The young Miss Parker went on holiday with her family during Christmas but disappeared on her way back home to Oregon.

Her friends are very concerned that she might have been placed in a wilderness program in Arizona. Most wilderness programs in Oregon are now closed; Unfortunately not before they claimed the lives of several teenagers. Programs like Sagewalk and Catherine Freer each claimed the lives of teenagers before they closed.

Miss Parker was transported over state lines; An action now forbidden by the state of Texas but not by the state of Oregon. Still the authorities in Oregon should be concerned. What about the education of young Miss Parker. Will the money the local school district invested in Miss Parker be wasted if she returns to Oregon one day with school papers which she would not receive credits for at all?

Will she return home alive at all? Several teenagers have lost their lives during ranch operations in Arizona. The state of Arizona has not implemented laws which address the previous deaths so tragedy could occur again.

A Facebook group has been created by her concerned friends:
Here is a link:

Where is Ellie Parker? (Facebook)

Help the group aiding their friend so she doesn't end up at some victim list.

The American girl caught between two worldsEvery august the Danish authorities is on the watch. Are there students who don't show up in school after the holiday?

If a student is missing do they have a background based on immigration? Is the student in Denmark or has it been shipped abroad because the student acted out or just had become too Danish?

If the student has been exiled, the social services will intervene and secure siblings so they don't risk the same ordeal. Parents can be jailed - even for years until the child abroad is legally an adult.

Why is it so important to rescue the children place in such a situation?

Because the children often return frustrated and filled with anger. Years ago an Italian student was murdered by two teenagers who had been exiled and the trial showed massive emotional damage inflicted in these two teenagers as result of their exile.

The Danish parliament sought to stop exiling teenagers and teachers and social workers were ordered to report every single missing teenager, so this evil could be stopped.

The authorities in Fairfax, North Carolina has not acted based on the fact that young Sofia Roberts has been exiled to Siberia and is now in risk of never being able to return.

We feel that the authorities should step in and take the half-siblings into custody as protection against similar revenge in the future.

Children should never grow up in fear of punishment from their parents.


Source:
The American girl caught between two worlds (The Siberian Times)

Green County in Ohio is wasting money these days. Not a year ago a young woman turned 18. She was known in the system. Around age 15 her step-mother pushed her mentally until she hit back which gave her a juvenile conviction of assault. Of course everyone needs to take responsibility for their actions but we are talking of an adult seeing to that a teenager gets a felony on her records which would diminish her choices regarding job and education for the rest of her life.

It was not the first time life hit this woman in the face. She was once a happy little girl who had a brother and a sister. Under circumstances not known her little sister lost her life. Being hit by grief the woman and her brother moved to her father and step-mother not long after the tragedy.

Years later her birthmother died unexpected from a heart condition in her mid thirties. Add to these two losses the fact that someone did something to her at an early point during her childhood which had led to her accusing several persons of indecent behavior. It is difficult to determine who overstepped her boundaries but someone did. Her therapist diagnosed her with Dissociative Identity Disorder which is a complex disorder which is rooted from events which a mindset of a child cannot handle in any way. Something did happen to her during her early childhood and it had lasting impact on her health.

The story would be good if she was given the right treatment just after she was diagnosed. Instead the stepmother and her father decided that that they would shop for a second opinion. Valuable time was lost and she became difficult to manage in the home once again accusing a relative of indecent behavior. She ended up at the residential treatment centers in Greene County. Here she passed through the level system in record time. They couldn’t find something to treat her for. Why? Because they didn’t know of what she was diagnosed! She was released back home and seemed to do fine.

In the meantime she met a boyfriend. Due to hanging out with the wrong crowd he got involved in a more serious offence which included robbery. The young woman violated her endless period of probation as result of this relationship and got more time in the juvenile detention. In the end she turned 18 and moved in with the boyfriend. Due to the serious charge he took off to another state. The young woman with no history of running away went with him. The police charged her with forgery, receiving stolen property and escape. The police found him in the other state with her but decided only to have him extradited. She could have continued living on the run from the law but decided to return and take her punishment.

