Southern Poverty Law Center has gone into the matter.
Here is a link to their press-release including a video-clip showing these disturbing incidents.
SPLC Sues Mississippi County after Shocking Video shows abuses in Juvenile Facility
Domestic prisoners of conscience |
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News have reached us about misconduct at a juvenile detention center in Forrest County in Mississippi.
Southern Poverty Law Center has gone into the matter. Here is a link to their press-release including a video-clip showing these disturbing incidents. SPLC Sues Mississippi County after Shocking Video shows abuses in Juvenile Facility
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We have been informed that there have been set up a blog about the transport process:
Being Transported A number of blogs is about the stay in programs. The traumatic experience of being taken out of your own home has to be covered too. The blog will consist of reblogging, hopefully new testimones and articles about this area of the troubled parents industry. We have learned that a young talented artist is banished to Samoa because his mother didn't like the art he produced. While some modern music seem distasteful for us in the elderly generation, we must remember that music which was introduced in the 1960's, 1970's faced criticism from older generation and this music found its way to our hard over the years.
Even warhero Glenn Miller faced criticism of his modern version of jazz. The music Earl Sweatshirt or Thebe Kgositsile as he is named off stage performed has not achieved such a status among the general population yet. It maybe never does. But should we not protect young talents instead of pushing them into mental care just because they during their innovative process may offend us with their art? We feel that we as a democratic society should allow artists to outlive their potential instead of judging them before they have been able to develop their art into something the society in the future may appreciate. Research into the nature of mental institutions like Coral Reef Academy does not produce a nice picture. While his personal choice of religion remain unknown for us there are resonable doubt that he will be allowed to attend a church of his own choice because this particular facility has close ties to a certain religious community. Time has come for older artists to support the young musicians who will take over once they have retired. We must ask the entertainment industry to at least write letters of support for Sweatshirt and other young artist facing similar challenges. While they enjoy succes today, they must remember that they many years back also was the talented young people who was condemned by society. They made it but they also know a lot of young people who didn't and maybe met their end too early due to ignorance and judgmental attitude. Give Sweatshirt a chance to succeed with his art. Set him free!! Sources Earl Sweatshirt (Wikipedia)Complex Exclusive: We Found Earl Sweatshirt (Complex Magazine) Dr. Phil is not an ATM-machine. Aspen Education Group is.
The third episode of a show where all good professionalism is thrown away was broadcasted today. Two teenage girls who show a behavior which very clearly displays that the parents should have been forced to take parenting classes were sent to a boot camp near Escalante in Utah. A boot camp previous used on a number of TV-shows in Germany, United Kingdom and the States. A harsh environment where the girls are supposed to be safe while they are subjected to non-functioning sleeping bags with broken zippers and no running water in the cabins until they are broken down under a regime not found worse in a boot camp for professional adult soldiers. Somehow the girls made it out. One of the girls did lose faith the family unit and opted for boarding school while the other sister wanted a more normal life with boyfriends, day school and everything else ordinary teenagers should be allowed when we are talking year 2011. Now Turn-about Ranch is owned by Aspen Education Group. Due to modern research it is now known that the higher cost of residential treatment compared with treatment at home does not result in a better result. It produces a new starting point for the teenager on the stage of the adult life which is in fact worse, because the young adult has to adapt to the social standards of the normal society. Standards where possible temptations need to be addressed based on own experiences in the individuals life so far. For many young adults coming out of residential treatment the release into the normal society is like switching a light on. In some countries the need for more or less aftercare up to age 25 is recognized but for 95 percent the reality is being thrown out on the streets without any support. Needless to say that prisons in several countries are filled with children coming out from residential treatment centers, boarding schools and foster care. More than 70 percent of the inmates aged 18 or a little more are estimated to be needing treatment rather than imprisonment if they shall improve. But the modern research has resulted in less demand for residential treatment and as result of this Aspen Education Group has announced that they will close 5 residential treatment centers. However this may not be enough. That is where Dr. Phil comes into the picture. At a point he ask himself whether he is an ATM-machine. He isn’t! Aspen Education Group isn’t either. They are fighting for their survival defending a costly and obsolete treatment philosophy. It is just too bad that their fight have just an effect on two innocent teenage girls, which most likely would have to battle posttraumatic stress disorder for the rest of their lives. Sources: Troubled Teens: Crisis Point (Dr. Phil Website) While HR911 seems stuck in the Senate, the work for improving human rights for minors has met some success.
