Every week on The Moff Podcast, we share stories that are funny, strange, heartbreaking, and above all, true. I myself have been married for 56 years. Unfortunately to four different women. You can work out a whole lot of s*** in the eyes of Target. Follow and listen to The Moth on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. At that time, my dad had two ranches. The main ranch we lived at was 1,400 acres, the second ranch.
ordered where Synodon was. So we're right next to each other. This is Alvina Gambonini. Her father, Alvin, was a third generation cattle rancher in West Marin County. The Gamboninis were there long before Sinanon first showed up in the 1960s. They were very friendly. I remember them inviting us for dinner a few times just to get to know us. They were very neighborly. Here's Bob Gambonini, Alvina's older brother.
and all of a sudden they started growing. When Synanon was new in Marin County, Bob and his dad Alvin would help them with the basics of ranch life. They offered advice, lent equipment, and even gave them a cow. But by the mid-1970s, it seemed like Sinanon didn't need their help anymore. They had bans and they're constant traffic day and night. I mean, in this community, we aren't used to seeing that.
Synanon stopped inviting the Gamboninis to dinner, but the Gamboninis started getting visitors from Synanon. They were kids, but they were cold, hungry, and tired, and they showed up in the middle of the night. I mean, it could be 2 or 3 in the morning, and there'd be a knock at the door. I remember they would come in, and they would tell their story. They said how it was almost like a boot camp, you know, maybe worse.
You know, it had to be pretty terrible for some of them to be escaping during the mail one night. And Synanon would tell the kids that we had guns in our house and my dad would shoot them if they came to the house. I believe some of them thought, you know, what do they have to lose? You know, my dad would actually take some to the bus stop and give them money to go home.
There was one incident, a boy, he was at our house and kind of until daylight, he called his parents. They did come to pick him up, but we kind of watched when they drove, they turned around and brought their son back to Sinanon. The Gambonini's relationship with Synanon grew contentious. They put in a giant water tank and they ran pipes from the springs and took the water through our property.
and piped it into their water tanks on their property. They would actually cut the locks on the gate to get to the top of the hill where they were going to make, you know, their airstrip. They're just like, what do you need an airstrip for it? And at some point, there's kind of got to be like bad blood. One summer night in 1975.
The Gamboninis were on their way home from a meeting in town. Bob and Alvina, who were 15 and 10 years old at the time, were in the car along with their parents and their other sister. Alvin leased one of his ranches to a family named the Cabrals. who were on vacation. And while they were away, they asked Alvin to check on their son Victor, who stayed behind. It was the property that shared a border with Synanon. There's a big, long bridge.
You cross over the big, long bridge, and the dairy is located right on the left-hand side of the road. So we were just going to turn around, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there was like an Army truck. full of people and and there was pickups and cars and these people all jumped out and there were sides with machetes and they all had shaved heads and we knew they were sitting on people
And they started surrounding the car. That's when I got scared and ran. I was asleep in the front seat of the car. My dad's on the driver's side, my mom on the passenger's side. I was in between them. When I woke up... They were throwing punches at my dad. The window was down. I just remember arms coming in. They were trying to pull my dad out of the car, but my mom was on the other side trying to keep him in.
I remember my dad holding onto the steering wheel, sitting on trying to grab the keys, and my mom pulled those out, and she's trying to protect, you know, put her arm to protect my dad's face. I just remember they kept throwing punches. and they wouldn't let up. I just ran, trying to get up to the house, and I pounded on the door, pounded on the door. Victor was home, and he opened the door, and he goes, what's wrong? What's wrong? What's going on?
And I said, they got my dad, they got my dad. And it's like, who went? So we jumped in his truck. And when we went back down with the truck, we couldn't even see the car. There were so many people around. It was more than when I had left. And that's when they started surrounding us. And at the end of the big, long bridge, there was a dump truck blocking the whole county road.
and they had the other end of that road blocked too. So we were boxed in. Victor just slammed it in reverse and floored it and backed all the way up to his house to get help. People were surrounding the car and jumping on the back, trying to break the back windshield. You know, just like animals. I remember a vehicle, like, ramming into our car.
