Dundee's Future Uncertain / News Article

[Carey]

http://www.ticotimes.net/newsbriefs.htm

Dundee's Future Uncertain

Tough-Love' Program
Center of Firestorm
By Tim Rogers
Tico Times Staff
trogers@ticotimes.net

As the dust settles after a week of rioting and violent upheaval at Dundee Ranch Academy, hidden in the backwoods of the Pacific-slope town of Orotina, questions are being raised about the future of the controversial behavior modification facility and the government's handling of last week's interventions.

Dundee Ranch, a member of the Utah-based
WorldWide Association of Specialty Programs
WWASP), was closed indefinitely on Saturday by
U.S. owner Narvin Lichfield, who was jailed for 24
hours last week on allegations of detaining minors
against their will, coercion and international rights violations.

The arrest culminated a week of chaos sparked by Prosecutor Fernando Vargas, who visited the
"tough-love" academy with a judge and government officials last week and told the 200 students
they did not have to stay there against their will. Many students rioted, committing acts of violence and vandalism, and 35 ran away (TT, May 23).

Lichfield was released from jail Friday at midnight on condition he not go near the academy until all the students have left, and not leave the country for six months. His Costa Rican wife, Flory Alvarado, is under the same court order (TT Daily Page, May 26).

By week's end, all the students haleft the country for their homes in the U.S. or to WWASP's notoriously tough facility in Jamaica. Both
Lichfield and WWASP president Ken Kay denied knowledge that some former Dundee students had
been shipped off to Jamaica, but, according to parents, more than a dozen youths from the Costa Rica program are now at the Tranquility
Bay facility on the Caribbean island.

Kay, despite his claims of ignorance, sent a private letter to Dundee parents last week
recommending that their children be sent either to Jamaica or one of two other similar WWASP programs (TT, May 23).

Inspector Curtis Jones of the Jamaican Tourist Police told The Tico Times Tuesday he had already received reports of children shipped to the WWASP program on his island and was planning to visit the remote facility next week to investigate.

Lichfield, who compares himself to Joan of Arc, told The Tico Times this week that he hopes to
work out a legal agreement with Costa Rican authorities about what he "can and can't do" and
reopen Dundee within the next two months. The Child Welfare Agency (PANI) last week issued a report notifying Dundee that it had to make 15 critical changes if it hoped to get legal and remain open (TT, May 23).

However, Lichfield admits that it is still too soon to predict the fate of his correctional facility here, or whether he will face criminal charges for rights abuse.

"I am scared crapless," he told The Tico Times this week. "I am afraid because they are going to
try and make me the poster child for rights abuses that didn't happen."

Lichfield and Dundee supporters, including many parents who fiercely defend the program,
maintain that the academy's extreme disciplinary tactics - including physical restraint and solitary confinement - are necessary for teenagers with extreme discipline and drug problems (TT, Oct. 25, 2002; Jan. 17, March 14). Lichfield reportedly paid for four former Dundee students to fly back to Costa Rica this week to give testimony about the merits of the program.

Critics of the facility, meanwhile, argue that the academy's tough-love practices bordered on rights
abuse and torture. Child advocacy group Casa Alianza last week went so far as to request
international intervention from the UN Committee on Torture.

New concerns were raised this week following allegations by several former students that
Dundee's nurses gave youths unidentified pills and injections. Upon returning home to California
last weekend, Codi, 14, told her mother she had been given "little white pills." Codi's mother told The Tico Times this week that her daughter had been instructed to take two pills "for allergies" after police brought her back following last Tuesday's breakout. On at least one occasion, her mother said, Codi reportedly took pills that made her dizzy and "walk into walls." Former Dundee student Michael Zighelboim, 17, alleges that some students were given injections
of some sort of "Valium knockoff drug" to make them sleep when they were crying at night. One
student was reportedly given such a strong dose that he stayed asleep for two days, Zighelboim
charged.

 Asked whether Dundee staff medicated the teens, Lichfield told The Tico Times this week: "I
don't know anything about it."

While Dundee's future in Costa Rica is unclear, the debate over the government's handling of the
investigation and subsequent interventions raged this week.

