Synanon demanded the children — and Milton and Sandy walked out instead

What this is

Synanon began as a storied rehabilitation community and devolved, by the late seventies, into a dangerous cult — the era of the four-foot rattlesnake placed in the mailbox of an attorney working with the Point Reyes Light during that small newspaper's Pulitzer-winning investigation. Milton Jonathan Hare met Sandy Rogers there, in Marin County; and the breaking point, per the family record, was the cult's mandate that children be permanently separated from their parents into a communal ‘hatchery.’ Sandy already had Cassie. They refused, and moved off the ashram around 1983–84. A family that chose its children over its community, in an era when the community had snakes: the full chapter.

Connected from here

There is no single root. This is one view of the graph, from this node — what you see depends on where you enter and what you are looking for.

Where this came from

Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.

What is missing, and how to fix it

This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.

• The Synanon years' dates, as the family recalls them