She is no longer a flight risk. The charges are not that serious and should result in a massive number of community service hours. The trial could be over in hours if the court system would start to work. But they are going nowhere and she will as a non-risk offender be staying at the tax-payers expense for months. What a waste of money for the taxpayers in Greene County.

What should be done?

Well she should be issued a lawyer, be given an electronic GPS device and ordered to do the number of community service hours which is fitting for the crime she has committed. She should be ordered back to school with the knowledge that she would be off probation the minute she can go back to court and show her high school diploma.

The fact is that she is going nowhere while the boyfriend is locked up. If the court decides to free him then it is another matter because she wants to be with her. A good mentor and therapist would tell her that while everyone thinks that he is bad news for her unless he is giving up his life of crime, she would focus on her education and career so she can be a good wife and possible mother once he is done serving his time.

Most likely she wants to have a child to replace the kid-sister what she lost many years ago which brings us to the last point. What about her illness? Can it be cured? Well, the time has passed and it is properly too late to cure her but she can learn methods so she can avoid being stressed which would release the other person hidden in her mind. She could have a good life but she would have to work hard for it. Unfortunately she cannot be pushed into starting to rebuilt her life because Greene County have so much money that they would like to house her for many months to go.

Most volunteers working to chart the behavior modification industry were shocked when they learned of the name of the facility. If you search the Internet for "Diamond Ranch Academy", you will learn that teenagers who have been there have started websites where they inform the world of the abuse and torment this particular program put them through. A boy died there in 2009.

Many of the teenagers claim that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder due to the experiences they were forced to undergo while they were there.

It looks like she is punished for the loss of her father. Her uncles Jermaine and Randy talks of discipline but we are talking of a girl who have never been allowed to act out as people who have lost a parent will do and then living in something like collective of has-been musicians who all are very dependent of these three children speaks for treatment – not punishment.

Where are the courts in this game? She needs to remain in California where her human patient rights are protected by law. She does not need to be transported to some kind of private boot camp in Utah where numerous court cases based of deaths in wilderness programs and boarding schools tell the world that minors are not regarded as valuable individuals worth protecting.


Sources:
Paris Jackson faces teen trauma tank (The Sun)
James Richard "Jim" Shirey - 2009 (Today a child died blog)
Various testimonies from former students (Tales from the black school blog)

The Danish police has charged 12 people with various acts of violence against the teenagers who had been sent to the facility named Solhaven in the Danish hamlet Farsoe by the authorities.

The teenagers were according to the charges exposed to violence and acts of humiliation by the employees.

The facility has fired the people charged with crimes. Officially due to the economy of the facility, but in reality to distance themselves from the charges the employees have been hit with.

Several of the charges are many years old and according to Danish laws acts of violence should have been reported to the authorities which are supposed to monitor such facilities. Numerous inspections have found nothing and because the area where the facility is located suffers from massive unemployment leaving it a major contributor to local jobs it is properly a question of putting support of local jobs over the interest of the children placed at the facility.

We will keep our readers updated on the situation.

Source:
12 tiltales for vold og tvang mod unge på døgninstitution (Politiken - article in Danish)

It seems like every country housing Cartolic schools have their own dark secret which are in need to be revealed.

The school of Saint Canute (Sct. Knud's skole) in the Danish town of Fredericia are exposed in the media. Corporal punishment, indecent elements as part of the education resulting in emotional damage to former students are among the headlines published.

What make matters worse is the fact that the victims are harassed by the supporters of the school on various social networks like Facebook. Supporters who have welcomed the so-called discipine based on methods which none of the supporters wanted to be known in public.

Internationally it sounds as very little compared with the Irish scandal surrounding the Magdalene asylums in Ireland or the Canisius - Kolleg in Berlin, Germany but it damages some of its former students in such a degree that they have been put on welfare benefits unable to take a job. It needs to be stopped.

The department of Education in Denmark have asked to be informed and it is hopefully a start for a probe into the conditions which ruled this school only a couple of years ago.

We will keep us imformed about this case and will continue to write about it.

If you have attended this school or any other religious school in Denmark and want to share actions taken against you which you believe was wrong, please feel free to contact us on this blog or other whistleblower blogs on the Internet.