The Tico Times this week learned from an inside source that Prosecutor Vargas requested government intervention of Dundee before the Child Welfare Office (PANI) submitted its criminal complaint against the institution, despite initial reports that Vargas was acting on the PANI's complaint (TT, May 23).

Vargas, reportedly unaware that the PANI had been investigating Dundee for several months, based his request on an earlier complaint filed by Dundee mother Su Flowers, who came to Costa Rica last March to try to get her daughter Nicole out of the program (TT, March 14).

Flowers filed her complaint with the Prosecutor's Office May 16, according to lawyer Adelia
Caravaca. Flowers' allegations that her daughter was being held at Dundee against her will
reportedly prompted Vargas to request an immediate intervention and forced the PANI to scramble to file its own complaint before the intervention took place.

PANI technical director Ana Teresa León, who headed the PANI's investigation of Dundee and
authored the institution's report, this week admitted that that the government agency's complaint was filed Monday afternoon, apparently several hours after Vargas had asked the judge to
authorize intervention. She expressed frustration that the prosecutor hijacked a three-month-old
process headed by the PANI.

León told The Tico Times PANI had been planning a government intervention since February.
However, she said, the intervention was being coordinated carefully with other government
institutions and the U.S. Embassy.

But once Vargas set the wheels in motion, the PANI was forced to play catch-up.

When the intervention began to spiral out of control, the PANI reportedly tried to convince the 35 youths who escaped from the facility to return to Dundee - even though it had just filed a
complaint against the facility alleging, among other things, physical and emotional abuse.

"The PANI told the students they should return to Dundee because the ranch had custody of the
children, not us," León told The Tico Times this week. "The children were Dundee's responsibility,
not ours."

"The situation of any child who is in danger is the responsibility of the PANI, according to the
Costa Rican Constitution. Especially in this case, where we have children from another country
who don't speak the language and who have reportedly suffered emotional and physical damage," countered Bruce Harris, director of Casa Alianza. "There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the responsibility for caring for these kids is the PANI's."

There are also discrepancies about when the government actually began to investigate Dundee.
PANI Minister Rosalia Gil said Jan. 15 that child welfare authorities were opening an investigation
based on The Tico Times' Oct. 25 report on the facility (TT, Jan. 17). However, Gil reportedly
told the daily La Nación this week that the PANI started investigating Dundee last March. The
PANI's León, meanwhile, said this week that the investigation began in February.

Vargas, an interim prosecutor, was replaced Monday by full-time Prosecutor Marielos Alfaro. The Prosecutor's Office is still trying to gather testimony from former Dundee students - a
difficult task now that all but a few have left the country (TT Daily Page, May 26). A movement
started this week to bring some of the students back to Costa Rica to give declarations.

[Deborah]

http://www.nationalpost.com/search/site ... 9B5E7E4FAF

Teens' 'prison' closed
Schools for rebellious teenagers are accused of taking drastic, abusive measures

Excerpts:
Mrs. Slavis was so desperate, she hired escorts to take her daughter across the border and had her sedated. "I could not deal with it any more, so I arranged for the escorts to come pick her up. When you call the school, they tell you you can take your child yourself or they can give you some numbers of some escort services that have nothing to do with the school. [Her father and I] sedated her. I told her I was giving her antibiotics to have her tonsils out [but] I was giving her sedatives so she would not kick and scream. It worked and she was co-operative."

The raid on the school sparked a riot: Students who were told by authorities they were free to leave began trashing the buildings. Fernando Varjas, the Costa Rican prosecutor who oversaw the raid on the school, said Mr. Lichfield faces allegations amounting to systematic torture. He said families have told the authorities that some students were denied access to their parents, sometimes for up to a year, were hit in the face, pushed up against walls and restrained until their arm almost broke.

He said the authorities were unable to find any evidence that the facility was licensed by the Costa Rican government or that there were any staff members with professional qualifications.

Thomas Burton, a California lawyer, has filed eight lawsuits against a number of World Wide schools (not including Dundee Ranch), alleging false imprisonment and negligence, as well as misrepresentation and fraud. "You get the brochure and the video and it looks like a wholesome, happy place, an Outward Bound-type place," he said.

U.S. lawyers are also considering a class-action suit involving hundreds of families.

