Saturday, December 22, 2007
Samantha Monroe
ST. PETERSBURG -- It's not easy to watch Samantha Monroe tell her story.
First, she looks directly at you, her blue eyes brimming with tears, a pair of vertical frown lines etched between her eyebrows. There's anger in her voice. A lot of four-letter words.
When she gets to the most painful memories, Monroe looks down at the table, pulls her long platinum hair out of a ponytail and runs her fingers through it, repeatedly. "I need a cigarette," she mumbles.
She's sitting in a busy cafeteria, but she doesn't seem to care if people see her crying or overhear the awful experiences she's describing. She wants to talk about what happened to her 20 years ago. She needs to.
"I was a 13-year-old kid," she says, "in the middle of a nightmare."
Monroe is 34 now, and she's still having it.
* * *
They will gather this weekend in a downtown St. Petersburg hotel, a group of people concerned about the dangers they see in adolescent treatment programs -- drug addiction centers, wilderness "boot camps" and residential workshops for children with eating disorders, behavioral problems or mental disabilities.
Some of these programs actually hurt the kids they claim to be helping, their critics say. The programs' methods are said to be akin to brainwashing. They can involve sleep or food deprivation, lack of privacy and verbal confrontations designed to break down a person's resistance. Kids are restrained with excessive force, subjected to humiliating experiences and isolated from their parents, homes and friends, according to critics. Arnold Trebach, professor emeritus of law and justice at American University in Washington, D.C., and a longtime critic of some treatment programs, organized the St. Petersburg conference, the second annual. He even coined a phrase for its subject: "treatment abuse."
Although most of these programs are well-intentioned, Trebach contends that too many have caused long-lasting physical and mental damage to children -- especially the programs spawned by the antidrug fervor of the 1970s and '80s. Children who attended those programs are now adults. Some of them are ready to share their stories. So the conference will also serve as a self-described reunion of survivors. Most of the attendees will be veterans of Straight Inc., the Pinellas County-based drug program that gained national notoriety in the 1980s. It was cofounded by St. Petersburg businessmen Joseph Zappala and Mel Sembler and attracted the approval of former President George Bush, Nancy Reagan and Princess Diana. Thousands of youngsters reportedly kicked drug addictions at Straight facilities around the country.
But the organization's methods also attracted criticism, investigations and lawsuits. Several former clients sued Straight, claiming they were abused or held against their will.
Straight officials persistently denied that any abuse happened. They also changed some of their more controversial methods, such as having clients sit on other clients to restrain them. They maintained that Straight was effective, saying that two-thirds of the children who completed long-term therapy remained drug-free for at least two years.
Still, there were six-figure settlements. Enrollment in Straight dropped. One by one, its treatment facilities closed. By mid 1993 Straight was out of business.
The bad memories will never end for Samantha Monroe, though. This weekend she'll talk about them at the St. Petersburg conference.
* * *
This is what she says happened to her:
It was 1980. Monroe, 13, was a bright girl from a troubled home that had been visited by state child-welfare officers. She was in sixth grade. She never did drugs, she says.
One day a boy brought minibottles of liquor to school, the kind sold on airline flights. Monroe got one, but when she was called to the principal's office, she flushed it down the toilet.
A detective investigating drug activity at the school told Monroe's mother that Samantha probably was doing drugs, that it was a fluke they had found her clean. He suggested Straight.
About a month later, Monroe got in the car with her mother and stepfather. She thought they were going to buy a plane ticket for her to visit her father in New Jersey. Instead they drove to a large warehouselike building in Sarasota.
Monroe was led into one room, her parents into another. Two girls, already enrolled in Straight, sat Monroe in a chair and told her they knew she was a "druggie," so they wanted her to confess.
She refused, they insisted, she refused. This went on for hours. Monroe was not allowed to get out of the chair. She couldn't go to the bathroom or get a drink of water.
By evening, desperate to escape the room, Monroe broke.
"I told them I did pot, heroin, acid, PCP, LSD, cocaine. I told them I huffed, I smoked banana peels. Everything they wanted to hear."
The girls hugged Monroe, said they loved her and told her to stand up.
"They made me strip naked, bend over and hold my ankles," Monroe says.