This kind of emtional abuse needs to be stopped.

In a lot of countries legal actions have been taken against religious schools and group homes. The path how to shut them down has been shown. Denmark only needs to follow in their footstep in order to save children from a similar fate in the future.


Sources:

• Factsheet about the school of Saint Canute (Fornits WIki)
• Factsheet about Magdalene Asylums (Fornits Wiki)
• Factsheet about the Canisius - Kolleg in Berlin (Fornits Wiki)

A year ago we helped a girl from being wrongly detained at the Academy of Sisters.

The people interested in the well-being of Victoria managed to get Diamond Ranch Academy off the table.

However the case is not won yet.

We must once again urge people to sign a petition:

Judge Dawn Amacker of the St. Tammany Parish of Louisiana, Family Court: SaveVictoria (Change.org)

The facility they have introduced now is Copper Canyon Academy.

Let us look at what a former employee wrote about her workplace. Among the points of interests she mentions are:

• Verbal and/or written communication between the client and family members is prohibited, restricted or monitored.  
  Yes, communication was restricted, especially at the lower levels of the program.  
• The program houses clients in foster homes or host homes instead of allowing them to reside with their parents.  
  Yes, the girls were required to live with host families once they reached the upper levels of the program. 
• The client is denied access to a telephone.  I never saw a girl talking on the phone with family or friends, so I assumed it wasn't allowed. Maybe there were rare cases, or maybe it was allowed once the girls went on to live with host families, but I'm not certain.  
• Clients are restrained or otherwise physically prevented from leaving the facility.  The girls were locked into the building at night. When I worked there, 2 different girls ran away and were caught (forced to return). I wasn't present when they were caught, so I don't know how much force was used.  
• The program inflicts physical punishments on clients such as exercising, running, food restrictions, and cleaning.  I saw a couple of instances where the staff told the girls to run laps on the track as a punishment for being too noisy at mealtime. And cleaning was the typical punishment for just about any kind of misbehavior. They referred to them as "work hours", and staff handed them out very easily. In order for a girl to see movies on the weekend, she had to have no "work hours" at all during the previous week. The same was true for being able to rise up a level.  
• Reading materials are prohibited or restricted.  The school had to approve anything that a girl asked to read.  
• The facility does not have a clearly visible sign outside the building stating the name of the program.  Yes, true. I always wondered why this was the case.  
• Clients must submit “chain of commands” or any other such requests for basic needs such as clothes, shoes, personal items and medical care.  

The present management may have changed a few rules but basically it is the same facility as back then.

Victoria's interest is not served by removing her from her mother where she lives right now. Especially it is not served by shipping her off to a facility like this. Instead the court can order counseling and guidance at her home. It would be cheaper for the taxpayers and better for Victoria.

With more than 9 schools closing this summer it seems that the Danish boarding schools known as “Efterskoler” roughly translated as continuation high schools will cease to be an alternative to the common student.

What went wrong for the boarding schools which had seen a 15 year row of steady increase in the number of students?

First and foremost they do not longer appeal to the general student population. They were quiet unique compared to foreign boarding schools. While many was specialized the general trend was that they were a place for emotional growth most like the therapeutic boarding schools in the United States but the difference was that the student population consisted almost 100 percent voluntary students.

Unlike the U.S. therapeutic boarding schools there was no escort firm transporting the students to the boarding schools in handcuffs. We were talking of motivated students seeking emotional growth.

Still the number of students dropped this year resulting in a huge number of schools closing. What was the reason for this dramatic turnaround?

The answer is simple. Like others the Danish students discovered that emotional growth has a price tag. You have to put a lot of effort into transforming yourself from the natural shy child mode into an adult person ready to address even larger groups of people. For many this transformation did cost them part of their personality and even some of the strength they should have relied upon later in life.

In a changing world opening you as a person does also mean that you expose yourself and become more vulnerable. Not every situation affords this. The 2010’s is not a decade allowing the students to take risks. They have to stay in business until they are almost 70 years of age before they are allowed to retire. Globalization means loss of jobs if you allow your talent or your knowledge to be shared. There are so many reasons to be a reserved and even be pre-intake about people you meet during life.

