Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

I just had some one e-mail me from prison in California, he is in there for murder.  His friend found a post of mine about Green River, she said when he read it he was touched to say the least. He was at Woods Bend in Kentucky in the med 70ts I was at Green River Bays Camp.  They were the to worst  in Kentucky .  He wants to correspond with me, but still to this day its hard to talk about.  Believe me when you live through a place like that, you are capable of anything.

4) BILL MOYERS' NOW COMMENTS On THE PATRIOT ACT
At the same time the Bush administration is probing into your private life, it is shielding itself from all public scrutiny. It has shredded the Freedom of Information Act; it has locked away presidential records not only of the current administration but of administrations going all the way back to Reagan as well; and it has even locked up George W. Bush's gubernatorial records so that the people of Texas can't see what he did to them while serving as their governor.

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration is also using anti-terror legislation and executive orders to protect its corporate sponsors from scrutiny and from prosecution. The drug company Eli Lilly, for instance, was recently granted immunity from all cases brought against it-?even those initiated long before the war on terrorism--related to a vaccine it manufactured that turned out to cause autism in many children. (Eli Lilly contributed over $3 million in the last two election campaigns.) The Bush administration also protected the Bayer Corporation1s patent on the antibiotic Cipro throughout the anthrax scare, whereas other countries, such as Canada, broke that patent so that other companies could make cheaper versions of the drug in case of emergency.

It is interesting to note that during WWII Bayer was part of the I.G. Farben conglomerate, the top financial contributor to the Nazi Party. I.G. Farben produced petrol and rubber for the Nazi war machine and it manufactured the Zyklon B gas that was used to exterminate millions of Jews and other "enemies of the state." In exchange for these services, the Nazis provided Farben (and Bayer) with lucrative government contracts and with slave labor from concentration camps.

Under George W. Bush's kinder, gentler fascism, U.S. corporations are now allowed to do business with the Homeland Security Department even if they cheat the government out of vast amounts of tax revenues by setting up offshore business fronts in the Caribbean Islands. It used to be that tax-evaders were tracked down and punished. Now they're rewarded with fat government contracts. Could the slave labor be far behind?

If only this were the extent of the Bush administration's ramble down the road to fascism. Way back in November of 2001, William Safire accused the Bush administration of "seizing dictatorial power." Well, Mr. Safire, you ain't seen nothing yet. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, just when you thought we can't lose any more of our liberties and still call ourselves a "free society," we learn that the Bush administration wants to take away even more of our rights. A secret document was just leaked out of John Ashcroft's Justice Department and turned over to the Center for Public Integrity. Titled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, this document turns out to be a draft of new anti-terrorism legislation, a vastly more muscular sequel to Patriot Act. If passed, it would grant the executive branch sweeping new powers of domestic surveillance, and it would eliminate most of the few remaining checks and balances that protect us from tyranny.

It's the Patriot Act on steroids. Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity shared this document with Bill Moyers, who examined it on NOW, his weekly PBS program. That episode aired Friday, February 7, yet even now no mainstream news broadcaster has picked up this incredible story. Read the NOW transcript and see the document itself online at http://www.pbs.org/now/. You can also read the Center for Public Integrity's analysis of the document at http://www.publicintegrity.org/.

Dr. David Cole, a Law professor at Georgetown University and author of Terrorism and the Constitution assessed the document, saying, "I think this is a quite radical proposal. It authorizes secret arrests. It would give the Attorney General essentially unchecked authority to deport anyone who he thought was a danger to our economic interests. It would strip citizenship from people for lawful political associations."

"Secret arrests?? Did we hear that right? It seems that the Homeland Security Department (HSD) is about to become the KGB. The first Patriot Act already allows for people to be locked up indefinitely without a lawyer and without being charged with a crime. If Patriot Act II passes, then arrests would also be secret. That means that dissenters (or anyone else, for that matter) could disappear without a trace, just as they did in Nazi Germany, in Stalinist Russia, and in Pinochet's Chile.

Patriot Act II would also grant even more immunity to Big Business. A corporation could pour toxins into your local river, for instance, and you wouldn't know about it until all the fish died and your neighbor?s kids were born with missing limbs. And then when you went to court and demanded to know what

the company was dumping in your river, the company could deny you that information on the grounds that it's a national security secret. JimHightower put it this way: "All a company has to do to shield anything it wants to keep from the public eye--say, an embarrassing chemical spill--is give the documents to the Homeland Security Department and call them "critical infrastructure information."

Ah, but there's even more to be concerned about here. The document was created back in early January, but so far it appears that the only members of Congress who even know of its existence are House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Vice-president Dick Cheney. (The Vice-president presides over the Senate, which makes him a member of the legislative branch as well as the executive branch.) This raises a troubling question: Why has the White House been sitting on this bill for a month? If the CEOs down at Bush, Inc. really believe that they need these broad new powers to protect us from terrorists, why not roll out that bill and start the debate? The answer is all too plain. In all likelihood, the Bush administration was planning to avoid debate entirely by springing this bill on the American people in the midst of a perceived national crisis. Perhaps during the war with Iraq, for instance. Or perhaps in the aftermath of the next terrorist attack. Or perhaps right after the Reichstag fire.

