Fornits

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An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

A Visit (sort of) to an Ed Consultant  

 I recently had occasion to go to Canada and Northern Idaho twice in the last couple of weeks. We drove a looping vacation through the Pacific Northwest and came back through the Idaho Panhandle, on a horse-buying trip. The filly we bought was in Moyie Springs, ID, just 2 miles south of the Canadian border. So, in the last 2 weeks, I have stayed overnight a couple of times in Bonners' Ferry, ID, home of Lon Woodbury's educational consulting business.

Bonners' Ferry is a lovely little town of 2500, plunked in a small valley of the Kootenai River, full of golden aspens and rutting deer this time of year. On our "pick-up" trip with the horse trailer, we were staying at the Kootenai Indian Casino, a fairly big place right on the river. We needed grain and hay for the trip home, and went into town to the grain mill. [Like a lot of small towns, there is the "strip mall" end of newer buildings going out of town, and there is the nearly-dead brick center of Old Town.] There, two 10-story-tall galvanized metal buildings are busy creating animal feed from local grain, puffing and grinding away at opposite sides of a small square in town. As we waited for our product, I spy..."Woodbury Reports" on a building near where we parked. I was astonished at the tiny metal-roofed very shabby blue Victorian house squatting under the shadow of the grain elevator, without landscaping and with junk visible in the yard. The best part of the place was the wooden sign you see in the strugglingteens.com site.

Now, there is no rule that an Internet business has to look legit to amount to anything; I was just extremely surprised to find this business, which seems to get the most respect of all ed consultants (probably due to its forum pages) appearing like a place that I would think twice about entering. I bet a good many "customers" with the bucks to send their kids off for a "fix" expect the decision-maker in their consultation process to be something more like "artisan goat cheese on a sesame water cracker" when it really looks more like "Cheez-Whiz squirted from a can onto a Ritz."

We were there the day of the Rocky Mountain Academy bomb scare. We knew kids were being shipped here and there (the armory and the fairgrounds), and it was the talk of the staff at the casino. Surprisingly, the locals really don't know much about the "schools" right outside of town...even the 3rd generation local young person serving our drinks at the bar. The RMA does "adopt" a stretch of highway, so they apparently do let them out for clean-up duty. Our server also said the school had a prom at the casino this year, but "the kids were really weird". The prom-goers were notably silent, not talking much at all...the girls danced with the girls, and the boys stood off to the side. This person's relative even works at the school in a fairly responsible position, yet little or none of the goings-on makes it out of the facility.

The consensus of the locals? We didn't meet one who approved of the school, even though it meant jobs in this small town. Mostly, the kids and the parents who sent them from Manhattan, Miami, and other rich enclaves (to experience the beautiful remote wilds, more than 45 minutes down the only highway to Sandpoint, the VERY-tony ski resort where one's parents can stay and refresh themselves while "visiting" their incarcerated children) are disdained. The best quote was from one young person: "They're just a bunch of rich kids whose parents send them off to be trained like a dog."

The educational consulting business is certified by a shingle given by this group of self-proclaimed and self-regulated non-pros. Oh, that and $100. This is a very Mormom community, Woodbury's purchasable book has the back cover sold to WWASPS or Teen Help, and he accepts any advertising WWASPS wants to send his way. He says he does not recommend their "schools". Yet a parent would have to be sort of blind to think the expertise of this person is of a caliber and neutrality to really do the best for their child. Oh well, maybe doing the best for their child is not at all about why they are searching for a private prison in the first place.

New Post>>>A note on the community sense in Northern Idaho:  The area is heavily Mormon, redneck, and feels a lot out-of-touch with the current America.  The beautiful woods that compose the drive from Bonner's Ferry (Struggling Teens' home) down to Coeur d'Alene are as primitive as they were when my dad was born there in 1919. There are tons of shanty "ranches".  While we were there, the local paper ran several stories about "racial tensions" with a black-and-white couple whose house had been "torched" because of what the couple said was racial hatred.  Turned out, the mixed-marriage folks really burned down their own house to collect the insurance and move away somewhere.  The cops figured this out after being puzzled by why a brand-new Sears stainless steel refrigerator was out on the lawn, unscathed, in front of the totalled house. This stretch of woods also habored the recent registered sex offender who murdered a couple and 2 of their children, while taking their 8-yo daughter captive for 6 weeks of hell. Coeur d'Alene is a fancy lake/ski area, with a prominent sleezy component population.  Bonner's Ferry is up the road, and one would think a parent's heart would drop when driving up to drop off children at the now-closed Rocky Mountain Academy.

Wonder why Phoenix/Anon reads this forum every day and posts often, while hiding under a brown paper bag.....?

Oh, well, if she's not a parent (as stated), and not a staffer, she's probably just a troll.  It's interesting that the Phoenix "support group" for WWASPS tried to hold a summer picnic last year and couldn't get a rise out of more than about 6 people in all the Southwest, and had to cancel the picnic plans.

I'm signing off today and going to write my letters to the government representatives about George Miller's bill.  Gee, if Phoenix gets excited by sitting alone in the dark before her computer, with her air conditioning humming, inciting responses from all of us here on Fornits like she was really someone important and not a single demented, sad individual, imagine what a power trip *I* could have from writing my Congressman and having him rightly assume that my single letter reflects the thoughts of around 1000 people in his district.  Now thats a POWER trip!

What kind of actual proof are you looking for, Anon?  Battered kids?  

-I know from my kid's personal eyewitness experience at Casa by the Sea (one step "nicer" than TB) that physically-abused kids were all around but that parents and all government authorities, Mexican and US State Dept., NEVER got to see them.
 
-I know that the accomodations kids actually lived in were NEVER seen by parents.
 
-I know that the actual food that kids were given was NEVER shown to parents.  

