Fornits

Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) => Topic started by: Anonymous on December 05, 2006, 11:32:54 PM

Title: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: Anonymous on December 05, 2006, 11:32:54 PM
http://www.missoulanews.com/News/News.asp?no=6119 (http://www.missoulanews.com/News/News.asp?no=6119)
Title: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: Nihilanthic on December 16, 2006, 05:28:19 PM
Myspace: it used to just let camwhores do their trade, and help people get laid, now its actually doing something meaningful!

 :rofl: OH THE IRONY
Title: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: Anne Bonney on December 16, 2006, 05:59:47 PM
Quote from: "TS Waygookin"
http://http://www.missoulanews.com/News/News.asp?no=5450

Quote
Contraband communications
by John S. Adams


Online communities like MySpace.com and Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora (www.fornits.com/wwf (http://www.fornits.com/wwf)) now give former students of Spring Creek and other programs in the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) a place to meet and share their thoughts and past experiences.


 ::cheers::  :nworthy:
Title: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: Anonymous on December 29, 2006, 06:50:22 PM
Yo!  All you folks who think MY SPACE is providing a valuable service for victims of residential treatment abuse best get on the bandwagon and mobilize against the lawsuit brought by Sorenson's against MY SPACE.  This is getting ZERO attention and I really don't understand why.  A victim spoke out about Sorenson's on MY SPACE and now their page is gone.  This is the chilling effect that has led to the silencing of those who dare to speak out against the troubled parent industry.  Do not let this go without a whimper.  Write to your journalist friends (John Gorenfeld) and others to spread the word.  Also, can anyone find the page?  Is it cached somewhere?  That would greatly help!!!  Thanks for listening!
Title: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: Nihilanthic on December 29, 2006, 06:51:21 PM
www.archive.org (http://www.archive.org) unless myspace set up their robots.txt

Anyway, set up some survivor user groups and tell them to get the fuck on fornits!
Title: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: Anonymous on December 29, 2006, 06:52:50 PM
Oops, meant to say do not let this go without even a whimper.  In other words, TALK BACK!
Title: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: Antigen on March 20, 2007, 01:19:45 AM
Holy sheep shit, thanks for bumping this.
Title: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: BuzzKill on March 20, 2007, 02:13:19 PM
Quote from: ""Guest""
Yo!  All you folks who think MY SPACE is providing a valuable service for victims of residential treatment abuse best get on the bandwagon and mobilize against the lawsuit brought by Sorenson's against MY SPACE.  This is getting ZERO attention and I really don't understand why.  A victim spoke out about Sorenson's on MY SPACE and now their page is gone.  This is the chilling effect that has led to the silencing of those who dare to speak out against the troubled parent industry.  Do not let this go without a whimper.  Write to your journalist friends (John Gorenfeld) and others to spread the word.  Also, can anyone find the page?  Is it cached somewhere?  That would greatly help!!!  Thanks for listening!



Sorenson's, Huh - I hadn't heard about this. Wonder if it never got any attention because it is one of PURE's programs? You know, in the same way certain "advocates" never sent out word about the Whitmore situation; never forwarded any of the articles and so on to their "groups"; never mentioned it on their web sites.

Is there any new news?
Title: AntiWWASP.com Forums Back Up...
Post by: Anonymous on June 13, 2007, 04:56:51 PM
Simplistic, easy to use, brand new vBulletin 3.6.7 package, improved registration process (fixed actually). We're Looking for program survivors and ex students willing to re-register and start building a community that was lost due to server reconfigurations.

Antiwwasp's only goal is to build up more conclusive information and for that matter collect it all. ISSACORP has done a great job archiving various scanned paper documents and such. We aim to get more people involved with documenting their experiences as they have. The survivor list has some new names so if you've been searching for old program friends or haven't added your name yet, go for it.

