http://old.valleyadvocate.com/articles/swiftriver.htmlExcerpts:
In other cases, however, such programs may load additional stresses onto an already struggling young psyche.
That's what Dean Kent feels is happening far too often at ASR. Kent, a former employee of the school, is so concerned about the treatment of students at the academy that he has gone public with his fears, drawing the attention of the state Office of Child Care Services.
The state started looking closely at the school several months ago after Kent spoke out about things he'd seen and heard while working there. As a cook at ASR last year, Kent grew increasingly disturbed by the way the staff treated students: viewing them as manipulative and untrustworthy, shouting obscenities at them during so-called "communications sessions," holding all-night group therapy meetings that students seemed to dread, and severely restricting their communication with the outside world. And he saw bored students who seemed to be growing increasingly unhappy and agitated.
Eventually his concern turned to fear -- fear that the use of sleep deprivation, forced work and tough wilderness outings as behavior-modification tools amounted to emotional and physical abuse.
Other things worried Kent too. He noticed that the students were not allowed to make telephone calls, even calls to their parents, without a staff member listening, and that their incoming and outgoing mail was read. After he learned that a boy who had broken his collarbone had been forced to move heavy cans and jars and wipe down shelves in the kitchen as punishment for a trifling infraction just a week after being injured, Kent became so worried that he decided to contact the state Department of Social Services about the school's practices. DSS passed the information on to the state Office of Child Care Services, which sent an investigator, Eric Lieberman, to the academy.
Academy administrators told Lieberman it was true that students were denied sleep for 19 or 20 hours during the first Life Step session, called "The Truth." Staff and students might stay up all night, then break for a nap between 5 and 7 a.m., then continue the session until 2 the next afternoon, the administrators said. One administrator also acknowledged using profanity toward the students during communications sessions, and added, "Some days I have said things to students that I wish I did not say."
The Office of Child Care Services' investigators found that the school had not been remiss in getting medical treatment for the student with the broken collarbone, but it did substantiate most of Kent's other concerns. It cited the school for "using behavior management techniques which subject students to verbal abuse, ridicule and humiliation, denial of sufficient sleep, and repetitive exercise as a response to an infraction of a rule."
OCCS also cited the school for monitoring students' telephone calls and mail. The agency said that the right to privacy in communications, even for juveniles, can be restricted only by court order -- for example, if a therapist believes that the teen's communication should be monitored, perhaps to support a young person through a crisis in relations with his or her family -- and then only temporarily.
The citation struck at another bone of contention between the state and ASR. A few months ago OCCS found itself at odds with ASR over whether the school needs to be licensed in Massachusetts as a treatment center, something College Health Enterprises had not done. ASR officials seemed to be having it both ways by enforcing rules usually associated withtreatment programs for people with emotional or behavioral disorders, but refusing to have the school licensed as a treatment center, which would give OCCS the right to oversee its operations. The disagreement is still unresolved, and has turned into a battle between lawyers for the state and the school.
Meanwhile, Kent was suspended from his job, and later fired, for calling the state and the press. Not content with firing him, school officials also had their lawyer, Northampton attorney Ed Etheredge, follow up the termination with a letter threatening Kent with possible libel action if he continued to speak.
In addition to declining to speak to the press, ASR officials seems to have become more defensive in recent months. When OCCS staff visited the school last month to discuss another complaint, school administrators refused to answer any questions and escorted the state officials off the property. At press time attorneys with the OCCS were trying to arrange a meeting to discuss differences between the school and the agency, which still maintains that ASR needs a license.