It was enough to push the car. I think they were trying to push it so we couldn't take off and leave. I remember my mom screaming, you know, my sister screaming, and then I, you know, of course, started to scream. But it was just mayhem. I remember their eyes, like a glare in their eyes, like so angry and so violent. If my brother didn't get out for help... I have no idea what would have happened or how long it would have kept going on because nothing was going to stop them.
My name is Sari Crawford, and this is The Sunshine Place. When my parents divorced, me and my mom and my two younger sisters were living in a house that my grandparents had purchased for us. My mother had been attending. the Saturday night parties and playing the Synanon game. But eventually, something changed, which is that she brought a man that she was dating home. He asked her to marry him.
and wanted her to move into Synanon. And she was all for the idea because Synanon offered what she thought was an award-winning school. that psychologists and social workers were studying and writing articles about. I became very excited about going to Sinanon. This is Julie Roberts. Julie Moncharch back in 1971. when she was nine years old and she moved into the Del Mar Club in Santa Monica with her mom and two sisters. Her mom sold their house and gave all the money to Synanon.
I had envisioned that I would be moving into a community and would have an apartment with my mom, maybe, and the sisters. I just somehow thought we'd all be in the same room or in the same house, but instead... My mother was roomed with her new husband. And then the children were separated by age. I didn't see my sisters at all. Ever.
And they said that the community will raise your children. Our children do not need their mothers and their fathers. The community is their mother and their father. Synanon kids saw their parents, on average, for three hours a week. Chuck saw this as an experiment. He felt that communal living in Synanon was a better alternative to the nuclear family.
I think concentrating on the children is the problem. Our values have produced a world today that is on the verge of being ruined for human habitation. That is the result of the way our parents raised us. The Synanon School became an experiment as well. Modern education is pretty much a failure. I think the children, probably like other animals, will do a much better job to educate themselves if we devote our efforts to monkeying around with the environment. Teachers were called demonstrators.
Practical skills and trades were taught alongside traditional academics. Students of all ages learned together. And older kids helped the younger students just like old-timer dope fiends helped the newcomers stay clean. We learned things that were way beyond what I would normally have been taught. I was all for it. I was ready. I could learn anything. I was excited. But Julie began to notice a change in the school.
Chuck said that the kids lacked structure and discipline, rules became more strict, and punishment was more frequent and harsh. There was a group of 10 boys who were considered troublemakers, and one day, they didn't show up for school. These 10 boys, they were sent up to Tomales Bay and were assigned to be in the first punk squad. The punk squad was Chuck's latest idea.
Synanon was going to take in juvenile delinquents from the court systems as an alternative to incarceration. It was also going to be a way for Synanon to validate their core mission of rehabilitation. which might keep the IRS from asking too many questions. But to Julie, the bunk squad was just a group of her classmates who were sent away on a bus. They came back to Santa Monica about a month later.
We reported to the basketball court and they came in marching and they were very good at it. We were sitting there watching the punk squad drill and suddenly the head of the punk squad slammed one of them in the face. I was like, what is going on? What the punk squad demonstrated that day...
was that Synanon had fundamentally changed forever. From the beginning, there were only two rules, no drugs or alcohol, and no violence. The second rule... didn't seem to apply anymore if julie didn't get the message that day she would soon during a group meeting she was accused of not doing her chores and then lying about it
She was told to stand up in front of all her peers. There was probably a hundred boys and girls around my age. I looked around at all of them and I was told to take my glasses off. And I was... punched and thrown to the ground and picked up and thrown to the ground, get up, get up, no, and they hit me again. And I was shocked. And that was the first time.
That sort of thing was happening more and more. So instead of them coming up to me and saying, do 10 pushups, they were slugging me or they were slugging someone else that was being punished in front of us. Suddenly, they were allowed to do whatever the hell they wanted to. When Julie was 12 years old, she found a letter on the desk of one of the demonstrators. It was a list of names, and hers was on it.