Aspen Education Group has announced that they will close 5 residential programs. No longer will minors be forced to wear orange jumpsuits at Aspen Ranch in Loa. While some of the girls at Bromley Brock School found some comfort by a male staff member most suffered because they were removed far from their family and friends. Their suffering is now coming to an end. Also the divorce academy New Leaf will close down. While some custodial parents now have a tool less at their hand if they want to keep their daughter from the non-custodial parent, there will be girls out there which now are able to keep contact with both parents. Two substance treatment centers will also close down. It is no surprise as the fact is that you cannot force an addict to be sober. People cannot change what they don’t acknowledge is wrong. All such treatment centers can do is wasting money. Another closure is Elan School best known for beating a “confession” out of Michael Shakel. The rather controversial therapy consisted of putting a minor into a boxing ring just to let the other students beat the minor up until the minor broke and confessed to some problems the treatment employees then could start to treat. It is not known whether the closure would improve Shakel’s chance of an appeal or a pardon. Finally the authorities in Costa Rica raided a boarding school with children from the United States. The school used a system from the former WWASP schools and it seems that some of the WWASP owners were involved in this school. 21 teenagers were freed. 2011 seems to be a good year. Also it seems that we have been spared deaths in residential treatment programs so far. Last year 7 children died in residential care in U.S. treatment facilities. If we are lucky we could end up with less deaths this year. In South Carolina a so-called therapeutic boarding school named Carolina Springs Academy was closed down about a year ago. They were understaffed and 3 boys ran away. Believing that such cases could impose a risk for the local community the authorities saw no other possible outcome that to suspend the license of this boarding school until the requirements had been made. The owner did choose not to try to meet the requirement. Instead the boarding school will be reopened as a Christian boarding school, which does not need to be licensed because any religious boarding school can establish itself in South Carolina without answering to anyone. How can that happen? Especially after 9/11! Almost every country can produce stories about teenagers who have been sent to religious boarding schools abroad only to return as a person with no ability to function in the society. Some even return ready to die for a cause democratic countries fight in order to avoid a new 9/11. South Carolina needs to change their laws. Whenever people get teenagers into their care, there should be laws and regulation to answer to. It doesn't matter if you want to run a boarding school with a certain faith or a faith-based curriculum. The law must be equal to everyone regardless of what people want to call a boarding school. Citizens living near Due West: Call your local politician now. Demand law and order for teenagers living in your community, so they can live protected and not least - You can live protected!! References: School of Troubles: Another chance for abandoned boarding school (Independent Mail, Dec. 10, 2010) Carolina Springs Academy (Fornits Wiki database) Magnolia Christian School (Fornits Wiki database) Abbeville school had role in rise and fall of enterprise for serving troubled teens (Independent Mail, Dec. 17, 2010) We will send a plea to all students in every high school in the world to send a letter of comfort to those who are no longer among us.
We all know a student who has been sent to a boarding school, wilderness program, boot camp or abroad because the family finds the present youth culture too challengling. They suffer isolated from their peers and we feel that is time to tell them or their captors that they are not forgotten. May 26, 1961 the article The Forgotten Prisoners launced the campaign "Appeal for Amnesty 1961" and defined the term "Prisoner of Conscience". We believe that it is time to honor this day every month by writing a letter to someone who used to be our classmate. It doesn't matter if our beloved friend will be able to read the letter. It will often not be the case. A massive part of the residential solutions offered to minors today isolate their clients from the rest of the world. 49 years have gone and the world has still minors who have been sent away from their local communities for their belief, lifestyle, religion or sexual orientation. Will it ever change? It will not change unless we all do our part. What would it take to write a simple letter every month? Somewhere out there a person you have known suffer! You can do your part: - Get your pencil. - Buy or draw a postcard - Write your message of comfort - Mail the letter Template if you are totally lost f <student name> prisoner of conscience <schools address> <schools town and zip> <possible country> Dear <students name> I just want you to know that you among the students of <your high schools name> are not forgotten. We think about your awful destiny and your daily torment and pray for your early release. Regards <your name> That was not that hard. Back in 1971 a small article mentions some teenagers and young women meeting a tragic end when they participated in one of the first wilderness therapy programs, we have learned of. In fact a then 17 year old Lorene Larhette is the earliest recorded death on a victim list published by another NGO.
