Parents, Shopping for Discipline, Turn to Harsh Programs Abroad
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con ...@aol.commado (Conase)
May 9, 2003 Parents, Shopping for Discipline, Turn to Harsh Programs Abroad By TIM WEINER / NYTimes ENSENADA, Mexico ??” Ryan Fraidenburgh was 14 when he was brought here shackled, kicking and screaming.
Two men carrying handcuffs and leg irons came for him at his mother's home in Sacramento, Calif., shoved him into a van and bound him hand and foot. They drove him 12 hours south, over the Mexican border, into a high-walled compound near here called Casa by the Sea.
"It was nighttime," Ryan recalled. "I look around and I see kids sleeping on cement. I was really, really scared. The big honcho, Mauricio, said, `You don't speak English here.' I didn't know how to speak Spanish." Ryan quickly learned the rules: stay silent, be compliant, don't look up, don't look out the window, don't speak unless spoken to. The punishments for breaking the rules included solitary confinement, lying on the floor in a small room, nose to the ground, often for days on end.
Ryan was not a criminal. He was only skipping school, his parents said in telephone interviews. But in August 2000, they said, in the middle of a bitter divorce and custody battle, they decided to send him away to Casa by the Sea, which calls itself a "specialty boarding school" for behavior modification.
Like hundreds of other parents, the Fraidenburghs made their choice largely on the basis of a glossy brochure and a call to a toll-free number in Utah. They came to regret their choice.
The idea of sending a child to such a program in Mexico was unheard of a decade ago. But in the United States, behavior-modification programs and boarding schools for troubled youths have faced increasing legal and licensing challenges over the past few years.
More and more are moving abroad ??” some to Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean ??” where they operate largely under the regulation radar and where some employ minimum-wage custodians more than teachers or therapists, say government officials, education consultants and clinical psychologists.
The behavior-modification business is booming at Casa by the Sea, on Mexico's Pacific Coast, the largest of 11 affiliated programs with roughly 2,200 youths, about half of them in Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica. The programs are run by a small group of businessmen based in St. George, Utah, under the banner of the World Wide ***ociation of Specialty Programs and Schools, or Wwasps, and Teen Help, the programs' main marketing arm.
Over the past seven years, local governments and State Department officials have investigated Wwasps-affiliated programs in Mexico, the Czech Republic and Samoa on charges of physical abuse and immigration violations. The Mexican program, in Canc??n, and the Czech program closed, and their owners left those countries saying they feared unjust charges. The Samoan program cut its affiliation with Wwasps.
Ken Kay, the president of Wwasps, would not allow a reporter to visit Casa by the Sea; Dace Goulding, the program's director, declined to answer any questions. But Mr. Kay, responding to inquiries in writing from his office in Utah, said no charge of abuse had ever been proven against any of the programs in any court.
"We are about getting families back together," he said in a written statement.
"We are not for everyone, and there are very few but vociferous critics of not just us but any youth intervention." He described many of the program's critics as parents who feel they have been "manipulated, brainwashed or duped" or who are battling through divorce and taking their anger out "by making us look terrible." In telephone interviews, eight teenagers who were formerly in Casa by the Sea described a system in which the youths try to ascend six "levels" through a system of rewards and punishments, including being sent to "R and R," a small, bare isolation room, often for days on end. Discipline, not education, was the rule, they said.
For Laura Hamel, 17, of Vienna, Va., who counts herself as a success story, it was a slow two-year ascent to graduation in March. She said she was demoted from Level 3 back to Level 1 after giving a weeping, lonely friend a hug and a kiss on the cheek at Thanksgiving. Affection of that kind is forbidden.
A youth who rises to Levels 4, 5 and 6 can become a "junior staff member" and "participate in the discipline process" against lower-level youths, Casa's contract with parents says.
"The authority is in your hands," said Ryan Pink, 19, of El Paso, who reached Level 5 at Casa. "You can discipline kids. The younger kids ??” they were constantly being restrained, being punished, put in R and R for four or five days. Nose to the wall. Or nose to the ground. And at night you sleep in the hallways." Many parents and youths say the behavior-management system of discipline and punishment scares youths into sobriety and obedience. Others ??” parents and youths formerly enrolled, education experts, government authorities and a former Wwasps program director ??” say the programs profit from struggling parents unable to handle their depressed, delinquent, defiant or drug-abusing children.
"Their goal is not to help teens in crisis or their families," according to a former director of one Wwasps-affiliated program, Amberly Knight. "It is to make millions of dollars." The financial success of Casa by the Sea is evident. Its enrollment has nearly tripled, from about 200 youths when it opened in 1998 to more than 570 today, almost all American teenagers. Already among the biggest programs of its kind outside the United States, Casa by the Sea has just spun off another program for those 18 and over.