A new section will be opening shortly to provide more specific information on each of the individual WWASP Schools, even those that have closed. This should serve as a valuable source of info for parents who want more than testimonials and stories.

http://www.antiwwasp.com/ (http://www.antiwwasp.com/)

http://www.antiwwasp.com/forum (http://www.antiwwasp.com/forum)
Title: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: Anonymous on August 08, 2007, 03:05:40 PM
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_6385296#top (http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_6385296#top)


Loophole in state law has allowed some in teen-help industry to go unlicensed
By Kirsten Stewart
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 07/16/2007 06:48:36 AM MDT

Call it the "problem child" of Utah's teen-help industry.

Majestic Ranch in Randolph - one of four Utah boarding schools that cater to troubled teens - has, until recently, failed to become licensed as required by law. It is the only school to fall short of health and safety benchmarks imposed in October 2005.

The hang-up: minor changes to an employee handbook, say regulators, who permitted the school to operate without a license for the past 18 months. Regulators say no harm was done; because Majestic is in good standing, they granted the school a probationary license on June 25.

But the school's slow road to compliance points to a larger problem with Utah's oversight of adoption agencies, wilderness camps, schools and other programs for vulnerable children: a loophole in state law.

Operating these businesses without a license is a class A misdemeanor - but only if someone is harmed, said Ken Stettler, Human Services licensing director.

"Usually if it's a new program just coming on, then they simply don't begin operation until they're licensed," said Stettler. "What was uncommon in [Majestic's] case was that we had an existing program that was already operating when the laws went into effect. In this case we don't close them down."

But at least one new business venture - an adoption agency - slipped through the loophole.
   
Focus on Children, now defunct and facing federal charges of running a baby smuggling operation in Samoa, did business in Utah for 2 1/2 years without a license.

The agency's owners applied in March 2001, but did not submit all the paperwork. After nudging from regulators, they were licensed on August 1, 2003.

No one, to Stettler's knowledge, is lobbying to give regulators stronger powers to insist on licensing.

Utah's Republican-dominated Legislature has traditionally opposed government meddling in the private sector. "Therapeutic" boarding schools, including 21-year-old Majestic Ranch, went unregulated until 2005.

The law defines "therapeutic schools" as serving students "who have a history of failing to function at home or public school" and that offer room and board.

Majestic initially fought regulation through its partner World Wide Association of Speciality Programs, a Utah-based chain of get-tough treatment programs.

Later, after it came to light that Majestic had been investigated three times for abuse, the boarding school became a proponent of regulation.

Only one probe ended in a criminal charge and conviction when a staffer - who was eventually fired - pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault.

Child welfare caseworkers received another complaint of abuse in 2005, but dismissed it as having no merit, said Carol Sisco, Human Services spokeswoman.
Tammy Johnson, Majestic Ranch director, said the licensing process has helped foster better relations with the state, but it hasn't changed the school's curricula or practices.

"The only thing that changed is we have to file more paperwork; quite a bit more paperwork," said Johnson.

Johnson blames some of the licensing delays on regulators who took a year to review Majestic's policies, but stressed, "they've been wonderful to work with."

Bad press, stemming from "frivolous" complaints from disgruntled employees, have hurt Majestic, said Johnson.

Over the past two years enrollment has dropped from about 60 students to 32, Johnson said. The school caters to 7-to-14-year-olds; annual tuition costs about $42,000.

"We lose on average of five kids a month to negative publicity on the Internet. It's unfortunate," said Johnson. "I wouldn't be able to come to work every day if I didn't feel I was making a difference in these families' and students' lives. It's not an easy job."

World Wide also has suffered. In 2005, there were seven schools in the network. Now there are two, including Majestic Ranch, said World Wide president Ken Kay.

Kay likens World Wide to a trade or service organization that helps market, handle admissions and purchase classroom materials for boarding schools. But the group also leases buildings to schools. And Majestic owner Dan Peart is related by marriage to World Wide founder Robert Lichfield.

Still, Kay said Majestic will probably sever ties with World Wide.

"There's a time for everything. At one point, it was a necessity for a bunch of schools to get together. But as schools grew, they decided they could do everything on their own. I'd be surprised if World Wide lasted more than a year."