Had some courageous soul not leaked this document out of the Justice Department, the White House might easily have succeeded in passing it through Congress without debate in the midst of our next perceived national crisis, much as it did with the first Patriot Act in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. A thorough debate of this bill right now, under fairly stable circumstances, would defuse it and prevent its passage even under more frightening circumstances later on. There's just one problem. The debate can't begin until more Americans know about this bill, but so far the Washington Post is the only major news outlet to even MENTION this story since Bill Moyers broke it on Friday night.

 Here's what you can do to help
First, forward this email to everyone you know. Second, send an email to the Center for Public Integrity and to the producers of NOW thanking them for breaking this story. Here's a sample message that you can use or modify:

I am writing to express my heartfelt thanks and admiration to the Center for Public Integrity, to Bill Moyers, to the producers of NOW, and especially to the brave unnamed patriot who valued the Bill of Rights over his or her own personal well-being and, at great personal risk, leaked a draft of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 out of the Justice Department.

Sincerely,(Your name, city, and state.)

Center for Public Integity: mailto:[email protected].
NOW with Bill Moyers: mailto:[email protected].


 click here to read:
5) THE USA PATRIOT ACT
A Legal Analysis by Charles Doyle
Senior Specialist, American Law Division
published online as a PDA document


 back to the home page
 go to the Free Press

An American Hitler and his Gestapo

By DOUG THOMPSON
Jan 23, 2006, 09:15   Email this article
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The U.S. Department of Justice, led by Alberto ?The Constitution is an outdated document? Gonzales, wants to know if you?ve been looking at any racy material on the Internet.

Yahoo and MSN have already complied with subpoenas from Gonzales? storm troopers demanding records on who is using their search services to look at porno sites on the Internet.

Google, to their credit, said no and is now caught in a tough legal fight against the George Bush?s Gestapo.

Ohmigod! Did he say Gestapo?

Damn right I did. If you don?t think the rights-robbing, privacy-invading, Constitution ignoring administration of George W. Bush is anything less than a Hitler-style Gestapo then you?ve got your head stuffed so far up your ass that all that brown stuff is blinding you.

America, once hailed as the land of the free, has ? under the tyranny of King George ? become Amerika, reviled as a global thug that doesn?t give a damn about anyone?s rights, especially those of its own citizens.

Protest if you want. Spout the Republican Party line is you can without gagging. I don?t give a damn. If you believe George W. Bush is anything less than an American Hitler then you?re too damn dumb and stupid to argue with anyway.

Bush is an evil man, a power-grapping despot who believes in absolute rule, a madman so wrapped up in his perceived role as ?a wartime President? and ?Commander in Chief? that he believes no law applies to him or his rotting, corrupt, administration. The Constitution? Why it?s just ?a goddamned piece of paper? to this insane megalomaniac.

Legal scholars agree that Bush blatantly broke the law by ordering the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without warrants or court review. The only cretins who support this dictator are the brain-dead Republicans who put power above the law and party loyalty above their country.

Bush is a traitor to his country. As a traitor, he should be led from the White House in chains and tried as one. Since he insists he is a ?wartime President,? then let?s try the son-of-a-bitch as a wartime traitor, a Benedict Arnold who turned on his country and gave aid and comfort to its enemies.  Bush has done far more damage to the freedoms and security of American than Osama bin Laden. In fact, I?m starting to believe the traitorous asshole is in league with bin Laden and others who want this country destroyed.

No true American would treat the Constitution with the contempt that spills like toxic bile from the lips of George Bush. No true American would continue to support this maniac as he continues to dismantle what once was the greatest country in the world.

Bush is clearly guilty of high crimes against the Constitution of the United States. It?s time to give this

No More Nightmares at Tranquility Bay?
By John Gorenfeld, AlterNet. Posted January 23, 2006.

Largely unregulated, the teen rehab industry has scarred thousands of kids for life. Now one lone congressmember is pushing to stop the abuse. :smile:  :smile:  :smile:  :smile:  :smile:  :smile:

 