Tuition and fees at Casa by the Sea run about $30,000 a year, half of what some United States-based programs cost. Its staff members "do not need and may not necessarily have" teaching credentials, Casa's contract with parents plainly states.
Lon Woodbury, publisher of Woodbury Reports, which rates schools and programs for troubled teenagers inside and outside the United States, said one reason that American programs have moved abroad is "to avoid the laws and regulations of the States." He added, "They can hire minimum-wage staff and still charge stateside prices." Profit margins and growth within the programs run by Wwasps appear solid. Teen Help, the affiliation's main marketing arm, was the single biggest corporate campaign contributor in the state of Utah in the 2002 election cycle, donating $215,290 to Republican campaigns, according to online federal election records posted in March.
Mr. Kay, the Wwasps president, said that the proof of the programs' success is the way in which "behavior of students generally changes drastically." The organization's internal surveys, he said, proved that "more than 98 percent of the schools' parents are completely satisfied." He wrote, "No wonder these are the fastest growing Schools of their kind in the world!!!" The overseas "specialty boarding school" industry is growing so fast that United States consular officials in overseas emb***ies say they have no idea how many such programs exist.
"No authorities in Mexico control these institutions," said Elisa Ledesma, a lawyer at the American Consulate in Tijuana. Consular officers demanded and received access to several such programs in Mexico, one official said, after they "heard horror stories from parents." The consular officers have the power, under the Vienna Convention, to visit overseas programs to check on the well-being of American citizens under 18.
In January, after several such visits, the State Department issued a notice on "behavior modification facilities" in Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica. The programs may "isolate the children in relatively remote sites" and restrict their contact with the outside world, it said.
At least seven programs in Utah, Montana, South Carolina and New York are Wwasps affiliates, according to the organization's Web site; at least three have faced legal challenges. Utah state officials say they are reviewing the license of the flagship Wwasps program, Cross Creek Manor, and that a second program, Majestic Ranch, is operating without a proper license.
Six weeks ago, according to the state attorney general's office in Utah, a director of Majestic Ranch entered into a court agreement to have no unsupervised contact with children after he was charged with misdemeanor child abuse.
Attorneys for both programs contest the licensing challenges. South Carolina officials have fined a third Wwasps program, Carolina Springs Academy, $5,000 for operating without a license.
While some dissatisfied parents have sued Wwasps and its programs, the contract that parents sign with Casa by the Sea sets high hurdles for them. It states plainly that the program "does not accept responsibility for services written in sales materials or brochures" or promises made by "staff or public relations personnel" and that any dispute between a parent and the program must be settled in a Mexican court, not in the United States.
The Wwasps programs market themselves under a multitude of interlinked Web sites. Their sales personnel offer thousands of dollars in incentives to adults who recruit new youths or host Web sites advertising the programs.
Some parents said in interviews that they enrolled their children in programs they had never visited after browsing Web sites, brochures and videotapes depicting happy children in a wholesome setting.
"I sent him there sight unseen," said Patti Reddoch, of Sweeny, Tex., who considered Dundee Ranch for her son, Edmund Brumaghin, now 17, but chose Casa by the Sea instead. "The music he was listening to started getting darker and he was getting more into the drugs, and that's when I decided I needed to do something.
"So I went on the Internet and started searching around and found the Wwasp program. I contacted them and made the arrangements, and that's pretty much it.
It didn't take me any time at all." Mrs. ...
toto scarec...@wicked.witch
It seems that this began on a large scale in 1988 with Steve Cartisano though at first it was simply based in Utah and other states in the US.
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=1913 Note that Cartisano owned a Samoan reform camp after having been banned from operating any camps for teens in the US.
http://www.rickross.com/reference/teenboot/teenboot14.html One case that made National News in 1997 was the case of David Van Blarigan from Alameda County, California. He was enrolled by his parents in the Tranquility Bay School in Jamaica and forcibly taken their against his will. He was 16 at the time.
http://www.nospank.net/tranqbay.htm http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/02/cov_23feature2.html It's been happening for a long time. Dorothy ...
fern5 ...@aol.com (Fern5827)
Unfortunately, many parents are terrorized by CPS, which has intruded wrongfully into family life, and has inserted *experts* for the judgement of parents.
Newsgroup alt support child protective services.
descriptors; ACS, DHS, TDPRS, FIA, CSB, DHHS,DCF, DSS, CPA, DFS,DHR, DPSS, FCS,SRS,SCF, CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS, ISLAMIC SCHOOLS, PARENTAL RIGHTS, CPS, ADMINISTRATIVE LAW, CYS,CYF, DYFS,DFYS,DCFS,ILDCFS.
