"Secrets in the Schoolhouse"
It's a desperate situation for many parents -- their child is unruly, rebellious, and out-of-control, and they don't know where to turn.
Many find hope in private schools that promise a "faith based" program.
In Florida, these private schools are allowed to operate with virtually no state oversight.
We've looked inside two of these private academies here in Northwest Florida, and tonight, in the first of three reports, we'll hear from former students and parents who told Channel Three's Mollye Barrows their "Secrets in the Schoolhouse."
"We just want to save these little girls," says 27-year-old Jennifer Connolly as she stands outside Victory Christian Academy, protesting the private, faith-based school.
The protest was organized by the woman standing next to her, another former Victory student, Rebecca Ramirez.
They say what goes on here at the isolated school in Jay is not their idea of a Christian program.
They traveled across the country to protest the academy years after leaving.
"We just don't want them to hurt like we hurt," Connolly insists.
Michael Palmer opened the all-girls boarding school in 1990, promising christian based education and training for children with behavioral problems...at a price of 12-hundred dollars a month.
Desperate parents at wits end with their children running away, using drugs, or just refusing to follow family rules often turn to Palmer for help.
Bonnie Ramirez, from California, sent her daughter to Jay in 1992.
"They seemed to be really nice people and they seemed very interested in helping the girls," Ramirez recalls.
But her 28-year-old daughter Rebecca says "nice" is not how she remembers the academy.
"It was emotional and mental breakdown for sure," says Ramirez. "They made you feel horrible about yourself. To the point where you were worthless, then that was where they could make you do anything they wanted to do and just make you believe that you can't live without this school."
Some say staff controls every aspect of their lives from talking or using the bathroom to eating.
"They always used to threaten us. If you throw it up, we'll make you eat it. And I know girls have had to do that," Ramirez says.
Students say the program tries to mold girls into a fundamentalist image of a young lady.
Ramirez and Connolly call it "behavior modification."
They say new arrivals are banned from speaking or looking at most of the other students for the first three month.
They say, they can only talk to their "buddy," an older, more experienced student assigned to watch the new girl and ensure she follows the rules.
Communication with the outside is also cut off, even phonecalls from parents, for the first three months.
Once allowed, all mail is monitored as well as phone calls which are limited to thirty minutes, once a month.
"They read your letters, so if you wrote something bad, they didn't send it. And they'd call you a liar anyways," says 17-year-old Kara Botos, who left the school a year ago.
Some former students also say education is not the priority, instead the girls say they spend hours reading the Bible and in Chapel.
"Over and over again telling us the same thing, that we were horrible girls. That we were going to burn in fire and brimstone and our flesh was going to burn off, like telling us all the same things. They never changed, they were consistently the same thing with a different verse," says Botos.
Other complaints include demeaning or unreasonable punishment for infractions like running away, crying or attempting suicide.
Some say girls are put in the "Get Right Room," a small pantry like space, for hours, even weeks.
They're only allowed out to sleep and use the restroom.
Botos says she was sent to the "Get Right Room" several times.
"They put preaching tapes on the whole time. If you were acting up they would sit on you," Botos describes.
Police reports show more than a dozen girls have tried to run away since the school opened in 1990.
In 1997, one student reported, Palmer choked her, sat on her, and pulled her hair.
Palmer denied the allegations, but told officers he did have to restrain the girl.
Botos and Ramirez say the staff prides themselves on not using corporal punishment, instead they say the girls are encouraged to keep other students in line.
A Sheriff's deputy was called to the school in September of last year...when a 16-year-old girl fought attempts to put her in the room.
The deputy reports four teen students and a 27-year-old male staff member wrestled the girl to the ground and held here there forty minutes...on the orders of another staff member.
These students aren't the first to complain.
Not long after Palmer opened the academy in Jay, California courts forced him to close a similar lock down facility he owned near San Diego because he refused to be licensed by the state.
California authorities looked into a variety of complaints, including abuse.
The state also investigated the accidental death of a 15-year-old girl who died while helping to build a new part of the school.
Palmer was eventually cited for operating without a license, but he continued to run his academy, claiming freedom of religion.
In 1991, authorities raided his school...and found a "Get Right Room," evidence of humiliating and intimidating punishment, and a bin full of medications, including one to treat worms.
Just this past september, Mexican authorities closed a school Palmer owned just south of the border...after immigration and child abuse complaints.
17-year-old Melanie Silveria said she was beaten, tied up, and ridiculed while she was there.
"There's no love, there's no compassion," Silveria insists. "Girls run to different things to find love. It's not a good environment for people who are already emotionally damaged."
Palmer refused to talk to the media about the protest.