From the Czech Republic to Costa Rica and Mexico, cops have seized American overseers for caging or mistreating American teens at harsh "boot camps" run under foreign flags to escape U.S. law.
But here at home, the companies that ship teenagers to remote reform schools can freely go about their business in many states. You can dial 1-800-355-TEEN to reach the sales staff of Teen Help, LLC, who can arrange for your child to be spirited away. They might put you in touch with "escorts," guys who can pull up to your driveway in a van and transport even the most defiant child to the airport. The next destination is up to you: a "tough love" school here in the 50 states, like Majestic Ranch in Utah or Spring Creek Lodge Academy in Montana?
Or perhaps Tranquility Bay, a barbed-wire discipline facility in Jamaica, where some of the approximately 250 teens can find themselves confined against their will and marched around by guards. Only the devil stands in the way of your consumer choice. The devil, that is, and a lone congressman, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.
Just ask Ken Kay. He's the president of the tightly knit group of Utah men who run these outposts with their families, under the umbrella company World-Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS), whose leaders, critics say, try to hide their role in running the schools by running them under different names. Ken's son Jay, a college dropout who ran a mini-mart in San Diego, now oversees Tranquility Bay, where he had admitted to the media that he squirted pepper spray on his charges in the past.
As a teen at Tranquility Bay, you can't call home and are escorted between rooms by Jamaican "chaperones." Talk out of turn and your punishment might be that a trio of guards wrestles you to the ground. "They start twisting and pulling your limbs, grinding your ankles," a student told the British newspaper The Guardian. Not knowing when you'll go home, you might take cold showers and watch "emotional growth" videos. The promise is that you will return a respectful, happy teen. But many WWASPS alumni who've banded together at online survivor websites like Tranquility Bay Fight and Fornits say their lives haven't been saved, they've been devastated.
Several WWASPS schools have been shut down after abuse claims. Tranquility Bay's counterpart, High Impact, a WWASP affiliate in Mexico, closed in 2002 after dark stories emerged. Teens said they were kept in dog cages. Two parents, Chris Goodwin and Stephanie Hecker, told the Rocky Mountain News their children were made to lie in their underwear for three nights with fire ants roaming over them and were threatened with a cattle prod if they scratched.
In December, Rep. Miller asked Congress's nonpartisan General Accounting Office (GAO) to launch a fact-finding probe into similar schools, claiming the $1.2 billion teen rehabilitation clinic industry is shrouded in secrecy. Miller's office is awaiting word from the GAO on the investigation request. After a call to the GAO, AlterNet was told no decision had been made yet as to whether to launch the study, which would look into whether the industry was receiving special tax treatment or using fraudulent marketing techniques. Asked why he requested the probe, Rep. Miller explained, "Far too little is known about the so-called 'behavior modification' industry, even as it has surged in size since the 1990s, and that is why I have asked the GAO to review it... There is no excuse for allowing children to be placed in unlicensed programs where their physical or emotional health is jeopardized."
But company president Kay told AlterNet he questioned the congressman's motives. "I think that he must just want to be powerful, or seen as, 'oh, the guy that saved all these children from abuse,'" says Kay. "My fear is that he has a vendetta."
The WWASPS schools rake in about $80 million a year. Claiming to enlist about 1,250 students (the official number has dropped from 2,500 in 2003), the company schools are part of a wider industry, estimated to hold 10,000 teenagers, that is rarely covered by the news media.
Miller, senior Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, is pushing for a bill, H.R. 1738, to increase state licensing of the teen control trade and hold Americans who run foreign discipline schools accountable to U.S. laws. Company president Kay, however, suggested Miller may also have a partisan, anti-Republican motive against WWASPS.
It's true that WWASPS is generous to the GOP. The schools and "teen transport" company are run by a web of cell-like corporate entities that deny their interconnectedness -- but share family members, billing addresses and other obvious signs of affiliation. At the top is founder Bob Lichfield, who lives in Utah on a posh ranch, his lifestyle and political presence fueled by tuition payments. According to the Salt Lake City Tribune Bob Lichfield and his family and business associates have given given over $1 million to GOP politics at the local and national level.
The lobbying seems to have paid off. Seeing as how the National Mental Health Association has categorically condemned juvenile boot camps as counterproductive "bullying," the goal would appear to be keeping oversight out of the hands of mental health experts. Like some timber companies and others, a number of "troubled teen" companies have promoted the idea that they should be their own watchdogs. While the rules are tightening this year in Utah, a frontier is opening in Montana. As Michelle Chen reported in the NewStandard, a pro-WWASPS plan is winning out in the state over a tougher one, coinciding with WWASPS school Spring Creek Lodge Academy's $50,000 lobbying push to water down the rules. Instead of the state Department of Health, the new plan lets industry insiders watch over schools such as Spring Creek and others. And there will be exemptions for "faith-based" schools.
So far, WWASPS hasn't chosen the God loophole, but its officials attach such religious zeal to teen control that the "faith-based" label would fit the company snugly. "Do I believe that God is finding a way for teens to get help? I do," Lichfield once told the Los Angeles Times. "Do I believe that Satan is interested in thwarting it? I do." Asked in December about his boss's remarks, Kay waxed philosophical: "If you have a spiritual side, I think you can truly believe that there may be some adversarial part of our nature and makeup that gets involved." Then there are other adversaries, some of whom Kay has called "wackos" -- a steady parade of unhappy mothers and teens, as well as the pesky foreign cops who have arrested camp leaders at Kay's schools for "human rights violations."
