Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => CEDU / Brown Schools and derivatives / clones => Topic started by: Anonymous on March 26, 2007, 06:59:59 PM
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Anyone hear about the CEDU New Zealnad off shoot of CEDU, promoted by Brandi Elliot, late of CEDU Middle School and Jim Powell, another CEDU-ite opened and closed in record time...didnt even last a year! Gudrun Stewart, also late of CEDU Middle School went there to work late last year, perhaps it was a jinx? Too bad former CEDU's!!! better luck in still another country!!!
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Was this school Campbell park for boys or another?
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It may well have been Campbell...how many school for boys run by CEDULEES can there be in New Zealand.
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Do you know anything about what prompted the closure? i cant find anything in the major NZ papers.
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I am sure they could just not find enough parents to dube into sending their kids to N.Z. and typical Cedulisoous management.
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Hello, I am not certain it was affliated with CEDU, but a Gudrun Stuart worked there. My son was there for a month. It was terrible and was not managed properly. I have been reading some of the posts here and it sounds similiar to what my son experienced. There was a fight with the staff and the students had to leave. The school paid for our tickets to bring our son and now they are saying that they will sue us for the money back -one year later.
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curiosabout cedu
Are you American?
I find it embarrasing that some CEDU dipshits go abroad and further tarnish the U.S. with shennanigans like this.
I'm very interested in hearing more about how you discovered Campbell park and how it played out.
Thanks,
Dishdutyfugitive
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Yes, our family is American. We were very interested in the opportunity as they portrayed it on their web site. The web site is of course gone, but I kept all my copies of how they described their mission. My son, 16, had just gone to a great wilderness program called Monarch in Colorado. It was excellent and we were able to really connect as a family. We thought that by him attending this great outdoor school in New Zealand, that it would be the perfect bridge before coming back home. We all travelled with him to drop him off for the planned 7 month stay. When we got there they told us that we would not be able to stay on the campus as promised beforehand- a huge estate and 1200 acres of farm land, organic farm, grapes, etc/ It sounded beautiful -and it was -but the people that ran it were strange. Very cold people. Gudrun Stuart was one of them. We were able to spend one night -a very short stay having to leave very early the next day. We had a tour and never saw any students. It was all very strange. We should have left then and there, but we kept thinking maybe it was us. As for Gudrun, I later learned that she had worked at CEDU in California. The entire experience for my son (one month) was a complete let down. He felt that he was in a detention center -the treatment was nothing as they described -and what we had described to him- except they had a great cook. We feel terrible about the whole experience. Eventually, the stress got to the boys and one of the boys- a relative of the owner attacked one of the workers and they all had to leave. They could not control the boys at all. It must have been too much of a dictatorship and the boys felt trapped. I think that the program had a great concept, but the advice from the ex employees of CEDU was terrible and this type of treatment towards people does not work. Anyway, the school needed students so they paid our airline tickets there and now, almost a year later they want the money back. We felt that we should have gotten our tuition back for the month he was there and so we made the decision that this was a fair exchange.
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Wow. That is amazing that they told you "Hellow and goodbye" all in 1 breath. That's a sure sign of shennanigans and ballyhoo. I'm glad to hear it only lasted 1 month. I'm sure that all the staff from there are now all working at some pyramid scheme type operation. 'Pigs in Zen'.
You're absolutely correct in feeling you should have get your tuition fees and all associated costs reimbursed to you however 'caveat emptor'.
The icing on the cake is the fact that they want their plane ticket money back! Not a chance. You tell them to call me if they want to discuss it further.
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My son, 16, had just gone to a great wilderness program called Monarch in Colorado.
FYI to everyone. This is not Monarch the CEDU clone. That is in montana.