After a body-cavity search, they gave Monroe someone else's clothes and led her into a large adjoining room where dozens of other children were seated in rows of plastic chairs.
It was the beginning of a 22-month battle.
Some adolescents accepted Straight's regimen of daily "raps" -- hours-long group sessions where clients frantically waved their hands in the air, sang songs in unison and spoke about highly personal subjects such as their sexual fantasies. Some didn't balk at writing daily "moral inventories" or going each night to sleep at a different "host home," the home of a child further along in the program.
Monroe balked -- at everything. And she paid for it.
"I got slapped, I got sat on, I got spit on," she says. "Can you imagine being flat on the floor, with one person sitting on one of your legs, another person on your other leg, a person on one of your arms, a person on the other arm and a 200-pound girl sitting on your chest, eating her lunch?"
Several weeks into the program, she ran away. Straight staffers found her sleeping at a friend's house and brought her back, against her will.
She ran again, hitchhiking to California. She got arrested for prostitution and went to juvenile detention. In exchange for immunity, she gave investigators information about other prostitutes. The state of California put her on a plane for Miami, where her mother was living. Monroe thought she was headed for freedom.
Instead, when she walked off the plane, she was greeted by her parents, her sister, and two Straight clients and their parents. She tried to run but they tackled her on the carpet.
"I was screaming, 'Help me! Help me!' but they just carried me out of the airport and no one did a thing," Monroe says.
She rode from Miami to Sarasota, hog-tied in the back of a van.
At Straight, she was taken directly to a windowless, bare closet called the "time-out room."
"I was in there for 14 days," Monroe says. "I had no shower, no trips to the bathroom. They brought me biscuits and water. Anybody who tried to touch me, I fought. I bit the inside of my mouth and would spit blood at them. I took off my shirt and used it as a weapon."
Periodically, other clients were sent into the time-out room to "motivate" Monroe: yell at her, tell her what a failure she was, how she had ruined her life.
Monroe had no choice but to soil her pants with urine, feces and menstrual blood. She says Straight staffers called this punishment "humble pants." The room reeked, she recalls.
Finally one night, as parents and children held a meeting in the next room, Monroe heard her own mother pleading with her through a microphone to "be a good girl." She decided to cooperate.
Two parent volunteers gave her a bucket of water and a clean pair of underpants, then allowed her to go in another room to wash. She says they didn't seem shocked by her appearance.
"I had a busted lip and a black eye," she says. "The skin was peeling off my hands, I guess from malnutrition. My hair was falling out. I had bitten one finger each day, to mark the passage of time."
That night, a male Straight staffer came into her time-out room after the evening's program had ended and everyone had gone home. As she tells what happened next, Monroe's voice quivers.
"He said, 'I can make it easier on you if you do what I tell you to do.' Then he unzipped his pants. So I took my pants off, too."
That was Monroe's ticket out of the closet. But it started a whole new nightmare for her. She says the staffer continued to demand sexual acts several times a week, seeking her out usually in the kitchen, where she had earned the privilege of working.
"He'd walk in and say, 'Where's my pretty little girl?' I thought I had to do it. I thought everybody who had privileges was doing it."
A month shy of her 15th birthday, Monroe discovered she was pregnant. And that, finally, got her out of Straight.
"They brought me to the girls' rap room and they said, 'You're free to go.' "
Monroe had an abortion, paid for, she says, by the state. She claims she wasn't the only Straight client who was sexually abused.
"How did girls get herpes on their mouths? How did boys wind up with anal tears? There were yeast infections, urinary tract infections."
For the next few years, she bounced from foster homes to psychiatric hospitals to boyfriends' apartments. She had another abortion. She worked as a stripper, a nanny, a sous chef. She earned her GED and completed a training program to be a certified nursing assistant. She tried, and quit, college. She was arrested for shoplifting. She spent four years in France.
Today she works as a travel agent. She feels more in control. The days of frantic calls to suicide hotlines are over. "Therapy," she says, "has deemed me sane. Maybe a little turmoiled. But sane."