More kids were going to be sent to Tamales Bay, where they were going to form something called the Girls and Boys Corps. Chuck decided what was good for the punks was good for all the children. Julie. And the other kids on that list packed their bags. Lauren Robinson, host of the new podcast, The Women's Hoop Show. Each episode, I'll be joined by a rotating group of women's basketball experts to talk WNBA.
college hoops the new unrivaled league and the shifting landscape of the sport the game is growing and so are we listen to and follow the women's hoop show and odyssey podcast available now for free on the odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts College holds a mythic place in American culture. It's often considered the best four years of your life and hailed as a beacon of integrity and excellence.
But beyond the polished campus tours, there are stories you won't find in the admissions pamphlets. The higher-ups are concerned about one thing, and that is avoiding scandal. It's no wonder that college campuses capture the nation's attention. especially in moments of upheaval. I'm Margot Gray.
Each week on the Campus Files podcast, we bring you a new story. It was the biggest academic scandal in the history of college sports and probably in the history of academia. On Campus Files, we cover everything from rigged admissions. to the drama of Greek life. A chancellor having a pornographic double life is an extremely rare case. Listen to and follow Campus Files, an Odyssey original podcast. Available now on the free...
And wherever you get your podcasts. Our schedule was basically exercise. And then in the morning and afternoon, we were assigned to a specific area to do work. I was often assigned to work in the kitchen. We would work the whole morning and lunch, and then we'd go back and finish at dinner. Julie is describing her daily routine in the girls' corps in Tamales Bay. We were woken up about 5 o'clock in the morning, being told to run somewhere.
sometimes up enormous mountains. I would get out of breath while they yelled at me. I can't. I can't get my breath. I can't. I couldn't breathe. I was like, forget this, I'm stopping. I was not able to participate in things and accepted being punched instead because I simply couldn't do them. Here's Selena Whitman.
who you heard in the first episode when her mom brought her to Synanon and she had her head shaped. There were a lot of situations like that where a kid just really couldn't keep up and they were forced to... something that they really didn't have the strength for. Buddy Jones was in charge of most of our physical education. He was on the tall side.
He was in very good shape. He was quite muscular. There were times that he would laugh and have fun with the kids, and kids enjoyed being with him, but he could also be very intimidating. And if he did get angry with you, it was scary. He had this thing where if a kid acted up, he would knock them on their butt. you know, push that kid really hard and they would fly back and wind up on the floor. He did it to me once. I remember being really scared as he walked up to me and pushed me down.
I thought Buddy Jones hated me because any interaction I had with him, he was hitting me or yelling at me. He was very kind to certain children. I observed him with other people. and they would be having a reasonable conversation. But for someone like me, every interaction that I had with him was calling me to a chair to be spanked, or he's slamming me across the face. I began thinking about ways that I could leave. In Synanon, there was a term for that. If you leave the community, you split.
Splitting usually means leaving in the middle of the night and walking either up mountain or walking down to the Sinon entrance, but there was a guard there. So it wasn't always safe. You know, how do you split? There was a way to run away if you knew where you were going and if you were savvy enough. The Gambonini Ranch was across from Walker Creek. It was roughly a mile and a half from the ranch down where we were.
We had been told the Gammoninis would kill us. They would torture us before they killed us. I mean, the stories would change about how vicious and crazy the Gammoninis were. And we were afraid. One thing Julie knew for certain is what would happen if she was caught splitting by Synanon. We were at the afternoon meeting. You had most of the kids from the girls' corps, boys' corps.
And then really just all the Synodon residents that happened to be at Tomales. And Buddy Jones and Rod Mullen were up in the front. Rod Mullen was one of the key people that was there. He was the head of all the basic training and the punk squads. So two boys were in a truck. We were told that they had ran away and they had been caught. So they were brought to this meeting and taken out of the truck, and they were viciously beaten. Punching in the face, kicking.