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It was such a shame that they tried to start this school in such a beautiful country. I really hate to have to bring up issues about this school with my son, as I feel terrible about having sent him there. If you could have met the their representative and seen their mission statement, anyone would have thought it was an experience of a life-time. The bits and pieces I get out of my son are that he lost most of his rights, it was not organized, or managed properly, all calls home were supervised, etc. There were about 6 boys there at a time and evidently no one was there for long. The owner was here in Los Angeles and he actually came to our house and put a demand note under our door saying that he was going to pursue legal action if we did not pay for the airline tickets totalling 10,000 dollars. He said that he can be reached on his New Zealand number and his New Zealand email by November 30th, or he will seek legal action. We thought since the school closed down after the brawl (which was not reported to local authorities), that we lost on our tuition and expenses -(about 7,000 dollars for our trip and one month tuition), that we should have called it even- but the fact that we were told lies about how the school was truly operated should be enough to counter sue them -has anyone heard of anything like this? Do we have a leg to stand on? It is an overseas organization. I really feel that it is wrong for them to even ask for the ticket money back after what we went through. We never even got a letter saying the school had closed, nor a letter of the incident of what had actually happened. Our son said the cousin of the owner attacked a worker and a fight began. I would love to get advise on how to get these creeps -money making scammers out of our lives. Thanks for any help.
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As for Gudrun, I later learned that she had worked at CEDU in California. .
WOW - I was quite fond of Gudrun when I was at cedu in 89. She started off in Vision with me. After 6 months she became a parent counselor.
She would go to Holland/Germany and visit her relative at least once a year and always send me a postcard.
She would sit with me at my table restrictions.
I am not a fan of Almost any of the counselors that atteneded cedu and I have been very vocal about what pieces of shit they are. It is particularly displeasing to hear Gudrun is still affiliated with these cult-brainwashing programs.
Gudrun has got to be in her 60's at this point?
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curious
Do not pay them for the airline tickets. The worst thing they could do is file a civil suit in New Zealand. Should they file one in NZ and it goes through the worst case scenario for you is that you would never be able to travel to NZ. They can't touch you in the U.S. (You said the school is registered in NZ not in the US).
Document everything and write up a summary of the events you described. I may be able to put you in touch with a lawyer that would be able to do a pro-bono intial review.
The owner sounds like a shady character who has a prolific record of selling swamp land to anyone he can. He also probably lost his ass on the school (since it closed) and is down to his last nickle so he's going to try to bully you and scare you to get money out of you. If he tries to contact you again tell him to speak with your attorney. Feel free to email me.
Dishduty
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Campel Park page (http://http://www.fornits.com/wiki/index.php?title=Campbell_Park)
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I was very interested in seeing that Wikepedia had a comment about Campbell Park School in New Zealand. The closure date was actually March 2007 not September 2007. The school only lasted six months and according to my son there was another physical encounter with a staff member before my son got there. Their web site is long gone, but someone previously had written about Nathan Tompkins, the owner of the school and still owner of the property on this forum (check out "Nathan Tompkins" under search). If you click www.campbellpark.org (http://www.campbellpark.org) it shows what they are trying to do with the property now. I would love to get the information on the attorney that would give us advice regarding this issue of them trying to collect for the airline fees and the fact that they are out of the country. The person who suggested this is dishdutyfugitive. I have no idea how to email you..I am new to this forum. Thanks.
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Enter the "Internet Archive" aka the 'wayback machine'. Here you can view extinct websites. The only downside is lack of images.
Here is the list of sites for Campbell Park
click http://web.archive.org/web/ (http://web.archive.org/web/) and then in the search box put
http://www.campbellpark.org (http://www.campbellpark.org)
To contact me click here
http://www.fornits.com/wwf/profile.php? ... f952155156 (http://www.fornits.com/wwf/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2483&sid=be547dad37779fc9efd251f952155156)
and then click on "private message"
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I have a question. Do you know if any of the boys were kiwi or Australian? Or the staff? or were they all American expats? Were the local authorities aware of the school?