* * *
Her story, says Richard Bradbury, is not far-fetched. It's typical of what many children experienced in Straight, according to Bradbury, a former Straight client who successfully completed the program in 1984, became a staffer and then spent the next eight years campaigning to destroy the organization. He picketed Straight offices, helped shelter Straight runaways and pestered media and state officials to investigate the program.
"It was pure child abuse. Torture," says Bradbury, now 36 and living in Tampa.
Bradbury claims he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He hasn't married or had children and says he blames Straight for that. He's self-employed, he says, because, "I have to take things at my own speed."
Chris Tyler, 40, of Palm Harbor, is another disillusioned Straight graduate. Like Bradbury, he said he barely experimented with marijuana and beer before his parents checked him into Straight when he was 16. He remembers the strip search and being led around by other clients hanging onto his belt loops.
"We were sitting on hard wooden benches 12, 14 hours a day," says Tyler. "If you didn't sit up the whole time, you had the knuckles of the guy behind you in your spine."
Like Monroe, Tyler ran away from the program but was returned when several Straight staffers saw him walking along Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard in Clearwater.
Tyler says the worst thing about Straight was that it encouraged teenagers to turn on each other.
"It was 99 percent run by kids who had no training. Kids running kids. Like Lord of the Flies."
Tyler, who now runs his own manufacturing and design business, is divorced and has two children. He says he's a workaholic, driven to succeed, he thinks, by the anger he still feels toward Straight.
"I was really taken advantage of as a child. It robbed me of my innocence, of just being 16 and going around with my friends and having fun."
Tyler and Bradbury both plan to be at this weekend's conference. They're particularly interested in Sunday's sessions focusing on possible legal action participants can take.
"I want to sue somebody," Tyler says. "I want to go after those people."
The problem, of course, is that Straight no longer exists. In 1996, three years after Straight shut down, its corporate name was changed to Drug Free America Foundation. That organization, based in a downtown St. Petersburg office, does drug prevention education but no treatment, said director of communications Katherine Ford. Advisory board members include Gov. Jeb Bush, his wife, Columba, and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker.
"We get lots of hate mail from people who think we are Straight," Ford said. "But none of us were involved with or employed by Straight."
However, there is one link: Betty Sembler, wife of Straight co-founder Mel Sembler, is chairwoman of the board of directors of Drug Free America Foundation.
Former Straight staffers are reluctant to revisit the past. Miller Newton, Straight's former national clinical director, was reached Monday at his home in Madeira Beach but would not comment.
One man who worked there for five years before moving on to other drug treatment centers in the Tampa Bay area said he had a positive experience working at Straight, but he did not want to be identified in this story.
Recently, Samantha Monroe went with Bradbury and Tyler to visit the building in Sarasota where she spent nearly two years in Straight. It's now a construction warehouse on Cattlemen Road.
Monroe walked inside and burst into tears.
"I was a lost kid in there," she said. "And I want someone to tell me why."
* * *
The Trebach Institute's Second International Conference on Adolescent Treatment Abuse and Reunion of Straight Survivors begins today with a 6 p.m. reception at Mattison's, 111 Second Ave. NE, St. Petersburg. Saturday and Sunday sessions are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and take place at Julian's at the Heritage Hotel, 256 Second St. N. Admission is $100, $35 for students. Some scholarships are available. More information is available at http://www.trebach.org/abuse or by calling toll-free 1-888-883-5685.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
S.T.A.R.T
The Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment (A START) offers this summary of a Congressional Hearing on child abuse and neglect in private residential facilities. This hearing was conducted by the Committee on Education and Labor of the U.S. House of Representatives on October 9, 2007.
October, 2007 Child Neglect and Abuse in Private Residential Facilities:
A Summary of a Congressional Hearing.
In response to a number of complaints of serious abuse in private residential treatment programs, the Committee on Education and Labor of the U.S. House of Representatives conducted an investigative hearing on October 9, 2007, on “Cases of Child Neglect and Abuse at Private Residential Facilities.” The hearing was accompanied by the release of a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), entitled “Residential Treatment Programs: Concerns Regarding Abuse and Death in Certain Programs for Troubled Youth.”
View Hearing here and the GAO report is available through GAO’s Web site here .