They fall. They get kicked again. I couldn't believe what was happening. I mean, I'm scared. I don't want to be a part of this. I want to go to a real school. Fuck this. Why am I here? Why am I being treated so badly? I totally did not understand. And yet it kept getting worse and worse. Selena remembers how one young girl was treated when she was caught trying to split. I remember being roughly awakened very early in the morning. You know, it was still dark out.
and told to get dressed. Then we were told to sit on the floor, and I saw that a lot of the adults had been woken up from their dormitories. They were separate from us, sitting on chairs. Seemed like there were 100 adults and 50 or 60 of us kids. And then I saw one girl standing by herself. One of the men came and announced to us that she had tried to run away and that they had found her. They had also called her father. He came running out.
and screamed at her, you know, how dare you try to run away tonight? I'm ashamed that you're my daughter. And they specifically... wanted him to paddle her in front of everyone. And he just kept hitting her and hitting her. And he was hitting her so hard like he had to hold her, you know. so that she wouldn't fall forward and fall on her knees. To have your parent strike you rather than just a demonstrator and so public, that was just...
Horribly humiliating. It was just heartbreaking to watch. Also just really scary. I was probably close to nine years old at that time, but... There were really small children sitting there. I remember there was a little girl that was sitting next to me and she was like kind of trembling and leaning into me because it was a really scary scene. Finally...
He stopped, and the other man who had initially made the announcement that she had tried to run away lifted up her arm to show that a victory had been made. and everybody started to clap, not us kids, but the adults. Pretty soon, people were shouting and cheering as if we were at some sporting event. He let her arm drop to her side, and she just stood there. She looked really broken. Then an announcement was made that if...
Any of us kids were thinking about running away. Next time, it was going to be worse. Violence became a part of everyday life for the kids in Synanon, along with exercise and military discipline. Julie struggled with all of it. She struggled just as much playing the Synanon game. Being a good game player was part of being a good Synanon person. So other than being good at your work, following the Synanon rules, you know, being helpful to the community, you got status through the game.
It was something we were taught. We learned strategy about the game, how to use strategy to help get things done. So you'd have a strategy of how you were going to put the game on so-and-so. I'm going to put the game on you because you are the worst friend I've ever had. And then everybody else says, yeah, you're a fucking asshole too.
The people that were exceptional in playing the game, who knew how to make the game funny, who knew how to make it interesting, they knew how to make people cry, were always giving kudos. The game was very hard for me because everyone's staring at each other. I didn't like talking in front of a group of 10 people. I frequently turned my chair around and I would just stare straight ahead.
There's a picture of me turned around in a Synodon game, so I'm facing a wall and I have my hands up like I'm gonna be punching. So I would get punished repeatedly for not playing the game, not speaking in a single game. Julie was put in the punk squad as a punishment. Her days were filled with even more intense exercise and physical labor. There was no education in the punk squad. Chuck even said,
Teaching them is ridiculous. Don't teach them anything. Teaching is a privilege. Being in the punk squad, I had reached kind of rock bottom. Every morning I woke up and said, I want out of here. At midnight on her 14th birthday, Julie and two other girls ran away from Synanon. We ran from the Tomales facility and we went by the Gammonini farm. The lights were on, the dogs were barking. There was a woman saying, please, if you need help, come in, please, if you need help.
But we were too afraid because we had always been told that Gamadini had been known to kill people that left Synanon. And we arrived in Petaluma early in the morning and walked right into the police department. We were asked what happened and they, Synanon, and everybody's eyes rolled up because they'd seen a lot of Synanon people coming through. And the other girls had a plan. They had someone they could call.
And I didn't know who to have them call. I didn't see that I had help from anyone. I just knew that I wanted out. The only person Julie could think to call was her mom. She picked Julie up at the police station. And then... She brought her back to Synanon. Julie was made to perform humiliating tasks, like cleaning up feces in a pig pen using a carrot and a cup. Her future in Synanon became a topic of discussion.
