This site goes on all night. I looked into CEDU and WWASP and one was talking about the bankruptcy of their school and the other showed me a group of schools but no mention of ASR or Wolfeboro. I don’t know all the little points of her stay but she came home very happy and wants to live in Costa Rica and do volunteer work. There was no local magistrate who ordered her to go. Her parents found the place thru friends who had a child there. I have to say that it is not abusive at all, the food was actually better than home she said and she did put on weight. They went rafting or canoing and were able to go into town for movies. They were very strict on her with her studies, which she didnt like. She was never a big academic, so I know she considered that abusive since she wanted to drop out of school and they would not let her. They took most of her clothes away from her for not being appropriate and her mum had to send new ones, which drove her bonko , her mum buys prudish type clothes.
You can expend a great deal of energy bickering about whether physical conditions can be deemed abusive or not. The physical conditions are, when all is said and done, merely symptoms and crude barometers of where the true, diabolical abuse often lies: deep in the psyche of the kids that go to these places.
I can think of camping experiences I've had where the physical conditions might meet the criteria of conditions that some might deem "abusive," but I did not consider them abusive. Why? I wasn't being brainwashed. It was
summer camp, not reprogramming.
On the other hand, there are places like ASR where
some of the kids experience conditions that can be deemed physically abusive, but some do not. Depends on the kid and the particular dynamic with personnel that are there at that given point in time, etc. etc. Something might be said about what kind of number gets done on a kid's head seeing that shit go on around you, whether you, yourself, have to jump through those hoops or not. 'Cuz the real point of places like ASR is
reprogramming, and that IS inherently
psychologically abusive to some kids, whether you can put your finger on specific "evidence" or not. Much of the damage done does not surface right away, might even take
years to surface for some kids.
There is also something else I should say about places like this. There is such a power trip mentality going on amongst many of the staff, and such a degradation of respect for other people's autonomy, that these conditions often end up translating into sexual abuse of the minors who get sent there to get "fixed" and "straightened out." Again, it can take years before those truths see the light of day. Those kids are informed that they are "special," that other people "wouldn't understand," blah blah blah... Just a heads up for you, for what it's worth...
