GOP Mega-Donor: How Dare You Accuse Us Of Making Kids Stand In Manure; All We Did Was Break Their Arms
Submitted by Roy Temple on Wed, 06/14/2006 - 7:26am.
Charles N. Sharpe is a very connected Republican player. His lobbyists in the Capitol include former GOP Chair Woody Cozad. In fact, Sharpe used to pay for Cozad's tirades on the radio.
According to the Associated Press, Sharpe has now filed a lawsuit against various public employees because they acted to protect the interests of children that were residents of Sharpe's Heartland Academy.
Sharpe delivered a defense of the practices at Heartland that will undoubtedly be used as a case-study in PR classes around the country for generations to come:
Sharpe issued this vehement denial:
Sharpe said Tuesday that the school required some students to shovel manure but never made them stand in it, a claim he called "an outrageous lie."
But then made this startling admission:
Sharpe said the only harm to students in 10 years was when staff members placed two out-of-control students in a "clamp" or restraining device and broke their arms. Another student had his ear drum punctured in a confrontation with a staff person that got out of hand, he said. {emphasis added}
Given the choice, I am sure those students would have chosen to stand hip-deep in manure with their arms and ear drums intact.
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0716-05.htmPublished on Sunday, July 15, 2001 in the Binghamton (NY) Press & Sun-Bulletin
Tough Love Shouldn't Be Deadly
by David Rossie
Excerpt
It should come as no surprise that in a country enamored of the death penalty so many people still think that you can beat goodness into a wayward child.
Earlier this month the wire services and television carried stories about a 14-year-old boy serving time in an Arizona "boot camp" who had died after allegedly being forced to eat dirt. ...
At about the same time the Arizona camp's story was unfolding, The New York Times ran a story about a similar, albeit slightly more sophisticated, gulag run by an evangelical zealot in Missouri. The Heartland Christian Academy in Newark, Mo., is the brainchild of Charles Sharpe, a retired insurance company executive and self-appointed instrument of God.
Children who are sent to Heartland, according to The Times story, don't have to ingest filth. All they have to do is stand in it.
Heartland's penchant for Old Testament-style behavior modification techniques came to light when it was revealed that 11 inmates, ages 13 to 17, had been marched into concrete basins filled with liquified cow manure and forced to stand there for varying lengths of time.
At least that is how witnesses who complained to the Lewis County Sheriff's Department saw it. Sharpe saw it differently. The messy miscreants, Brother Sharpe explained, were simply part of a work detail.
"A group of little men thinks they can stop God?" Sharpe was quoted in The Times story. Obviously the sheriff didn't know who he was dealing with. What's most appalling about the story is that of the 11 children who were rescued from Heartland's manure pits and sent home, eight were shipped right back by their parents. That says a lot about why the kids were sent there in the first place.
Sharpe and others of his ilk argue that most of the kids who go through these tough love type programs come out changed. That's probably true. But changed into what?