Chuck said that I needed to get my ass kicked and that if I wanted to leave Synodon so bad, they should just let me leave. Get that bitch out of here. Throw her fucking bags. And her sick-ass mother, too, they said. Unknown to me, my mom had been in communication with my father, and my father had agreed to take me. My mother...
was there with me on the side of the road at an intersection where we were going to meet up with my father. And I felt that my mom had lost her chance to ever be my mother again. So the last thing that was done as I had packed my items into the suitcase is that I was told to sit on a chair and a woman came over and shaved my head with a shaver blade. So it was down to the skin. I left officially on January 29th, 1976.
I was a contractor for 13 years after I left Sinanon, and I start just messing with wood, sanding and scraping it, and it was... Usually some old abandoned piece of wood that I just picked up and start carving on. And somehow I began to discover that even the worst pieces of wood still had a soul. This is Buddy Jones from the Punk Squad. Can this camera move? Can you see behind me? That's the last two weeks of work. This was a bush. And I scraped all the bark.
off of it and now look there's there's a little philosophy behind it which is perfection is not my goal so I just accept my wood the way it is, and when I say I'm finished, it's finished. So the wood is important to me. Maybe the real reason it's important is it doesn't talk back. If you ask Buddy, he'll tell you that his story begins in Riverside, California. But we're going to fast forward to the 1960s, when Buddy was playing football for San Diego State University.
on a team full of future NFL legends. The head coach is Don Correale and the defensive coach was John Madden. The defensive captain was Joe Gibbs, and I was the defensive co-captain. One day during a drill, Madden saw me hitting. I would hit so hard that... Madden pulled me to a side and said, Jones, you got to stop hurting people. And I said, Coach, this is football. He said, I'm talking about your teammates.
I wanted to hit anybody because by that time of my evolution, I was a black man with a chip on his shoulder. Racial tensions in America had reached a boiling point. And San Diego was a very segregated city. It was the first time in my life that someone said, why don't you go to the nigger side of town? And that didn't happen just once. It happened about three or four times and became apparent that I wasn't going to be able to find a house anywhere near the campus.
But he heard about a place called Synanon that had recently opened up in San Diego. He heard that it was all about community and equality. One Saturday, my wife and I went to their Saturday night open house. And the whole place was totally integrated. There's this new organization doing fantastic social things, and the top of it is black and white. And I wanted to be a part of that.
When you find two people that had the charisma of both Chuck and Betty, you had to be in awe. At a certain point, I was invited to move in. And that was... 1969. And I went directly to work for the school when I moved into Synanon. That was my first job. Buddy teamed up with another newcomer in the school. Rod Mullen. Rod would become the director of the entire program, including the punk squad. There were good things about the school and there were bad things about the school.
But nonetheless, there was a team of us that were pretty committed to that. And we did the best we could. Rod's path to Synanon began at the University of California at Berkeley. where he was a student activist during the height of the anti-war and free speech movements. But he noticed that many of his peers left the demonstrations and went home to their comfortable lives when the school year ended.
He didn't think that activism should be part-time. If you really want to change things in society, the protests may be part of that, but then you have to build something that addresses the issues and comes up with solutions. After graduating, Rod moved to Oakland. He studied photography and documented the impact of systemic racism in the community. He also found Synanon's facility in Oakland.
I'm meeting the same people that are in West Oakland. A lot of African-American people, poor, with addiction problems. I'm seeing like... The neighborhood itself has so many negative components that as people start getting positive, that just drags them back down again. There's this undertow. What I see in Synanon is I see the same people and they're positive and they're working together and there's racial integration and even class integration. This is something I want to be part of.
I got to try something different. We can't just go on living with the goal in life being a white picket fence and a job with mom at home raising the kids. You know, the saddest aspect. of someone's life as if there's no meaning. And I think Synanon was great at giving people a real sense of meaning. And I said I don't want to run around taking other people's pictures. I actually want to be in the picture. Once Rod arrived at Synanon, he saw the school as a place he could make a difference.
The school was really under-resourced. So there were a few adults. Newcomers would get assigned to come over and work with the kids. And they were no bueno, you know. They were not mature enough themselves to be in those positions, but we didn't have anybody else, so we had to kind of make do with what we had. And here comes this guy who is a mature adult. Buddy came into Synanon, another guy my age, and I latched on to Buddy like, you know, you're here, you know.