[email protected]
Title: glad the word is getting out
Post by: Anonymous on August 28, 2007, 10:52:05 AM
I'm so pleased that information is coming to light about the CEDU nee synanon based freaky programs. maybe my father will finally understand a little more about me if he would just PAY ATTENTION the way Americans are beginning to. The internet has been important in verifying all the things that parents questioned before. It's important that survivors of these institutions, who are able, point parents in need in the right direction and not the WRONG direction that Kay, and Litchfield would have them go.
Title: Self-Medicated in Theaters Now
Post by: Anonymous on September 15, 2007, 05:00:36 PM
Self-Medicated is playing in theaters now.  The movie is a true story about Monty Lapica's experiences after being kidnapped and sent to Brightway and Paradise Cove.  The website is www.selfmedicated.com (http://www.selfmedicated.com)
Title: Re: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: BuzzKill on August 17, 2010, 06:15:42 PM
This one made the front page of the NYT:

quotes:
Profit margins and growth within the programs run by Wwasps appear solid. Teen Help, the affiliation's main marketing arm, was the single biggest corporate campaign contributor in the state of Utah in the 2002 election cycle, donating $215,290 to Republican campaigns, according to online federal election records posted in March.
And get a load of this one -
"I find it incredible that parents would send their kids off to some place they've heard about on the Internet," Mr. Woodbury said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/09/inter ... ner=GOOGLE (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/09/international/americas/09MEXI.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5062&en=332c23c7bd637e4d&ex=1053057600&partner=GOOGLE)

?

May 9, 2003

Parents, Shopping for Discipline, Turn to Tough Schools Abroad

By TIM WEINER


NSENADA, Mexico — Ryan Fraidenburgh was 14 when he was brought here shackled, kicking and screaming.

Two men carrying handcuffs and leg irons came for him at his mother's home in Sacramento, Calif., shoved him into a van and bound him hand and foot. They drove him 12 hours south, over the Mexican border, into a high-walled compound near here called Casa by the Sea.

"It was nighttime," Ryan recalled. "I look around and I see kids sleeping on cement. I was really, really scared. The big honcho, Mauricio, said, `You don't speak English here.' I didn't know how to speak Spanish."

Ryan quickly learned the rules: stay silent, be compliant, don't look up, don't look out the window, don't speak unless spoken to. The punishments for breaking the rules included solitary confinement, lying on the floor in a small room, nose to the ground, often for days on end.

Ryan was not a criminal. He was only skipping school, his parents said in telephone interviews. But in August 2000, they said, in the middle of a bitter divorce and custody battle, they decided to send him away to Casa by the Sea, which calls itself a "specialty boarding school" for behavior modification.

Like hundreds of other parents, the Fraidenburghs made their choice largely on the basis of a glossy brochure and a call to a toll-free number in Utah. They came to regret their choice.

The idea of sending a child to such a program in Mexico was unheard of a decade ago. But in the United States, behavior-modification programs and boarding schools for troubled youths have faced increasing legal and licensing challenges over the past few years.

More and more are moving abroad — some to Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean — where they operate largely under the regulation radar and where some employ minimum-wage custodians more than teachers or therapists, say government officials, education consultants and clinical psychologists.

The behavior-modification business is booming at Casa by the Sea, on Mexico's Pacific Coast, the largest of 11 affiliated programs with roughly 2,200 youths, about half of them in Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica. The programs are run by a small group of businessmen based in St. George, Utah, under the banner of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, or Wwasps, and Teen Help, the programs' main marketing arm.

Over the past seven years, local governments and State Department officials have investigated Wwasps-affiliated programs in Mexico, the Czech Republic and Samoa on charges of physical abuse and immigration violations. The Mexican program, in Cancún, and the Czech program closed, and their owners left those countries saying they feared unjust charges. The Samoan program cut its affiliation with Wwasps.

Ken Kay, the president of Wwasps, would not allow a reporter to visit Casa by the Sea; Dace Goulding, the program's director, declined to answer any questions. But Mr. Kay, responding to inquiries in writing from his office in Utah, said no charge of abuse had ever been proven against any of the programs in any court.

