spiderpaz: I wonder if the parents enrollment of their child into this camp alone is enough for the kid to successfully seek emancipation. I mean, if you were to play this tape in court, it would be hard to imagine any sane person denying the kid emancipation from such abusive people.

Full disclosure: In my "other life" outside of Fark I've worked as a volunteer with some NGOs working to get places like this shut down--was threatened with this a fair amount as a kid, and places like this have existed since at least the early 80s (Bob Larson's "Back In Control Training Center" was one of these that operated Stateside that was advertised in PMRC literature).

There have been a few cases where kids have been able to get legal emancipation due to being committed to these places (and generally the scuzzballs who run these make parents sign over custodial rights to them, hence why they can schlep kids overseas). Usually these happen when the person who got committed is over 16, the facility has been in the news for abuse (either shut down by a foreign government--yes, this has happened--or targeted for licensing violations by a state government) AND there has been a supportive group behind emancipation.

The case I'm most familiar with was the last teen involuntarily sent to the Love In Action/Refuge degaying facility in Memphis, TN; he escaped, began emancipation proceedings in another state, was kidnapped by his parents and sent back, and managed to escape AGAIN and go into hiding whilst people worked to send friend-of-the-court briefs to the emancipation court (again, full disclosure--I did help in collecting info that was eventually used in the friend-of-the-court brief that led to successful emancipation).

That said--the US is probably one of the worst countries in the world to try to escape parents bound and determined to send you somewhere like this. Courts and CPS agencies often have a strong bias that a teenager filing an initial complaint of this sort is an "out of control youth"; emancipation is difficult if not functionally impossible in a good deal of the US; and the US is one of three countries that have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child--which HAS been used in other countries to fight involuntary committment to places like this.

I will also note that the other two countries which haven't yet ratified the Convention have perfectly valid excuses; Somalia hasn't had a functional national government since 1994 (and what passes for government there has agreed to ratify it once Somalia gets a unified government and/or Somaliland and Puntland are recognised by the UN as separate nations) and South Sudan has only been a recognised country for a couple of months and are still working on getting basic government institutions set up to ratify (yes, they've also made a committment to ratify the Convention once they get a formal Parliament setup).

The US is the ONLY country with a fully-functional government that has not ratified the Convention; the US is LITERALLY THE ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that has willfully refused to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Why?

Because of the very sorts of motherfarkers who would willingly send their kids to a facility like this; there are entire dominionist lobbies that have lobbied against ratification of the Convention under the spurious claim that "parents won't be able to discipline their kids as they see fit", they've lobbied for making CPS agencies even MORE ineffective than they are; they've lobbied for very wide "religious exemptions" to child abuse laws; they've even explicitly lobbied against multiple attempts to pass a law that would make shiat like these facilities and the groups that send kids overseas to Jesus Gitmos illegal.

(Yes, there have been efforts for at least five years running to pass a law that would give some basic protections to kids being sent to "behaviour modification facilities", including pretty much making schlepping kids to overseas Jesus Gitmos illegal and requiring basic things like licensing and staff with training in actual psychology and psychiatry rather than Jesus Counseling. Unfortunately, they had issues passing even when there was a favourable Senate, and there hasn't been a favourable House environment to pass this since Clinton was in office. :P)

In some cases--like in Texas, until a MAJOR scandal broke in 2005, and in Florida until a MAJOR scandal broke in 2008-ish--states have even completely exempted these sorts of facilities from any sort of licensure as long as it's a "religious" facility. Texas and Florida accepted a "parallel accreditation" from state associations of Jesus Gulags; Missouri and Mississippi (which are the new hotbeds for these sorts of facilities in the States) don't require licensing at ALL for "religious children's homes" (which is how they legally classify Jesus Gitmos and Jesus Gulags).

And yes, both George W. Bush and Jeb Bush have been historically major supporters of this sort of thing. George W. Bush in particular had a long association with the Jesus Gulag industry--he was close friends with Mel Sembler (founder of Straight, Inc.--widely regarded as possibly the most abusive "behaviour modification facility" chain documented until "Jesus Gulags" started becoming more well known) and gave a "get out of jail free" card to a facility run by one of three abusive Assemblies of God-run chains of "Jesus Gulags" when it was at threat of being shut down for "educational neglect" and possible molestation of children involuntarily interned there.