The company has spent the last decade trailblazing an unregulated frontier. Like manufacturers, they've outsourced to foreign countries which have different laws and standards. A predecessor like STRAIGHT, Inc., from 1976 to 1993 the foremost teenage drug rehab outfit in America, was driven out of business by liability and sued for false imprisonment and manhandling of children. But as industry watchers have discovered, the early 1990s saw new business models emerging for "tough love." WWASPS' approach has been a goldmine. By splintering its business empire into fragments -- including Teen Help, Adolescent Services, Inc., and Teen Escort (the teen retrieval arm) -- it has received much more leeway to conceal accountability and money trails, its critics argue. Draw a map of the network, Utah state prosecutor Craig Barlowe told the New York Times in 2003, and you'll see "a lateral arabesque with no hub except for these connections in Utah." Barlowe was pursuing a child abuse charge against the director of a WWASP-affiliated school at the time.
On the consumer end, parents are offered thousands of dollars in sales incentives for finding new kids or promoting WWASP schools, the New York Times has reported. The schools' hunger for pupils has created a proliferation of promotional websites -- like FamilyFirstAid.org -- beckoning mom and dad to ship the kid to the "friendly tourist Island [sic]" of Tranquility Bay, the "prime forest land" of WWASPS' Spring Creek Lodge and other pleasurable-sounding destinations. (As author Maia Szalavitz documents in her upcoming book, Help at Any Cost, at WWASPS program Paradise Cove in Samoa, which is now shuttered, kids caught scabies, and guards confined bad kids to a 3 feet by 3 feet plywood chamber that teens referred to as "The Box.")
School of hard knocks
Two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, Lou Kilzer of the Rocky Mountain News and Tim Weiner of the New York Times have written exposes of the kennel cages, bug infestations, unqualified staff and confinement to punishment rooms that have been passed off under the Harry Potter-esque language of "boarding school." Rep. Miller's spokesman Tom Kiley said that substandard education is just one of the areas of concern that the GAO needs to help resolve about WWASPS and the wider industry. This August, one facility with the prestigious name "Academy at Ivy Ridge" in New York had to refund more than $1 million after pretending to offer legitimate high school diplomas.
WWASPS eludes the attention and regulation it might receive if its institutions were presented as health care facilities instead of schools. There is little to show for them as high-water marks in American education, however; when not being bombarded with Tony Robbins motivational tapes, kids learn by rote and fill out multiple-choice tests. While a promotional website claims that "more than 80 percent of the graduates of these programs go on to attend some of the best universities and professional schools in the country," Kay didn't respond to a request for an example of a student at an Ivy League or other top school. Referring to WWASPS-affiliated institutions, Maia Szalavitz said admissions officers are unlikely to be impressed by the education, which not only stresses conformity over critical thinking but can include long stays in solitary confinement.
Over two years ago, Rep. Miller was turned down by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft when he asked him to investigate possible crimes revealed in the New York Times reports. "Congressman Miller sees this as a top priority," says Miller's spokesman Kiley. "The promise is that your child is going to be treated with respect, and that these are the people meant to help them. In fact, the opposite is happening."
The money linking WWASPS and Republicans, says Kiley, "definitely sends up red flags," but he wouldn't go so far as to claim a web of connections. Miller's proposed End Institutional Abuse Against Children Act, would give states $50 million to help license schools, establish new criminal and civil penalties for leaders of abusive programs and let the government regulate overseas camps that are presently beyond the arm of the law. Right now, the State Department warns that it "has no authority to regulate these entities."
Company president Kay, however, told AlterNet that local authorities already do a "great job" regulating the schools.
Under Montana's new plan, that board, dominated by industry insiders, will be responsible for making sure companies avoid some of what has befallen WWASPS's 450-teen Spring Creek Lodge Academy campus in Thompson Falls, Mont., in the last three years. Such as the time that Karlye Anne Newman from Denver, days shy of 17, hanged herself in a bunkhouse there in 2004. Or making sure the firm doesn't again allow a man like former employee Keith Wood, 31, in the proximity of troubled youth. Wood last February went to nearby Plains and shot a romantic rival seven times with a Glock pistol before turning the weapon on himself.
According to a 2004 report in the Missoula Independent that re-opened Karlye's forgotten death, the kids are forbidden to speak of her suicide -- or spread tales of Jamaica, a distant island that looms over them as a fate worse than Montana. "That's a Cat-4," a student said when the paper asked about the dead girl. "We can't talk about Karlye." A card around the student's neck helpfully informed the reporter that a Cat-4 meant losing rank in the program, meaning staying longer at the camp and costing dad thousands more in tuition. Tuition at the lodge runs at about $40,680 a year, a typical figure for these schools.
Abuse, says Kay, doesn't happen anymore often than in the public school system. "That doesn't mean we're gonna shut down the public schools," he said.
Unless, of course, if your middle school principal kept girls in multi-day "stress positions" similar to the kind approved by Donald Rumsfeld for use on Muslim prisoners. As Maia Szalavitz relates in "Help At Any Cost," that was the case at a WWASPS school for girls in Mexico. It was called Sunset Beach and was shut down after being raided by local police in 1996. Authorities seized and later released overseers Glenda and Steve Roach. A company official blamed "the local legal system" for the ensuing closure of the school.
But across the world in the Czech Republic, two years later, authorities reached similar conclusions after finding that the WWASPS-affiliated Morava Academy was holding kids in windowless rooms and forcing them to remain on their stomachs for days. Czech cops arrested and released the overseers on bail for illegal imprisonment and torture, the British Guardian reported.
The accused were the Roaches, the same people arrested in Mexico. At press time AlterNet could not locate the Roaches for comment or determine the outcome of their case, though industry watchdog group International Survivors Action Committee has claimed to have located them in the Bahamas living under new names. Czech press reports paint a cloudy picture as to their whereabouts, with Glenda leaving the country before trial on a health waiver, and Steven "at large" to avoid criminal investigation, according to Radio Prague and other sources.