"We are about getting families back together," he said in a written statement. "We are not for everyone, and there are very few but vociferous critics of not just us but any youth intervention." He described many of the program's critics as parents who feel they have been "manipulated, brainwashed or duped" or who are battling through divorce and taking their anger out "by making us look terrible."

In telephone interviews, eight teenagers who were formerly in Casa by the Sea described a system in which the youths try to ascend six "levels" through a system of rewards and punishments, including being sent to "R and R," a small, bare isolation room, often for days on end. Discipline, not education, was the rule, they said.

For Laura Hamel, 17, of Vienna, Va., who counts herself as a success story, it was a slow two-year ascent to graduation in March. She said she was demoted from Level 3 back to Level 1 after giving a weeping, lonely friend a hug and a kiss on the cheek at Thanksgiving. Affection of that kind is forbidden.

A youth who rises to Levels 4, 5 and 6 can become a "junior staff member" and "participate in the discipline process" against lower-level youths, Casa's contract with parents says.

"The authority is in your hands," said Ryan Pink, 19, of El Paso, who reached Level 5 at Casa. "You can discipline kids. The younger kids — they were constantly being restrained, being punished, put in R and R for four or five days. Nose to the wall. Or nose to the ground. And at night you sleep in the hallways."

Many parents and youths say the behavior-management system of discipline and punishment scares youths into sobriety and obedience. Others — parents and youths formerly enrolled, education experts, government authorities and a former Wwasps program director — say the programs profit from struggling parents unable to handle their depressed, delinquent, defiant or drug-abusing children.

"Their goal is not to help teens in crisis or their families," according to a former director of one Wwasps-affiliated program, Amberly Knight. "It is to make millions of dollars."

The financial success of Casa by the Sea is evident. Its enrollment has nearly tripled, from about 200 youths when it opened in 1998 to more than 570 today, almost all American teenagers. Already among the biggest programs of its kind outside the United States, Casa by the Sea has just spun off another program for those 18 and over.

Tuition and fees at Casa by the Sea run about $30,000 a year, half of what some United States-based programs cost. Its staff members "do not need and may not necessarily have" teaching credentials, Casa's contract with parents plainly states.

Lon Woodbury, publisher of Woodbury Reports, which rates schools and programs for troubled teenagers inside and outside the United States, said one reason that American programs have moved abroad is "to avoid the laws and regulations of the States." He added, "They can hire minimum-wage staff and still charge stateside prices."

Profit margins and growth within the programs run by Wwasps appear solid. Teen Help, the affiliation's main marketing arm, was the single biggest corporate campaign contributor in the state of Utah in the 2002 election cycle, donating $215,290 to Republican campaigns, according to online federal election records posted in March.

Mr. Kay, the Wwasps president, said that the proof of the programs' success is the way in which "behavior of students generally changes drastically." The organization's internal surveys, he said, proved that "more than 98 percent of the schools' parents are completely satisfied." He wrote, "No wonder these are the fastest growing Schools of their kind in the world!!!"

The overseas "specialty boarding school" industry is growing so fast that United States consular officials in overseas embassies say they have no idea how many such programs exist.

"No authorities in Mexico control these institutions," said Elisa Ledesma, a lawyer at the American Consulate in Tijuana. Consular officers demanded and received access to several such programs in Mexico, one official said, after they "heard horror stories from parents."

The consular officers have the power, under the Vienna Convention, to visit overseas programs to check on the well-being of American citizens under 18.

In January, after several such visits, the State Department issued a notice on "behavior modification facilities" in Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica. The programs may "isolate the children in relatively remote sites" and restrict their contact with the outside world, it said.

At least seven programs in Utah, Montana, South Carolina and New York are Wwasps affiliates, according to the organization's Web site; at least three have faced legal challenges. Utah state officials say they are reviewing the license of the flagship Wwasps program, Cross Creek Manor, and that a second program, Majestic Ranch, is operating without a proper license.

