The letters in a wwasp school are NOT censored. The kids can write anything their hearts desire, whether nice, or not. The family rep also has contact on a weekly basis with the parents.
My grandaughter was admitted to Casa by the Sea on November 2, 2002. During the first months, she was required to go to the computer area on every Monday and write a letter home (or to us, or to her siblings). In the first 6 weeks, 2 letters came to us. Two letters came to her mother also (I don't know if they were the same week or not). Of the 2 letters we got, both were oddly stilted, negative, not ranting, but simply stating (prophetically), "things are not what you have been told around here". The other weeks' letters simply disappeared.
During this period, the Odyssey family rep, Paola Segura, called the mother every Tuesday with a short update. Each call was similar: "...she is having some problems with the rules, but otherwise, she is doing fine." My grandaughter, upon returning home, told us she spent more than 2 early months in Worksheets, a very small white room with only a plastic resin chair, feet flat on the floor, hands by her sides, no schooling whatsoever, no physical activity save short periodic potty breaks, limited meals, including Thanksgiving, and no contact with the outside world, her peers, or her family. This was her existence from early November until sometime after the New Year. When recently asked about kids being on their knees, "is it true", she replied, "Yes, that's what R&R is all about". She also knew one girl in her family who had scars on her chin from continual repeated hog-tying episodes in R&R.
She also "chose out" of 3 successive Discovery seminars, not because of anything specific she said, but because of things she would not say. "If you don't say what they want you to, then they say you 'chose out', send you out and you wait another 6 weeks before they try again. You eventually learn to say what they want."
A child can write anything and everything he wants about WWASPS facilities. That missive, however, will seldom make it through THE CENSORS. Don't imagine for a moment it is uncensored open communication. Why do you think they have the kids use email (easily and anonymously delete-able) instead of handwriting? Would parents be comfortable with felt-marker blacked out chunks of letters?
It is vital that the Program have unfettered freedom to "mold" the minds of their internees. Parents who accept an evaluation of a minimum-wage, untrained, non-English-proficient guard grant to the Program their child's welfare. I absolutely am breathless when I consider that my grandchild was watched over by such marginal human beings, and was kept, as a Level II, from the outside world (including her parent) for 10 months of incarceration.
