Category Archives: Alcoholics Anonymous

10 years later

(I’m not using “preferred pronouns” because I think that is confusing.)

It’s ten years later and I figured I’d give an update.

Samaritan Counseling has still not acknowledged any of my complaints or the criminal conviction or death of James Garrett, LCSW

In 2016, after being banned forever from Samaritan Counseling, I got a message that a girl named Frank wanted to be my friend. That was the beginning of a strange journey. S/he is dead now, but I met and had many conversations with Frank/Ava about Oona Edmands’ therapy and David Olsen’s (executive director) strange behavior.

It started to make me very uncomfortable. After all, I wasn’t even allowed to talk to a therapist and I was becoming this person’s “therapist” about the same state licensed therapist.

Frank/Ava would text me all the time to tell me how unprofessional Oona was acting and even though s/he had been in therapy for decades; s/he had never seen anything like it.

Obviously there is a lot more to the story, most of which I don’t know, but I can say, based on my interactions with Frank/Ava, Samaritan is a shit show to this day, and it’s not getting better.

But the reality is there will always be scam artists. Watch the shows about Twin Flames and other cults. Samaritan Counseling will get away with it too, for now.

OASAS on how to avoid feelings

Here you see another attempt by NYS OASAS to explain away sexual misconduct without ever even mentioning or acknowledging the 12-step cult that is so very central to the whole situation.

So many counselors and clients are victims of this “feeling shaming”. The reality is that people feel most strongly when something is very wrong. You’re simply not allowed to say “AA is bullshit” as an OASAS licensed professional, and a client is not allowed to say that either without some kind of treatment consequence.

It is telling that OASAS cannot seem to mention the 12-step program that is at the core of the organization and so fraught with problems.

I do like this video because they talk about many of the issues I care about, except for the most important one, which is 12-step programs being accepted as legitimate, tax funded mental health care and the role of 12-step in sexual abuse patterns. OASAS is a 12-step organization from top to bottom.

Comments are not allowed, of course. If they really wanted an open conversation, they’d allow comments.

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Oona Edmands is sorry… but not for Samaritan (Solihten) Counseling’s 12-step Coercion

In response to the Shambala sexual harassment issue, Oona Edmands says:

“I believe you completely. […] I am sorry that I have been a leader in a bystander group and that this group that has not had the courage to come forward and offer empathy, which has made my attempts to be an ally confounded by my ties. I have publicly cut those ties. I am sorry that I have parroted the language of devotional enabling that keeps people in these high demand groups and encourages them to give their power, money and time away. I will continue to speak out and use my influence in my community to raise awareness. I wish you healing.” von Oona Edmands 8.2.2019

I wish she would say the same to me. I lost faith in religion and basic human decency when I was terminated by Oona Edmands, who is a leader in the Nyingma cult (aka “Buddhism”).

She has not acknowledged the psychological abuse and medical fraud of the 12-step cult detailed on this website. She has not acknowledged the fraud scheme she forced me into, which led to great suffering, suicidal ideation and bankruptcy. She has not publicly cut ties with the 12-step organization, but has rather supported David Olsen’s and Jenness Clairmont’s cult-like excommunication of me from any further communication with Samaritan/Solihten Counseling Centers and flippant deletion of any complaints.

I wish Oona Edmands would acknowledge James Garrett’s criminal conviction and the psychological abuse of the 12-step industry.

My last memories of Samaritan Counseling are of Oona Edmands laughing at me while I tried to explain the fraud, Jenness Clairmont telling me on the phone that she would not be meeting me to discuss James Garrett’s records, and David Olsen telling me that my complaints were not going to be included in my medical records, while his 12-step referrals were.

You are wasting your time, money, and power at Samaritan (Solihten) Counseling.

Avoid Samaritan (Solihten) Counseling During the COVID-19 Crisis

Samaritan Counseling Centers are offering telehealth counseling during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus crisis.

Please be very careful about accepting ‘addiction treatment’-related services from Samaritan Counseling. The ‘treatment’ they offer is a fraud scheme.

