Milwaukee Journal SentinelAcademy's grip lingers as son, family transformRanch closes amid allegations, but some praise itBy MARK JOHNSON
markjohnson@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Nov. 8, 2004Third of three partsEight months had passed since the night Cathy and Steven Petershack hired men with handcuffs to escort their troubled son to a harsh boarding school in Costa Rica. In all that time, they had heard his voice on the phone just once, for five minutes on Christmas Day.
His e-mails home to Milwaukee only added to the mystery of how he was doing. In some, Joel, now 17, seemed contrite, ready to give up the thieving, drug use and fighting that had driven the Petershacks to send him to Academy at Dundee Ranch in August 2002.
In other e-mails, he just sounded angry.
By spring 2003, his parents wondered what was going on at the $2,100-a-month academy. Unbeknown to the Petershacks, Costa Rican authorities were asking the same question.
The school had tripled in size, from about 65 students in March 2002 to 200 students roughly a year later. With 10 or more children sharing some rooms, viruses spread rapidly.
"Twice, they had this virus - we did not know if it was the food or the water. They had vomiting and diarrhea," said Edgar Leguizamon, the academy's physician. "Half of the students had it."
In 2003, complaints about the academy reached the Costa Rican child welfare agency, Patronato Nacional de la Infancia, commonly called PANI. Susan Flowers, an American who reportedly had lost custody of her daughter in a divorce, told government officials the girl was being held at Dundee Ranch against her will.
The agency visited the academy in February, and again a month later. In March, former Dundee Ranch Director Amberly Knight sent the agency a letter warning that the school was using "untrained, unqualified staff," "providing the bare minimum of food and living essentials," and putting students at "physical and emotional risk."
There had been articles, too, in the Costa Rican press raising questions about the unusual school operating in a former resort outside Orotina, about a 15 minute drive from the Pacific Ocean.
Joel knew none of this. He saw no newspapers or television. He did not know the United States had gone to war in Iraq.
The controversy over the school built slowly in Costa Rica until the day in May 2003 when Flowers sat down with a local prosecutor named Fernando Vargas.
"She told me a very unusual story, like a movie story," said Vargas, a square-jawed 35-year-old, who was filling in for a colleague in the office halfway between Orotina and the Costa Rican capital, San Jose.
The story, Vargas recalled, was about a large, wealthy educational organization that used extreme methods to punish difficult children. From experience, he knew that people often tell outlandish stories in the prosecutor's office.
He would see if this was a "movie story," or real.
Catching attention
Costa Rican prosecutor heads to the academyVargas spent the weekend scanning the Internet for information on the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, the group of teen centers that included Dundee Ranch. The prosecutor read accounts of the punishments used by these schools. News articles described affiliated schools in Mexico, Samoa and the Czech Republic that closed following allegations of abuse.
The following week, Vargas applied for a warrant to raid Dundee Ranch. He found out there already was a thick file on the academy compiled by the child welfare agency. Among other problems, the agency had found overcrowding, insufficient food for some and a number of children with immigration problems.
"Some did not know where they were," said Rosalia Gil, Costa Rica's minister of children's affairs.
The prosecutor was annoyed that child welfare officials had allowed Dundee Ranch time to correct practices that he considered human rights abuses. He believed some of the physical punishments - restraining children and forcing them to exercise or stare at walls - violated the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, a document ratified by Costa Rica, but not by the United States.
Before heading to Dundee Ranch, Vargas said, he told the child welfare agency, "If they can't comply, you have to close the place and take the children away."
On the scorching, muggy afternoon of May 20, Vargas arrived at the academy accompanied by 50 police officers, detectives and officials from the child welfare agency. As required by Costa Rican law, a judge also accompanied the raid.
Joel was eating lunch in the cafeteria when he saw the cars drive up and men with guns jump out. The students kept eating. No one remarked on the men with guns because they were not allowed to talk.
Outside the cafeteria, students approached the prosecutor.
"When we got there, young people were seeing us as saviors," Vargas said. "They were saying in English, 'Shut down this place,' 'Help us,' 'I want to talk with my mom.' "
But that was not what Susan Flowers' daughter said when Vargas spoke with her. She said she was fine.
