Mountain Park Baptist Boarding Academy CLOSED

[Anonymous]

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 Posted on Sun, May. 30, 2004
 
 
 


Baptist boarding schools closes in Missouri, Florida

JIM SUHR

Associated Press


ST. LOUIS - A southeast Missouri religious reform school questioned for its strict disciplining of troubled teenagers has closed, ending a run marked lately by dwindling enrollment and legal dustups over its methods.

Mountain Park Baptist Boarding Academy, founded by a man who once operated a controversial school in Mississippi, closed Friday, along with its sister school, Palm Lane Academy in Florida, the school's principal said.

"It is just time," Mountain Park Principal Sam Gerhardt told the Wayne County Journal-Banner. "We've been in some battles for the last couple of years. It is just time for us to do something different."

A woman who answered the telephone Saturday at Mountain Park, located about 110 miles south of St. Louis, refused to comment. She said Gerhardt was unavailable but might publicly discuss the matter within days.

Calls to Gerhardt's home Saturday night went unanswered.

The school's Web site - http://www.mountainparkacademy - has been deactivated, and the school's attorney, John Oliver, said Saturday, "I just don't know what the situation is."

"I'm not privy to any of those decisions," Oliver said, adding he hoped to speak Monday with Mountain Park officials.

Mountain Park's students already have returned home or been transferred to similar reform schools, the Journal-Banner reported. The paper said the school and its property have been put up for sale.

Mountain Park and its Florida counterpart both relied on Christian fundamentalist teachings, strict discipline and corporal punishment to work with teenagers with behavioral problems.

But Mountain Park has long attracted critics, particularly after a Florida teen was killed there by two other students in 1996.

Mountain Park's founder, the Rev. Bob Wills, previously ran a Hattiesburg, Miss., school that was sued in 1982 for allegedly paddling pregnant teens and detaining a 19-year-old against her will. A settlement required changes at the school, but Wills ultimately closed it and relocated to Missouri in 1987.

Over the years, Mountain Park has seen its enrollment drop from more than 150 teenagers to, according to testimony from school officials last month, just about 40 this year.

In Missouri, where state law generally exempts religious boarding schools from state regulation and oversight, Mountain Park has had competition, some with their own legal problems.

In northeast Missouri, the discipline-minded Heartland Christian Academy sued after authorities and juvenile officials took 115 children from the rural complex by buses in an October 2001 raid.

At the time, juvenile officers cited concern for the children's safety after a series of abuse allegations against Heartland, which openly relies on corporal punishment. The children later were allowed to return to the school, located about 150 miles north of St. Louis.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in St. Louis permanently barred juvenile authorities from again removing all students from nondenominational Heartland without a proper hearing.

No Heartland officials have been convicted of wrongdoing.

Last month, federal jurors in Cape Girardeau awarded former Mountain Park student Jordan Blair $20,000 for allegedly being shoved against a sink by a worker. Earlier in that civil trial, a federal judge ruled that the school did not violate federal labor laws when it required the Arkansas teenager to do chores without pay.

Oliver called the allegations "part of a crusade by a few individuals against fundamentalist Christian schools." On Saturday, Oliver said he has asked that the case be retried.

Blair had alleged he was falsely imprisoned while at the school in 2001, and that the school's disciplining violated his civil rights. He also accused Mountain Park of wrongly denying outside communication, limiting bathroom breaks and letting students sleep as little as five hours a day.

Blair later transferred to Florida's Palm Lane Academy but bolted from there while on an errand.

Most of Blair's lawsuit had been tossed out before last month's trial.

Blair's attorney had cast Mountain Park as a veritable labor camp, though the judge sided with Mountain Park's insistence that payless chores were a key part of rescuing troubled youths.

[Anonymous]

Every time an abusive school or program is shut down, we can all breathe easier.  Congratulations to the Mt. Park and Palm Lane survivors who joined forces and fought long and hard to validate their own experience and protect other kids from abuse.  You know who you are!  God bless you all and thank you for all you have done and continue to do.  You're the best!

 :nworthy:

[Watchaduen]

http://www.mountainparkhorrors.netfirms ... tsnew.html

Just maybe all the lawsuits has something to do with shutting down.  It's one thing to have one lone victim sue.  Yet another when all the victims ban together.  Jordan Blair (a victim from Mt. Park) was awarded $20,000 for a shove into a bathroom sink.  I think the jury was sending a message loud and clear Abuse is Abuse.  No matter how you want to try and pain it.

[Anonymous]

Well if $20,000 grand is all it takes to scare these programs into shutting down, bring on the lawsuits.  But let's be real, 20k is a drop in the bucket and most programs can easily pay that out and keep doing business as usual. No, I think Mountain Park and Palm Lane are history because they fear continued scrutiny by the media and the pressure brought to bear by survivors speaking out on websites and chatboards.  In other words, rampant talking out of group!!!

[Watchaduen]

You missed it entirely.  If you read that website Jordan Blair's lawsuit was the least of their worries.  A young boy who only served one month there.  During his first few days he was shoved (hard) into the bathroom sink by one of the people in charge.  The jury awarded him $20,000 for that "one" shove.  All his other charges were thrown out.  He also wasn't allowed to have any victims testify on his behalf because they weren't there at the same time and didn't file the suit together.  So all in all it was a big deal.  There is another lawsuit where 7 victims banded together.  Abuse, torture and even drugging are charges brought against them.  If you read you will see the different lawsuits coming up.  Jordan's was the first.  $20,000 for one shove?  So what does 6 mos. of solid abuse and torture get a victim?

[Anonymous]

Call me cynical.  While I'm glad this place is shut down, every time one of these places shuts down, the employees scatter to the four winds and end up working in other programs, and another program starts up in its place, and the gulag goes on.

I did see a positive news story about a troubled yout' program, though.  I don't know what the *rest* of the place was like, but one program was having the boys train stray dogs (reward-based only training of the dogs) to get their Canine Good Citizenship certificates, and then the dogs get adopted out to families.

While it's got to be hard to bond with the dog and then let it go, teaching the dog, in a positive way, to follow very simple rules would tend to help a lot of the problems some of the teens typically labelled "troubled" would have.

It invites them to empathize with the dog, and gives them one guaranteed friend that won't narc them out.

It said they had to "earn" the privilege of training the dogs.  That could either be benign or cover a multitude of sins.  Still, that's one activity that sends up a green flag.

Can't remember the name of the place.

Timoclea

[Anonymous]

There is also a dog-training program used in a prison somewhere.  I saw a documentary-style program on it which featured a couple of inmates serving life sentences for murder having great success training dogs.  I think the program Timoclea is talking about might be in Florida.

[Anonymous]

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Charlotte Observer (subscription), NC - May 30, 2004



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[Watchaduen]

I find it odd and disheartening that all those newspapers and stations carried the "Closing Mountain Park" stories.  Yet each and every time an abuse story comes out it only makes the local news of that particular torture chamber.