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House Bill:  Stop Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act

Senate Bill:  Stop Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act

 

1) ASPEN EDUCATION GROUP

a) Mt. Bachelor Academy:

• VIDEO: Attorney Kelly Clark announces a $25million class action lawsuit has been filed against Aspen Education Group by former students who were forced to endure abuse under the guise of therapy.

 

b) SageWalk Wilderness Program (from the ABC show 'Brat Camp')

• VIDEO: Sergey Blashchishen's friend memorialize Sergey's death
  
• Video: CAFETY President calls Aspen's ethics into question

• Also see:

  • Researcher's from the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment  (ASTART) : Treatment Research Lacks Good Science

  • CAFETY's AEG Factsheet

 

3) World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP)

• Tranquility Bay Documentary- Les enfants perdus de Tranquility Bay (2005)

Shocking documentary, "Tranquility Bay", presents evidence of abuse at several behavior modification centers for troubled teens run by a WWASP, a Utah-based company. The company's Guantanamo Bay-style approach to education has been reported previously in the media, but this English-language pic by Gallic Mathieu Verboud and Jean Robert Viallet provides an in-depth investigation that eschews sensationalism and builds a scrupulously mounted case against the org via moving interviews with victims and parents, as well as present and ex-employees -Variety Magazine

• Fun Fact: WWASP founder was, up until recently, MITT ROMNEY'S Finance Co-Chair

Documentary : Part One.
Documentary : Part Two.

 

4) Straight, Inc.

• Surviving Straight, Inc. - Clips from the upcoming feature film

Straight Inc. was a drug rehabilitation program for teens, that operated from 1976-1993 in several states across America. Clients were forcibly indoctrinated with the program, deprived of all basic human rights until they could demonstrate a sincere internalization of the group's values. All clients underwent sleep deprivation, isolation, food and water deprivation, verbal and physical abuse as a matter of course. All forms of personal autonomy were considered privileges and were earned through adopting the abusive personality of a "Straightling."

• Fun Fact: Mel Sembler, founder of Straight Inc is MITT ROMNEY's Finance Co-Chair

 

5) State of Montana (Buyer Beware!)

• Who's Watching the Kids? - PBS

Who's Watching The Kids? There are more than 30 privately run schools for troubled youth operating in the state of Montana. They employ more than 600 people and pump an estimated 4 million into the state income taxes. It's an exploding industry, but strangely, most Montanans have no idea the schools even exist. In this hour-long documentary, MontanaPBS explores a lucrative industry praised for its novel approach to reforming youth, yet shrouded in disturbing allegations of abuse and neglect.

 

6) KIDS & North Star Expeditions

• DOUBLE FEATURE: Over the GW & Aaron Bacon

by: Nick Gaglia (survivor of Kids of North Jersey)


Over the GW (2007) is based on Nick Gaglia's own experiences as a drug-addicted teen who underwent physical and psychological abuse at a cult-like, tough love rehab center. Tony Serra a drug-abusing Bronx teen whose worried mom (Julia Moriarty) checks him into a New Jersey rehabilitation clinic where physical restraint, mental abuse and will-breaking brainwashing are routine therapies.


Aaron Bacon (2009) - Inspired by the book "Help at Any Cost" by Maia Szalavitz, this film is based on the true story of a 16-year-old boy who dies as a result of malpractice and abuse in a wilderness program.

7) Judge Rotenburg Center

• Documentary & ABC Nightline Clips

This documentary investigates human rights abuses in a MA program that uses electric shocks (think cattle prods) as a form of "treatment". Such "treatment" has been declared by the UN to be, unequivocally, torture under the legal definition of the term under Art 1 of the Convention Against Torture.

8) CEDU

• Surviving CEDU - Clips

Surviving Cedu,” tells the story of a half-dozen teenagers who were each sent to the Cedu School, variously described to them as a standard boarding school, a wilderness adventure school, or a therapeutic learning environment in the Western mountains of the United States. But the experience of the school was something entirely different. Students quickly found themselves in a new, strange, uncomfortable and often frightening world of intense group relationships and heightened, invasive and violent group therapies. Relationships at the school between students - and staff - seemed to have little formal structure or sense of normal boundary - and a student’s life was always under threat of intense and unpredictable disciplining and punishment.