Nonetheless, Vargas planned to take statements from other students, especially those who had fewer points for good behavior and were unlikely to earn their way out of the academy anytime soon. They would have less to risk by speaking out.
The young prosecutor led students into the cafeteria. Academy staff were ordered to remain outside, 50 meters back.
"You cannot be in a place against your will," Vargas told the students, explaining their rights under Costa Rican law.
He said the students could communicate with their parents and send e-mails home without anyone editing or censoring them. Even inmates in the country's jails retain those rights. Vargas then passed out sheets of paper on which students could make complaints anonymously.
As the prosecutor spoke, an excited chatter rose among the students. Some cried and hugged. Joel felt something absent in him for a long time, "that little spirit of hope."
When students left the cafeteria, chaos ensued.
The judge and prosecutor argued, the judge insisting this was a "witch hunt" because the one girl the prosecutor had come to see - Flowers' daughter - had reported no abuse.
Vargas insisted he needed more time to gather evidence. But under Costa Rican law, Vargas could not remain on the property once the judge left.
When the judge drove off, Vargas was forced to follow, leaving behind computer files and other evidence.
'Just bring me home'
Reports of student riot make mother take actionThe judge and prosecutor were not the only ones departing the academy in a hurry. More than two dozen students - some barefoot - fled, hopping the fence and following the dirt road toward Orotina. Other students began vandalizing the school.
"Everybody ran in every direction," Joel said.
After nine months of rebellion and punishment, Joel was surprisingly low-key. When the other students ran, he walked back to one of the rooms. He picked up a guitar, lay on the bed and began to play.
He could hear students running and people chasing them. It made no sense, he thought, to flee into the countryside. How far would he get in a land he didn't know?
Later, the academy and its supporters would say that Vargas caused the riot at Dundee Ranch by telling students they were free to leave. Jan Bezuidenhout, a parent who was visiting the academy, took detailed notes describing the raid and riot. She said the prosecutor and other officials left that afternoon because "they saw the chaos they had created and didn't want to face it."
The prosecutor denied this, offering his own theory.
"I think this riot was because we promised something to the children and then we left with no explanation," Vargas said. "They always thought that we will take away the suspects or take the children out. But they never thought we would go out and leave them with their captors."
On the morning after the riot, Dundee staff gathered students in small groups and asked them to sign a form saying that they had been treated well and not abused.
"I thought it was an outrageous request for the staff to make of the kids," said Bezuidenhout, who supported Dundee Ranch in other respects.
Joel read the form and handed it back.
"I won't sign it," he said.
Joel and other students who refused to sign the form were placed inside the "high impact" facility, the walled compound Joel had helped to build. Academy staff stood guard at the entrance preventing the students from leaving. When Joel tried to walk out, one of the guards cracked a wooden board across his legs.
In Milwaukee, Cathy Petershack clicked onto the Web site for Dundee Ranch parents, and her eyes went straight to a message asking if anyone knew about the raid. Students had run away.
Cathy grabbed the phone and punched in the academy's number.
The staff member in charge of Joel answered brightly, telling Cathy there was good news. Joel had finally earned enough points for a phone call later in the day.
After months of trusting the academy, Cathy was suddenly wary. What about the report of a raid and students missing?
"Tell me," she said, "is my son even there?"
Joel is here, the man answered. He's cooperating. Yes, the academy is having a little difficulty, but it will be taken care of in a day or two.
Cathy wanted to hear her son.
Hours later, in the early evening, she heard his voice for the first time in five months. Joel was crying.
"Just bring me home. Give me a chance to talk to you," he pleaded. "Let me tell you what's happened."
Cathy asked if he could wait a day for her to fly to Costa Rica and bring him home. Joel wanted to leave right away. He was willing to fly alone.
When they finished talking, Joel's family representative got on the phone. He told Cathy: Joel is manipulating you again. He is not ready to come home.
This time Cathy believed her son.
"Joel is coming home," she said.
Leaving it behind
School closes amid praise, condemnationOn May 22, 2003, at 4 in the morning, Joel left Dundee Ranch for the airport in San Jose. Tired as he was, he could not sleep. He thought how happy he'd be to eat airline food.