The Committee Chairman, Rep. George Miller, opened the hearing by indicating his deep “concern about allegations of child abuse in private residential treatment programs, which are often referred to as ‘boot camps,’ ‘wilderness programs,’ or ‘behavior modification facilities.’” Rep. Miller went on to say that while hundreds of these programs operate across the country, they “are governed by a weak patchwork of state regulations.”
In discussing the abuse within these programs, Rep. Miller indicated that, “We have heard stories where program staff members forced children to remain in seclusion for days at a time; to remain in so-called ‘stress’ positions for hours at a time; or to undergo extreme physical exertion without sufficient food and water. Today we will hear even more horrifying stories, of children denied access to bathrooms and forced to defecate on themselves. Of children forced to eat dirt or their own vomit. Of children paired with older children—so-called ‘buddies’—whose job it is, essentially, to abuse them.”
Rep. Miller went on to characterize this type of abuse as “inhumane.” He also noted that it is “an outrage” that no federal agency keeps official data about the number of children enrolled in these programs, despite the fact that children are typically transported across state lines, sometimes by force.
The ranking minority member of the Committee, Rep. Howard P. McKeon, offered opening comments as well during which he indicated that “the allegations of mistreatment raise a number of serious questions.” He noted that before federal intervention is considered there is a need to determine how widespread the incidents are, and “to better understand the breadth of the problem.” The hearing included testimony from six individuals:
• Greg Kutz, Managing Director, Forensic Audits and Special Investigations, GAO; • Paul Lewis, father of a son who died in a program in 2001; • Cynthia Clark-Harvey, mother of a daughter who died in a program in 2002; • Bob Bacon, father of a son who died in a program in 1994; • Jan Moss, Executive Director of the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs (NATSAP); • Allison Pinto, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental HealthInstitute, University of South Florida, and Coordinator, Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic, and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment (A START), and a clinical psychologist, licensed in California and Florida.
Mr. Kutz began by summarizing the results of a study done by the GAO on private residential treatment programs in general, and particularly on the circumstances surrounding the death of 10 separate youth in 10 different residential treatment programs between 1990 and 2004. As part of their study, the GAO conducted interviews, reviewed records including police reports, autopsy reports, and state agency oversight reviews, conducted Internet searches for Web sites making allegations of abuse and neglect, and reviewed data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems (NCANDS). Based on their study, the GAO concluded that allegations of abuse, some of which involved death, were widespread. During 2005 alone, according to NCANDS data, 33 states reported 1,619 staff who were involved in incidents of abuse in residential programs. However, the GAO was unable to determine how many of these allegations took place in private versus public programs because data on this is not currently gathered. In fact, one theme of the hearings, emphasized in particular by Mr. Kutz and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, was that there is an absence of adequate data on a national level that can be used to describe and track the scope of the problem.
In their review of the circumstances surrounding the 10 deaths, the GAO found four striking patterns:
• Untrained program staff; • Misleading marketing of programs to parents; • The occurrence of abuse before the fatalities occurred; • Negligent operating practices.
In his testimony, Mr. Kutz reported that they only found one instance where a single individual was serving a criminal sentence because of a death out of the ten fatalities that they studied. In hearing about the absence of more criminal convictions, Rep. McKeon said that “this boggles my mind!”
In their report, the GAO indicates that there is a lack of a standard definition for different types of residential treatment programs. They particularly focused on wilderness therapy programs, boot camps, and therapeutic boarding schools. They also indicated that there is great variety with regard to the steps that states have taken to provide oversight of residential treatment programs ranging from statutory regulations that require licensing to no oversight.
The inadequacy of licensing requirements and monitoring procedures was a pervasive issue throughout the hearings. In fact it was pointed out that in some states there is no licensing at all.
Rep. McKeon and Rep. McCarthy particularly expressed concern that programs and program owners often move from one state to another, especially when problems occur in the original state. Rep. McKeon indicated that, “I don’t like to see federal legislation but there are some times when it has to happen, and if you have a situation like this where people can go from one state to another to avoid prosecution, it might be that federal legislation is needed.”
Mr. Kutz reported that the programs that the GAO had studied cost from $131 to $450 per day, with an average cost of $300/day, or slightly over $2,000 per week. Mr. Kutz also indicated that the GAO is currently completing a more comprehensive study of the residential treatment field, and that the report of that study would be available in early 2008.