 

9) Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC)

• POWERLESS - Documentary (2008)
  

The Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre boasts of a success rate unheard of in the addictions field—with more than 80 percent of its grads said to be “clean and sober” through its use of such innovative new therapy modalities such as confrontational therapies and using teenagers, some still going through the AARC program, to counsel other teens. The roots of this treatment can be found in an American teenage addiction center that has been shut down. These experience, like their American counterparts, include being held against their will, treatment therapies they describe as abusive and even incidents of sexual abuse. Former resident, Rachel O'Neill, wants someone to know that for all of AARC's promises of success, bad things do happen there and attention, she believes, must be paid. “If somebody commits a crime they can go to jail for it but you can't randomly incarcerate teenagers just because you want to and it offends my sense of justice and my sense of what it is to be Canadian that AARC is still doing what they do.”

• Did you know? 50% of population with struggling with addition has a mental health diagnosis

 

10) Escuela Caribe

• Kidnapped for Christ: Feature Film - Trailer
• Please support the completion of this film
• Also see:
  • Jesus Land (the book)

Kidnapped for Christ is a feature-length documentary film, which follows the stories of several American teenagers who were sent to an Evangelical Christian reform school located in The Dominican Republic called “Escuela Caribe.” The school is run by Americans and is advertised as a “therapeutic Christian boarding school” whose mission is to “help struggling youth transform into healthy Christian adults.” While many have praised the school for saving the lives of hundreds of troubled teens, in the past several years many former students have begun to speak out against the school, claiming that they suffered both psychological and physical abuse during their time there. The film’s director, Kate Logan, set out to document the experiences of the students at this remote boarding school and was given unprecedented access to film for seven weeks on campus in the summer of 2006. Through candid interviews with distressed students, footage of staff imposing extreme discipline and punishments, and finally the attempted rescue of a student being held at the school illegally past the age of 18, she was able to reveal the shocking truth of what was actually going on at Escuela Caribe.

 

11) Dozier Florida School For Boys

• Video - Producer Cut

12) Program Unknown, but could be WWASP's Paradise Cove

• Boot Camp
  

Boot Camp is a 2007 psychological suspense thriller feature film written by Agatha Dominik and John Cox and directed by Christian Duguay. The film is based upon on true events; it is about teenagers sent to a rehabilitation camp (in Fiji) who are then abused and brainwashed. -- Link coming soon!

Don't you think it's time we shatter the stereotype that struggling kids, different kids, gay kids, any kid is a bad kid that belongs in an institution?

Act Now!

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NOTE:

*Name's have been altered to protect survivors from further therapeutic trauma and degradation.

**Some of DHS SUBSTANTIATED accounts of therapy include:

MOUNT BACHELOR:

• Abusive emotional growth curriculum which included punitive, humiliating, degrading and traumatizing Life Steps Program that included requiring the following actions be done in front of staff and peers: “sexualized role play, requiring students to say derogatory phrases about themselves, requiring students to reenact past physical abuse, permitting staff in the usage of derogatory names, phrases and ridicule of students and sleep deprivation.

• Disciplinary policies in violation of Oregon law, including requiring youth to engage in self studies or solo experience which consisted of strenuous work projects and camping alone in inclement weather conditions, withholding access to bathroom, doing pushups or run laps, group punishment for one student breaking of a rule, prohibiting youth from talking, touching or looking at others and requiring they face the wall for up to a week or longer (called “bans”), censorship during calls with parents where phone calls were terminated if students complained.

• Deprivation of educational services and, in some instances, staff was found to have inadequate background or experience to provide “adequate care, safety, protections and supervision of students.

~~Dept. Human Serv. Children and Fam. Serv. Div. MBA Complaint and Or. to Correct Conditions not in Conformity with Licensing Stand. (Nov. 2, 2009) Download PDF.

SAGEWALK

• Staff members (identified as AP1 and AP 3) neglecting the care of Sergey by failing to provide medical care, which was likely to endanger his health or welfare.
• SageWalk neglecting the care of Sergey by failing to provide medical care, which was likely to endanger his health or welfare.
• Investigating Sheriff recommends that homicide charges be filed by the Lake County district attorney, finding the Sergey's death occurred as “the result of criminal mistreatment and reckless endangerment by the school.”This death occurred in August, 2009, and two years later there is still no action by the district attorney.

 

Sources:
~~Dept. Human Serv. Children and Fam. Serv. Div. Abuse Investigation & Protective Services Report - (March 17, 2011). Download PDF.

~~Sheriff Chuck Pore - Media Release - SHERIFF 090529 - SERGEY BLASHCHISHEN - (March 29, 2010)

~~ Barney Lerten and Shanna Mendiola, KTVZ - Lawsuit Against Mt. Bachelor Academy Expands - (July 2011)

ALSO SEE: Sergey's online memorial.

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