As the small plane rose, Joel took a last look down at the dark Costa Rican landscape and thought: I'm free.
The place he'd come to view as his prison would close within a few days, reeling from the riot and a government investigation. The owner, Narvin Lichfield, would be arrested by Costa Rican police, then released.
Vargas, the young prosecutor, would receive e-mails and letters of support from more than a dozen parents of Dundee students. But those would be far outnumbered by messages from academy supporters such as Bezuidenhout, who said that in her daughter's case, "I honestly do think it kept her alive."
Finally, Costa Rica's human rights ombudsman for children would write a harsh report criticizing the child welfare agency for knowing about abuses at Dundee Ranch for more than a year and failing to act.
Joel left all of the controversy behind.
At Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, Cathy scanned the crowds in the arrivals area, looking for the boy she had not seen in nine months. Her eyes caught a glimpse of a skinny young man in white pants and a white Nike shirt. His face looked gaunt. Dark circles ringed his eyes. Skin drooped down from arms that were once bulky and muscular.
Joel had left Milwaukee weighing 280 pounds. He returned weighing 180.
"Oh my God," Cathy said. "What did I do?"
Measured steps
Change is apparent, but price was steepThey took things slowly.
That weekend, the Petershacks drove their son to the family cabin in Rhinelander, the place where Joel and his stepfather had bonded years ago.
They didn't press Joel for details about what happened in Costa Rica. They waited for him to raise the subject. He didn't. A year would pass before he spoke about Dundee Ranch, and then the story would emerge mostly in fragments.
"Some days I'll push him to talk, and he says, 'Mom, please leave it be,' " Cathy Petershack said. "He's told me he'll never forgive me for doing it."
Cathy said she never realized how harsh the punishment would be at Dundee Ranch and never would have authorized the academy to restrain Joel had she known what that meant.
As for the classes Joel took, they had little value in Milwaukee. None of his credits in Costa Rica were accepted here.
All told, the decision to send Joel to Dundee Ranch cost the Petershacks close to $25,000. When Cathy complained, the company sent her a refund check - for $985.
And yet, it was clear Joel had changed.
Now, when he left the house, he would give his mother and stepfather a hug and kiss. For the first time in his life, he got a job. He worked at United Parcel Service, then took a second job at a pizza parlor.
In fall 2003, Joel began attending classes four days a week to gain his high school equivalency diploma.
His teacher, Pamela Bolden-Etter, had heard about Joel's rebellious past but saw no hint of it in her classroom. He was quiet and focused on his work. With two jobs, Joel often came to class tired.
Though friendly, he didn't socialize much.
"I do not allow people to know who I am," he said.
Even so, Bolden-Etter liked him. She described him with a word that would have shocked the people who knew Joel before he went to Costa Rica: lovable.
Sometimes he hugged her. Always, he thanked her.
The teacher had no doubt Joel would get his degree, and he did.
On a rainy evening in June 2004, Cathy and Steven Petershack relaxed with their son and daughter in the small teachers lounge at Juneau Business High School.
It was less than an hour until Joel's graduation, and he looked excited, though he would not be going to any of the graduation parties. He had to work the 3 a.m. shift at UPS.
"How are you feeling?" Bolden-Etter asked.
"Tired," he said. "I haven't slept."
"That's how your life goes," the teacher said gently.
The graduation speeches were short; everyone seemed eager to get to the awarding of degrees. As the names were called, graduates crossed the stage, pumping their fists, waving, dancing, strutting, high-fiving.
When his name was called, Joel smiled and opened his right arm in an expansive gesture, as if to say,
Of course, I made it.Cathy cried.
After the ceremony, the graduates left the auditorium. Then the Petershacks filed into the hallway, wading into the sea of parents looking for their children.
Steven and Cathy eased down the hallway, standing on tiptoes, straining to see their son.
"Here he comes," Cathy said finally.
Steven surged forward and caught his stepson in a bear hug.
"Yeah! Yeah!" he shouted. "You did it, my son."
Cathy leaned in and kissed her son's face.