This site, notpowerless.com has documented YEARS of fraud and neglect that could be easily remedied but hasn’t been for very suspicious reasons.

Samaritan Counseling Executive Director David Olsen and Clinical Director Jenness Clairmont instead banned me from all communications with a nationwide network of ‘professionals’. LCSW Oona Edmands has completely neglected her duty as a mandated reporter.

No one at Samaritan Counseling has ever acknowledged the criminal conviction or death of James Garrett, the creator of the 12-step ARISE Intervention who I was repeatedly required to pay over and over again during 6+ months of ignored complaints to Samaritan Counseling.

I made this website hoping that nobody will have to go through the hell that Samaritan Counseling put me through. Involuntary hospitalizations, social shunning, medical fraud and bankruptcy.

Samaritan Counseling seems to have believed that I deserved this kind of treatment for pointing out that Alcoholics Anonymous is an abusive religious cult and that the rehab industry is a scam. They have not acknowledged simple facts, because they are obsessed with profit and religion.

David Calvin Olsen PhD makes over $175K/year at Samaritan Counseling

David Olsen, the 12-step sex therapist/pastor who has banned me from any contact with a nationwide network of state-licensed therapists, makes more money than any other Samaritan Counselor. It is not clear that his subordinates are even aware that his 12-step partner and ARISE Network founder James Garrett was charged with multiple felonies and pleaded guilty to a crime. Jenness Clairmont, the Clinical Director of Samaritan Counseling, who now works as ‘Forest Clinical Services’ and Oona Edmands LCSW seem to have no awareness of the crimes as David Olsen has forbidden all communications.

davidolsen income

Guidestar 990

The Samaritan Institute (Samaritan Counseling) is now known as Solihten Institute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solihten_Institute

Just so nobody gets confused, Solihten Institute, Inc. is the same organization that this entire website is about. Changing the name doesn’t fix the problem.

http://notpowerless.com/samaritan-institute-a-difficult-complaint-process/

Jenness Clairmont, the Clinical Director of Samaritan Counseling and board member of the NYS Office of Professions at the time my complaints were continuously ignored and James Garrett was charged with five felonies and pleaded guilty to a reduced crime, now does business as ‘Forest Clinical Services‘. She has never acknowledged the criminal conviction or any of my complaints about ARISE Network 12-step coercion.

David Olsen, the Executive Director of Samaritan Counseling is a sex therapist/pastor who supervised Oona Edmands and has banned me from all communications with any of his employees.

Oona Edmands is a licensed social worker in NYS despite the fact that she was involved with serious criminal activity at Recovery Resource Center (James Garrett) and has refused to acknowledge complaints related to his ‘treatment’ over the course of 6+ months.

HHS Conscience and Religious Freedom Division Closes Case Against Samaritan Counseling Director David Olsen One and a Half Years Later

Again, HHS has dismissed clear evidence of malpractice, this time a year and a half after the complaint was filed.

HHS_response_6_12_19a

HHS_response_6_12_19b

Notpowerless.com will continue to publicize the complete lack of accountability at Samaritan Institute counseling centers to HIPAA laws and 1st Amendment rights. Any state-licensed social workers who require 12-step participation are violating basic social work ethics and patient privacy laws. This misconduct goes unaddressed and unacknowledged by the state agencies, whose job it is to protect people from unethical and predatory practices of businesses like Samaritan Counseling and most NYS OASAS providers. Instead, it seems that the state agencies are protecting corrupt businesses from being required to take simple and reasonable corrective actions.

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2019/05/02/hhs-announces-final-conscience-rule-protecting-health-care-entities-and-individuals.html

NYS OASAS Needs some SERIOUS Investigation

UPDATE May 2020 “I’m not looking for all kinds of heads to roll. I just want someone to say, we messed up, we’re responsible, this is how we’ve changed things.”

