Chi, you are EXACTLY right in your description of a WWASPS facility. Our grandaughter was in Casa, and down to the details, had the same experience as your daughter (only, unfortunately, it was for 10 lonely months w/o ANY direct communication with the Outside World, including parents!).
The place was filthy, a decrepit failed hotel from the 60's.
The food was nearly inedible, and monotonously the same...heavy rice and beans, fish stew from belly meat, green hot dogs. This does not reflect the rice diet for her first 2+ months in solitary.
She gained 25 lbs, and she's only 5' tall.
Her parents paid the $95 toiletries fee, but she lost her soap on Day 2 and did not get any more for 2 months. She wrote (after 6 weeks there) thanking her mother for sending a bar of soap in a care package. She could only put her needs/requests on a tablet and wait for 2+ weeks, hoping to receive shampoo, sanitary needs, etc. While there, she knows one girl who tried to commit suicide by drinking an entire bottle of Prell shampoo.
She sat all day listening to the same tapes.
Their library was a joke, filled with what she called, "Chicken Soup for the Everything".
Her complexion was horrible.
The only outside time was a half-hour at 7:00 AM, playing "basktball" silently on a cracked and rutted asphalt patio area in the former shoddy hotel courtyard. When the chunkyness of the girls became an issue, Casa imported a BYU jock who force-ran them around the quad for their 1/2 hour "PE".
Her bed was a cheap metal bunk, jammed in with 23 other girls per trailer, with not enough space to pass by in the aisle.
Her only worldly goods (personal possessions, letters, a tiny stuffed toy) were stored in a small plastic laundry basket stuffed under the lower bunk.
Allowed only 30 seconds after the "Good Morning, Chica" for feet to hit the floor from their beds, they had cold-water showers, with or without soap and shampoo.
Kids ALWAYS had to clean up the place when "company" was expected. In fact, that's how they knew a seminar with visitors was planned...by the forced labor beforehand.
And, yes, her mother, like you, admitted later to having a sinking feeling while touring the facilities (even though she was being given the Dog and Pony show of the Upper Level areas, much "nicer").
Peri, Cross Creek may be a little better, but remember that approximately 600 American kids endured Casa...by far, the largest number of WWASPS kids in any facility. Thank God Mexico shut them down. Now, if only Jamaica would do the same.