Dorothy sends in: ...
sf s...@pipeline.com
So when in doubt, just ask Dr. Phil!
toq ...@verizon.net
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the State of Utah is finally getting interested in regulating the "Behavior Modification" industry.
Better still, the new US Attorney General may be sympathetic to the idea as well.
If you want to write the Utah State Legislature in support of their measure, here's some contact info.
http://lcpdutah.org/List2005.htm http://se16.utahsenate.org/perl/spage/slead2005.pl Also, if you have personal experience with this troubled industry, you can write to Attorney General Gonzalez at: Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001 The text and web address of the Trib article are given below.
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2564302 New push for camp regulation At-risk teens: A Utah organization could see closer federal oversight By Robert Gehrke The Salt Lake Tribune WASHINGTON - President Bush's new attorney general says the Justice Department may take a more active role in oversight of boot camp programs for troubled teens.
The comments by Alberto Gonzales came in response to a question submitted by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Miller has been pressing the Justice Department unsuccessfully to investigate allegations of abuse at World Wide ***ociation of Specialty Programs (WWASP), a Utah-based chain of programs for at-risk teens.
"Mr. Gonzales' comments suggest he will be more sensitive to this serious situation than the Justice Department has been to this point," Miller said in a statement. "I will be watching carefully to ensure that he fulfills the commitments he has made in response to these questions." In his written responses to questions during his confirmation process, Gonzales said the Justice Department would work to engage states and directors of private facilities to ensure children are protected. If cases of inappropriate or abusive practices cannot be resolved, they may be referred to the Civil Rights or Criminal divisions at the department for action, Gonzales said.
Previously, former Attorney General John Ashcroft had responded to Miller's inquiries by stating that the department lacked the authority to investigate abuse allegations at private facilities.
Ken Kay, president of WWASP, said he has invited Miller's staff to visit the WWASP schools and would welcome the attorney general if he wanted to visit, but "unnecessary government intrusion is never the answer." "I, and all our affiliates, maintain that our No. 1 concern is always for the safety of our students and children in general," Kay said.
"I would be more than willing to be part of any fact finding committee with members of the [attorney general's] staff." There are seven schools in the WWASP network, including three in Utah.
One of WWASP's facilities, Majestic Ranch in northern Utah, was investigated by state officials three times last year, resulting in one conviction. Others have been shut down, including Casa By The Sea, which was closed by Mexican authorities last September.
Last week, a committee in the Utah Legislature approved a bill sponsored by Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, that would toughen state regulation of the schools.
WWASP founder Robert Lichfield, his family and business partners have given more than $1 million to politicians in the last two election cycles, including hundreds of thousands to Utah officeholders and candidates.
toq ...@verizon.net
http://www.wdam.com/Global/story.asp?S=2952277&nav=1Pw1WPXL New Abuse Claim Against Bethel Feb 15, 2005, 04:36 PM EST Email to a Friend Printer Friendly Version Another allegation of physical abuse at Bethel Girls Academy has an angry parent taking action.
"I got a call at 11:30 at night telling me they're taking my child to the emergency room because my child's wrist is swollen and they think it's broken, so when I get a call back they're telling me it's broken," says Angela Roberts.
Last Saturday, Roberts says, she received some shocking news. Officials at Bethel told her that her 16-year-old daughter Angenika injured herself after she slammed her fingers in a door and punched a wall. But Roberts says she's not buying it. She claims the school's director Herman Fountain is responsible.
"My daughter says Mr. Fountain grabbed her and took his knees and put it in my daughter's pelvis area and grabbed her wrist and pushed it all the way back until it popped," she says. "That is ridiculous." Angenika McNeil, the alleged victim, says: "He just jacked me up and he slung me into the door and that's how I got this cut on my eye and when I got into his office he put his knee into my stomach and started bending my hand back and then I jerked it away from him." Roberts has filed a complaint with the Forrest County Sheriff's Office against Bethel Academy.
But Fountain gives a different account of what happened. He says it was last Thursday, and he tried to restrain Angenika after she lashed out.
"She bit my arm right here. I've got a bruise right here," he says.
"She kicked me in the chest and in the legs and I just held her down until she calmed down." Fountain says Angenika was not injured during Thursday's incident, but instead had to be taken to the e-room Saturday after she injured herself.
"Mr. Fountain needs to pay for his actions," Roberts insists. "He needs to be put in jail for his actions. It makes no sense for a man to do those types of things to these children. I don't care what type of children they are."
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