Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS)

Teen Mentor (Costa Rica) shut down by authorities

<< < (5/15) > >>

Samara:
Jonathan - Another dumbf*ck parent. Who in their right mind would warehouse their kid at an international location?   And Jesus, what type of proof does he need of abuse? The bruises are interior.  Jesus when will these people ever get it?

Ursus:
Reportage from Lon's site:

-------------- • -------------- • --------------

Breaking News
Posted: Mar 24, 2011 08:56

Teen Mentor Academy
San José, Costa Rica

Teen Mentor Academy In Costa Rica Closed By Authorities

Contact:
Adam Williams
Reporter
506-2233-6378
http://www.ticotimes.net

March 24, 2011

The Tico Times in Costa Rica, http://ow.ly/4kSK7, reported Teen Mentor was closed following allegations of abuse. The Academy, known as Teen Mentor, has been operating since October 2010 in Carara Hotel facilities in Tárcoles Garabito, Puntarenas. The owner of Teen Mentor rented the facilities.

PANI officials inspected the facilities on Friday in response to complaints of physical and psychological abuse to students brought by three psychologists who previously worked there. According to the hotel maintenance manager at the time of the intervention of PANI, "Teen makers Mentor and youth were left alone," he said.

According to the complaint filed with the Board, the 21 minors who were in the academy, all of U.S. origin was a violation of various rights. "It is alleged physical and psychological abuse, isolation, lack of communication between young people and their families, there was no medical supervision or clarity on the issue of right to education and recreation programs lacked," said Jorge Urbina, technical manager PANI.

PANI Technical Manager explained that staff of that institution had interviewed the boys. The official said the children reported last Thursday they were forced to sign a document that stated they were at the site of their own volition. According to the boys, if they had not signed the document they would have been sent to an isolation room where they would have been kept eight days.

The Costa Rican child welfare agency (PANI) officially closed the Teen Mentor Academy immediately, and according to Urbina, the U.S. Embassy in San José alerted parents of the 21 children to come and take them home. Until yesterday afternoon, the parents of 10 young people had come to pick up their children. The remaining group was in the custody of the Board.

According to Urbina, the U.S. Embassy linked Teen Mentor Academy to the Mentor Corporation ABC Costa Rica SA, and registered on the National Register in August 2010. "It was confirmed that the program did not have permits from the Ministry of Health or of the Board to operate in the country," said Jorge Urbina.

The article stated the owners of this program marketed the program through its website, as a rehabilitation program for young people between ages 13 and 18, with program costs starting at $600 a month.


Copyright ©2010, Woodbury Reports, Inc.

Ursus:
Here's the afore promised update of the above article in the Tico Times:

-------------- • -------------- • --------------

Tico Times
TOP STORY

Child Welfare Office closes yet another teen reform center

Posted: Friday, March 25, 2011 - By Adam Williams

A youth behavior modification center run by the Utah-based World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP) is closed following allegations of abuse.


Not Guilty: In 2007, former Dundee Ranch administrator Narvin Lichfield, above, was found non-guilty of abusing teens at his behavior modification camp in Costa Rica. Last Friday, child welfare officers closed a similar camp run by his brother, Bob Lichfield, citing abusive practices. Tammy Zibners | Tico Times

For the second time in the past nine years, a youth behavior modification center run by the Utah-based World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP) is closed following allegations of abuse. This one was run by the association's director, Bob Lichfield, brother of Narvin Lichfield, who ran a similar center here until it was voluntarily shut down in 2003.

Last Friday, the Child Welfare Office (PANI) closed the center, known as Teen Mentor, which advertised itself online as a therapeutic and psychological services program for U.S. teenagers dealing with behavioral issues and substance abuse problems.

According to PANI technical director Jorge Urbina, PANI officers visited Teen Mentor's facilities on Friday after three Costa Rican psychologists reported that they witnessed abuse of student residents.

Teen Mentor was operated out of Hotel Carara, in the Pacific coastal town of Tárcoles de Garabito.

Student residents told PANI investigators that they had experienced physical, verbal and psychological abuse while at the facility.

"We intervened on Friday and interviewed all the kids from the program. Their reports were similar to the reports made by the psychologists about mistreatment and rights violations," Urbina told The Tico Times. "It was apparent that the regimen of discipline included physical, psychological and verbal mistreatment."

Urbina said that when PANI officials arrived, no program supervisors were present at the hotel.

In addition to the reports of abuse, Urbina said that the program wasn't registered with PANI or the Health Ministry, thus rendering it illegal. Permits from PANI and the Health Ministry are required to run an organization that works with children under the age of 18.

According to the organization's website, http://www.horizonbootcamp.com, residents would be offered therapy to assist struggling teens to "provide structure, supervision and discipline" for a monthly fee beginning at $500 per month.

Urbina said that none of the 20 U.S. residents, aged 15-17, reported receiving any therapeutic guidance.

"The place promoted itself as a therapeutic center with recreational offerings," Urbina said. "But in our investigation we found that there was no therapy being performed at the school nor was there a recreational program. It was a completely unauthorized school."

The U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica also addressed the closing of the program this week.

"The Embassy had no role in the decision to close the school or remove the students [from Teen Mentor]. The matter falls fully under the jurisdiction of Costa Rican authorities, primarily PANI. The Embassy contacted the parents of U.S. citizen students, and has been working with the parents and the Costa Rican authorities to get them home safely."

Second Time Around

Robert Walter Lichfield, who also goes by the first name Bob and is the founder of the WWASP program, registered Teen Mentor as an official business in the national registry in August 2010 and began operating it here last October. In the last 16 years, 15 behavioral facilities operated by WWASP have been closed due to similar allegations by child welfare organizations in the U.S. and other countries.