-I know that parents who were shown the "time-out" rooms were NEVER told that kids spent days and even months in isolation (like my kid did).  

-I know that kids always knew when parents were scheduled to arrive for a seminar, etc. because the facility was NEVER cleaned up so well as when the kids had to scrub for 3 days beforehand.

-I know that only the best written efforts were forwarded to parents, who NEVER got to communicate directly with their kids without strict censorship ("write it again until you get one that I can show your folks").

-I know that comments such as yours, about how you don't believe negative comments, are ALWAYS from parents whose kids are still in WWASPS and simply can't deal with the possibility of their bad mistake in trusting low-lifes to guard their children.

<
Whatever else you came out of Ivy Ridge with, you didn't come out with a very accurate or compassionate view of your fellow man.



Julie/Timoclea



"

Also didn't come out with much of an education.  Pretty damn pitiful writing, for the $100,000 the parents spent.

On 2005-06-01 12:34:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Hi Joyce,



You are no idiot, these people just don't understand or have never been to any of these facilities.  They think they know but have no idea, so keep thinking and doing what you are doing,  your daughter is graduating let these idiots keep talking!!!!"

Uh....WRONG.  Been There, Done That, Understand "These Facilities" very well.  Have a child who was there.  Struggled for a year on bringing sunshine into our child's daily life.  Failed.  Tried everything to get her out.  Failed.  Tried to get the facility shut down.  Succeeded.  

Dare I say, I know more about "these facilites" than you, Dear Anonymous. Could it be that, JUST MAYBE, you also have a child incarcerated, who you are hoping will not hate you in your later life?  

Your advice to Joyce to "keep thinking"?  If only she had thought at the beginning.

On 2005-05-30 00:05:00, Anonymous wrote:

"It's surprising to me to read the responses my posting generated. Do I know what my daughter will be like in 5 years? No, and neither do you.

What I do know, is that my daughter is alive right now, and sees a future for herself unlike some of her old "friends".

All parents on this board can identify with your fear of your daughter *not being alive* if she continued whatever behavior got her "put" [what other word would you use?] into the Montana facility.  Teens do weird scary things as they grow up.  However, have you questioned the process that needed 18 MONTHS, out of the most important maturing years of a young person, to effect a change? That's nearly 600 days of constant, way-more-intense-than-normal control of every moment, including personal hygiene time, daily self-critical "therapy" sessions, and the lack of random "daydreaming" that is necessary to develop a healthy mind.  Throw in all the time away from the rest of the world she will eventually have to live in...one with current economics and war she should understand, one with a continual barrage of advertising she should be taught to interpret, one with random and senseless acts of true love and kindness that even stray kittens thrive on...that she is missing. Your daughter has been removed from Life, and her "attitude" (improper in your eyes) has been the single focus of her world.  

Dear Mom, how would you do existing in a workplace where every single second at your desk was being watched for transgressions against the Code of Behavior, often transgressions made up as you go along, and administered by dumb yockels who somehow have been placed above you in the chain of command?  You would probably retreat into the safety of quiet obedience after a year and a half of this anxiety and terror. We're presuming here that you wouldn't have your lunch removed or your bathroom break disallowed if you forgot to respond to your hourly requirement of praising the rightness of your workplace environment. We're also presuming that you get to go home at day's end and vent your frustration on your family or the dog or the weeds in your garden.  There is no such relief for your daughter, who is still held captive and incommunicado.  

Making an assumption that I "put" my daughter in this school to make my life easier seems to fit into your stereotype of the "I don't want to deal with it" parent. You don't know me, or my situation.

Because I personally have dealt with a life twisted by such an institution (and ALL BM facilities are the same, your "Academy" being fairly notorious and blatant enough to make it to the List of Red Flags), I can predict your future with more than an educated guess.  I don't know you, true, but I know literally hundreds of parents and survivors like you, and the results are dismally similar.  

Joyce, this post on Fornits is not for you.  You are a lost cause, smugly confident in the rightness of your born-again-Christian type attitude.  I wonder why you are here, reading all this "negative" blather and fearful of your choice for your daughter being "painted with the same brush" as all the other facilities.  We're not talking about Harry Potter's "school" here.  We're talking about a sinister private prison where one can only hope to work off one's sentence and eventually be released back into The Outside.  That freedom is hard for a teen to deal with, and [from experience] I can say that it will take about half as long for the "conditioning" to wear off as it took for it to be imprinted in the first place.

This post is for the others out there, who think there is an answer for their troubles in hiring an organization of greedy uneducated captors for a whole lot of money.  Like fine wine, if it's very expensive, it must be good...right?  It's not, and my point in participating in this forum 21 months after my child was released is to remove that option from other parents considering incarcerating their children.

And if you think it's okay and not child neglect to wilfully deprive a kid of shoes and define shoes as a privilege, then you're not playing with a full deck, either.



Timoclea







"

I'm not sure if I'd call flip-flops in and of themselves 'abusive".  A whole lot of the world calls them their only footwear.  What I WOULD call abusive is the fact that the kids are told over and over that they wear flimsy sandals for the specific, sole, and punitive reason that such footwear is issued just so escape becomes very difficult or nearly impossible.  Sort of like wearing shackles or hobbles...is that abusive for a prisoner going to court?  No.  Is that abusive for teenagers going about their twisted life in the gulag?  Yes.  

BTW, it was not their ONLY shoes.  Even in Casa, they had their tennis shoes which were passed out for the half-hour forced marches called PE, and then recollected.  Our kid's problem was that when she was sent off, her shoes were already tight.  During her year there, she grew enough (duh!) to need a larger size, which never happened.  She limped along for a while, then learned to jog around the courtyard in flip-flops. Was this abusive?  Maybe, but definitely sadistic and neglectful.