The worst thing you will read all day

[sabotabby]

This post made me sick to my stomach. It's about a gay kid whose parents had her violently kidnapped in the middle of the night and brought to a brainwashing camp where she was abused in an attempt to turn her into some sort of Stepford wife. WWASP and Cross Creek, the facility at which this child was tortured, are apparently real things, as is the horrifyingly named Teen Escort Service. These are for-profit companies that are, unbelievably, allowed to operate.

If half of the allegations in that post are true, how are these places allowed to operate legally? Can't we round up the owners and operators of these places and put them in our own re-education camps or something?

Comments

[corwin77.livejournal.com]

I don't even know what to say to this. It makes me want to dress all in black, get supplies together, and make a rescue operation into this place to free all the gay childrens.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

I'm with you.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

That actually happens in this movie.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

Except they are wearing camouflaged fatigues with rainbow shoulder patches.

[corwin77.livejournal.com]

Not only do I want to see that movie but I would totally add a rainbow patch to my rescue uniform.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

THese places have been around for years. One wants to say "if you shut them down here they just offshore," but the governments/state governments of Mexico and Guatemala have done more about this than, say, Utah. They're effectively Black Sites for "troubled teens."

This is basically the same controversy as with Zach Stark and "Love in Action" here in TN about five years ago. The story comes back and fades. It's always welcome when these horrible places get a little attention because it usually hurts them. Love in Action doesn't operate as a teens' boot camp anymore after the state of TN sued it. (Though they counter-sued and I think even got a settlement.)

[lienne.livejournal.com]

kmfdjhdxfcgjhvgkjbhklm.

[laughingimp.livejournal.com]

That's about all I've got, too. o_O

[flummoxicated.livejournal.com]

How IS that legal? Especially the kidnapping part? According to some comments there, kids try to cause a scene going through security, but the captors always are able to explain the situation and are allowed to go.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's the wrong kind of scene; "These guys have a bomb in their bag!"

Good kids don't do that, though.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

:(

I hate people.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

fuck

[nichtsda.livejournal.com]

I've read a lot of these stories, unfortunately. I was curious after seeing a segment about a teen who collapsed in the early 90s in the Challenger program and have been collecting information (for the project you've been following) for a while now. I almost wrote an LJ rant about these programs after a night of gathering more information simply because fact that they continue to exist, despite a notorious history, makes me extremely angry.

As S_J said, the offshore countries where WWASPs operates some of their schools have done more regulating and investigation than the US. The government of Costa Rica shut down Dundee Ranch after reports of abuse by staff. WWASPS also had a program in the Czech Republic that was shut down. But their American programs are going strong, as is their most infamous offshore program, Tranquility Bay in Jamaica.

The tuition for a program like Tranquility Bay is that of a year at an expensive private college, so this program definitely is profitable for Ken Kay and his cronies -- I can't imagine what else the $40K the parents pay goes into -- they cut corners on everything, including food, education, healthcare -- in Jamaica, many children sleep on the concrete floor, so they don't even buy beds.

Above all, these places frequently get away with levels of abuse and neglect, up to and including death, that a parent would go to prison for inflicting. If a parent marches their own child into the deserts of Utah and refuses to give them water and mocks them when they collapse, we'd lock them up and call them monsters. But if a company like VisionQuest or Challenger does it, oh well, the parents knew the risks when they put their kid in the program. Then they find some kid who's willing to say the program was good and saved him from a lifetime of delinquency.

And the programs often do advise parents to pay a service to kidnap their children and force them to get in the van or on the plane. That's a standard detail of most survivor stories. Again, kidnapping and coercion of a minor under any other circumstances is illegal, but this is capitalism, so it's cool, I guess.

These private detention centers -- or state-run boot camps, which are just as bad -- are set up on the premise of helping troubled children, but appear to be staffed from the top down with people who hate children.

[snarkitysnarks.livejournal.com]

Whoop, lost my lunch forever.

Utah has its own special world within the US, which may explain the continued operation of shitholes like that. They had enough influence and money to affect Prop 8 over here in California, so you gotta figure they know how to run things that are questionable shades of legal.

Unrelated, but of possible interest to you

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

Re: Unrelated, but of possible interest to you

[sabotabby]

This! Saved forever!

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's because I work for a lawyer, but after mulling the possibilities of breaking into these places like the ALF breaks into research labs, my next thought was what about a class action lawsuit? I wonder if that's been tried....it would need a few kids who've gone through this and a kick ass team of lawyers...