In an effort to address the trend of mainstream students choosing other alternatives some of the boarding schools made a huge mistake. They targeted minority groups.

The Danish youth culture is different than the one you see at the boarding schools. The finest tool of socializing is missing at the boarding schools. There is a ban on alcohol opposite the conditions the students can meet at every high school in Denmark where the Friday bar located on campus very fast becomes the center of communication among the students. Also in Danish firms sharing a beer or a glass of wine makes it out for 98 percent of human resource programs in the businesses. The association of Danish firms criticized the boarding schools for preparing the students for the business poorly. It was a message which hit the parents who finance the stay hard especially in a time where unemployment is high.

So while the strict environment with a ban on alcohol appealed to minority groups it didn’t appeal to families from the general population and not to the business sector.

Another mistake was the increased corporation with the Danish social services. The Danish parliament is working on real inspections of the children placed in group homes and foster families for the first time ever. This move has prompted a number of the group homes to re-categorize them as “Efterskoler” so they can avoid supervision and inspections because the boarding schools are only inspected for their academics – not by how they treat the students.

This move to avoid control by the authorities has not been unnoticed by various human rights organizations which have started a number of blogs and webpages set up to warn parents of future boarding school students.

The increased awareness did cost the boarding schools.

Social networks do also have an impact. For many of the students the emotional growth they experienced did only work while they were at the boarding school. Once they returned home without the support of their peers, they found themselves alone, isolated and in a position where they couldn’t return to the persons they were before they left the homes for the boarding schools.

Now the students can look groups of former students up and find out if the schools provided them with quality education or it was just empty air as result of the peer group dynamics only found at the schools. Schools like Holmstrup which cheated the students for a trip to Cuba couldn’t hide their failure for future students and had to close.

Last but not least some of the exercises used to put pressure on the students turned out to be outright dangerous and even life-threatening for the students. Some of the schools hired former soldiers suffering from various traumatic experiences while they were stationed abroad to direct these exercises. In the media several rescue missions where students had to be rescued was reported. For the students denial of participation in the exercises could be expulsion so the pressure was certainly on.

So there are a number of reasons for the sudden wave of schools closing for the last time. The question is whether the schools can regain their former strength.

The answer is no unless the Internet will be closed. Future students have access to all kind of information. They know in advance what they can expect and the product the boarding schools offer is not what the market – the families  - want.

Sources (In Danish)
Efterskoler truet af færre elever (TV2 Nord)

From one of our US-partners we have learned of a petition which is about a girl who is in danger of being send to Diamond Ranch Academy where James Richard Shirey died January 2010.

Your signature is needed. Below you can read more about the case:

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Today we heard a troubling story about a girl named Victoria, a sweet 16 year old girl from Louisiana who is in danger of being court ordered to be held at Diamond Ranch Academy, in Hurricane, Utah, a notoriously abusive behavior modification program for the next 2 years. Victoria does not deserve to be incarcerated, her father from whom she is estranged simply does not like the school she currently attends and is determined to dictate her education.

Apparently, in Louisiana, when divorced parents cannot agree on a school for their child they go to court, where a judge listens to both parties and then issues a court order deciding which school the child will attend. (This is what the mom has told me.) The father brought in glossy brochures about DRA, showing the horses, the beautiful grounds, ponds, classrooms, dormitories etc, and presented DRA to the judge like it was a boarding school.

Ultimately, the judge approved the Dad’s petition to send his daughter to DRA, and she is scheduled go there June 1.

Mom and daughter both recently visited DRA and were horrified. Neither of them want Victoria to attend this school, and are desperate to find a way to show the judge the truth about Diamond Ranch Academy, the abuse and the maltreatment that has been the cause of injury and death of at least one student in their care.

Please consider signing this petition in support of Victoria being saved from this fate, allowing her and her mother the freedom to choose the school that is best for her, not a program that will abuse her and rob her of the best years of her life.

If you were a student at DRA please share your story here, we will make sure each and every testimony is delivered to the judge presiding over this case.

Thank You
http://www.troubledprograms.com

Source:Save Victoria From Diamond Ranch Academy (Troubled Programs)