And here we were with our kids in this school and we made this commitment and we had a hell of a lot of work to do and we needed each other. I mean, we just kind of latched onto each other. When we put... The school, together, it was predominantly female demonstrators. But some of the younger boys were beginning to test their testosterone, you know. They were pushing back on the women.
And that was one wise decision Chuck made, which is, let's have these guys push back on some real men. And that's when we started basic training. Most of the time... The drill sergeant, his bark is bigger than his bite. But in your mind, you don't want to cross the drill sergeant. You just don't want to do that. It was just, I don't even know what the issue was, but...
Kids did something in a dormitory, so I went in the building. And I just picked a kid. I says, come outside with me. So I said, you want me to mess you up? Oh, no, John. Oh, no, no. He knew. I said, I'm going to pound on this building. Every time I pound on it, I want you to scream like a banshee hen, as if I'm just, you know.
So I would bang on this building and look like I was just really... I didn't do anything to him. I just made him scream. And he went back in, and he went along with the act. He says, okay, okay, okay, okay. So I went back and I said, anybody else want some of this? And they all were at attention, you know. All that took was just the idea of it.
We call it the father principle. When I was young, I got in trouble, and my father was going to give me a whooping, and he started to do it. And he said to me, You're not going to cry, huh, son? I said, no, sir. And I didn't back off or I didn't cry. He said, it's good. And a smile came to his face. He said, I'm very proud of you. He said, but do that again?
I'm going to treat you like a man. I didn't want that to happen. So that was the end of getting in trouble. But in Synanon, because it was such a safe community, We didn't have that kind of principle. There were certain realities our kids didn't know. They didn't know what it would be like to confront a guy like me on the street and tell me, go fuck yourself.
They didn't know what kind of response they would get. Once they ran up against it, they understood, oh, this is what happens. The first group of kids that came to us really were out of control. Those guys knew that, you know, I was pretty tough. Remember Mr. T? I pitied a man who tried to cross Buddy. The punk squad was some young guys who had just got out of hand.
didn't listen to anybody. And then there's a group of kids who came from the County Juvenile Hall. There were kids that the County Juvenile Hall couldn't handle and put in our possession. To be honest, that's where I was needed. When you have kids that have gone that far, just being tough is not enough. Just wasn't enough. So when they brought those kids in, we had to turn things up a notch.
So then not only did they get basic training, they got behavioral training. I, amongst others, said, look, we can't handle these kids. You know, we can't. Chuck said, well, here we are at the mighty synonym. We've dealt with all kinds of criminals and so forth and so on. And what? We can't handle a few teenagers.
He said, if we throw him out on the street, what's going to happen to him? Well, that's a dilemma. So let's do something. If you have to use corporal punishment to get their attention, if that's the only thing that they understand, then let's... do that. Chuck was a good salesman. Chuck realized these kids were different from the others, and they required a different approach. So he eliminated one of his two original rules. of no drinking and no violence. He said,
Every time a kid sasses you, knock him on his ass. Punched a kid in the chest. That was the corporal punishment. You know, you didn't strike their face. You didn't start beating them up. You didn't kick them. All you did was hit them and strike them in the chest, and that usually would knock a kid down. I didn't like doing that. I did it, but it wasn't me.
And those were like always the worst days in my life because I wasn't comfortable with it. This is Jeff Becker. When he was a newcomer, he was assigned to work in the punk squad. I worked for Rod at that time. I wasn't a fan. I don't want to say bad things, you know, but I was not a fan.
And I have to say honestly, I don't think I was qualified to be in that position. I had been shooting heroin two years earlier. I didn't have training working with kids. So I don't think I was qualified to put my hands on a kid. You know, they just kind of plopped me in there. And with the punk squad, you basically always had to be angry. They were kids that nobody else wanted anymore.
They basically got thrown out of everywhere else. These were kids whose parents literally dropped them off and drove away. So they were... monsters. They were horrible. You'd have this little cute kid and then you'd walk past the housing, the tent, and you'd hear him and you'd realize this kid is Satan. Corporal punishment was a reaction to a violation. It's sort of like when you see a mother bear with her cubs.
