Gauging Ken Kay's much-repeated success rate percentages....how did he get those numbers?
Well, I can paraphrase one person's experience (I can't directly quote because she is paranoid about being sued by WWASPS, and I didn't take the time to email her back and forth for permission to quote this time).
This mother sent her ADHD son to Spring Creek for a better education, attended all the seminars with her husband, could not speak to her kid because he was not "progressing", ignored his persistent pleas by mail about his situation [regretfully called herself "the perfect Program parent]. She was being told, however, that he was doing OK, just a little slow. She put a stack of pretty brochures for distribution by her store's cash register and referred others to the lie of WWASPS because somehow she believed it. During this time, she was mailed a questionnaire from St. George. It said basically, "Are you happy with the program? Would you refer others to the Program?" Apparently there were only 3 or 4 questions of the vaguest sort. One would assume these questionnaires were only sent to happy parents with kids still in the Program. IOW, there was absolutely no "survey" made, and the success rate seems fabricated and unchallenged. In fact, I have seen Kay quoted in several different places with different percentage numbers for any given interview...whatever suits his fancy that day, I imagine.
The son was at SCL for 8 months, going nowhere, when WWASPS suggested he might benefit from the more diverse "cultural experience" at Tranquility Bay. This mother had him escorted ($2500) to Jamaica, and still was not able to speak to him. Her first call was at 13 months, and she spoke to him a total of 3 times in the 16 months he was in WWASPS. What finally woke her up? When her son wrote her about an exorcism at TB, a kid who she later assumed was having a nervous breakdown, was taken screaming into the showers where staff "washed the blood of Christ over him".
Even though she had been continually told by her family reps that the kid was doing OK, when she finally arrived to bring him home, various staffers told her they were glad she was taking him because "he cries all the time" and "he really doesn't belong here".
A victim of severe post-traumatic stress syndrome, this child's therapy is costing more than WWASP ever charged to put him into that situation. He is very bitter that his parents believed staff reports and ignored his own pleas. He is living at home (he's still quite young). Hopefully, he will be able to eventually heal.
And this, folks, is the story of one family who filled out the questionnaire as one of the 94.7% happy families.