After presenting testimony that vividly described the circumstances surrounding the death of several of the youth , and the neglect and abuse that had occurred prior to the deaths, Mr. Kutz indicated that, “if you walked in part way through my presentation, you might have assumed that I was talking about human rights violations in a third world country. Unfortunately, these human rights violations occurred right here in the United States of America.” This same sentiment was later repeated by Rep. Miller.
Mr. Lewis, Ms. Clark-Harvey, and Mr. Bacon all described in very powerful and emotional terms the experiences they had with the residential treatment industry, leading to the death of one of their children. Each talked about the great lengths they had gone to in their effort to find help for their child, and how carefully they had checked out the program before sending their child there. Ms. Clark-Harvey talked about how she and her husband had been misled by the program to which their daughter Erica went on such issues as the training and preparation of the staff, and the emergency procedures that were in place should they be needed. Mr. Bacon reported that he and his wife were “conned by their fraudulent claims,” and regretted their gullibility in believing what they were told. He outlined “21 days of ruthless and relentless psychological and physical abuse and neglect” that his son Aaron endured before his death in 1994.
Mr. Kutz indicated that programs pretty much told parents what they wanted to hear in order to get their child placed in the program, and that it was clearly a situation of “buyer beware” in which it was not possible for parents to genuinely know what they and their children were getting when they made a placement.
Another theme that was highlighted in the presentations by each of the parents, and by the GAO, was that complaints by the youth were not believed and were instead viewed as manipulations. Mr. Lewis, whose 14 year old son Ryan took his own life, reported that his son begged for help and told program staff, the day before his suicide, that “I want to call my mom and I want to go home.” Mr. Lewis reported that this was perceived as a manipulation rather than a cry for help, and that Ryan was not only denied help but was not appropriately supervised. This took place despite the fact that Ryan had engaged in self-destructive behaviors the evening before his death, and program staff had been told upon Ryan’s admission that he was depressed. Ms. Clark-Harvey indicated that after her daughter collapsed, she was left to lie where she fell for 45 minutes because staff were “unable or unwilling to recognize what was happening.” The GAO report cites the death of a 15-year old boy who became very ill and weak, complaining of muscle soreness, stumbling frequently, vomiting, and losing control of his bodily functions. According to the GAO report, “the staff interpreted this as being rebellious. The victim was ‘taken down’—forced to the floor and held there—on more than one occasion for misbehaving. Staff also tied a 20-pound sandbag around the victim’s neck when he was too sick to exercise, forcing him to carry it around with him and not permitting him to sit down” (p. 33).
When asked by Rep. Miller what they would recommend to other parents, Mr. Bacon indicated that he would tell them that “the risks of sending your child...are far greater than you can imagine.” Ms. Clark-Harvey said she would caution families that they cannot be certain of the claims of programs. Mr. Lewis said that he believes children belong with their parents, and that we need to “provide much stronger home-based programs.” Following the testimony by the parents, Ms. Moss of NATSAP, a trade organization of 180 residential treatment programs that served 16,000 youth in 2006, described her organization and its efforts to work to ensure that only programs of the highest quality are on the market. She indicated that early in 2007, the NATSAP Board of Directors had passed a new requirement for membership. The Board now requires that all prospective members must either be licensed by a state mental health agency, or accredited by an appropriate mental health accrediting organization. Ms. Moss indicated that her organization was not an accrediting organization itself, and did not look upon itself as providing a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” to programs.
Rep. Todd Russell Platts pointed that of the 10 programs studied by GAO, five were NATSAP members at the time of the fatality, and that while two of these programs had since closed, three continued to operate. Rep. Dale E. Kildee asked Ms. Moss about the number of complaints that NATSAP had looked into of their member programs, and asked for records on this. While Ms. Moss indicated that the primary benefits that NATSAP members receive are educational benefits, such as access to conferences and regional meetings, Rep. Kildee noted that member programs “may gain a certain credibility” by belonging to NATSAP that can be used for marketing. He indicated that NATSAP has “something to prove to this Committee and the American public that you are supplying more than just credibility.”
