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Sue Scheff Attacks FORNITS, Free Speech
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by schefftruth | August 12, 2007 at 11:56 am
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August 10, 2007
The “Internet Wolverine” responds to threats by Sue Scheff, her company PURE (Parents Universal Resource Experts), and others in the private “teen help” business: “Hit me with your best shot, cowards! At the end of the day, I can take it. You can’t”
Ginger Warbis, living somewhere in Virginia, is no ordinary woman. She began her controversial electronic publishing site at Fornits.com over five years ago. Flanked and protected, pro bono, by Attorney Philip Elberg, Warbis is fearless in her exposure of the burgeoning and dangerously unregulated industry called the “troubled teen” or “teen help” industry.
If you dare enter Ginger Warbis’ Web World, you are forewarned that it is not for the weak of heart. The posts are crude and nasty at times, but most hit to the heart of a uniquely American tragedy.
“Oh, the irony of it all,” Ginger Warbis exclaims in a recent post on her site as she writes under the pen name of “Scarlett Chiclet.” In the span of a few years, this angry advocate has transformed herself from a rough hewn virtual-vigilante to a witty, raunchy publicist who isn’t afraid of anyone, anywhere, anytime. Whether you like her or not, one cannot help but admire the tenacity of Ginger Warbis and her band of mischievous Internet crusaders.
Warbis’ arch-enemy at the moment is Sue Scheff, a self-proclaimed “resource expert,” who places children in programs, sometime unsafe ones, that pay Scheff substantial sums of money. According to bloggers, Scheff recently tried to shut down the Fornits.com site and silence Ms. Warbis’ prolific criticism of Scheff and others like Scheff.
In response, Warbis moved her Internet presence to Canada. The Fornits.com site is now spawning anti-Sue Scheff sites too numerous to track, such as www.sueschefftruth.com.
Why is Ginger Warbis so tenacious and tough? She characterizes herself as a “prisoner of war” who survived the now defunct Straight Program. As a child in the early 1980s, Warbis said she was held against her will for two years at Straight in Florida, deprived of a meaningful education, and forced to confess and engage in acts against her will.
Attorney Elberg, who defends Warbis’ right to speak, has won multi-million dollar settlements against those victimizing children in private programs. Elberg also criticizes Scheff and her practices of using her money to silence those who disagree with her.
In an apparent response to Sue Scheff’s attempt to take down Fornits.com, Ginger Warbis challenges:
“Sue me! I beg of you, bring this fight back into the public eye in any way you can. . . .”
With the help of Attorney Elberg, she won dismissal of a 2004 case that Sue Scheff, the wealthy heiress, and PURE, filed against Warbis for defamation and invasion of privacy.
Underscoring her determination, Warbis writes: “You spoiled yuppie scumbags think a civil suit or public embarrassment or the prospect of losing some of your precious stuff is too horrible to even think about. I'm made of stone . . . . tough, so far beyond the need for creature comforts and social acceptance. . . .”
It does not appear that Ginger Warbis will be folding Fornits.com anytime soon. In the meantime, Sue Scheff has hired a company to saturate the Internet with self-created positive comments and web sites about her and her company, in the hope of countering the mounting guerilla forces of Ginger Warbis and Fornits.com. ###
copyright 2007 Paula Reeves
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 13:06 on August 12th, 2007
schefftruth, I feel that there's a larger newsworthy issue here, beyond an individual... psyborgue posted a fairly definitive account of "the case against", but repeated attacks against an individual don't really shed light on what I see to be the larger story, which is an industry in which Ms. Scheff is a relatively small part.
(You might want to check out our J-Tips for more help.)
at 13:59 on August 15th, 2007
I quite agree, Jordan. I set up Fornits forums around 7 years ago. In that time program critics have gone rounds with a whole lot of program proponants. It actually gets confusing at times. When you're arguing with people who are all, essentially, brainwashed the same way people to mistake one for another more often than you might expect in ordinary group discussion. Case in point; Some of my words that Paula quotes in her article were actually part of a rather unpleasant exchange with a woman named Anne Hall (I'm not making this up!) Sue is somewhat remarkable, if not nearly unique and not just for her aparent disinclination to learn from the mistakes of others! What sets Sue apart from most of the rest is her stellar success both at marketing the troubled parent industry to great personal financial profit but at suppressing critics. That's what makes her special to me. I <i>hate</i> bullies! (maybe for obvious reasons, who cares? lol)
Oh, I've seen the craziest things! It might be worth the readers' time to dig through all the muck and grime of the Elan forum and find the story about the girl who was burried alive. One of the eye witnesses who was much traumatized by the whole thing started getting phone calls from her former Elan counselor every time she logged on to post. It was friggen creepy! When DCHFans.org goes back up you'll see a whole lot of similar litigiousness and mean spirited bullying demonstrated by program proponents, most of whom never even met Sue Scheff. Back when we did that conference in Bethesda with Arnold Trebach, one of my friends did some cold calling to invite program survivors to it. Look at this remarkable letter she recieved, and responses to it, for her effort. http://trebach.org/letters/cavey/
These people always have been mean spirited, underhanded and about as lucid as Donald Rumsfeld. The trouble is, they're also litigious and their victims tend to be rather traumatized, in most cases. The program survivor or veteran or critic community (in other industries known as "past customers and employees") tend to be pretty easy to intimidate.
That's one reason why some of us clown around about it so damned much. Laugh at the devil AND demonstrate that yes you CAN say these things and not be struck by lightening. Litigation, maybe. But there's really nothing any of these people can do to me that's as bad as the kind of treatment that up to, what are the latest estimates? 100,000 teenagers and pre-teens are subject to on any given day in the American Gulag Archapilego that is the troubled parent industry.
TOUGHLOVE is a hategroup