Send your children to a 'behaviour-modification centre'!!

Well, dayum! If parents are paying to have their kids inducted into this cult, who the hell is going to pay to have them deprogramed?

Tranquility Bay would certainly increase parental tranquility--at least temporarily.

It is also providing a equal opportunity employer for the people of Jamaica.

The graduates will have plenty to discuss with their therapists.

Hmmmmmm. Here's an article from my paper yesterday:

Costa Rica school called 'horror story'

07/05/03

DANA TIMS

From the moment her ringing telephone woke her well past midnight May 20, Robin Crawford of Dundee knew something was wrong with her son, Cody.


Crawford had flown with her 16-year-old son to Orotina, Costa Rica, two weeks earlier to place him in what she understood to be a "supportive boarding school."

A very different picture is emerging amid allegations of torture and abuse, two police raids, a Costa Rican court inquiry, U.S. Embassy intervention and talk of class-action lawsuits against the Academy at Dundee Ranch and its operators.

"What I saw when I finally got down there was something out of a horror story," said Crawford. She has since retrieved her son and is helping him recuperate at Pacific City. "Nightmare doesn't begin to describe it."

School officials did not return telephone calls this week seeking their side of the story.

Other people, however, are speaking out after what's been described as riots involving Cody Crawford and dozens of the 200 mostly U.S. students at the facility.

Cody, along with other Dundee Ranch students, gave closed-court testimony to a judge in Costa Rica before leaving the country with his mother in late May.

Robin Crawford said she has been contacted by at least two attorneys in two states seeking to initiate class-action lawsuits against the ranch.

Dundee Ranch -- not to be confused with Dundee, Ore. -- is a former ecotourism resort 55 miles west of San Jose, Costa Rica. It is coordinated by the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools. The association, which coordinates nine other schools with a total of 2,200 students in the United States, Mexico and Jamaica, is based in St. George, Utah.

The school's Web site promises prospective students a "world-class program in a world-class environment." A section titled "Behavior Modification" says, "Appropriate behavior is reinforced and rewarded" using a "merit system requiring each teen to earn their status and privileges through a standard program using a level system."

That's far from what Cody and other teens encountered once at the school, his mother said.

"At one point, they made him lie on the ground with his face in feces and urine," Robin Crawford said. "He was threatened with beatings if he so much as moved. Other children have separately and independently verified these things."

Crawford said she first heard of Dundee Ranch from her sister. Crawford persuaded court officials to let Cody attend the ranch after he was arrested on possession of marijuana and breaking and entering.

Mother inspected school Crawford inspected the ranch and found its facilities satisfactory. She agreed to pay $1,990 a month in tuition and figured her son would be in good hands.

"I only learned later that they showed me just a portion of the place," she said. "And the students I met turned out to be upper-level students who earned extra credit for taking part in their little show."

School officials imposed and enforced endless rules, Crawford said, which included keeping one's eyes focused downward, a prohibition on using the bathroom for hours after meals and bans on looking at someone of the opposite gender.

"It's extremely warm in that climate, yet the kids got only 20 ounces of water a day to drink," Crawford said. "Cody saw kids with open sores. They were getting almost no medical treatment."

Parents of some Dundee Ranch graduates defend the facility, which apparently is trying to mount a defense of its own against the allegations.

Owner defends program Narvin Lichfield, Dundee's owner, bought airline tickets to fly John Sortomme, a retirement planner in San Diego, and his daughter, a 17-year-old Dundee graduate, to Costa Rica to defend the school to journalists, according to Associated Press reports.

Chanel Sortomme went to Dundee "a very intelligent screw-up" who had run away from home three times, her father told reporters. She came out "a beautiful, intelligent, powerful young lady."

Even so, a number of students, including Cody, fled the ranch when Costa Rican authorities showed up May 20 and told them no one could be forced to remain. Riots broke out two days later, according to media reports, when Lichfield tried to reverse the order.

By that time, Cody had sprinted into the nearby jungle. He later said he tried to use the stars to guide him through the foliage to the U.S. Embassy in San Juan. Instead, a passing motorist picked him up and provided shelter until Cody's mother retrieved him.

Child agency investigating

PANI, Costa Rica's child welfare agency, is investigating complaints of abuse against the facility, which has closed. Ken Kay, president of the specialty schools association, will try to reopen Dundee Ranch this month, according to news reports.

Kay has not returned telephone calls.

When Crawford got the call telling her of trouble at the ranch, she wanted to fly to Costa Rica immediately. She said she delayed her trip a week on the advice of Dundee Ranch officials.

Once she got there, she located her son, who was living with a San Juan family. After talking with police and judicial officials, she and Cody returned to Oregon, she said.

After rushing to Idaho to attend her father's funeral, the pair returned home to Dundee last week.

"I don't know what's going to happen at this point, other than my own crusade to make sure these people don't harm any more kids," Crawford said. "Cody's been having nightmares every night. This can't happen to anyone else."