Mr. Kutz noted that the NATSAP logo was displayed prominently in the marketing of the programs that they had studied, and Dr. Pinto reported that parents with whom she had talked often referred to a program’s membership in NATSAP, and were not sure how to interpret what it meant. Dr. Pinto also reported that parents have no place to get accurate and complete information about programs, and that in earlier correspondence, NATSAP had referred to concerns about the problem of abuse and neglect in residential treatment as “the noisy complaint of a few individuals.” Ms. Moss indicated that NATSAP wanted to improve the quality of residential treatment, that they had already taken some steps in this direction by strengthening the membership requirements, and that their Board would take the input from the Committee under close consideration.
Dr. Pinto reported that she had conducted an on-line survey of youth and parents in an attempt to determine if in fact the complaints about residential treatment were restricted to a few isolated incidents, or were more widespread. Over a six-month period she received more than 700 responses to a lengthy survey. Respondents had participated in 85 different programs in 23 states, and while some respondents reported having positive experiences, complaints of mistreatment were widespread and significant. The complaints included deficiencies in health care and sanitation, unreported incidents of physical and sexual abuse, violation of basic human rights such as privacy and dignity, requiring individuals to endure painful stress positions for extended periods of time, providing very little food and inadequate nutrition, engaging in cruel and dangerous thought reform procedures, and using seclusion and restraint procedures excessively.
Overall, Dr. Pinto indicated that the survey respondents had expressed “profound distress about their residential care experiences.”
Obviously very moved by the testimony, Rep. Miller at one point commented that, “I can’t think of testimony that we have received in this Committee that has caused a greater sense of anger and sorrow than we have heard this morning.” In closing the hearing, Rep. Miller called for federal action to address this serious problem. He did not specify what the action might be but noted, in very determined tones, that, “We will have to figure out what the right vehicle is but we will figure it out.”
This summary was prepared by Robert M. Friedman, Ph.D., Department of Child and Family Studies, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute, University of South Florida on behalf of the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic, and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Friday, December 7, 2007
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
WHAT IS YOUR ELF NAME ??
WHAT IS YOUR ELF NAME ?
http://www.jokesunlimited.com/christmas_elf_name.php
1. Rudy - Tinker Floppy-Feet2. Fiona - Happy Spirit-Fingers3. Biscuit - Cheerful Spirt-Fingers4. Bailey - Pinky Monkey-Buns5. Lulu - Tinker O'Leary6. Jennifer- Bijou Angel-Pants7. Lisa - Jolly Floppy-Feet8. Michelle - Buttons Smickleifigus9. Erick - Zippy Sugar-Socks10. Lacy - Jolly Smickleifigus - DANG MICHO - why we always have to be rocking the same shiat?! ugh11. Daniella - Bouncy Sugar Socks12. Nicki - Blissful Mistletoe13. TRAVIS- LUCKY CANDY-LIPS14. Susan - Bouncy Smickleifigus15. David - Sunny Bubba Louie16. April - Goofy Smickleifigus17. Clay ~ Cheerful Monkey-Buns - Thats not an elf name...its a porn star name! Errr...and a girls porn name at that. Im in trouble.18. Terri ~ Puddin Angel-Pants..omg!..haha!19. Brian~ Bouncy Sparkly-Toes..AND NO IM NOT EITHER!!!!20. Shannon-Jolly Angel Pants21. Tammy-Nipper TumTums22. Anna - Beaker Floppy Feet????23. Matt - Nipper O'leary24. Anne - Pinky Bubba Louie25.Christina~~Jolly Fluffy Paws !!26. Crystal~Batty Mistletoe27. ALLISON- "WACKY BING-A-LING" LMAO28. CHASTITY~ SNAPPY SUGAR-SOCks
29. Steve- Pijou-Twinkle Toes
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Human Mind
Believe in the incredible power of the human mind. Of doing something that makes a difference. Of working hard. Of laughing and hoping. Of lazy afternoons. Of lasting friends. Of all the things that will cross your path this year.
The start of something new brings the hope of something great.
Anything is Possible
CHILD-ABUSE
Majestic Ranch Academy
Majestic Ranch Academy is located in Randolph, Utah.
The facility is one of several facilities operating according to the guidelines of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) and affiliated with Teen Help.
