Author Topic: Bethel sued by parents  (Read 2545 times)

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Offline Watchaduen

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« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
heryle - My son was TORTURED and ABUSED at Bethel Boys Academy aka Eagle Point Christian Academy, aka Pine View Academy, Lucedale, MS.

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2004, 05:20:00 PM »
What a creepy looking man. Even creepier was his comment.

Academy director John Fountain laughed Tuesday when asked about claims of abuse at the school.

"These are low-income families who want something for nothing," he said.


Given their record (below) one has to wonder what the politics are in Ol Miss.

Parent complaints of abuse and neglect at the boys' academy in 2003 led to the adoption of new policies. The Fountains didn't admit to wrongdoing.

In May, the Human Services Department removed about 40 girls from the girls' academy after it had gotten abuse complaints. The girls have not been allowed to return.

Children also were removed from one of Herman Fountain's homes in 1988. State welfare officials raided Bethel Home for Children? the academy's predecessor? and removed 72 abused and neglected children. A judge closed the home in 1990. Herman Fountain reopened it in 1994 as Bethel Boys' Academy. The girls' academy opened in 1999.

////

Good luck Cheryl !!!
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Offline Watchaduen

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« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2004, 05:28:00 PM »
:lol:   More lawsuits to follow.  We will be filing another lawsuit every 30-60 days, each with an additional 5-10 victims each.  Every abused child is going to have his day in court.  The Fountains are cruel sadistic individuals fueled by greed and greed alone.  It's no wonder they teamed up with WWASP.  Victims are now coming out of the woodwork since we filed the first Federal Lawsuit.  At this point we can keep the Fountains busy for a few years.  It is I who will then laugh.  Another Mom just rescued her son from that Hell Hole.  He will be messed up mentally for a long time to come.  I sleep better at night every time a victim gets rescued from that place.  No child deserves the abuse and torture the Bethel Boys Academy dishes out.  The girls that were abused at Bethel Girls Academy will finally get to see justice also.  The state raided the place this past summer and all the victims removed.  Yet, in the end did absolutely NOTHING!!!!!!  What's it going to take?  A child dying?
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
heryle - My son was TORTURED and ABUSED at Bethel Boys Academy aka Eagle Point Christian Academy, aka Pine View Academy, Lucedale, MS.

Offline Deborah

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« Reply #3 on: November 07, 2004, 06:12:00 PM »
Well, unfortunately Cheryle, as we've seen, time and time again, the death of the child is taken no more seriously than the abuse of a child.
A sad commentary.

Also sad is that the precedent has been set, so as to allow a certain percentage of deaths in the industry.
Why are the risks so high?
Should any form of 'therapy' put a child at risk of psychological damage, much less death?
I'd be curious to know how many teens are killed in juvie?
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
gt;>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Hidden Lake Academy, after operating 12 years unlicensed will now be monitored by the state. Access information on the Federal Class Action lawsuit against HLA here: http://www.fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?t=17700

Offline Watchaduen

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« Reply #4 on: November 07, 2004, 06:37:00 PM »
I couldn't agree with you more.  I have read about the deaths at these torture chambers for kids.  Seems so many of them are covered up.  Accident, etc.  I know when we rescued our son, we attended a big meeting at the Attorney General's office.  Our son and the other boy that had just been rescued the day after were sent to the Child Advocates Office in Jackson for a forensic assessment and evaluation.  Both boys were deemed credible.  J.W. Watkins (Personal Integrity Div. for the Attorney General's Office) sat on the other side of the smoked mirror witnessing this.  My son was extremely concerned that a kid was going to die during one of the tortures inflicted at Bethel.  Even the Director of the Child Advocates office put that in her forensic assessment.  It was her grave concern that under the sadistic evil treatment of the Fountains a child could lose his/her life.  Yet, the State of Mississippi seemed okay with it.  We finally obtained copies of the court hearing where the Fountains were responding to Mike Moore, the Attorney General asking to close this Hell Hole down.  Bethel's sole defense as it states in these court papers was that the two state run schools (Oakley and Columbia) were abusive and torturous also so therefore you (the State of MS.) is coming to court with unclean hands.  Go figure.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
heryle - My son was TORTURED and ABUSED at Bethel Boys Academy aka Eagle Point Christian Academy, aka Pine View Academy, Lucedale, MS.

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #5 on: November 07, 2004, 09:43:00 PM »
Folks, there is something you all need to understand about the State of Mississippi:  The concept of the rule of law means something entirely different there than it does to the civilized world.  Some of you may have seen the 60 Minutes piece on the Emmett Till murder back in the '50s.  He was tortured, beaten, shot and drowned for whistling at a white woman.  The people who did it went on trial and walked away scot free.  A Mississippi jury didn't have any problem with what they did.

