for your kind words and advice. It makes me feel more sane.
How did I come to post on this board? In a nutshell--because I was apalled at all I had learned about these places and how they packaged themselves differently but were all pretty much the same ball of wax.
I've been divorced since my son was 2--his anger and wildness came about after we moved from NYC to the suburbs. Well, I'm sure he'd rather have a father who showed interest, too, but he never remembers having that to begin with, but he grew up in Manhattan and it was a whole new world for both of us when we came here, and it wasn't a good fit. At any rate, we are moving back to the city as soon as I can get my house ready to sell and then sold.
Anyway, I teach at a community college, and I had a student who wrote a composition on RedCliffe Ascent, and the student wrote about how much he liked nature, etc. etc. so I was thinking it was like Outward Bound with a counseling componant. Outward Bound IS okay--I've been myself though now they have a "troubled teen" one, too, and I doubt I'd trust that. Being an English professor--I'm thinking Thoreau and Emerson. Then I noticed they had actual schools that stressed they were not boot camps. It wasn't until I started reading this board and thestraights.com and newspaper articles related to various atrocities that I recalled the comments I'd made on his paper. I'd said, you tell the reader your parents sent you there because they loved you and it was in your best interest--but you never say what sins you committed that led you there AND you tell the reader nothing of your actual experience. He chose NOT to rewrite that particular paper. I was disappointed because I really did want to know his experience there. Now it's making sense.
I knew about the atrocities in Mexico at Casa, but I naively believed as long as a program or school was in the US--well--you know, it must be ok. So I called a number and the woman recommended Ivy Ridge or Spring Creek, but there was something peculiar about the conversation. Maybe it was when she said kids were on "lock-down." My ex-husband worked for the Dept. of Corrections and I'm thinking, does she mean lock-down as in "locked up" or literal lockdown--something in the prison system reserved only for death row inmates OR after a prison riot or similar. Anyway, I have phobias about fires and means of egress in general, so I knew I wasn't sending my son to THAT school.
Then I got to googling and researching and I realized all these places were all connected, and then I read some of these boards, and I was absolutely horrified. Now I served on a community school board in NYC, so I know schools get investigated for all kinds of reasons, but when you hear the same thing coming from all over the place over and over again, it serves one well to believe it because everybody's not lying.
I post this because hopefully parents who research will come across this as well and it will persuade them to find a different option. Certainly a lobotomy would be much less painful--which seems to be the results these programs want--a lobotomized teen. Parents--do not turn your children over to people who don't allow contact between you. Less can happen to them living on the street.
Turns out, my son's friend, Alex from the old neighborhood was at Tranquility Bay during the revolt. I was shocked because Alex is such a nice kid (I knew him before he got sent off, and I don't know what his parents were thinking--I can't even imagine what he did--maybe he got a B in math). Then my son has another friend, Kelly, and she used to be at the house all the time--very nice girl. She was from a rich family, however, and her brother had died of a heroin overdose, so her parents were very edgy. But since Kelly went to "Boarding School"--no one has heard from her. I went to a reputable boarding school and we had 3 pay phones on every dorm hall. The worst problem was some girl hogging it talking to her boyfriend. So now I'm worried about Kelly. No emails, no IM's, no phone calls--not to my son--not to any of her friends. Moreover, she left abruptly--didn't tell anyone, and word got around she had suddenly gone to "boarding school." Someone tell me she's at Exeter or Andover, please.
I just find this all so shocking and I feel like an imbecile now for even making the phone call to the "placement lady."