Majestic Ranch Academy takes children as young as 7.
Former "students" have complained of brutal and unwarranted physical restraint as well as verbal threats of violence from Director, Wayne Winder.
In 2002, Wayne Winder was charged with sexually abusing several students and banned from being alone with any of the children at the facility.
Information obtained by ISAC indicates that the children who made the accusations against Winder were transferred to Tranquility Bay, a WWASPS facility in Jamaica.
Tranquility Bay is owned by the son of WWASPS President, Ken Kay.
Criminal charges against Winder were subsequently dismissed.
During a visit to the facility in October 2003, ISAC investigators witnessed young boys shoveling manure at 10:30 am on a school day.
The children were dressed in light jackets while the supervising staff member, who was leaning against a fence, was wearing a heavy winter coat.
Majestic Ranch Academy is owned by Dan Peart, brother-in-law of Robert Lichfield, founder of WWASPS and Teen Help.
In 2005, ISAC received a complaint from a staff member who made the following allegations against the facility:
In early 2005, staff members demanded better food and safe drinking water for children, better healthcare for children, and better housing for staff members. They threatened to quit unless their demands were met. Instead of providing these things, officials at Majestic Ranch threatened to report the staff members for child abandonment if they quit their jobs.
Some girls at the facility have scabies that has not been treated.
Raw meat is left unrefrigerated all day, but is still fed to the children and staff.
Expired milk is served to children.
The milk is sometimes "watered-down.
Food and water are making children and staff members sick with vomiting and diarrhea.
Staff must bring their own food and water to avoid serious intestinal problems.
One child's tooth broke because of decay and the remaining portion is black. The child is in pain and as of the time that ISAC received this complaint, the child had not yet seen a dentist.
At least one child is severely traumatized due to sexual abuse suffered before entering Majestic Ranch.
Many children have night terrors and nearly all of them talk in their sleep.
One girl was ill for a long time but was not seen by a doctor until she had developed pneumonia.
There is no nurse on site.
The eyeglasses of one child were broken for at least one month.
Children are being mentally abused.
Children look depressed and listless.
Children are fed a minimum amount of poor quality, high-carb food consisting mainly of oatmeal, toast, peanut butter & jelly, beans, and canned soup.
Children are given no between-meal snacks and are always hungry.
As punishment, children are forced to stand on top of milk crates in the middle of the yard for long periods of time in sub-freezing temperatures. On one such occasion, the high temperature for the day was 10 degrees.
Children are forced to pick up maggot covered carcasses of dead ranch animals.
Boys drink shampoo in hopes of getting sick enough for their parents to withdraw them from the facility.
Children are forced to shovel snow after dark in below-freezing temperatures.
Children who refuse to shovel manure are forced to do so with their bare hands.
Girls were made to clean Dan Peart's personal guest house which is located across the road from the facility.
The mother of one child died while he was in the facility. The child was not allowed to attend the funeral. It was deemed "not in his best interest."
As of the date that this complaint was filed with ISAC, there was a sewage backup and raw sewage was flowing on the property.
The "girl's cabin" is actually a double-wide pre-fab trailer split into 2 "dorms," one side for younger girls, the other for older girls.
One side has no smoke detector.
Windows have nails in them so they will only open about 2 inches.
Some girls receive only 2 pair of underwear per week. When they complained that their underwear was dirty, they were told to turn them "inside out."
A female staff member was required to sleep with the boys due to a staff shortage.
The staff member witnessed a top bunk fall onto a boy lying on the bottom bunk.
Bed sheets had not been washed in over a month, even though some children wet their beds at night.
In the girl's trailer, the bathroom door is propped open at all times.
If the children touch any of the dogs on the ranch, the dogs are shot by owner Dan Peart.
Ranch dogs feed on the carcasses of dogs and other animals.
Sick animals are shot in front of the children.
Hired ranch hands sleep in trailers that are only 100 yards from the boy's dorms.
In recent news articles, Tammy Johnson claims to be the Director of Majestic Ranch.
However, after receiving the above complaints, an ISAC volunteer called Majestic Ranch and asked to speak to the Director.
The man who accepted the call identified himself as Wayne Winder.
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