But somehow, according to WWASPS officials' statements to the press, it was the teens' fault for being "master manipulators" who'd tricked the European officials into thinking there was abuse. In 2003, a dramatic teen uprising in Costa Rica at the company's Dundee Ranch school brought WWASPS to the attention of Times national security reporter Tim Weiner. The uprising began after a visit by Costa Rican officials, who told students they had more rights under local law than WWASPS allowed them. "They told us you have the right to speak, you have the right to speak to your parents, you have the right to leave if you feel you've been mistreated," 17-year-old Hugh Maxwell told the Times. "Kids heard that and they started running for the door. There was elation, cheering and clapping and chaos. People were crying."
Six people told the Times that staff beat the children to stop them from leaving. As order collapsed, Costa Ricans seized control and hauled off the founder's brother, Narvin Lichfield, in handcuffs for holding kids against their will, releasing him a day later. In a statement, the company complained that the Latin American prosecutor, with his "Rambo-like tactics," had told kids they could "do whatever they wanted, without consequences." According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Narvin Lichfield was charged in Costa Rica with "aggravated privation of liberty, coercion and international crimes." A Costa Rican judge ordered him to stay in the country for six months, but ultimately Lichfield did not stand trial.
An evil world without consequences, populated by lying teens, is what WWASPS's officials and pro-company parents often say they're up against, a nearly metaphysical threat. Participating families must attend motivational seminars on the struggle. Ex-participant Karen Lile, a piano seller in Northern California, has written an essay alleging that she suffered "distress and emotional shock" from a Teen Help "discovery seminar" she attended at a Holiday Inn which, she wrote, encouraged her to keep her child in the program. Witnesses at similar events describe the atmosphere as rising to the fever pitch of religious revival road shows, with adults wailing and beating on chairs.
So how are mom and dad talked into keeping their kids at a foreign detention center? The pamphlets for one Teen Help-affiliated school show kids playing basketball and wandering amid natural wonders, rediscovering lost innocence. As long as parents ignore the small letters warning, "Not all Photos [sic] taken at the facility," they can tell themselves they are buying a snooty private education.
And they are told it's this or death on the streets. "If your child needed a kidney transplant to save their life, you would come up with the money," Kay said. "If the value of your child's life isn't worth the cost of a new car " And they're warned not to believe teens who may spin tall tales of abuse. After a high school basketball player named Paul Richards was sent to Paradise Cove in Samoa, Szalavitz recounts in her book, his parents received a newsletter, "WHUTZ UP in Paradise Cove," offering a lesson in how to avoid being "manipulated" by letters from the front.
The lesson presents a sample letter reading, in part: "It is not the camp you promised ... The [program staff] are mean and beat me when I do something they don't like."
Parents are encouraged to write back with dispassionate jargon: "Work your program."
The young basketballer later told Szalavitz that "working" his own $2,000-a-month "program" meant letting groups of shaved-headed teens belittle him for refusing to "see the light" and be grateful. "They just circle you up, and they all start yelling at you at the same time and say how shitty a person you were," he said. "'You're worthless, you're pathetic, you're a piece of shit, you're a compulsive liar and nobody likes you,' just basically stuff 'til they broke down your self-esteem."
Was a shipment to the Jamaica security complex appropriate for a teenage girl who'd been sleeping around? Kay, asked the question, stressed that being flown to a school like Tranquility Bay is "a child's right." Teens "should expect that their parents have the right to step in on their behalf and make some decisions for them," he said. Some kids have entered WWASPS-affiliated schools for no infraction more serious than fighting with a stepmother. No court order is required.
Szalavitz says there's no evidence for the legitimacy of the "treatment" at most of the schools, which operate in a regulatory climate without consequences. As there is no research into long-term effects, she'd like to see studies done on whether any WWASPS alumni have been left with post-traumatic stress disorder. Some parents have described their kids' WWASPS transformations with language more "Dawn of the Dead" than "Dead Poets Society." Alex Ziperovich, 16, emerged from Spring Creek Lodge "35 pounds lighter, acting like a zombie," his mother, a Seattle attorney, told the New York Times.
Where's the outcry?
Why haven't stories like the ones by Weiner and Kilzer, Pulitzer winners both, caused a public outcry and swift government reaction? Do press accounts give WWASPS too much equal time? "It's a ridiculous way of covering things. We don't cover any other kind of health care that way," Szalavitz says, suggesting the press wouldn't be so charitable to non-doctors who claimed to have a new method for extracting tumors. Most news features take the he-said-she-said approach familiar to us from recent reporting on Intelligent Design: "WWASPS isn't for everyone ..." But, says Szalavitz, "This is not a story of 'some people go to this church, some people go to that church.'" Szalavitz added, "We're selling what they stamped out of psychiatric institutions 100 years ago."
Oddly enough, WWASPS president Ken Kay himself has raised unsettling questions about the programs Rep. Miller is waging his battle to regulate. During a period in 2002 when he'd split with WWASPS, he told the Rocky Mountain News' Kilzer: "These people are basically a bunch of untrained people who work for this organization. So they don't have any credentials of any kind. We could be leading these kids to long-term problems that we don't have a clue about because we're not going about it in the proper way ... How in the hell can you call yourself a behavior-modification program -- and that's one of the ways it's marketed -- when nobody has the expertise to determine, is this good, is this bad?"
Kay has since rejoined WWASPS as president. Asked in an email interview in December whether his concerns had since been calmed since 2002, Kay said he was quoted out of context. "Nobody [calmed] my worries for children," he wrote back. "There are trained authorities that deal with abuse. All necessary systems are in place ..."
John Gorenfeld is a freelance writer in San Francisco. He has a blog at gorenfeld.net

