Contentious Founder Of Synanon Dies At First Praised Nationally, Dederich’s Image Tarnished

Charles Dederich Sr., the founder of Synanon who was first praised nationally for his drug and alcohol rehabilitation results but later reviled for mind control and violence including conspiracy to murder a lawyer with a rattlesnake, has died. He was 83.

Dederich, who started the controversial group in Santa Monica, Calif., died Friday in Visalia, Calif., of heart and lung failure.

Dederich came to California in the 1950s, an alcoholic and a loser. He left behind a strict German Catholic upbringing in Ohio, an aborted career at Notre Dame, two broken marriages and a series of jobs.

Dederich rented a small apartment near the beach, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and sobered up, and underwent a controlled LSD experience at UCLA. Somewhere along the way he realized he had power over others. Admirers began drifting to his place to drink soup and listen to his mesmerizing advice about abandoning “dumb” addictions to drugs and alcohol.

Using his $33 relief check for financing, Dederich rented a store-front in 1958 and tacked up a sign, “TLC” for the Tender Loving Care Club. Fifteen people lived there together under his tutelage.

The group was renamed Synanon (a corruption of the word “symposium”) and within a year moved to a large brick building in Santa Monica, Calif.

Dederich’s Synanon irked neighbors and earned him 25 days in jail for running a “hospital” in a residential area.

But his detoxification results also attracted favorable national publicity. With publicity came more followers and support funds, and even litigation enabling him to pursue his operation amid objecting neighbors.

Dederich preached only three rules - no drugs, no alcohol and no violence.

He invented detoxification therapy known as the “game” or “symposium” - a lengthy group encounter which included his caustic, profane and aggressive verbal attacks. Dederich called it tough love.

Wealthier drug and alcohol abusers with profitably professional careers joined, often turning over their entire assets to Dederich. Synanon launched its own businesses, starting simply with a service station and an auto-repair business, to make more money.

The organization became a $30 million, nonprofit, tax-exempt (revoked by a federal court in 1984) business owning vast California real estate and 450 vehicles, planes and boats. Chapters sprang up in San Francisco and Tulare and Marin counties in California, Detroit, and even Germany and Malaysia.

But in the late 1960s, Dederich became more controlling, strongly urging that members divorce themselves from past families and life outside Synanon and devote sole loyalty and property to him. In 1974, Dederich declared Synanon a religion.

But the organization’s sterling image was tarnishing under suits filed by ex-Synanon recruits who challenged Dederich’s dictatorial rule. Violence became acceptable to ensure loyalty or punish those who opposed him. Guns and munitions were stockpiled and members dubbed the Imperial Marines were trained in martial arts.

Dederich felt freer to dictate lifestyles. Taking a wife half his age for himself, he started arranging “love matches,” urging members to dissolve existing marriages and choose new partners for three-year pairings.

Then came the snake incident. Attorney Paul Morantz, who had successfully represented two former Synanon acolytes in civil suits against Dederich, was bitten by a live rattlesnake that had been placed in his mailbox.

Morantz survived and Dederich and two followers pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit murder, and the Synanon leader was sentenced to five years’ probation and fined $5,000.

The plea bargain also required Dederich to give up control of Synanon.