Six weeks ago, according to the state attorney general's office in Utah, a director of Majestic Ranch entered into a court agreement to have no unsupervised contact with children after he was charged with misdemeanor child abuse.

Attorneys for both programs contest the licensing challenges. South Carolina officials have fined a third Wwasps program, Carolina Springs Academy, $5,000 for operating without a license.

While some dissatisfied parents have sued Wwasps and its programs, the contract that parents sign with Casa by the Sea sets high hurdles for them. It states plainly that the program "does not accept responsibility for services written in sales materials or brochures" or promises made by "staff or public relations personnel" and that any dispute between a parent and the program must be settled in a Mexican court, not in the United States.

The Wwasps programs market themselves under a multitude of interlinked Web sites. Their sales personnel offer thousands of dollars in incentives to adults who recruit new youths or host Web sites advertising the programs.

Some parents said in interviews that they enrolled their children in programs they had never visited after browsing Web sites, brochures and videotapes depicting happy children in a wholesome setting.

"I sent him there sight unseen," said Patti Reddoch, of Sweeny, Tex., who considered Dundee Ranch for her son, Edmund Brumaghin, now 17, but chose Casa by the Sea instead. "The music he was listening to started getting darker and he was getting more into the drugs, and that's when I decided I needed to do something.

"So I went on the Internet and started searching around and found the Wwasp program. I contacted them and made the arrangements, and that's pretty much it. It didn't take me any time at all."

Mrs. Reddoch, speaking by telephone, said she then hired an "escort service" familiar with Casa by the Sea to handcuff and transport her son away at 5 a.m. one Sunday last September.

That morning, her son cursed her bitterly, but now his attitude is changing, she said.

"I am very pleased with the school," said Ms. Reddoch, who said she visited Casa by the Sea once, for a weekend, last January. "I've started putting out brochures for referrals. I would recommend Casa to anyone."

Reality may differ from the brochures, however. "Everyone has a shaved head," Michael Zieghelboim, who was formerly enrolled at Casa by the Sea, said in a telephone interview. "They walk around like zombies. Most of the staff have no training."

"Casa by the Sea was the scariest thing that ever happened to me," said Mr. Zieghelboim, who now lives with his father in El Salvador.

He said that despite falling behind in his education at Casa by the Sea — at 17, he is now in the 10th grade — he rates himself a success. "If I had never gone there, I'd probably still be doing cocaine," he said.

This kind of tough discipline is an attraction for many exasperated parents.

The program runs "a very tight ship," said Virginia Day, of Redmond, Wash., who sent her son, Gabriel, 15, to the program in July.

"The staff that works most closely with the kids are not necessarily professionals, and I know that this is an issue," said Ms. Day, who called herself a very satisfied customer. "This is not a school that specializes in a therapeutic component."

Carol Maxym, an educational consultant in Maryland, said: "What they are looking for at Casa is compliance. Compliance is easy, if you break the kid down enough. And compliance is cheap." She added, "The parents often don't realize what's going on."

Youths and staff at other overseas Wwasps programs have described harsh conditions. One was Aaron Kravig, now 19. He said he contracted scabies, untreated for six months, ate meals of watery porridge and fish entrails, and was schooled almost solely with "emotional growth" videos at Tranquility Bay, the Wwasps-affiliated program in Jamaica, according to a transcript of sworn testimony he gave last year at a Virginia state court hearing.

In Costa Rica, Ms. Knight, the former director of the Wwasps-affiliated Academy at Dundee Ranch, resigned in August after sending a letter to the national minister of child welfare calling for the program to be shut down.

The letter said the program was "hiring unqualified, untrained, staff" and providing "the bare minimum of food and living essentials." It said the program "takes financial advantage of parents in crisis, and puts teens in physical and emotional risk."

The speed with which some parents choose an overseas behavioral-modification program for their children baffles some educational consultants.

"I find it incredible that parents would send their kids off to some place they've heard about on the Internet," Mr. Woodbury said.

Ms. Maxym, author of "Teens in Turmoil: A Path to Change for Parents, Adolescents and their Families" (Viking Penguin, 2000) said, "I find it interesting that parents will spend less time finding a school for their child than buying a new car."