::armed::   If we weren?t spending the money on the war, we would just be wasting it on dumb shit like Social Security Education Health Care and Welfare.  Look at the good it?s doing for companies like the Carlyel Group and Halliburton.  You can go you Iraq and work seven days a week living in a tent, and make the same money I make working at Miami Beach.
And let?s face it the cost of $332 billion plus the additional $122 billion Bush is asking for in 2007 is a small price to pay for all the weapons of mass destruction we have uncovered.  Oh that?s right the only weapon of mass destruction we have uncovered is President Bush.  The cost of human life, 2359 U S deaths, and 17269 wounded and 30260 Iraqi deaths, mostly civilian?s seams so small when you see how happy the Iraqi people are that we liberated them.  Like I said the money to be made is outstanding, and look who?s getting a slice of the pie?  

In the mid-1990s, George H.W. Bush joined up with the Carlyle Group. ?Under the leadership of ex-officials like Baker and former Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, Carlyle developed a specialty in buying defense companies and doubling or quadrupling their value. The ex-president not only became an investor in Carlyle, but a member of the company's Asia Advisory Board and a rainmaker who drummed up investors. Twelve rich Saudi families, including the Bin Ladens, were among them. In 2002, the Washington Post reported


?   The bin Laden family first invested in Carlyle in 1994.  Representing Carlyle?s Asia Board, George H.W. Bush visited the bin laden family's headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Kurt Eichenwald, ?Bin Laden Family Liquidates Holdings With Carlyle Group,? The New York Times, October 26, 2001.

Halliburton an "emergency" contract for oil fields reconstruction, which was awarded without the usual government bidding process because of said "emergency" (and despite the fact Just before the Iraq war started, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded that the invasion wasn't on any particular timetable and the fact it had been in the works for a year and a half).
 The deal was authorized for up to $7 billion, but the Army didn't trash the country with sufficient enthusiasm to make the whole amount, and the actual size of the deal is now estimated at $600 million (assuming Halliburton survives the lawsuits from competitors who inexplicably feel that something fishy is going on here).

No child should be abused or neglected for the sake of profit. Teens and pre-teens have testified to being abducted, incarcerated, abused, and neglected in for-profit private residential facilities, boot camps, wilderness programs, and boarding schools, as well as state-funded juvenile justice facilities ... an industry that is largely unregulated. As a parent and survivor of one of these torture camps, I am shocked that this is still going on in America. We go to war to liberate the Iraqi people from the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein. We judge third world countries for sweat shops. Who will liberate our children from abusive treatment centers? We have thousands of our children in these torture camps. This is not a new problem! I was abused at Green River Boys Camp in 1974, which means that it?s been going on for at least thirty-two years! We can find one hundred and sixteen stories of children that have died, committed suicide, or been murdered in these camps  at http://www.caica.org/NEWS%20Deaths%20Li ... mitted.htm   I know of two more victims from camps in Kentucky. As a survivor of thirty two years I can tell you of the long term devastation effects of having lived in one of these camps. So can sociologists like Dr. Ann Marie Charvat, who testified in the capital murder case of Anthony Darrell Hines. I have learned of several people on death row and in prison for murder that were former residents of Green River Boys Camp. I believe if we actually knew how many people have committed suicide and violent crimes, after having been abused in torture camps, we would all be shocked. Parents are told that these camps will change their children, and this I can vouch from experience. But if they knew what they change them into, they wouldn?t approve.