Back in the 1930s, Mississippi was the lynching capital of the nation.  And by "lynching," I don't mean a dozen guys in hoods and bedsheets stringing up some sharecropper on a back road in the middle of the night.  Mississippi lynchings were summary executions where a victim - always black - was taken from jail BY THE AUTHORITIES without benefit of trial, and publicly hanged in the middle of town before crowds of thousands.  The newspapers published advanced notice.  The rationale was that the right to a trial was for white people.   And this was a third of the way into the 20th century.  There are people still living in Mississippi who have seen it.  

So do you think Mississippi authorities are going to lose a lot of sleep over the sufferings of rich, spoiled, out-of-state kids, many of them from north of the Mason Dixon line?  As long as the local boys make some money, who cares what happens to other people's kids?
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #6 on: November 16, 2004, 12:53:00 AM »
Quote
On 2004-11-03 11:33:00, Watchaduen wrote:

"http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041103/NEWS01/411030359/1002
"


Parents being counter sued

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/news ... 37544.html

Bethel director says lawsuit planned
Boys school head may sue students' parents
By Jeannie Peng
American Staff Writer

The director of a school for troubled boys in Lucedale said he is filing a countersuit against parents of students who filed a federal lawsuit against him on Tuesday.

"I'm tired of them trying to get something out of nothing," John Fountain, director of the Bethel Boys Academy, said Wednesday.

The identities of the litigants seeking $75,000 in damages against Bethel Boys Academy could not be determined on Wednesday.

Fountain, along with his father, Herman Fountain Sr., are named as the defendants in the lawsuit brought on by parents seeking compensation for abuse they claim their children received while attending the school. Both Fountains indicated they did not know who filed the lawsuit when questioned about its source on Wednesday.

"I don't know who's suing me. Tell them to get in line," John Fountain said.

Attorney Oscar Stilley, who represents the parents suing told The Clarion-Ledger Tuesday that cadets at the academy were told to beat up other kids. He also said the boys were "turned into slaves."

The Hattiesburg American could not reach Stilley Wednesday at his office and home by telephone.

Meanwhile, John Fountain said the accusations are untrue.

"There was a boxing team a year ago and they won a state competition. The reason it was done away with was because the boys started acting out beyond the ring." he said. "It's an ongoing thing. We stay in court. If we don't have pressure, then we don't know what life is."

Bethel Boys Academy has a history of run-ins with state regulators dating to the late 1980s when 72 students were removed in a raid. In 1990 a judge closed the facility, which targets troubled teens, but it later reopened.

In 1993, authorities removed 13 boys amid allegations of abuse. The Lucedale school and its operators later signed an agreement that barred the school from using electricity to discipline students and made sure students had access to water during exercise periods.

John Fountain said Bethel Boys Academy and a similar operation for girls, Bethel Girls Academy in Petal, run by Herman Fountain Jr., are still in debt.

"I'm here to help the girls. I'm not in it for the money," said Girl's Academy Director Herman Fountain Jr.

State officials raided the girls school and took 38 students out of the facility amid allegations.

Herman Fountain Jr. has denied wrongdoing and has said a agreement with state officials is pending.

Herman Fountain Jr. said that the problems at Bethel Girls Academy and Bethel Boys Academy have existed because of a high turnover rate of staff.

"We have a revolving door when it comes to staff. The problems that I had here was because of staff. Me and the state get along fine," Herman Fountain Jr. said.

Originally published Thursday, November 4, 2004
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #7 on: November 16, 2004, 12:57:00 AM »
No less than they totally deserve!!!

The DI at that place intimidate, harass, and otherwise put those boys through utter hell. Then they cart them over to the Herman (brand) Baptist Church and preach the love of God to them! Is it God of the Bible. NO WAY!

God through Jesus reached out to this wreched world and made a way of forgiveness for us.

How can Herman look down on these boys like they are scum and treat them so when he is a worse sinner and hypocrit than the whole bunch of boys he has ever had???

This depraved HEATHEN has taken the money of parents to bring their children into his CHAMBER OF HORRORS where there are cobwebs in the "barracks" (another name for GULAG) fed them CHEAP greasy crap and humiliated them in the name of GOD.

A reputable source told me Herman once named a kid that was very codependent "TITTY".

You know, I am too embarassed to even investigate the mental picture THAT nickname in THIS context can paint for me!!!

Now tell me, how many of YOU would like to be called as a nickname a slang word name for a woman's mammary glands???? Can you answer that or are you TOO EMBARASSED???

