So, if my parents or guardians made me sleep in a room like this

or spend all of my time lying on the floor face down like this …

they would probably get arrested, right?  Either for child abuse or neglect.

But what about if parents outsourced abusing their kids?  What if they sent thm to places where things like THIS take place?

Many who have been there describe a life of pain and fear. They say they spent 13 hours a day, for weeks or months on end, lying on their stomachs in an isolation room, their arms repeatedly twisted to the breaking point.

….

“You could hear kids screaming when they were getting restrained,” Mr. Bucolo said. “It was horrible. They would do it behind closed doors. And say the kids were lying if they complained.”

What would you say about parents who spent $30,000 to send their kids to this place?  Or what about this one?

The company that owns them is WWASP and this is what Wikipedia reports:

The treatment methods employed by WWASPS institutions are said to be controversial, as there have been allegations of severe abuse and torture by staff at programs supported by WWASPS.^[18] The programs have been the subject of legal investigations by several U.S. states.^[19]

Numerous former students or their parents have filed lawsuits against WWASPS, its personnel, or individual schools. Most have been settled out of court or dismissed for procedural reasons. For example, a 2005 lawsuit filed in California on behalf of more than 20 plaintiffs was dismissed because the judge found that California lacked jurisdiction. In June 2007, Utah attorney Thomas M. Burton told a reporter that six suits he had filed against WWASPS on behalf of his clients had been dismissed on procedural grounds. WWASPS president Ken Kay told an interviewer that lawsuits against WWASPS are ploys to get money, brought by people who “are never going to be happy.”^[20] A lawsuit filed in 2007 against WWASPS and its founder, Robert Lichfield, on behalf of 133 plaintiffs alleging physical and sexual abuse and fraudulent concealment of abuse has brought negative publicity to Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, because Lichfield was one of six co-chairs of the Utah state fundraising committee for Romney’s campaign.^[20][21]

On August 31, 2007, Randall Hinton was convicted of one count each of third degree assault and false imprisonment, for mistreating students at the WWASP-affiliated Royal Gorge Academy, of which he was manager and co-founder. However, the jury returned verdicts of “not guilty” on four other counts of third-degree assault and one other count of false imprisonment. ^[22] Hinton was sentenced to jail followed by probation.^[23]

The Brown Daily Herald wrote this:

Parents in the United States who pull their children out of normal schools and send them to WWASPS camps do not have to provide any justification - accounts online include a 17-year-old girl who had been accepted to Harvard before her parents sent her to Tranquility Bay. Students remain in the camp until they turn 18 (they can be sent there as young as 11 or 12), or until they genuinely embrace the camp’s belief system, which includes accepting parental authority, turning away from drugs and sexuality, and genuine gratitude for having been sent there to be reprogrammed.

While at the camp, students are monitored 24 hours a day, are not allowed to speak or move without permission and are subject to a rigid disciplinary system. Punishment at Tranquility Bay includes being forced to lie on the ground for months without moving or speaking, being sprayed in the face with pepper spray, or having your arms and limbs twisted into unnatural positions - the idea being to cause extreme pain without leaving marks. At other WWASPS camps, students have been beaten, put in dog cages and starved. Teenagers who cooperate with the program rise in a complex system of internal ranks, eventually becoming enforcers against new students. In so-called “group therapy” sessions, students are punished if they do not hurl abuse at one another, reveal personal information and proclaim their salvation by the program.

Child abuse has slowly grown out of the family sphere and turned into an industry.

These things would not be legal if parents did them here in the US, and parents who send their children to these places should be put in jail.  The “schools” should be closed and the kids sent to live with better families and attend real schools.

Here are some other links:

http://www.wwaspinfo.com/

http://www.isaccorp.org/wwasps.asp

http://www.caica.org/index.htm

 http://fornits.com/anonanon/docs/wwasp/TB-Photos/

http://www.parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=6136

Filed under: Child Abuse, Education, Featured Stories, FrecklesCassie, Young Adult Issues, children, kids, prison, prisons, schools, teens, torture