For more info contact http://www.parentadvocates.org
http://www.caica.org
http://www.isaccorp.org
[email protected]

In 1974, I was 14 years old when I was sent to Green River Boys Camp.  As soon as we arrived, A-Group came running to the car shouting ?You thinking AWOL?? as they were jerking me from the vehicle.  I had no clue what they were talking about, so I replied ?no?.  To my reply, they responded with ?Bullshit!?  All of this shouting continued as we were scurried to the Clothes Room, where my clothing was ripped off of me and I was issued state uniforms.  Then they rushed me to the Tool Room to give me a GI haircut.  They never stopped shouting ?You thinking AWOL??, and ?You think you?re cool??, ?You ain?t cool!? etc.  This was horrifying, but there was much worse ahead. The first night they asked me about the crimes I had committed.  Because I didn?t know what they were referring to, they ?grouped? on me.  Grouping is twelve to fifteen members standing around you in a circle and screaming things like ?face up? meaning to confess to something or confess that something is bothering you.  Nothing was bothering me, nor did I have anything to confess.  The counselor had my group take me to the shower.  They forced me to scrub the floor tiles a wood handled scrub brush in each hand.  As I was made to scrub using both hands, group members had their feet pressed against my behind, making sure that all my weight was pressed onto my arms. As a young boy, having never done anything like this, I could only support my weight for a few minutes ? needless to say how much pain I was in at this point.  When I couldn?t hold myself up any longer, the group members took turns holding me up by my shirt collar, which made breathing extremely difficult.  This torture went on for about two hours!  I begged them to stop asking what they thought I had done.  I told them I was hot and could not breathe.  The Counselor then ordered the group to cool me off and they proceeded to throw buckets of cold water on me. This continued for still another hour before the Counselor told the group to ask me if Gary and I broke into a church.  I answered ?yes? hoping to end the torture.  They had me confess to several things that I hadn?t done.  At about two AM, they finally stopped, and gave me some dry clothes for bed.  I believe this incident was the closest I?ve ever been to death.  I couldn?t get out of bed for two days; for them not to make me get up reveals how bad off I was.  It didn?t take me long for me to figure out why Gary had lied about breaking into the places he confessed to.  I learned that the purpose for grouping was to inflict enough pain on us to pressure us to confess to something we had done wrong, or something that had been done to us, even if we had to make something up.  For example, grinning or smiling was a sign that we were thinking mischief?  If we were caught smiling, a group member would be required to point us out, and then we were to tell the group why we smiled.  We weren?t allowed to say we were smiling because we were thinking of something positive, we had to say we were thinking of something negative, like ?I was physically abused by my father,? or ?I sexually abused my sister,? or something else radical.  The whole process was insane.  Since most boys that age don?t have experiences of this sort, we had to make up things with nothing real to confess.  And then we played hell to remember the many lies because we had to exchange life stories with every group member.  One around midnight, when we got out of big group (group with our Counselor; little group was having group without our Counselor), our Counselor, Mr. Courtney told us to go get Curtis in C-Group out of bed and find out why he wanted to get my brother to sell drugs for him.  Curtis didn?t even know my brother or me as he was from East Kentucky and we were from West Kentucky.  But Gary had been caught smiling and told his group the reason he smiled was because he was feeling bad about Curtis and him going to solicit my brother to be a drug dealer.  Unfortunately, Curtis was unaware of this diabolical lie.  Anyhow, we have Curtis outside in his underwear after midnight scrubbing; asking him why he hated my brother with me knowing this was all a lie.  I still had to act like I was furious at Curtis and Gary for wanting my brother to do such a thing, because if I hadn?t acted upset, Mr. Courtney would tell the group to find out why I didn?t care about my brother.  We all had made-up stories ready to use for when we were grouped on.  But if we someone else used us in their story, and we didn?t know how to play along, we were screwed ? just like I was my first night and like Curtis was this time.  Finally after two hours, Mr. Courtney let us give Curtis enough information to allow Curtis to confess.  Hence, Curtis then had to explain why he wanted to make my brother a drug dealer.  After about three hours, Curtis confessed that his daddy used to beat him and because of that, he was feeling bad and that made him want to get my brother to sell drugs.  Then we were allowed to release Curtis.  As he stood up, the skin on his knees peeled off.  After three hours of torturing Curtis for this story that any sane person would know was obviously made-up, we were allowed to turn him back over to his group.  Yet, it wasn?t over for either of us.  He then was required to confess to his group why he wanted my brother to sell drugs, and I was required to express to my group how hurt I was that Curtis and Gary wanted to use my brother like that.  This is the hell we had to endure every day, even up until three AM and getting up at 5:30 to start the next day.  