So then the sentence for being codependent at Bethel is you will be referred to as if you are still a NURSING child at the age of 16. HOW IN THE NAME OF GOD CAN A MAN OF GOD (ALLEGED MAN OF GOD AT LEAST) NAME A 16 YEAR OLD CHILD "TITTY"???

This is the utter SICKO we are dealing with HERE!!!!

If this is rehabilitation, I want no part of it! Sue the joker and do it over and over and over until a judge and a jury finally have the sense to award a group of plaintiffs  20 million dollars. Herman will then have to SELL all the things he has acquired immorally from all these innocent people and pay at least SOME of them back.
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Offline cherish wisdom

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« Reply #8 on: November 16, 2004, 01:09:00 AM »
Most of these programs happen to be in states where authorities look the other way when there are reports of child abuse. To them - the kids in those places deserve it and need it. Programs are also in states where elected leaders are eacily bribed by political donations.  
Utah, Montana, Missouri, Idaho, Arizona - there are several where rules and regulations are lax, unenforced or non-existent.  
Parents should beware before sending their child to one of these states.  They are putting their child in extreme danger and essentially throwing their rights away...

Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men, and deny equal privilege to others, will be to constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic, and have no place in a Republic. The Constitution of this Republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.
--Abridged quote-Benjamin Rush, M.D., a signer of the Declaration of Independence

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If you lack wisdom ask of God and it shall be given to you.\"

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #9 on: November 16, 2004, 01:22:00 AM »
You mentioned Arizona?  There are NO programs for kids in Arizona that allow a parent to send them to.  The kids have to sign an agreement to go and stay.  Even that doesn't hold up, they can still leave after a couple of days if the rules are too strict.

Now, if they are arrested, they can be a guest of Joe Arpaio and the juvenile chain gang out digging graves in 115 degree summer heat.  Yes, Sheriff Arpaio was overwhelmly re-elected!
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #10 on: November 16, 2004, 11:47:00 AM »
Quote
On 2004-11-15 22:22:00, Anonymous wrote:

"You mentioned Arizona?  There are NO programs for kids in Arizona that allow a parent to send them to.  The kids have to sign an agreement to go and stay.  Even that doesn't hold up, they can still leave after a couple of days if the rules are too strict.



Now, if they are arrested, they can be a guest of Joe Arpaio and the juvenile chain gang out digging graves in 115 degree summer heat.  Yes, Sheriff Arpaio was overwhelmly re-elected!"


Well, I'm glad that Arizona has sensible laws, and I hope those laws are enforced.

On the chain gang thing, people on the chain gang have at least had due process of law before being convicted and sentenced.  The summer heat is different depending on the humidity level and whether the person is acclimated to local conditions.  

When I lived in New York as a child, it just didn't seem that cold in the winter.  When I moved to South Carolina in January it felt like spring had come early.  Now, winter in Georgia feels damned cold, but summer feels mostly okay.  And I have lived in the South without AC, as a child and as an adult.  I have AC now, but I haven't always.

I'd be real concerned if the inmates didn't have hats, sunscreen or appropriate clothes, and lots and lots of clean water and gatorade (or tablets for the electrolytes).

But just the hard work in the heat, after due process, for locals that are locally acclimated, is not necessarily unhealthy.

We marched and sweated out in the South Carolina heat in band camp and band practice, all through my high school years.  We were a competition band, and we marched *a lot*---and carrying heavy brass instruments.  And doing countless sit-ups to strengthen our gut muscles and improve our breath support for playing.  And doing countless punishment situps, in the heat, when we screwed up.

We did have people drop from heat stroke, but we had a nurse on hand to take care of the few that did, and we had a lot to drink, and we all wore hats and sunscreen.

My problem with the various "boot camps" is not that they make the kids *work*---it's that they're frequently negligent about *how* they do it, and what the kid's other problems are or aren't, and kids sustain permanent damage and sometimes die.

There's no accountability at the "boot camps"---and there's too much secrecy where bad things can happen and after they happen it's just the kid's word against the word of staffers who swear the kid is lying---and nobody really knows when you have a kid lying or guilding the lily and when you have staffers or owners lying or spinning because there's no Sunshine---nobody really knows.

But it's not the *kid* keeping everything secret while it's going on----and that suggests to me that it's not the kid who has the most to hide.

We need Reform.

We need Oversight.

We need clear Standards.

We need Enforcement of those standards.

And we need Sunshine so that it's no longer a question of who you believe, it's plain as day who's doing what to whom.

It concerns me that the Programs who preach so much of accountability and standards and clear and certain consequences for the kids are so resistant to accepting the same structural framework for themselves.

The Programs preach accountability to authority and respect for that authority and obedience to authority to and for the kids, but they wiggle and dodge and evade as much as they possibly can to keep from being accountable to higher authority themselves.