Palmer sent a staff member to tell two reporters to leave.
"Do you think Mr. Palmer would be available," reporter Mollye Barrows asks.
"He said that you're trespassing. He wanted me to come out here and tell you to leave," the staff members replies. He refused to give his name or job description at the school.
Palmer did talk to Channel 3, off camera, prior to the protest.
Palmer says the girls lie and many of their complaints are unfounded.
There are those who say Palmer's staff provided guidance and the nurturing they needed.
Joanna Rosado spent two years at Victory Christian Academy and left last year.
"It's a wonderful school. It did a lot for me," Rosado insists. "The only reason Victory doesn't help a girl is because the girl doesn't want to be helped."
Rosado says the focus is self-improvement.
She says the "Get Right Room," or "Time Out Room" as Palmer renamed it, is partly for girls who are a danger to themselves or others.
She say even the fiery preaching is aimed at achieving salvation through faith.
"Sometimes I felt they were against me," Rosado says, "but in my heart I knew I was doing something wrong."
Palmer insists his academy is a success and parents across the country want to send their daughters here.
Coming up Wednesday night we'll hear from a former student who says Palmer used God to justify raping her.
-----------------
"Secrets in the Schoolhouse" Part II
A former student at a private, faith based school in Jay wants to see the facility shut down for good.
It's a facility that offers Christian education and training for at risk girls, but some former students say the program and especially it's director is abusive.
Channel Three's Mollye Barrows unveils more "Secrets in the Schoolhouse."
Years after Rebecca Ramirez was allegedly assaulted, she wants everyone to know it. That's why she protested outside Michael Palmer's Victory Christian Academy in Jay.
She was 16 when she attended the school in 1992.
"How would you describe it to somebody who had never been there before," Barrows asks.
"Traumatizing. Very traumatizing, life changing, but in a bad way."
Back then, Ramirez's parents didn't approve of her boyfriend and thought the faith based program would 'straighten her out.'
Instead, she says the experience nearly destroyed her.
Ramirez claims that Palmer, who was 53 at the time, began taking her out of class to talk about problems he was having with his wife and about his growing love for her.
"He started using Bible versus and God," Ramirez says. "Saying that God talked to him and using Bible versus about love and twisting them and really trying to convince me that if I didn't love him back that I would be sinning. I would be going against what God had planned for me."
In police reports, Ramirez alleges Palmer raped her twice.
"He just started being a little bit more physical with me," Ramirez says. "He started touching me and he locked me in his office and made me lay down on the floor and he raped me in his office, in the dark."
"I was completely helpless," Ramirez continues. "I had no voice. I knew the staff and they were already threatened by him and they weren't going to listen to me and I was just afraid of doing something wrong where it would really make him mad because he had shown me his guns and he wasn't afraid to use them and he, in a round-a-bout way, threatened me."
Palmer vehemently denies the allegations he raped Ramirez, but investigators take the allegations seriously, though no charges have been filed.
Police know Palmer had a contact with Ramirez, even after the girl was sent home to San Diego.
The Ramirez's say Palmer sent her jewelry along with flowers and sentimental cards.
Ramirez reads one of the cards aloud, "With deep and tender love, Mike."
"How do you feel about that card," Barrows asks.
"I want to burn it," Ramirez says.
Palmer does *not* deny sending Ramirez the cards, but he doesn't
recall sending her the jewelry.
Ramirez's parents kept the items they felt were evidence of
Palmer's abuse.
They say Palmer even drove out to California after Ramirez returned home, hoping to take her back with him.
"He asked my husband if he could marry Rebecca and we were really worried because we found out he had guns with him and we were afraid he was going to kidnap her and take her away," says Bonnie Ramirez, Rebecca's mother.
But the Ramirez's say Palmer left peacefully after they refused his offer to marry their then 17-year old daughter, another claim he denies.
They filed suit against him in 1994, but nothing ever came of it.
The family says the lawsuit was too difficult to pursue from California.
Ramirez says it's only after years of therapy and healing that she's able to come forward now and warn others.
Thursday night, a devastated mother tells how she learned of the abuse of her son and how that same organization accused of abusing him now has a school in Santa Rosa County.
-----------------
"Secrets in the Schoolhouse"
Written by:
mbarrows@sbgnet.com Faith-based, private schools are allowed to operate in Florida with little state oversight.
Mollye Barrows wraps up her series "Secrets in the Schoolhouse", with a look at another private, faith-based school in Santa Rosa County.
One of the things we've found is that some faith-based schools move from state to state, to take advantage of laws that allow them to operate with the religious freedom they are looking for.
One such school is "New Beginnings Rebekah Academy" in Pace:
Heather Derowitsch is worried about her 16-year-old adopted sister.