Ryan Fraidenburgh's father, Bob, an aerospace engineering executive, said he had only glanced at Casa by the Sea's "brochures that looked like Club Med." He said he removed Ryan from the program by himself in January 2001 after deciding he had been too hasty.

"We made a huge mistake," he said. "Until the day I die I'll regret that."

Ryan's mother, Carolyn, said: "We were expecting treatment, not a minimum-wage person to watch over your kid like he was an animal in a cage."
Title: Re: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: Eliscu2 on September 05, 2010, 01:07:01 PM
:nods:
Title: Re: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: FemanonFatal2.0 on June 10, 2011, 06:01:58 PM
http://http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/cult-spawned-tough-love-teen-industry

The idea that punishment can be therapeutic is not unique to the Rotenberg Center. In fact, this notion is widespread among the hundreds of "emotional growth boarding schools," wilderness camps, and "tough love" antidrug programs that make up the billion-dollar teen residential treatment industry.

This harsh approach to helping troubled teens has a long and disturbing history. No fewer than 50 programs (though not the Rotenberg Center) can trace their treatment philosophy, directly or indirectly, to an antidrug cult called Synanon. Founded in 1958, Synanon sold itself as a cure for hardcore heroin addicts who could help each other by "breaking" new initiates with isolation, humiliation, hard labor, and sleep deprivation.

Today, troubled-teen programs use Synanon-like tactics, advertising themselves to parents as solutions for everything from poor study habits to substance misuse. However, there is little evidence that harsh behavior-modification techniques can solve these problems. Studies found that Synanon's "encounter groups" could produce lasting psychological harm and that only 10 to 15 percent of the addicts who participated in them recovered. And as the classic 1971 Stanford prison experiment demonstrated, creating situations in which the severe treatment of powerless people is rewarded inevitably yields abuse. This is especially true when punishment is viewed as a healing process. Synanon was discredited in the late 1970s and 1980s as its violent record was exposed. (The group is now remembered for an incident in which a member placed a live rattlesnake—rattle removed—in the mailbox of a lawyer who'd successfully sued it.) Yet by the time Synanon shut down in 1991, its model had already been widely copied.

In 1971, the federal government gave a grant to a Florida organization called The Seed, which applied Synanon's methods to teenagers, even those only suspected of trying drugs. In 1974, Congress opened an investigation into such behavior-modification programs, finding that The Seed had used methods "similar to the highly refined brainwashing techniques employed by the North Koreans."

The bad publicity led some supporters of The Seed to create a copycat organization under a different name. Straight Inc. was cofounded by Mel Sembler, a Bush family friend who would become the GOP's 2000 finance chair and who heads Lewis "Scooter" Libby's legal defense fund. By the mid-'80s, Straight was operating in seven states. First Lady Nancy Reagan declared it her favorite antidrug program. As with The Seed, abuse was omnipresent—including beatings and kidnapping of adult participants. Facing seven-figure legal judgments, it closed in 1993.

But loopholes in state laws and a lack of federal oversight allowed shuttered programs to simply change their names and reopen, often with the same staff, in the same state—even in the same building. Straight spin-offs like the Pathway Family Center are still in business.

Confrontation and humiliation are also used by religious programs such as Escuela Caribe in the Dominican Republic and myriad "emotional growth boarding schools" affiliated with the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), such as Tranquility Bay in Jamaica. WWASP's president told me that the organization "took a little bit of what Synanon [did]." Lobbying by well-connected supporters such as WWASP founder Robert Lichfield (who, like Sembler, is a fundraiser for Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney) has kept state regulators at bay and blocked federal regulation entirely.

By the '90s, tough love had spawned military-style boot camps and wilderness programs that thrust kids into extreme survival scenarios. At least three dozen teens have died in these programs, often because staff see medical complaints as malingering. This May, a 15-year-old boy died from a staph infection at a Colorado wilderness program. His family claims his pleas for help were ignored. In his final letter to his mother, he wrote, "They found my weakness and I want to go home."