Unfortunately her death was not the last one in the Oregon wilderness. As late as in 2009 Sergey Blashchishen died at a wilderness program called Sagewalk. Sagewalk is known from an entertainment program called Brat Camp, which was broadcasted by ABC in 2005. More than 30 years passed between these deaths and no lesson seems to have been learned by the individuals who run these programs. Can you as a parent entrust your child to this industry? References: Victims in 1970s (Secret Prisons for Teens) Survival test ends in tragedy (Rome News Courier, September 8, 1971) Lorene Larhette - 1971 (Today a child died blog) Portland teen collapses and dies during wilderness camp hike (OregonLive,September 1, 2009) Brat Camp (Internet Movice Database) Our search engines found this piece written by a then soon-to-be prisoner of conscience:
--- I have not yet been placed in a "character building school/wilderness program/boot camp/gay re-education camp/or a therapeutic boarding school" but as of today I am packing to be placed in the later. Basically, Monday I will be expected to walk into a therapeutic/troubled teen boarding school titled "Academy at Sisters" - which is in Bend, Oregon. So far I have heard nothing but bad things of this school. Facebook groups of survivors have said that it's "taken their hopes and dreams, and replaced them with skills only to be used by housewives," and have claimed that, "it took away our basic rights, and forced us to learn nothing but compliance." My parents think it is a good idea to send me here, however, I disagree to the highest extent. I have done nothing wrong. Sure, In my past I've made mistakes, but whom hasn't? I have never done drugs, stolen, lied to the extent that it has caused me/others harm.. None of the things that the AAS advertises it shall help with. Why am I posting a testimony? Because I want this to be here for someone to edit while I'm in the program. Because I want someone to see that I had a level head about me before I left. I still have hopes, dreams, and ambitions, and I want that documented before it's gone. I don't want to be added to the list of survivors. I don't want to have to try and survive it at all. --- Later research did show that she lost her freedom around September 1, 2010. She is detained in La-pine, Oregon at the "Academy at Sisters" so-called boarding school. Here she is isolated from her former peers at the Glencoe High School in Hillsboro and that part of her extended family which would have offered her to live at their home. Little is known about the type of cancer which led to the early death of her mother according to her blog, but one thing is certain. She began to doubt God. Those of us who have lived longer has experienced such periods of our life also. There will be time of hardship where we question our belief. But we also know that the desicion to start to believe again was made in loneliness undisturbed by others. Nobody forced us to go to a certain religious boarding school so we could "find" God again. Nobody enforced their belief upon us. But this is the reality Morgan face. Academy at Sisters is a religious program. While they state that they accept people believing otherwise, they don't mention what they do with people who don't believe. We know that this boarding school has a show-room campus which parents can tour. They also have the La-pine campus where the teenage girls are forced to work in the woods during breaks in the enforced therapy and missionary. Pray for Morgan. Help her support group on Facebook out. Regards Hugh Elborn Update: She is free for now, but like many teenagers she must now live very carefully because her parent can hire a youth transport firm to take her away in handcuffs and legirons 3 a.m. from her own bed. whenever they like, so she cannot prepare for help and support outside another time. Who we are
We are a small non-governmental organization who are focusing on teenagers in residential treatment, which basically are prisoners of conscience because they are detained based on their beliefs rather than their actions. Often they are confined based on an administrative desicion or by the orders of their parents without access to legal aid. We have to accept that even here in 2010 the news of teenagers who die while they are placed in residential treatment continue to raise. We support HR 911 which will introduce some minimum standards for teenagers who are placed at boarding schools, boot camps or wilderness programs. Our approach is research on the internet and interviews with survivors of various programs. You can reach us by email. Our email-address is (without spaces): h u g h e l b o r n @ y a h o o . c o m Regards Hugh Elborn spokesperson |
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