NYTimes.com Article: Parents, Shopping for Discipline, Turn to Harsh Pro

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by threehegemons@aol.com.


This is a somewhat surreal form of 'globalization.'  It is now commonplace in 
the US to ship prisoners across state boundaries, moving them into an 
under-regulated netherworld.  But this is parents voluntary shipping their 
children across international borders.

Steven Sherman

threehegemons@aol.com

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Parents, Shopping for Discipline, Turn to Harsh Programs Abroad

May 9, 2003
By TIM WEINER 




 

ENSENADA, Mexico - Ryan Fraidenburgh was 14 when he was
brought here shackled, kicking and screaming. 

Two men carrying handcuffs and leg irons came for him at
his mother's home in Sacramento, Calif., shoved him into a
van and bound him hand and foot. They drove him 12 hours
south, over the Mexican border, into a high-walled compound
near here called Casa by the Sea. 

"It was nighttime," Ryan recalled. "I look around and I see
kids sleeping on cement. I was really, really scared. The
big honcho, Mauricio, said, `You don't speak English here.'
I didn't know how to speak Spanish." 

Ryan quickly learned the rules: stay silent, be compliant,
don't look up, don't look out the window, don't speak
unless spoken to. The punishments for breaking the rules
included solitary confinement, lying on the floor in a
small room, nose to the ground, often for days on end. 

Ryan was not a criminal. He was only skipping school, his
parents said in telephone interviews. But in August 2000,
they said, in the middle of a bitter divorce and custody
battle, they decided to send him away to Casa by the Sea,
which calls itself a "specialty boarding school" for
behavior modification. 

Like hundreds of other parents, the Fraidenburghs made
their choice largely on the basis of a glossy brochure and
a call to a toll-free number in Utah. They came to regret
their choice. 

The idea of sending a child to such a program in Mexico was
unheard of a decade ago. But in the United States,
behavior-modification programs and boarding schools for
troubled youths have faced increasing legal and licensing
challenges over the past few years. 

More and more are moving abroad - some to Mexico, Central
America or the Caribbean - where they operate largely under
the regulation radar and where some employ minimum-wage
custodians more than teachers or therapists, say government
officials, education consultants and clinical
psychologists. 

The behavior-modification business is booming at Casa by
the Sea, on Mexico's Pacific Coast, the largest of 11
affiliated programs with roughly 2,200 youths, about half
of them in Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica. The programs are
run by a small group of businessmen based in St. George,
Utah, under the banner of the World Wide Association of
Specialty Programs and Schools, or Wwasps, and Teen Help,
the programs' main marketing arm. 

Over the past seven years, local governments and State
Department officials have investigated Wwasps-affiliated
programs in Mexico, the Czech Republic and Samoa on charges
of physical abuse and immigration violations. The Mexican
program, in Cancún, and the Czech program closed, and their
owners left those countries saying they feared unjust
charges. The Samoan program cut its affiliation with
Wwasps. 

Ken Kay, the president of Wwasps, would not allow a
reporter to visit Casa by the Sea; Dace Goulding, the
program's director, declined to answer any questions. But
Mr. Kay, responding to inquiries in writing from his office
in Utah, said no charge of abuse had ever been proven
against any of the programs in any court. 

"We are about getting families back together," he said in a
written statement. "We are not for everyone, and there are
very few but vociferous critics of not just us but any
youth intervention." He described many of the program's
critics as parents who feel they have been "manipulated,
brainwashed or duped" or who are battling through divorce
and taking their anger out "by making us look terrible." 

In telephone interviews, eight teenagers who were formerly
in Casa by the Sea described a system in which the youths
try to ascend six "levels" through a system of rewards and
punishments, including being sent to "R and R," a small,
bare isolation room, often for days on end. Discipline, not
education, was the rule, they said. 

For Laura Hamel, 17, of Vienna, Va., who counts herself as
a success story, it was a slow two-year ascent to
graduation in March. She said she was demoted from Level 3
back to Level 1 after giving a weeping, lonely friend a hug
and a kiss on the cheek at Thanksgiving. Affection of that
kind is forbidden. 

