The Quest For Perfection (Is A Damn Fine Thing)

Part III: The Flooding of Fredrick Street - Chapter 19

III

The Flooding of Fredrick Street

Extract from The Investigative Standard, November 12th 2013

THE TRIAL OF THE FREDRICK STREET EXPERIMENTS

The courts today will continue to hear the case against The Wells Foundation with regard to the Fredrick Street experiments, conducted by the organisation on the island of St. Kilda.

The alleged experiments took place between 2009 & 2011, which claimed the lives of 10 out of the 12 participants. One of the survivors, Sarah Barr (the other surivovr has requested to remain anonymous) will today testify in court against The Wells Foundation.

Ms Barr, 39, has also claimed the organisation are responsible for the deaths of at least 50 employees after the facility in which they were kept on St. Kilda was flooded.

Whilst The Wells Foundation have confirmed there was an incident of flooding within their island facility (which they purchased in 2005), there was no loss of life as the facility was monitored remotely with a skeleton crew on the island. They have also reported that the work they are doing on the island has been solely related to measuring the fluctuating changes of the weather that has been reported around the island, in order to better understand climate change.

A spokesperson for the organisation has declined to comment on the allegations by Ms Barr or the ongoing trial.

Transcript of Interview with Ray Samson. August 26, 2015. Conducted by J.P. McNair.

As Ray told me the story, light had faded and the place had gotten a little busier. We paused as he helped clear a queue of hill walkers who'd stopped in.

There was a fire crackling now, and I felt warm from the beer. The story, or Ray's side of it, was unsettling and I knew we were coming up to the difficult part. My mind was reeling with what I'd uncovered. I knew about The Wells Foundation and had reached out for comment but had heard nothing back. Now I knew why.

Ray re-joined me, with another beer for both of us.

"Sorry about that, it's hiking season."

I waved his apologies away. Despite everything he'd told me, and the part he'd had to play in what happened, I liked Ray. I could tell Sarah did too, otherwise she'd have given him up to someone more important than an author writing a book.

"Are you getting what you were looking for?" he asked.

More than I thought you would give me, if I'm honest.

Ray laughed. "It's pretty unbelievable, at first. I can't believe some of it myself."

What I can't get over is the extent of it.

He nodded. "It was a massive operation. We couldn't believe it ourselves."

One thing I haven't asked, you or Sarah, was how the participants were found?

"Now that, that was a particularly clever thing they did. Rather than finding people who were in jail or something, or kidnapping people, they advertised it."

They advertised it?

"They advertised it. I can't remember the exact wording but it was basically along the lines of 'Looking for a second chance for a new tomorrow? Join The Wells Foundation today.' Some cheesy bullshit like that."

And it worked?

"You bet it worked. The response was unbelievable. People applied in their droves, detailing why they deserved a second chance with essays or videos of themselves telling their story. It was like X-Factor auditions being submitted to Frankenstein. The only thing they didn't read was the small print. They didn't know what they were getting themselves into. And neither did we."