If nothing else, the "do as I say, not as I do" effect of the Program owners' and staffers' behavior has to be counterproductive to the learning experience for those of the kids who are appropriately placed and could otherwise benefit from a structured, consistent environment (if it was being done *right*).

I am sure there are some kids out there who would sign themselves in and genuinely prefer a hard but fair environment to the crazy inconsistency and arbitrariness they get at home.  Crazy and arbitrary inconsistency is part of what makes ordinary pain-in-the-butt teens into extraordinary pains in the butt.  There are kids who would pick a "boot" school that was fair and consistent over their own home environment or their own local school.

There are real juvenile delinquents who do really bad things, and get convicted after a fair trial, who *need* to be locked up.

There are mentally ill juveniles who need a certain kind of residential treatment.

They don't all need the *same* treatment.

And there has to be accountability of the programs and the parents to higher authority to ensure that the kids are going to the right place, or *not* going into residential care where it's inappropriate, and that the places that do provide residential care do it right and do not abuse and neglect the kids.

This is what makes me most suspicious of the programs and their advocates that come and post here.

If they're so lily white clean, *why* are they fighting so hard to avoid having to be accountable to higher authority?  If they're helping so many kids and doing the best anyone can do, *why* fight so hard to avoid licensing requirements and standards and inspections.

If they're as clean and good as they tell us they are, it seems to me that they would be saying, "Fine, let's work together to make the list of rules and standards, let's work to get the licensing in place with those high standards, and let's work to get a process of frequent surprise inspections in place.  We're quality care providers and we want parents and our community to be confident that they're getting what they pay for and their kids are getting the very best care we can provide for the money."

It seems to me that they would be seeing this as an opportunity and not a threat---namely, if the kids *are* being appropriately placed and it *is* hard sometimes to provide quality at what the parents can afford, that they would eagerly embrace standards and licensing and surprise inspections and take that as an opportunity to request funding assistance for families with financial need to ensure that quality of care can always be maintained.

Instead, they're squealing like a stuck pig at the very hint of serious, effective regulatory oversight.

And for me, that is the single factor that *most* undermines the programs' credibility versus the teens who are claiming to have been abused and neglected in those programs.

If it wasn't generally true, it seems to me that the programs would be falling all over themselves to *get* the licensing and standards and surprise inspections and enforcement to *prove* that they're what they claim to be.

It seems to me that if the programs were being as helpful to the kids that go there as they claim to be, that they would be falling all over themselves to help set up a *good* uniform regulatory structure and using that dialogue as an opportunity to request funding for good, hard research into the effectiveness of different treatment methods for different problems to get good hard numbers on what strategies work best and which ones are ineffective.

For people with nothing to hide, the program folks are acting awfully cagey.

And that's *why* I believe *most* of the claims of abuse and neglect I hear from the adults who used to be kids in one program or another.

I'm not against residential care, where appropriate.

I'm against *bad* residential care, inappropriate placements, and ineffective or harmful treatments.

Timoclea
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #11 on: November 30, 2004, 03:01:00 PM »
I beg to differ regarding facilities in Arizona.  There is Sunshine Acres which was featured on Dr. Phil.  There are several others including one for just girls run by a retired female sheriff. Of course these are very expensive!
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #12 on: August 13, 2005, 02:31:00 AM »
http://mysite.verizon.net/res0g8bp/the8 ... id133.html

The above link spells out the business history of the Bethel gang. Note that in Sept of 2004 they made the BOYS ACADEMY an LLC, a LIMITED LOSS CORPORATION or COMPANY.
Does THAT sound like a MINISTRY to you?

Just confirms what we have all said from the beginning.

The Bethel Academy, or Eagle Point or whatever the heck thay call it this week is all about being positioned to make MONEY, and now they have positioned themselves where they have little if any personal liability because of this CLEVER BUSINESS MOVE!!!!!

Looks like this was a well timed method employed by those crafty Fountains to keep the sprawling spread of lands, and the buildings and facilities of their ill gotten gains from being taken away from them by parents and children they have victimized over the last several years!! Is this a great country or WHAT!!
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #13 on: August 17, 2005, 03:35:00 AM »
Your right that LLC's prevent personal liability...but sometimes, and I stress sometimes, its possible to get around this. Judge for yourself:

Piercing The Corporate Veil of an LLC- The piercing doctrine recognizes that while limited liability generally benfits society, entrepreneurs sometimes use the sheild abusively. When abuse occurs, courts will not allow the miscreants to find shelter behind the sheild [LLC]....courts...focus on a number of factors, including whether..the dominent owner used the entity sheild not merely for the legitimate purpose of limiting personal liability but [instead] somehow to promote a fraud or injustice.
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