And she might keep him out of danger by knocking him over. There's usually a reason for that kind of activity. And I was involved in that. And I think that on some level, Chuck knew the difference with Rod and myself of understanding the difference between abusing a child and corporal punishment. When kids get out of line, they are knocked on their asses. That treatment turns them into woolly lambs in about a week. I practice judo, boxing, collegiate wrestling.
football, and street fighting. Okay? I could have hurt some of those kids. I mean, really hurt some of those kids. That never happened. That just never happened. Now... It may have felt like it, but it didn't. That didn't happen. It scared the shit out of them. But in terms of the kids, I think that conversation of... The difference between abuse and corporal punishment got lost somewhere. No, no, you have to understand this, my friend. We had crazy people in Sinanon.
We had people who had mental problems, serious mental problems. And we had no filtering system to say who was and wasn't qualified to work with the kids. If you were going to open up a nursery school these days, you wouldn't go down to Patton State Hospital and interview the patients. Some of those people worked out their own situations working with the kids.
I think they abused some of the kids. Buddy Jones and Rod Mullen say they were in over their heads with the punk squad. They were just following Chuck's rules. And they may not have realized it at the time, but a massive change had taken place in Synanon. That opened the door. You got people involved in the school who just were... being violent to all the kids. You make that switch to like, well, in this case, we can be violent to save these kids from a terrible fate.
But then how do you get the genie back in the box? And so that, in some ways, was the first crack in that position of nonviolence. And, of course... You know, it just went totally out of control. On March 3rd, the Marin County grand jury released a report criticizing Synanon for actions that have left people worried and uneasy. Julie Moncharch, 16, who ran away from Synanon two years ago, says she was punched and beaten and saw many others beaten.
One boy was physically beaten because he did not do the 20 push-ups that she was assigned. He was beaten. He was, you know, hit in the head and then socked in the stomach. Synanon says the grand jury's statements and Ms. Moncharsh's allegations about child abuse are lies. Julie Moncharsh was one of the first people to speak publicly about abuse in Synanon. Alvin Gambonini spoke up too, and people were starting to listen.
And they were starting to pay attention to what else was happening in Synanon. The grand jury expressed concern about Synanon's recent large weapons purchase from this gun shop in San Francisco. As Synanon... began to change from a moral society to what it became. It just felt terrible that that initial situation with the kids was an inflection point.
But if I had said, fuck you, I'm not going to do it, do I think that Synanon would not become violent? No. That was in the cards. That was where it was going. And that's where Chuck was going. There was going to be a breaking point, and that just happened to be it. But then it just went fucking crazy. Next time on The Sunshine Place. Chuck was talking about changes, and he really had this thing about the children.
And so Chuck would get on his high horse and start talking about, why do we have to have kids anyway? Chuck decides that there will be no more children born into Synanon. I felt like I was walking around Sinanon with a cigarette or a bottle of booze. You know, I was a walking enemy of the state because I had this newborn baby. He goes to extreme measures to make sure of it.
He started talking about every male in Synanon should get a vasectomy. And any woman who's pregnant will have an abortion. And my wife told me she was pregnant. Thank you for listening to The Sunshine Place, a creation and presentation of C-13 Originals, a Cadence 13 studio. Executive produced by Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, and Emily Barclay Ford. For Team Downey. Chris Corcoran and Zach Levitt of Cadence 13, and Josh McLaughlin, written and directed by Perry Kroll of C-13 Originals.
Editing by Alistair Sherman and Perry Kroll. With production and editing assistance by Chris Basil and Ian Mott. Mixing and mastering by Bill Schultz. Narrated by me, Sari Crawford. Original music by Joel Goodman. Marketing, PR, production coordination, sales and operations by Moira Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hilary Schuff, Lauren Vieira. Lucas Santrone, Sean Cherry, Lizzie Roberti, and Danny Kurtrick of Cadence 13. Cadence 13 is an Odyssey company.
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