Here ya go!

[Anonymous]

My sons and Martha's son never witnessed any beatings at Dundee. Amberly never spoke of any beatings. It sure seems funny to me that the beatings Nathan witnessed were only discovered after you came in contact with Sue.

I do not believe anything you say. Yet, I know and believe Dundee was abusive. Abuse does not have to be defined by beatings.

Just tell the truth about everything, don't add to it and don't take away from it and you will be alot more believable.

< jvarney@timespicayune.com.>

Physical ordeals

Garred and Geoffrey Bock said they were not subjected to beatings at Academy Dundee, though they claimed other students were. But some of the punishments they described were physical ordeals by any account. For talking when they weren't supposed to, as one example, the twins said they were ordered into an isolated room and forced to kneel silently for 12 hours a day, three days in a row.>

[Carey]

And what is the point in you reposting what I have said and what the reporter said?

[Antigen]

I think the insinuation here is that, if the media got a detail wrong, then the whole story must be untrue.

Never mind that journalists almost always get something wrong or misunderstand. If you want badly enough to believe that the truth is a lie (as in the case of someone who's come to depend for their own self esteem on the idea that to trust the program makes them good parents and to question the program makes them bad parents) that's all the evidence you need.

Know what I think? More than likely, there is no written or unwritten policy involving hitting or beating anyone as such. However, it must happen at least once in awhile. How else does the staff make a kid hold to a painful and unhealthy physical position against their will? Ask them in a more stern voice? Ground them? Take away their car keys? Of course not, they physically force them to do it. And if the kid fights back? Well, given all the facts as we know them, it's hard for me to imagine a scenareo that does not include beatings of some sort.

But you're right. Beatings are not the only form of abuse. IMO, not even the worst.

The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.


--P.J. O'Rourke

[Carey]

Ginger,

The reporter did not get any detail wrong.  What he said is exactly right. "Garred and Geoffrey Bock said they were not subjected to beatings at Academy Dundee, though they claimed other students were. "  That statement is accuarate.  I was sitting right there with them when they made that statement.  You see, they did claim others were beaten. Did they witness it with their own two eyes?  NO.  They heard others talk about it and they did see kids with bruises.  But they were not eyewitnesses to anyone being beaten.

Could someone have been beaten, I am sure they could have.  Afterall, a girl was assaulted and raped while at Dundee and yet that has been kept under lock and key.

So, I still don't see the point.  Maybe the Anon who posted it could explain.

[Anonymous]

Carey wrote:"Afterall, a girl was assaulted and raped while at Dundee and yet that has been kept under lock and key."

I recall this wasn't a student, but a staff member?  No point being made, just clarification.

[Carey]

Yes she was staff.  She was an 18 year old who herself had gone through the program.  The boy who raped her was also staff and he too went through the program.

I don't think so much who it happened to is important.  I don't want the poor girl to have to suffer anymore than she already has.  However, I think the fact that it did happen is important.  All parents who had children there should have been notified that it did indeed occur.  

The mother of the girl who was assaulted and raped told me that her daughter was pursing legal actions here in the states against the boy.  I don't know whether she did or not.  I doubt she did because I think she would have had to have done so in Costa Rica.   Also, the mother works as an after care coach for families who have kids in programs.  Charges should have been pressed.  There is a rapist out there, here in the states that is, who is not being held accountable for his actions.

I knew about this before I went to Dundee to get the boys.  I had heard about it from a friend of the mother.  

This was another incident in which the boys told me about.  They did not see the girl get rapped, but they did see her afterwards. After she came back from the hospital that is.  Her head was in bandages from the surgery.  They knew what had happened to her.