[amykhar]

Found it. In admin/forum.php The private forums are handled as such: When a private forum is created, the script sets the permissions for everybody except admins so that they cannot see it. THEN the stupid script goes and finds all the mods and explicitly gives them access. Removing this chunk of code:

   $mods=$DB_site->query("SELECT DISTINCT moderator.userid FROM moderator,user WHERE moderator.userid=user.userid AND user.usergroupid<>6 AND user.usergroupid<>5");
    if ($DB_site->num_rows($mods)) {
      while ($mod=$DB_site->fetch_array($mods)) {
        $accessto[] = $mod['userid'];
      }
      while ( list($key,$userid)=each($accessto) ) {
        $DB_site->query("INSERT INTO access (userid,forumid,accessmask) VALUES ('$userid','$forumid',1)");
      }
    }

from admin/forum.php solves that problem.

Amy