The teen's father sent her to a private school in Pace that offers strict, Bible based education and training for troubled girls.
Administrators there won't allow Heather any contact with her sister.
"Brother McNamara told me my sister was a sinner and that he was going to teach her the ways of the Lord and straighten her out," says Derowitsch. "That as far as I'm concerned I might as well forget about my sister for the next year."
The school is "New Beginnings Rebekah Academy," a facility with thirty-one students, opened by Pastor Wiley Cameron and his wife, Faye.
Cameron says the girls usually stay a year at a cost of about 700-dollars a month.
No one with the school would talk to us on-camera and although supporters say they have nothing to hide, others say they do.
"The scales came off of my eyes and I understand now that just because you use the word Christian does not mean love and kindness," says Teresa Calalay, a mother from Georgia.
In 2000, Calalay sent her son Justin Simons to another home run by Wiley Cameron in Corpus Cristi, Texas.
That facility, for troubled young men, was part of the Roloff Group Homes.
Three weeks after dropping justin off, she brought him back in a wheelchair.
A trip to the emergency room confirmed her fears.
"The doctor says Ms. Calalay you need to step outside, we've got to call the police, your son's been tortured."
Justin says he and a 17-year-old boy were tied together at the wrists, beaten, and forced to run barefoot through the woods for miles.
He says they then spent eleven hours digging in a pit where he claims church workers hit him and urinated on him.
"Every night before I went to sleep, I'd hear somebody scream and say please stop hitting me," Simons says.
A supervisor over the homes, Allen Smith, was arrested for abusing the boys and Wiley Cameron was put in jail for not turning over records investigators wanted.
The church denied wrongdoing, but Texas authorities investigated all the Roloff homes, including the Rebekah Girl's Home.
As a result, dorm mother Faye Cameron was removed for abuse and neglect.
She's now banned from working with children in Texas.
Some claim the Roloff homes have been abusive for years.
"I came because I was defeated by sin, into drugs, suicidal," says one preacher's daughter.
"Drugs...alcohol and I just wanted to do my own thing," explains another girl.
"My mom didn't want me," says former Roloff student Kerry Logsdon. "I came here and they teach me and this place has done nothing but help me."
At the time Justin Simons filed his complaint, the Camerons were allowed to operate in Texas without a state license.
Instead they were monitored by the Texas Organization of Christian Child Caring Agencies or Taccca.
Wiley Cameron was a TACCCA board member and critics saw that as a conflict of interest for school administrators to oversee themselves.
So in 2001, Texas changed the law so the private schools must have state supervision to operate.
Citing freedom of religion, the Camerons closed the doors on the Texas homes and soon after opened "New Beginnings Rebekah Academy" in Pace.
Florida law allows private, faith-based schools to operate with little state oversight.
Instead they're monitored by FACCCA...the *Florida* Association of Christian Child Caring Agencies.
The Camerons took over this school three years ago.
Since then, FACCCA administrators say the state has investigated the academy at least twice.
One incident was about a year ago.
FACCCA says Faye Cameron was questioned for hitting a girl with a curtain rod.
FACCCA refused to let us see their report, but says Faye Cameron called it quits after the incident and is no longer working with the girls.
Heather Derowitsch says child welfare workers also told her they investigated the school in 2002 for "extreme physical exertion" involving a student.
Like "New Beginnings," "Victory Christian Academy," another private, faith based school in Jay is accredited by FACCCA.
Victory's Director, Michael Palmer, had similar schools in California and Mexico that authorities forced him to close after allegations of abuse and licensing issues.
Palmer is Vice President of FACCCA.
John Burt's "Our Father's House," a shelter for at-risk girls, was also under FACCCA until his arrest for child molestation.
Child advocates question the ability of school directors to oversee themselves.
The International Survivor's Action Committee is a non-profit group that monitors these private, faith-based schools.
"Anything could happen and the kid has no voice," says ISAC researcher Karen Grant. "There's no safety measure here because there's no oversight."
FACCCA argues it *helps* to have the same people who run the schools oversee them, because they have "a stake" in making sure the process works, that faccca helps "protect religious liberty."
FACCCA's Executive Director Ed MacClellan refused to be interviewed on-camera for this story, saying our goal appears to be to "destroy people who have given a lifetime of service to children for little to no pay...."
But some former students and family members believe money is the main motivation for certain schools.
"It's very disturbing that facilities can exist that care for children," says concerned sister Heather Derowitsch. "And there's no government agency that can go in and regulate these facilities and make sure that these children are being treated okay, especially when there's a proven history with the directors of the school, with child abuse. It's very disturbing."
------Mollye Barrows/Reporter