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I heard that there was one boy that was a kiwi. He was asked to leave, according to them, because he was always picking fights. If you got into trouble you would have to pick thistles for three days straight. My son had to do this twice while he was there for the month. I do not think the local authorities know about the recent incident that prompted the school to close down. It all was very clandestine. We never received a formal letter from any of the staff letting us know exactly what happened. All the other boys that were there were from the United States. Many, like my son, were from California. When my son came back home the other boys were sent back into wilderness programs. They said that if we let our son back home he would be an animal. We thought our son had had enough of this crazyness. Most of his work he had gained through family therapy had gone down the drain after Campbell Park. He was definetly not the same person we had dropped off when he came back. But we were not going to let him down again. If you were able to take a look at their mission, the boys that they recruited from the US had already had serious records of burglary, etc. According to the mission -these were not the type of boys that they were recruiting. Not that I judge another person, but the most of the reasons we chose the school were based on lies. It was just a huge mistake and they should "eat" the cost of the airlines tickets for lying to us about the program and keeping the one month's tuition. They blame the boys for the failure of the school -and they want to get as much of their loss back on suckers like us.
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Dear Dishdutyfugitive, I have been having difficulty loggin on to send a private note to you. I have tried to register twice and cannot seem to log on. When I register it says successful and that I would get a note sent to my email, but I have not as of yet gotten anything and when I try to log on, it says not valid?
I will continue to work on this..I really appreciate your advise on how to handle these crooks.
Oh, I forgot to mention in response to a question earlier..There were only two or three staff members that we knew of that were American. There was one person that they were trying to recruit from Red Cliff Wilderness. I will have to research his name.
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. Eventually, the stress got to the boys and one of the boys- a relative of the owner attacked one of the workers and they all had to leave. They could not control the boys at all. It must have been too much of a dictatorship and the boys felt trapped. I think that the program had a great concept, but the advice from the ex employees of CEDU was terrible and this type of treatment towards people does not work
Hi. I am sorry to hear you had this experience. Welcome to the club. Can you tell us what was the deal with the "relative of the owner attacking..."
The stress, and especially the feeling of being "trapped" can really hurt a kid who has been entrusted by his folks to mean spirited and harmful pseudo quackery done under the guise of therapy...
I can't resist. Didn't you use the internet before making your decision to fly to New Zealand from the United States, to find the names of people who were affiliated and what their "qualifications" in the "troubled teen" were? Specifically, because of this li'l 'ol website you would have found it was related to CEDU?
Sadly, it probably wouldn't have changed your decision until you were duped out of thousands of dollars and risked seriously harming your CHILD.
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From what I have come to understand from my son, one of the night personal thought that the boy was going to either escape or cause harm to who knows. But the night personal (ex-military personal) tried to restrain him, and the boy hit him back. Then there was a mad scramble. Two boys ran outside and my son was restrained inside by another worker. Since the relative of the owner hit the night personal, they were afraid that he would press charges and all four boys had to quickly get out of the country -so they say. The web site made no reference to behavior modification. We were at the stage in our son's life that he did not need any behavior modification -just peer/mentor support and guidance. The school had a local representative here in Los Angeles that met us several times going over the curriculum, outdoor learning, trips, etc. He was very accomodating and invited us to stay at the school. When we got to New Zealand they told us that this was not possible -odd?There was supposed to be a computer room, use of Ipod, leisure time, etc., When we dropped him off, the computer room was empty, they were no longer allowed use of Ipods, except after one month of excellent behavior. The whole philosophy had been altered from what we understood it to be. Even some of the personal were different. We were never told about Gudrun Stuart. It was not until my son came home that I looked her up on the internet and found out that the previous school she worked at had closed down for numerous reasons. I had never heard of the struggling teens program. I found the school by doing a search of schools for boys in New Zealand. I wanted him to go to a civil community- ha, ha. Looking back I think that they were inexperienced employees. And there had already been some problems before we got there -which they never mentioned. So we were guinea pigs for a month.