(http://http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2007/09/how_a_cult_spawned_the_tough_love_teen_industry_630x738.gif)
Title: Re: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: AtomicAnt on September 07, 2011, 07:56:39 PM
Torture Alleged at Chain of Children's Homes
By JONNY BONNER

    SALT LAKE CITY (CN) - Hundreds of parents claim a group of boarding schools tortured their children: locked them in dog cages, forced them to lie in feces and eat vomit, masturbated them and denied the troubled teens any religion "except for the Mormon faith."
     The Utah-based World Wide Association Of Specialty Programs and Schools and its owners - Robert Lichfield, Brent Facer and Ken Kay - went to great lengths to hide the "torture," which began in the mid-1990s and continued for a decade, the 357 plaintiffs claim in Salt Lake County Court.
     The plaintiffs say that 59 schools and owners tied to the company "jointly promoted, advertised, and marketed defendants' residential boarding schools as a place where children with problems could get an education while receiving instruction and direction in behavior modification for emotional growth and personal development."
     But they say the children were subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the schools including, Cross Creek Center for Boys, Brightway Adolescent Hospital and Red Rock Springs. They say the abuses inflicted upon some children for years "could be accurately described as torture."
     According to the complaint, students were locked in boxes, cages and basements at the schools, denied medical and dental care, and forced "to carry heavy bags of sand around their necks or logs throughout the day over many days."
     They were sexually abused, "which included forced sexual relations and acts of fondling and masturbation performed on them," according to the 119-page complaint.
     Students were "forced to eat their own vomit ... bound and tied by hands and/or feet ... chained and locked in dog cages ... forced to lie in, or wear, urine and feces ... forced to sleep on cold concrete floors, boxspring, or plywood," and put to forced labor, the complaint states.
     Children were "kicked, beaten, thrown and slammed to the ground ... forced to eat raw or rotten food ... poked and prodded with various objects while being strip searched ... denied any religious affiliation, except for the Mormon faith ... [and] threatened [with] severe punishment, including death, if they told anyone of their abuses and poor living conditions," according to the complaint.
     Their mail was confiscated, and personal visits and telephone calls were forbidden or discouraged, the parents say.
     "At all times relevant, defendants did not disclose to the parents the physical, emotional, mental, and/or sexual abuse to which their children were subjected at their facilities and conspired, even to this day, to prevent them from discovering such abuse," the complaint states.
     The defendant company still operates residential centers in Utah, South Carolina and Costa Rica, but has faced school shutdowns in Mexico, Jamaica and Samoa amid child abuse investigations, according to the complaint. It says that more than 2,100 students were enrolled in its schools in 2003.
     The plaintiffs filed a similar lawsuit in Federal Court in 2006, which U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups dismissed in August for lack of jurisdiction.The parents seek punitive damages for fraud, gross negligence, false imprisonment, assault and battery, and breach of contract, and a protective order to prevent spoliation of evidence.
     They are represented by Windle Turley of Dallas, Texas and James McConkie II with Parker & McConkie of Salt Lake

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/09/06/39546.htm (http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/09/06/39546.htm)
Title: Re: Articles and links regarding WWASP!
Post by: unicorn33 on February 12, 2012, 02:35:45 AM
As a Casa by the sea survivor, and seeing abuse RIGHT in front of me from LUKE HALLOWS sitting on top of a 14 year old LITTLE girl screaming and cussing at her in R and R will never leave my memory, or seeing the girls walk through the gates from High impact, where the WWASPS says they had NO affiliation with them!!! I cant belive this! PLEASE PARENTS!!!! THESE PROGRAMS HAVE SEMINARS THAT ARE ABUSIVE AND BRAIN WASHING YOUR POOR KIDS!!! I KNOW MORE THAN YOU KNOW! PLEASE EMAIL ME IF YOU HAVE ANY PERSONAL QUESTIONS THAT I CANT MENTION ON HERE, DUE TO MY FAMILY BEING A PART OF THIS HORRIBLE ABUSE. [email protected] THANK YOU