A youth who rises to Levels 4, 5 and 6 can become a "junior
staff member" and "participate in the discipline process"
against lower-level youths, Casa's contract with parents
says. 

"The authority is in your hands," said Ryan Pink, 19, of El
Paso, who reached Level 5 at Casa. "You can discipline
kids. The younger kids - they were constantly being
restrained, being punished, put in R and R for four or five
days. Nose to the wall. Or nose to the ground. And at night
you sleep in the hallways." 

Many parents and youths say the behavior-management system
of discipline and punishment scares youths into sobriety
and obedience. Others - parents and youths formerly
enrolled, education experts, government authorities and a
former Wwasps program director - say the programs profit
from struggling parents unable to handle their depressed,
delinquent, defiant or drug-abusing children. 

"Their goal is not to help teens in crisis or their
families," according to a former director of one
Wwasps-affiliated program, Amberly Knight. "It is to make
millions of dollars." 

The financial success of Casa by the Sea is evident. Its
enrollment has nearly tripled, from about 200 youths when
it opened in 1998 to more than 570 today, almost all
American teenagers. Already among the biggest programs of
its kind outside the United States, Casa by the Sea has
just spun off another program for those 18 and over. 

Tuition and fees at Casa by the Sea run about $30,000 a
year, half of what some United States-based programs cost.
Its staff members "do not need and may not necessarily
have" teaching credentials, Casa's contract with parents
plainly states. 

Lon Woodbury, publisher of Woodbury Reports, which rates
schools and programs for troubled teenagers inside and
outside the United States, said one reason that American
programs have moved abroad is "to avoid the laws and
regulations of the States." He added, "They can hire
minimum-wage staff and still charge stateside prices." 

Profit margins and growth within the programs run by Wwasps
appear solid. Teen Help, the affiliation's main marketing
arm, was the single biggest corporate campaign contributor
in the state of Utah in the 2002 election cycle, donating
$215,290 to Republican campaigns, according to online
federal election records posted in March. 

Mr. Kay, the Wwasps president, said that the proof of the
programs' success is the way in which "behavior of students
generally changes drastically." The organization's internal
surveys, he said, proved that "more than 98 percent of the
schools' parents are completely satisfied." He wrote, "No
wonder these are the fastest growing Schools of their kind
in the world!!!" 

The overseas "specialty boarding school" industry is
growing so fast that United States consular officials in
overseas embassies say they have no idea how many such
programs exist. 

"No authorities in Mexico control these institutions," said
Elisa Ledesma, a lawyer at the American Consulate in
Tijuana. Consular officers demanded and received access to
several such programs in Mexico, one official said, after
they "heard horror stories from parents." 

The consular officers have the power, under the Vienna
Convention, to visit overseas programs to check on the
well-being of American citizens under 18. 

In January, after several such visits, the State Department
issued a notice on "behavior modification facilities" in
Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica. The programs may "isolate
the children in relatively remote sites" and restrict their
contact with the outside world, it said. 

At least seven programs in Utah, Montana, South Carolina
and New York are Wwasps affiliates, according to the
organization's Web site; at least three have faced legal
challenges. Utah state officials say they are reviewing the
license of the flagship Wwasps program, Cross Creek Manor,
and that a second program, Majestic Ranch, is operating
without a proper license. 

Six weeks ago, according to the state attorney general's
office in Utah, a director of Majestic Ranch entered into a
court agreement to have no unsupervised contact with
children after he was charged with misdemeanor child abuse.


Attorneys for both programs contest the licensing
challenges. South Carolina officials have fined a third
Wwasps program, Carolina Springs Academy, $5,000 for
operating without a license. 

While some dissatisfied parents have sued Wwasps and its
programs, the contract that parents sign with Casa by the
Sea sets high hurdles for them. It states plainly that the
program "does not accept responsibility for services
written in sales materials or brochures" or promises made
by "staff or public relations personnel" and that any
dispute between a parent and the program must be settled in
a Mexican court, not in the United States. 

The Wwasps programs market themselves under a multitude of
interlinked Web sites. Their sales personnel offer
thousands of dollars in incentives to adults who recruit
new youths or host Web sites advertising the programs. 