The U.S. Department of State recently issued a notice on the Internet about behaviour modification programs, warning parents that families typically sign a contract that gives the facilities blanket authorization to make judgments about their child's health and welfare.

In Mr. Burton's lawsuits, he names multiple defendants, including WWASPS, various individuals, escort services and Teen Help, which markets WWASPS programs. One suit claims that a child was taken from his home in the middle of the night and later moved to a jungle compound as part of a facility in Samoa, where it is alleged staff taped the boy's jaw shut with duct tape and put him in chains for three days.

The documents allege defendants promised parents a commission of one month's free enrolment, or cash, for new recruits and that seminars for parents were used to "blunt expected criticism from their children" and "convert them into unwitting supporters."

Karen Burnett, of Shepherdsville, Ky., who pulled her 17-year-old son, Nathan, out of Dundee Ranch after four months, said she became concerned when she noticed parents speaking "with a sameness" about the program. She said they would dismiss concerns about the treatment of students.

Like other parents, she found the school on the Internet. Mrs. Burnett, a housewife, used her inheritance to pay the bills, hoping her son would get help for his drug problems. She hired an escort and never visited the school.

She said her son was put in an Out of Population room, which he told her was a 12-foot-by-12-foot concrete space where children are sent as punishment. "For most of the time, he was on his knees, hands behind his back, face to the wall, for up to 12 hours a day. In Nathan's case it was for three days." The reason for his punishment, she said, was that he had traded his medicine for candy.

She said parents are told students cannot call home until they reach "level 3" in the program. She thought it would be weeks but it became apparent it would be months. "They had him on rations. Nathan told me when you get to level 3 you get juice."

"It is really a brainwashing technique. It's to keep them hungry, keep them stressed, break them down, emotionally, psychologically, get them to admit to their crimes, then build them back up. And in the building back up process ... you rebuild it in the way you want."

She said her son was not given any counselling for his drug problems and did not receive a proper education -- she said there were no teachers and the classes were run through computers.

Jeanne Drouillard, who grew up outside Windsor, Ont., and now lives in Michigan, had similar concerns when she sent her 15-year-old daughter Elena to a WWASPS school in New York called Academy at Ivy Ridge. Elena, who was adopted, had various anger management problems but Ms. Drouillard discovered there were no qualified therapists on staff. She was told she could pay extra to hire a psychologist. When she was denied visits with her daughter for seven months, she pulled her from the program, having spent close to $25,000. Her daughter told her the school used a system of control. As punishment, she was fed only bread and cheese for days.

Roderick Hall, a child psychologist, said he has been contacted by children who have been to WWASP schools and believes they are "abusive" in the way they claim to treat students. He said one girl told him she was drugged and woke up at a school in Mexico.

"She told me they were not allowed to write to or call their parents until they buy into the program and to gain privileges they had to ridicule the new kids. They often tell the parents they are treatment centres or boarding schools. They are really neither. I think they are private prisons."

Ken Kay, the WWASPS president, said families' allegations of abuse are "highly unlikely" and said the students cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

"You have to remember the student population we deal with. They are kids that, pretty much across the board, have had problems with being truthful ... frequently that is is why they end up in our schools." He denied that schools do not have qualified teachers and said therapists are "made available." The private facilities have many happy customers, he said.

Mrs. Slavis said she had her daughter "transported" to the school in Jamaica. Tranquility Bay's Web site shows pictures of sandy beaches and children taking dance lessons, reading books, working at computers and playing guitar.

Mrs. Slavis said she still believes in the schools. "They have had 15,000 graduates. I go to seminars for the parents and I meet a lot of graduates and happy parents who are still in the program. My daughter told me when she got restrained she deserved it. And when she got sent to the isolation room or the consequence room there was always a reason for it. And now she does not get sent any more."

jsmyth@nationalpost.com
 Copyright  2003 National Post

[FaceKhan]

That may be the best description of the brainwashing and torture that goes in these gulags ever to be published in a news article.

 

_________________
No greater love hath a man, then he lay down his life for his brother, not for millions, not for glory, not for fame, for one person, in the dark, where no one will ever know or see.

[ This Message was edited by: FaceKhan on 2003-06-08 21:49 ]