Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS)
Tranquility Bay parents on attack
Ursus:
A followup on Isaac Hersh's experience was published a few days after the above article came out. I gather he did not return to his parents' home...
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New York Daily News
I was beaten & bound in boot camp, claims Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox teen
BY Kirsten Danis · DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
Friday, March 28th 2008, 11:29 PM
A Brooklyn teen banished to a behavior boot camp in Jamaica by his family - sparking an internal battle among ultra-Orthodox Jews - is back in the United States after a showdown on the island nation.
Isaac Hersh, 16, landed at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey Friday after his father was persuaded to let him leave Tranquility Bay, a private reform school.
"Relieved is not the word," said Zvi Gluck, a Queens financial worker. "The entire way home he was describing the atrocities that were happening there."
Gluck was one of a handful of Orthodox men who jetted to Jamaica on Wednesday to try to fetch the teen and was briefly detained until Isaac's father agreed to his release.
The ending capped a dramatic week when some members of Isaac's tight-knit community took the unusual step of publicizing his case.
The teen, who had been living with an Orthodox Texas family in an informal foster situation, had been brought back to Brooklyn by his parents last June and then shipped off to Tranquility Bay.
The family that had been caring for Isaac had no idea where he was until about three weeks ago - and became worried that he was living in a facility that has been accused of abuse.
Isaac told Gluck and others that he was beaten and forced to lie on a mat with his hands and feet tied as punishment for minor infractions.
The story so divided the religious community that Isaac's father, Michael Hersh, was forced to take a leave of absence from his job as CEO of Hatzalah, the large, Brooklyn-based volunteer ambulance corps. Hersh's lawyer did not respond to requests for comment yesterday.
Friends of the Hersh family described Isaac as a troubled son who had clashed with his parents for years. Others described him as a normal teen. He is living in an undisclosed location while custody arrangements are worked out.
kdanis@nydailynews.com
© Copyright 2010 NYDailyNews.com.
SUCK IT:
--- Quote from: "Pile of Dead Kids" ---It also multiplies the irony.
You'd think that Orthodox Jews, of all the people in the world, would know better than to send their own kids to camps run by control freaks...
--- End quote ---
For the uninitiated fornits reader, who is scratching their head at this comment, according to fornits mythology, treatment programs for adolescents are akin to WW2 nazi concentration camps. Now I've never been in a nazi concentration camp, but I did go to a holocaust mueum once, and comparing the treatment I went through to that is disingenuous to say the least, not to mention dismissive of the truly horrible experience the jews went through then. But this is about propoganda not accuracy for the fornits poster.
Troll Control:
--- Quote ---Isaac told Gluck and others that he was beaten and forced to lie on a mat with his hands and feet tied as punishment for minor infractions.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, this sounds like a vacation in paradise to me. No abuse here. Nothing to see. Move along.
DannyB II:
--- Quote from: "Dysfunction Junction" ---
--- Quote ---Isaac told Gluck and others that he was beaten and forced to lie on a mat with his hands and feet tied as punishment for minor infractions.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, this sounds like a vacation in paradise to me. No abuse here. Nothing to see. Move along.
--- End quote ---
Yep and you just lap it up, there doggy.
Ursus:
A bit of a twist to the story...
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New York Daily News
Ponzi suspect got me out of hell - teen
BY Thomas Zambito · DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, September 2nd 2008, 11:57 PM
Youngsters lie on floor of boot camp in Jamaica. Isaac Hersh (below) says Joseph Shereshevsky saved him from the camp by paying for flight back to New York.
A Brooklyn teen once banished to a Jamaican boot camp has come to the defense of a businessman charged with scamming mostly Orthodox Jewish investors out of $250 million.
Isaac Hersh, 16, says accused swindler Joseph Shereshevsky paid for the private jet that whisked him out of Jamaica in March, freeing him from what he called a "living hell."
"If not for Joseph, I would have still been in hell," Isaac wrote to the Manhattan federal judge who will decide whether Shereshevsky should be released on bail. "I owe my life to him."
Isaac's family sent him to Tranquility Bay, a private Jamaican reform school last year, a move that sparked an internal battle among ultra-Orthodox Jews.
After 9-1/2 months, Isaac was freed in March when some members of the Orthodox community rallied to his cause. He claimed he was repeatedly abused and forced to lie on a mat with his hands and feet tied.
Shereshevsky's lawyer, John Meringolo, will ask a judge Thursday to release the Jewish philanthropist from Norfolk, Va., on $5 million bail. He is being held without bail.
Shereshevsky and a Chicago-based partner are accused of masterminding a Ponzi scheme that snookered some 1,200 investors across the globe, including some who toiled in Manhattan's Diamond District.
The feds say Shereshevsky, the son of a rabbi, drew upon the shared ties he and his investors have in the Orthodox Jewish faith to convince them to turn over their hard-earned cash.
Dozens of members of the Orthodox Jewish community in Norfolk have sent letters supporting Shereshevsky's release, including several rabbis.
His father-in-law has agreed to put up the deed to his Baltimore home and 10 others are willing to post some $4million in cash, Meringolo said.
"Mr. Shereshevsky's enduring and strong connection to the community indicates that there is no reason to believe that he will not appear before this court when required," Meringolo added.
The father of seven is asking to be kept on home confinement so he can continue supporting his family and a quadriplegic brother.
In his letter, Isaac said he was awakened in the middle of the night at his father's Brooklyn home by two burly men who handcuffed him and tossed him in the back of a car before forcing him to board a jet for Jamaica.
"They got me on a plane to the island of Jamaica and transported me to an inhumane facility where malnutrition, child abuse and mistreatment was practiced on a day-to-day basis," Isaac wrote.
Shereshevsky agreed to help. "Despite the fact that he never met me, he right away went ahead and paid for the jet [home] out of his own pocket," wrote Isaac, who now lives with an aunt in Brooklyn.
"I consider Joseph Shereshevsky a great individual and mentor and I strictly don't believe the horrific things being said about him."
tzambito@nydailynews.com
© Copyright 2010 NYDailyNews.com.
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