Joel was smiling - for the first time in months.
PostscriptOn a warm afternoon in early fall, more than a year after the riot and the closure of Dundee Ranch, a man named Harold Dabel walked the flowered grounds of the academy, showing off the new boarding school rising from the ruins of the old one. It is called Pillars of Hope and will cater to troubled American youths graduating from other programs. It will be very different from Dundee, said Dabel, the new administrator.
No longer will students be brought by force, as Joel was. The new school won't be affiliated with the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, Dabel said, adding, "We don't want to get into the past history of Dundee Ranch."
The observational placement room, in which Joel and other students were punished with hours of staring at a wall, has become a storage shed. The high impact center Joel helped build has been converted into a courtyard with adjacent rooms containing weights and ping pong tables, and a stable of horses in the back.
"Instead of a boot camp," Dabel said, "this is our fun camp."
Still, links to the past remain. Dabel said the new school will offer scholarships to graduates of schools in the World Wide Association. One of Dabel's partners in the new school, Francisco Bustos, was the finance manager at Dundee Ranch, and Dabel himself was featured in a photograph of Dundee Ranch's "management team." The new school will lease the 45-acre Dundee property from Lichfield, the owner of the former academy.
"A lot of the ideas here are a credit to him and his dreams," Dabel said of Lichfield. "He's one of our major investors."
The school has received a health permit, Dabel said, adding, "We could have students very soon."
That news caused grave concern in San Jose at the Costa Rican child welfare agency.
"They have no permission from us whatsoever," said Rosalia Gil, the nation's minister of children's affairs. She vowed to send government officials to visit the school.
"It's important that what happened at Dundee Ranch doesn't happen again," she said. "We're going to be there to see that it doesn't."
Days after Dabel and Gil spoke, Mexican authorities closed one of the other schools in the World Wide Association, Casa by the Sea. There had been complaints of abuse at the school.
Ken Kay, president of the association, said he expects "total vindication" on the abuse allegations and believes the school soon will receive permission to reopen. Kay said, too, that schools in the association have discontinued the use of observational placement, opting instead for something he described as "more coaching in intent."
As for Pillars of Hope, it has yet to open.
What happened at Dundee Ranch changed the Petershack family in Milwaukee, turning the brittle bonds between a son and his parents into sinew. Relationships no longer rupture in the heat of an argument. Cathy and Steven Petershack don't wake up to the exhausting worry of a son careening from one crisis to the next.
Still, they regret sending Joel to Dundee Ranch.
"There's absolutely no way I would send him now," Cathy said.
She has asked herself: Could something else have saved Joel? What would have happened had he stayed in Milwaukee instead of going to Costa Rica? She does not know.
Joel, now 18, insists he has not changed, all evidence to the contrary. He has been slow to shed the deep reserve he brought home.
This summer, he began seeing Brittany Sutton, an outgoing young woman whom he met through friends. They dated for three months before she learned about the place his parents had sent him. Even then, she said: "He wouldn't let me in. He wouldn't talk to me about it."
Nonetheless, Joel and Brittany got engaged. She is pregnant with his child, and Joel has been imagining what parenthood will be like.
"Raising a kid is difficult," he said. "With great responsibility comes great power."
He paused.
"And great love."
From the Nov. 9, 2004 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel© 2005-2007, Journal Sentinel Inc.---------------
Breaking Joel
Desperate Steps, Dark Journey
Joel Snider's stepfather, Steven Petershack (center), grabs him in a bear hug just after the 18-year-old graduated from Juneau Business High School in June. His mother, Cathy, cried at the event, a celebration that she thought at one time seemed unlikely. Photo/Gary Porter
The Petershack family was changed by the nine months Joel Snider (center) spent at a harsh Costa Rican academy. In the front row (from left) are: Cathy Petershack, Joel's mom; Joel; his girlfriend, Brittany Sutton; and his stepdad, Steve Petershack. Joel's sister, Julie Grayson (back row, far right), and her husband, Denver Grayson (back row, far left), are with their children, Megan, 2, Thomas, 3, Jonathan, 6, and Breanna, 4. Photo/Gary PorterDundee Ranch