We were always treated as a group.  If on person did wrong, we were all punished.  So we were all constantly punished since things little natural things such as smiling was considered wrong doing.  The staff at Green River twisted their motives by claiming that we brought punishment on each other.  This obviously was not true.  We quickly learned that no matter what we did, the staff will always found a reason for us to torture someone daily.  Most days, several group members were tortured with tactics such as thought previously mentioned.  The second time I was tortured was because I had a toothache for approximately a week.  It was abscessed and I was in severe pain before they had me seen by a dentist.  He gave me Penicillin for the infection and Darvocet for the pain and told me to stay inside until returning to have my tooth pulled.  That night in big group our Chaplin told the group to find out why I was manipulating the group by not working.  Even though I informed them that the dentist had ordered me to stay in, the Chaplin insisted that the group find out why Mandel was manipulating the group, which started them to group on me, and force me to scrub the floor. When I could endure no longer, I tossed the brushes.  This was a dumb move, since I already knew what would happen if I refuse to scrub; the group stands me up, bends me over to where my hands are a few inches from the floor, and someone holds my knees while others put there weight on your back.  This caused severe pain in my legs in a matter of seconds as I begged to scrub, but the group held me in this position until the staff member was convinced that I was ready to scrub again.  I have had pain in my legs ever since.  I don?t know what happened to my legs, but the pain has never gone away.  It is very difficult to sleep, even today, because the pain is worse when I lie down.  My second wife talked me into seeing a doctor in 1987 to see if he could find out why my legs were always in pain.  The doctor asked if I had ever injured my legs.  I told him no and I couldn?t bring myself to tell him what had happened at Green River.  We were in school four hours a day, and worked another four hours of the day.  I acknowledge that the teachers took no part in our torture as they seemed to be nice people.  Daily, we each would retrieve a shovel, axe, and a pick from the Tool Room and then we walked about one and one half miles down River Road, where we dug up stumps.  The stumps were previously dug around, causing the holes to be filled with ice and freezing cold water, since the temperature was below freezing.  We stepped down into the icy water to dig up and chop the stump until it could be turned over and buried.  On returning to camp the group had to wash our tools and cloths before going inside, in the time it took us to do that our cloths would be frozen. This was my first day introduction to work at Green River.  The group working beside us had a group member with a bloodied face tied to a tree.  The forms of torture they had come up with were designed not to leave marks on us, although when a staff member was mad enough, marks didn?t matter. On a particular day, E-Group made the mistake of permitting visitors to see some of what was really going on.  As they burst through the door, Raymond Berry?s shirt was torn open revealing his black and blue left side as many ribs must have been broken.  At first, I was thankful that our parents saw this, but when they turned back around and I saw the horror in their eyes, I was truly sorry that they had witnessed this.  Later, when Raymond went AWOL and the cops pursued him, he drove his stolen car into a river and drowned.  It was common knowledge that he committed suicide since he drove the car into the river when he saw the police approaching him.  He probably had no desire for further help after experiencing the help tactics of the Green River staff.  At the time, I didn?t feel sorry for him.  I believed he was better off because he had been grouped on for weeks and death seemed so much better then the torment he would have encountered if he had been sequestered.  One person I?ve corresponded with has suggested that by making us participate in torturing others, we became too ashamed to talk about it.  I don?t know why it is so difficult for me to talk about it.  I have been silent except for one incident I told my second wife in 1985 when my brother died from cancer.  Afterwards, I started thinking of Larry Rittenour, another boy that went AWOL during my stay at Green River.  The Superintendent had another camp member and me to torture him on the way back after he was found. The Superintendent, Mr. Thompson, instructed us to find out why Larry went AWOL.  Larry responded that his sister was dying of cancer and that he wanted to see her. The pain in his eyes and his tears made it obvious that he was telling the truth, but Mr. Thompson had us to beat him all the way back to camp.  After all these years, I have never gotten Larry?s pain out of my mind.  By 1992, I was having nightmares and flashbacks of Green River.  Many children don?t survive these behavior medication camps as is exposed by web sites such as ParentAdvocates.org or Coalition against Institutionalized Child Abuse.  But for those of us that do survive, we never become normal mature adults, for a part of us will always be those little helpless children being tortured.  Death seems our only escape...

After all these years, I still live in the reality of yesterday, and cannot understand why this country carelessly continues to allow children?s lives to be permanently damaged?  
Mandel Crittendon