was the driver doing while driving? Why?

Specifically, what were the circumstances leading to a distracted, young man reading an evaluation form, while operating a fast-moving truck, towing a trailer, with a load of people in the back on a windy, back-country highway. No red flags for you, huh? Blame stops with the driver? How convenient for the Board of Trustees, who consistently appointed -what shall we call them? okay - dumbasses, to run the Corps, and consequently to make asinine decisions like the one that led to (remedial) LEAD group 104, requiring extended evaluations for which there was INSUFFICIENT TIME to complete.

I'm not saying Way management wanted the accident to happen. They were just too stupid and thoughtless, oh, and NEGLIGENT!! to consider the danger of over-burdening the LEAD staff, when it was already under so many other constraints, real and administrative.

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I went LEAD twice,and I'm glad I did...although I think it should have been on a volunteer basis rather than required of all corps....

I had already graduated by this time,and I heard most of this stuff publically(to the corpse) shortly after it happened sans all the names....Of course,the responsibility,or blaming stopped with the LEAD staff and the 'believing' of the victims...

We had an old school bus to transport the people down to the hitch-hiking spot when I went...which was probably safer...

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quote:
...I think it should have been on a volunteer basis rather than required of all corps....
So then because it was a requirement in the Corps...blame twi trustees, right? By that logic, I could blame twi trustees for my motorcycle accident, since it was a requirement for me to drive to the ROA.

Damn those trustees, they should have thought of a better way for me to get there.

Better yet, they shouldn't have conducted ROA AT ALL... life was safer without it...

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While this was a terrible accident that was obviously not dealt with properly, there is one thing that still blowes my mind every day... how stupid we all were back in those days, as humans.

I remember sitting in the back of a pickup, in a lawn chair, going 60 down the highway as a young teen. What were we thinking? That is illeagal in hopefully every state now.

On our long trips to the ROA every year (25+ hours usually), us kids would be in the back of the boat of a station wagon restling and playing all the way.

These days I would think it would be rediculous to let your 5,6,7...yr old in a car without a seatbelt, but there I was sleeping under the seat on every long trip.

Guess it was our believing. icon_rolleyes.gif:rolleyes:-->

Please continue with your story...sorry for the slight derail.

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Oldies,

I have also been sued for negligence in my contracting business...It's not a pretty thing...In court you have to prove negligence to place liability,at least financially....There's no financial gain in suing the individual driver,but there is in the company he works for...

I won't get into the argument about how much blame lies with the trustees etal. ...I know we're not talking about suing here,but rather Godly or,maybe (un)Godly responsibility and cover up...

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I've posted either here or on Waydale about the incompetence that left my mother with a forever broken back. She's never recovered and was chastised because she wasn't "walking in the spirit". She walked right off of a mountain side and took a violent fall because a LEADer told her, a middle aged woman from The Bronx, to go back to camp to retrieve something, take a left at the oak tree and a right at the maple tree. She tried to tell them that she didn't know the difference between trees an she was reproved for not remembering what she had been taught. She obediently went , misunderstood the difference between trees and took a terrible fall.

She came home early from LEAD and I wasn't told that she had returned or that she had been in an accident. We had "sub parents": Fellow corps that kept an eye on the kids while Family Corps parents went lead. They knew she was back and didn't tell me. They continued to act as my parents while my mother was being kept away from me. I heard thru the grapevine that she was back and had gotten hurt because "her believing wasn't there". I demended to see her and get some info and finally was allowed to see her days later. I couldn't sleep knowing my mother was hurt, I wasn't allowed to see her or have any info. It was torture.

Many were talking about it in front of me, making my mother look bad without regard to my feelings. She wasn't allowed to go to a doctor until she reached a level of pain that was turned around on her as a lack of believing.

It was all her fault. She was never treated and now her bones are fused incorrectly.

Oldies man: It is neglegent and unreasonable to require people to hitch hike across the country.

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