I found this clip on the radio interview:
Today's The Current program on CBC Radio One covers obedience schools like Tranquility Bay from several perspectives; they interview Decca Aitkenhead, who wrote the Guardian article I blogged earlier; Ken Kay, president of the organization that runs Tranquility Bay; Carey Bock, a mother who extracted her two sons from
Dundee Ranch Academy in Costa Rica (a very similar operation); and Geoffrey Bock, one of those sons. The interviews are available in RealAudio format from the above-linked page. I'll probably have more to say about this topic in general later,
but here are some thoughts on the interviews themselves.
Decca Aitkinhead didn't say much that she didn't already say in her article (which, of course, we've all read, right?), but I was interested by the host (Jim Brown's) reactions. He couldn't seem to get past the initial "arrest" (my term), where the parents hire an outside "escort" (their term) agency to wake the victim up at 4am, handcuff them, and whisk them off to Jamaica. He describes that as an experience that could have someone waking up screaming for a long time afterward. Hard to imagine exactly how I'd react, but I don't think it would have that effect on me simply because I'd be too busy waking up screaming over the ensuing several years of what amounts to incarceration in maximum-security prison (without even the minimal rights that prisoners in actual maximum security prisons have). Did Brown's brain simply hit its limit for horror and shut off at that point in the interview so that he didn't hear what comes after the waking-up-at-4am part of the
experience?
The interview with Ken Kay deserves careful listening. Notice how smooth his speech is - he entirely controlled that segment of the show, choosing his own topics and organization. The host barely asked questions at all. Also note how Kay's
approach, right from the start and throughout his presentation, is to attack the credibility of anyone who opposes him, while avoiding factual disputes. He starts off with decrying Aitkinhead as "having an agenda". He never mentions what her
agenda might be, only that she enough to make her reporting obviously worthless. Similarly, he says you can't believe anything any of the inmates says about conditions in the camps, because most of them were sent there for being liars. That's an uneasy combination with using testimonials from those same liars as support for the camps being wonderful places, but he manages to make it work.
The only factual point of Aitkinhead's that I heard Kay actually dispute was her claim that "observational placement" lasts a minimum of 24 hours - he said that it's possible to get out in 30 minutes, but note that he didn't say it was common, or the usual case, to get out in 30 minutes, and although he said it's a bad thing for an inmate to pose a physical threat to the others, he made no mention of whether it was common or the usual case for inmates in been posing a physical threat to the others. Aitkinhead said the procedure is more typically used for non-physical offences, one of which is "romantic encouragement"
(looking at a member of the opposite sex); and although Kay attacked Aitkinhead's general credibility, he didn't actually say her claim wasn't true. Of course, one could suggest that even 30 minutes of the described treatment is a pretty questionable form of discipline for "posing a physical threat" on that level.
When the host did get in a question, about the initial arrest process when someone is taken to the camp, Kay simply wash independent contractor, nothing to do with us. He did not address Aitkinhead's claim that it's handled by an outside contractor at the recommendation of Ken Kay's
organization, which would appear to make them not entirely independent of it. On the reasons parents send young people to obedience schools, he doesn't dispute that it's for things like smoking pot or having sex - instead, he tries to claim that smoking pot and having sex are really very serious matters, definitely life-threatening, honest,
trust me!
The bottom line on Ken Kay's presentation seemed to be not that the camps are any different from how they're claimed to be (perhaps he doesn't want to say that because it would hurt his marketing message to parents who want to send their
offspring to the camps as described...), but only that it's okay for the camps to be the way they are. Do you agree?
Lest anyone get confused, please note that the obedience school shut down by the local government, and from which Carey Bock extracted her sons, was Dundee Ranch Academy, in Costa Rica; not Tranquility Bay in Jamaica, which is one of
eleven run by Ken Kay's organization. We shouldn't tar either of those with the brush meant for the other.
The interview with Geoffrey Bock is worth some close attention even though he doesn't say much. Do you notice how many times he addresses the interviewer as "sir"?