Some parents said in interviews that they enrolled their
children in programs they had never visited after browsing
Web sites, brochures and videotapes depicting happy
children in a wholesome setting. 

"I sent him there sight unseen," said Patti Reddoch, of
Sweeny, Tex., who considered Dundee Ranch for her son,
Edmund Brumaghin, now 17, but chose Casa by the Sea
instead. "The music he was listening to started getting
darker and he was getting more into the drugs, and that's
when I decided I needed to do something. 

"So I went on the Internet and started searching around and
found the Wwasp program. I contacted them and made the
arrangements, and that's pretty much it. It didn't take me
any time at all." 

Mrs. Reddoch, speaking by telephone, said she then hired an
"escort service" familiar with Casa by the Sea to handcuff
and transport her son away at 5 a.m. one Sunday last
September. 

That morning, her son cursed her bitterly, but now his
attitude is changing, she said. 

"I am very pleased with the school," said Ms. Reddoch, who
said she visited Casa by the Sea once, for a weekend, last
January. "I've started putting out brochures for referrals.
I would recommend Casa to anyone." 

Reality may differ from the brochures, however. "Everyone
has a shaved head," Michael Zieghelboim, who was formerly
enrolled at Casa by the Sea, said in a telephone interview.
"They walk around like zombies. Most of the staff have no
training." 

"Casa by the Sea was the scariest thing that ever happened
to me," said Mr. Zieghelboim, who now lives with his father
in El Salvador. 

He said that despite falling behind in his education at
Casa by the Sea - at 17, he is now in the 10th grade - he
rates himself a success. "If I had never gone there, I'd
probably still be doing cocaine," he said. 

This kind of tough discipline is an attraction for many
exasperated parents. 

The program runs "a very tight ship," said Virginia Day, of
Redmond, Wash., who sent her son, Gabriel, 15, to the
program in July. 

"The staff that works most closely with the kids are not
necessarily professionals, and I know that this is an
issue," said Ms. Day, who called herself a very satisfied
customer. "This is not a school that specializes in a
therapeutic component." 

Carol Maxym, an educational consultant in Maryland, said:
"What they are looking for at Casa is compliance.
Compliance is easy, if you break the kid down enough. And
compliance is cheap." She added, "The parents often don't
realize what's going on." 

Youths and staff at other overseas Wwasps programs have
described harsh conditions. One was Aaron Kravig, now 19.
He said he contracted scabies, untreated for six months,
ate meals of watery porridge and fish entrails, and was
schooled almost solely with "emotional growth" videos at
Tranquility Bay, the Wwasps-affiliated program in Jamaica,
according to a transcript of sworn testimony he gave last
year at a Virginia state court hearing. 

In Costa Rica, Ms. Knight, the former director of the
Wwasps-affiliated Academy at Dundee Ranch, resigned in
August after sending a letter to the national minister of
child welfare calling for the program to be shut down. 

The letter said the program was "hiring unqualified,
untrained, staff" and providing "the bare minimum of food
and living essentials." It said the program "takes
financial advantage of parents in crisis, and puts teens in
physical and emotional risk." 

The speed with which some parents choose an overseas
behavioral-modification program for their children baffles
some educational consultants. 

"I find it incredible that parents would send their kids
off to some place they've heard about on the Internet," Mr.
Woodbury said. 

Ms. Maxym, author of "Teens in Turmoil: A Path to Change
for Parents, Adolescents and their Families" (Viking
Penguin, 2000) said, "I find it interesting that parents
will spend less time finding a school for their child than
buying a new car." 

Ryan Fraidenburgh's father, Bob, an aerospace engineering
executive, said he had only glanced at Casa by the Sea's
"brochures that looked like Club Med." He said he removed
Ryan from the program by himself in January 2001 after
deciding he had been too hasty. 

"We made a huge mistake," he said. "Until the day I die
I'll regret that." 

Ryan's mother, Carolyn, said: "We were expecting treatment,
not a minimum-wage person to watch over your kid like he
was an animal in a cage."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/09/international/americas/09MEXI.html?ex=1053533097&ei=1&en=4bd81cb0561e8a56



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