In 2002, Narvin Lichfield, Robert's brother, was director of the Dundee Ranch Academy in the town of Hidalgo, Orotina, west of San José. A Tico Times investigation that year found that many of the students who attended the academy accused Dundee staff of physical and psychological abuse.

In an interview with The Tico Times in 2002, Narvin explained his "high impact" behavioral modification methods, which included tactics such as making students walk 100 miles around a track under the hot Pacific sun to earn their "freedom," or forcing them to spend up to five days in "solitary confinement" as punishment for looking out of the window during a lesson.

"I am sure 'High Impact' will be mistaken as jail, there is no doubt about it," he told The Tico Times in 2002. "But this is no different from any boarding school in England" (TT, Oct. 25, 2002).

In 2003, PANI raided the Dundee Ranch facility after a U.S. woman living in Costa Rica, Susan Flowers, reported to PANI that her daughter was being held against her will at the academy. The raid resulted in a student riot and 35 teens escaped from the site (TT, May 23, 2003).

After the raid, Narvin Lichfield was briefly arrested and charged with detaining minors against their will, coercion and international rights violations. When the case finally went to trial in early 2007, judges declared Lichfield innocent for lack of evidence (TT, Feb. 23, 2007).

Judges did say they believed students' rights had been violated at the Dundee Ranch, but prosecutors had failed to prove it.

When the Dundee Ranch site was closed in 2003, another program overseen by the WWASP organization moved into the same location. Known as Pillars of Hope, a Tico Times report in 2006 revealed that the program functioned as a language school and did not abide by the same "high impact" behavioral practices of Dundee Ranch (TT, Dec. 15, 2006).

Despite the controversy surrounding WWASP programs and schools, the academies have always produced polemic responses from former students and parents. While some former students decry traumatic abuse and punishments such as denial of food, other former students report satisfactory experiences and considerable improvements in behavior. Some report a mixture of both.

"I feel so grateful for what the program did for me. It's worth suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, because once I get over it, I'm gonna do great," Mary Gilbert, who was 14 in 2003, wrote in a letter to The Tico Times that year.

According to Urbina, all but one student have been reunited with family members and returned to the U.S. with the assistance of the U.S. Embassy. The remaining teenager is under PANI's care while waiting to be picked up by family.

Without the appropriate permits, Urbina said the school would be shut down indefinitely. Since the teenagers had been in the country since October, it is unclear whether they had valid visas.

The Tico Times attempted to contact three WWASP schools in the U.S., and one that is still operating here, but no one answered the phone numbers listed on their websites (TT, Jan. 24, 2003).


# # #

Inculcated:
Sheesh… well, at least relatively this one didn’t last that long… open for less than a year, but these WWASP bastards are really tenaciously determined! I mean insurrections from staff psychologists having the nerve or ethics to complain about rampant abuses, outraged parents motivated to action and raids conducted by authorities…would be daunting enough to most sickos, but not in this case. Here history repeats itself. This is the same Narvin who was being investigated for abandoning horses to starve to death a short while back, right? Where will those wacky opportunistic, sadistic Lichfield’s go from here? Hopefully to prison and only to be released on THE CONDITION THEY DO NOT POSITION THEMSELVES TO BE IN CONTROL OF OR IN CONTACT WITH ANY MINORS AND ALL ANIMALS!

--- Quote ---The law criminalizing torture abroad is codified at 18 U.S.C.
§§ 2340 and 2340A (the “Extraterritorial Torture Statute”). 18
U.S.C. § 2340A(a) states:

Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to
commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any
person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be
punished by death, or imprisoned for any term of years or
for life.

Torture is defined under the statute as:

[A]n act committed by a person acting under the color of
law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental
pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to
lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or
physical control.

Notably, the statute prohibits torture committed not only by US
citizens, but by non-citizens present in the United States. 18
U.S.C. § 2340A(b) states:

There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsec-
tion (a) if (1) the alleged offender is a national of the United
States; or (2) the alleged offender is present in the United
States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged
offender.

--- End quote ---
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/us ... A000-.html

thomasC:
Comment on updated Tico Times article by WWASPS troll.  Where the fuck do these people come from? Were they just not hugged enough when they were kids or something?


--- Quote ---Wow interesting but inaccurate report including:

"Bob" Lichfield had nothing to do with the ownership, operation or etc of this business.

Students had two individual therapeutic sessions weekly and several adolescent group sessions weekly. Hence the need for the Psychologists who later became disgruntled and stole equipment including expensive phones and computers. The psychologists Ricardo Wlaker, Karen Carprio and Soledad Giacobbe. While the therapy may not have been effective due to the incompetence of these therapists it is an uncontested fact that it took place.

Please list in detail the "Physical, Psychological abuse and verbal mistreatment. Include who, where, when and etc. Please note that it is an uncontested fact that Ricardo Walker was the clinical director of the facility and oversaw the food service, employee training, and discipline measures of the facility.

There were students from 13-18 years old

All students signed agreements that they chose to be at mentor teen (no mention)

Several reports by the students the psychologist and Pani "brainwashing the students". And making it very difficult for their return home. Several flights were outright missed by their mismanagement.

Several students told Pani and other officials they would like to continue the program

Mentor had a very effective recreational program including trips to Manuel Antonio, weekly movies, zip lines, crocodile tours, sea turtle releases, surfing, trips to the mall, and several trips to Jaco city and beach.

The government entered the facility with around 60 people illegally without a court order. When told such, they pretty much strong armed their way in and left absolutely zero due process.

Allegations are easy to make print and say yet where is the evidence?

To think that dozens of Costa Rica citizens would be involved in mistreatment of students is an insult to the hard working people that took great care of the students at the facility.

--- End quote ---

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page