I can say this. When my best friend came back from two months at Alldredge Academy, certainly not a wwasp torture chamber but not exactly a wonderful experience either, he found out all the things I had done to try to get him out.
I called his parents, I research on the net, I attended a conference of treatment abuse, I phoned the local sherif and prosecutor who wanted the place shut down, reported his parents to cps, I called the media. I found out where he was using my research and contacts going only by a state that he was in which his parents told us after he was kidnapped. We even by coincidence got a copy of a letter that his mother was drafting to the program. (she typed it into the instant message console by accident and sent it to his other friend)
I even went so far as to plan a rescue operation to get him away until he was 18 on the off chance he escaped and made it to a phone to call someone or if we managed to get a location on where his group was hiking.
And if I had discovered that he was in a program as bad as wwasp I would had plans along with his other friends to aquire any necesary weapons and get him out of there by force.
When he got out, he did not cut me off as a negative influence. On the contrary, he said "you are my Samurai" and he gave me a sword.
Never give up Spots, no matter what happens and no matter how confused or changed she may be when she gets out of there you have shown you love her more than yourself which is more than her parents can say and one day she will thank you for fighting for her. Just knowing that someone was fighting for her release the whole time at such a heavy personal cost will help her to heal. That someone out there believes that it was wrong to send her there can help her believe that it was wrong too.
Dropping leaflets is a neat idea. Anything that tells the kids that others are out there fighting for them and that what goes on in there is wrong will help them to resist the brainwashing.
Trying to help her parents see the light and fighting to shut the place down and trying to use the legal process to get her out is all you can possibly be asked to do. The only thing beyond that is to take matters into your own hands and potentially break the law. There is no harm in thinking about it since its certainly something many of us have wanted to do when we were in your position. I would imagine it would not be too costly to have some Mexican gentlemen pay Casa a visit and get your grandaughter out. The question is would you be willing to live in exile possibly for the rest of your life?
Of course no one can ask you do such a thing and its probably best that you do not. I do not know whether I would have been willing to follow through with it myself. At some point I think I would have but even if my friend had been sent to wwasp I would have taken into account that he was just 3 1/2 months shy of 18 and could not be held beyond that but if he had been younger with the potential for being held there for years I think that I probably would have gone ahead with it.
Anyone here familiar with whether you can get in trouble in the US for an act committed in another country?
In regards to seperating themselves from negative influences, I think you mean they seperate themselves from anyone their parents tell them to to avoid being sent back. Once they are 18 and no longer under such a threat it seems they tend to seperate from the most negative of influences the ones who sent them there and insist it was the right thing, their parent(s).
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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 2003-08-03 02:25 ]
[ This Message was edited by: FaceKhan on 2003-08-03 02:30 ]