“four days after Walls entered the facility no one ever heard from him again. Wondering why he hadn’t called, his aunt visited the center on Dec. 9 to see him in person and was told he had packed all his stuff and left five days earlier, said Ketter-Walls. Surprised and worried, his family and friends began asking around town for him. Did he relapse and was hiding out? Did he overdose and die? They called morgues and hospitals. They checked local drug hangouts. They visited a Burger King he frequented and showed his picture to staff. Nothing.

“On Jan. 11, 39 days after the family last spoke to Walls, a pest control worker entered his room at the Hudson Mohawk center and found a badly decomposed body on the bed. It was Walls. He had been there the whole time….

“…Ketter-Walls said her family met this winter with a local Department of Social Services employee, who said they were surprised to hear Walls had died since the center was still receiving state reimbursement for his stay into the month of February — nearly two months after he died.”

Undiscovered for 39 days: State probes recovery center death
Justice Center, Inspector General’s office review incident at Troy site

NYS Finally Closes LCSW License for ARISE Intervention Creator James Garrett

http://www.nysed.gov/coms/op001/opsc2a?profcd=73&plicno=020876&namechk=GAR

deceased

Oh, what a tangled web! They started by telling me I wasn’t being forced into AA, and through a snowball of lies ended up denying that this guy was dead or that he wrote the book on how to force people into AA. It wasn’t until the state police got involved that NYS Office of Professions even acknowledged knowing he passed away, and then it took more effort to get them to update public records, which they did not think was important.

NYS Office of Professions and ARISE Network still suggest that this may not be the author of Invitational Intervention and have not confirmed that he indeed wrote that book and was charged with five felonies. NYS OASAS has not explained why there is no record of him ever having a NYS CASAC license online. I think that there was an attempt to quietly remove him from OASAS records. He was a licensed CASAC before the felony charges and my complaints.

“Your Clinical Relationship with Samaritan Counseling has Ended”

After I got my records from James Garrett, in the hope to speak to Jenness Clairmont, Clinical Director of Samaritan Counseling, about it (she told me she’d speak to me after I got those records)…minutes later, while I was driving home from James Garrett’s office, I got a call from her saying that ‘your clinical relationship with Samaritan Counseling is over’. She said Samaritan would not be communicating with me anymore. I asked if I could send a letter, and she said I could, but that they would not respond to it.

I was effectively a non-person to Samaritan Counseling from that point on.

It is not clear what James Garrett told her, but records show that he told my therapist Oona Edmands to keep ‘clear boundaries’ because I was ‘not following [my] side of the contract’, and ‘confirmed’ my “Axis 2″ behavior [Axis 2 means ‘personality disordered or mentally retarded’]. Interestingly, though, he was at the time charged with five felonies by state police for fraud, and it has since become clear that his whole career is based on the ARISE Intervention, which involves the social network of an ‘addicted individual’ to create ‘consequences’ for not going to a (often very expensive) 12-step rehab or attending 12-step meetings, supposedly for their own good. In these programs, the individual is advised to publicly ‘admit’ problems with honesty, character defects, powerlessness, insanity and selfishness, and to ‘surrender’ to a ‘higher power’. In my opinion, it is not a personality disorder or mental retardation to question this kind of arrangement.

Any use of aversive conditioning, such as this intentional infliction of ‘consequences’ such as total shunning (which could also be considered willful neglect), has been recognized by NYS OMH as abuse, and is supposed to be reported to the NYS Justice Center. Social shunning is a form of psychological torture and Samaritan Counseling “the relationship specialists” are well aware of this. I still don’t understand why licensed mental health workers do not see the AA program as psychologically abusive in itself, or why forcing someone to go to those programs as a condition of therapy is not considered in itself an egregious mishandling of transference.

Samaritan Counseling has not responded to any communications since then, except to tell me that my complaints aren’t ‘technically’ a part of my clinical record, despite my HIPAA request for amendment of them to my records. They have, in fact, contacted Yelp to remove my reviews citing ‘privacy concerns’. Jenness Clairmont still practices at http://forestclinicalservices.com/ and is a board member of the NYS Office of Professions.