This is a very very disturbing news story. I am quite familiar with attempts to make a "school of hard knocks" for children. I am also altogether too aware of the high suicide rates of the children who emerge from such places.

The activities in this program don't come close to some of the real cults and what they do to their children but it has many similar elements.

I have been through several such programs. What is hard for some to understand is that quite often getting beaten with a 2 by 4 is preferable to the restrictions on speech and movement and the desire to break the child's spirit.

What the idiots rarely realize is that sometimes they are trying to break the wrong part of the child's pysche.

Not being allowed to go anywhere without adults and having to endure demeaning brainwashing is a sick thing to do to children. I know a few who emerged from such programs only to immediately commit suicide.

Jay Kay is a disgusting man. He should be sentenced to a year of sensory deprivation.

Wow, that is horrible

Any parent that would even consider sending their child to this travesty of a 'center' should take a look in the mirror and admit that maybe they are the problem.

Tranquility Bay
Early this year (2003) I vacationed in Jamaica. I had heard the stories and had spoken to some press that were investigating the issues. My curiosity was somewhat peaked, and since I was staying in Jamaica for about a week, I decided to hire a driver and see, for myself, what this facility looks like. My experience and the pictures I personally took of the facility are available for the asking. For those interested in an abridged version - - here it goes:

First and foremost, you must understand that this place is in the middle of nowhere. It's a shock to travel Jamaica's countryside to begin with, because driving in general is so dangerous, away from the resorts (I happened to be staying in Ocho Rios) and the poverty is omnipresent. The city (Treasure Beach) is as remote as it gets, and when you arrive and ask where Tranquility Bay is (or to it's local folk the "Olde Warf Hotel"), you are outrightly lied to -- they say they don't know exactly where it is. Once you arrive in town, past the Motorcycle merchant, look for an old Jamaican (looks to be 300 or so) sitting on a rock, for it is at that dirt road you have to turn and follow a path about a half-mile long to the rather un-glorious "Tranquility Bay".

My first awareness that I was in the right place, was that I saw 10 or 20 boys riding on the rim of an old Pick-up Truck in front of us. They all looked unkempt and the ride looked dangerous. They were allowed inside the gates (the children and the dilapidated truck) and I had the driver stop so I could take in this nightmare, that I had only previously read about or had seen by way of very unclear pictures on the internet.

It's bad -- the first thing that catches your eye is that all of the windows (99%) have been "boarded-up". It hales from something out of a Hitchcock movie. The place has an odor and it is not pleasant at all. The beach could never be utilized because it looks as though the sewage is emptied on it regularly. If that's not the case, then a blanket statement that the beach is in horrible and unusable condition for whatever reason is a completely fair assessment of the situation.

The place has guards; it's ominously quiet (it was while I was there). Even if you did manage to escape, I don't know where any of its "guests" would run to. The trip just to the main road (if you could call it that) would wind even the most fit athlete, and the townspeople are rumored to get rewards for turning run-a-ways in. Remember that many Jamaicans work for the facility and even if the reward does not exist, they have a stake in making sure the "guests" stay imprisoned.

Obviously, I could not go inside, but I snapped many pictures and they clearly illustrate, that the place is a broken-down second-rate motel from the past, and should have been leveled many years ago, and that any beauty that the structure or the beach on which it sits may have once possessed is gone. It's a frightening site (and this is just from the outside). Notably, there is garbage in large cages outside the structure and I did have the feeling that something or someone, other than it's intended contents, may be placed in there from time-to-time.

Interestingly, I was not approached, although I was taking pictures like crazy (and my presence was somewhat obvious).

Another important fact, for people to keep in mind, is that this "hell-hole" is hours from both Kingston and Montego Bay Airports -- it's a drive you will never forget and it runs upwards of $300 round-trip.

Truly, all of this is moot, because the Headmaster (and I use this reference loosely) has no credentials at all which justify his position of management over this facility. The parents are bad parents -- plain and simple -- for taking part in this plan. An inquiry about this program by any parent, by itself, should result in a parent being jailed with no due process for the rest of their life.

Eventually, the United States Government will have to deal with this mess -- hopefully by invading Utah again -- it is time for that (government intervention) -- they have short memories from the last time (The Invasion of Utah.) Utah's inhabitance (and others) need desperately to come to terms with the fact that troubled children are a part of normal life and that having them kidnapped by paid morons (mostly because the parents are too cowardly to do this themselves)and then surreptitiously smuggling their child/children off to a foreign country to be tortured indefinitely is contrary to the mores and values of a civilized society.

Do not send your kids to this place! It's awful to look at, the manager is unqualified and all your doing is stuffing the bulging coffers of the nuts and religious fanatics that run these torture chambers.

Richard R. Titsch, III
New Jersey

Tranquility Bay Reformatory
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