Utah used to be a hotbed for these (particularly those linked to WWASPS) until info about the particular abuses in the WWASPS chain came out; they've since stiffened their laws, making it very difficult for Jesus Gulags to operate in their state. It almost didn't happen--the Jesus Gulag industry has a LOT of money and a LOT of lobbyists willing to portray anyone who manages to survive with their soul and mind intact as an "out of control rebellious youth" who might murder their entire family in their sleep TOMORROW. :P

miss diminutive:

This. Do these people really want to put their dogmatic beliefs before their own children's happiness?

"Those who are willing to believe absurdities are willing to commit atrocities."
- Voltaire

omnibus_necanda_sunt: Personally, what I'd do is stir up shiat in the host country to try and get the government to rescind their operating license or the staff's visas. Once the camps are back in the states, dealing with them will become much easier.

Difficulty: A lot of the Jesus Gitmos are explicitly set up in countries that don't HAVE licensing requirements and don't require visas for Americans; at least one haven (American Samoa) pretty much is a US territory held at an arm's length, and many of the Latin American and Caribbean countries where these places set up often give dual citizenship to Americans willing to invest a minimum amount into a business in the country and stay there for a minimum amount of time.

Also, in some cases they actively recruit from Jesus Camper cults within those countries (definitely true in the case of El Salvador and Guatemala and Costa Rica, for one).

No, what needs to be done is the following:

a) Have the US ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, because this will give SOME legal basis to shut these places down in the States and (just as important) give survivors the legal tools to sue for things like compensation for their inevitable PTSD treatments.

b) Make the act of schlepping a kid overseas to these facilities for the purpose of avoiding US jurisdiction re child abuse laws illegal, and name anyone who willingly participates in this as an accessory to the conspiracy to violate this law. (Yes, you heard it right: I'm talking "farking bring RICO into this and charge the parents with conspiracy if necessary".)

c) Make law on a FEDERAL basis that longterm residential care facilities for children must be licensed and follow minimal standards of care (such as "don't send Johnny on the Bataan Death March through the desert for the unspeakable crime of Having Teh Gay"), and mandate that any facility that purports to be a therapeutic care facility for "troubled children" must have licensed psychatric and/or psychological staff following current licensure guidelines from mainline psychiatric and/or psychological associations. (This pretty much shuts the "Degaying" industry down, as an aside; ALL psychiatric and psychological associations that actually have any say on licensure have condemned "reparative therapy" and some consider promotion of "degaying" a valid cause for yanking licensure. Pretty much all of these facilities have staff that are either entirely unlicensed, have received certifications from known diploma mills, or are certified as unlicensed "Christian Counselors".)

themindiswatching: How are any of these farks not in prison? Surely kidnapping is illegal in the Dominican Republic too.

It's not kidnapping if it's done with the parents' consent, unfortunately.

Walosi: FloydA: This is disgusting. How can anyone possibly defend this?

The younger (a juvenile delinquent) sister of a friend was ordered to one by a judge. Same psycho routine but at least it was in the same state. After a while she seemed to get into it and became a missionary. Her family wasn't particularly religious before. It was like brainwashing. That was 20 years ago she only recently seemed to return to normal.

Wow. I mean, it's disgusting enough when a parent sends their own child to a facility like this, but to have a court order one? That's an order of magnitude worse.

Are these the same bastards that I did my CCNA class with?

I hope it's a different, completely unrelated New Horizons.

OgreMagi: blem. My response was, "so her running away, binge drinking, farking strangers, and violent attacks on us were because she just needed some actual discipline as I had once sug

Neither of you sounded like you should've been parents.

Cisco-Kid: Are these the same bastards that I did my CCNA class with?

I hope it's a different, completely unrelated New Horizons.

Completely unrelated to the computer training firm, fortunately (yeah, I had that worry too).

WhyteRaven74: Lemurknits: You'd be surprised at what goes on even in this country. Religious 'rehabilitation camps' that degrade, abuse, and harm their students in the name of Jesus, profit, and in the case of the girls, misogyny. Link

hey your link didn't come through

Damn it. I meant to link to http://formerhephzibahgirls.webs.com/ a page for survivors of Hephzibah House, a Christian concentration camp boarding school for girls who were raped or don't fit the fundamentalist mold troubled girls. This hellhole is in the United States, and has moved state to state to avoid investigations into how they treat their victims students.

Ambivalence: bVork: And the best part: one of the Republican presidential candidates is tied to this industry! I really hope this blows up during the election cycle. Perhaps the increased attention and outrage will get these torture camps shut down.

Just the one? That's actually rather surprising.

WHO? I really want to know, so I can start saying 'Candidate X is an asshole who supports child abuse'

LewDux: [www.escuelacaribe.com image 377x177]

Just think in just 500 short years, all the world's problems can be fixed in one night of rehabilitation (new window)

HeartBurnKid: themindiswatching: How are any of these farks not in prison? Surely kidnapping is illegal in the Dominican Republic too.

It's not kidnapping if it's done with the parents' consent, unfortunately.

It's kind of hard to discern consent when you see them take them away. What says one couldnt send the kidnappers to Hell since you were too afraid for your life to ask what they were doing?

1) Kid should file for emancipation from his abusive parents
2) Parents should be in jail
3) This prison camp (call it what it is), should be shut down immediately.

sethstorm: HeartBurnKid: themindiswatching: How are any of these farks not in prison? Surely kidnapping is illegal in the Dominican Republic too.

It's not kidnapping if it's done with the parents' consent, unfortunately.

It's kind of hard to discern consent when you see them take them away. What says one couldnt send the kidnappers to Hell since you were too afraid for your life to ask what they were doing?

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'd think the kid taking somebody's ear off would be entirely justified. I'm just pointing out why these farkers don't get the prison sentence they so rightfully deserve.

Macular Degenerate: 1) Kid should file for emancipation from his abusive parents
2) Parents should be in jail
3) This prison camp (call it what it is), should be shut down immediately.

1) is unfortunately more difficult than it sounds.

1a) Hopefully he has a way to legally get the hell OUT of the compound in the first place (in case you aren't aware: parents sign over custody to the perps who run these camps, and said perps tend to seize the passports of the kids involved; said Jesus Gitmos also tend to be in isolated parts of these countries where public transportation isn't available and there is a non-negligible chance that the local police are outright sympathetic to the gringos providing jobs).

1b) Generally these kids are also sent to the Jesus Gitmos without any money and generally kids in Jesus Gitmos don't receive pay, which complicates the process of getting home substantially--they will need, at minimum, $140 for a replacement passport from a nearby consulate or embassy AND some way to get to the consulate in the first place; they'll also need to get money for a return flight home, because the US Embassy isn't going to give a loan to the kid to fly out unless they're evacuating ALL US citizens. Good luck getting a replacement passport without any documentation that you are, in fact, a US citizen and no way to GET said documentation save from the very unmentionable smegfarkers who put you in the Jesus Gulag in the first place.

(And yes, the replacement passport is a necessity here--the Jesus Gitmos typically seize passports of the kids in question in order to hold them hostage, and even to fly back from American Samoa (much less the Jesus Gitmos in Latin America or the Caribbean) requires a US passport--US government won't let you in otherwise, and international flights going to the US won't board otherwise.)

As it is--the few times that American kids have been bailed out of a Jesus Gitmo has usually involved kids escaping, having to end up pleading for asylum from the host country, host country going "WTF", investigating, and then sending in the equivalent of the FBI and SWAT teams to shut things down. (This actually did happen to a WWASPS facility in Costa Rica, of note.)

1c) Assuming that the kid is ABLE to make it back Stateside at all (instead of having to apply as an asylee to a friendly consulate or government official), laws and likelihood of actually finding a judge willing to grant emancipation vary substantially from state to state and even county to county. The last teen resident of Love In Action/Refuge ended up having to go to a third state (outside of his original state AND outside of Tennessee) to file for emergency emancipation; areas in the Southeast US, particularly in states known as hotbeds to the "Jesus Gulag" industry, tend to be distinctly unfriendly to teenagers filing for emancipation due to involuntary committment in these facilities. (This is especially true when judges use "Jesus Gulag" internment as a "diversionary sentencing"--yes, it's not unknown for kids to be committed to these by Jesus Gulag-friendly judges due to being ruled "out of control youth" by their parents.) If the kid is in any kind of treatment or is under sixteen years of age, emancipation is functionally impossible; in areas where complaints by teens to CPS agencies are written off as "complaints of out of control youth", emancipation is functionally impossible unless the kid can get to a friendlier jurisdiction.

(I myself ran into this whilst trying to escape the religiously motivated child abuse I suffered--I pretty much was flat out told that legal emancipation was not an option in my case because I was under treatment for depression and the fact I was sixteen and had not yet held a job (ironically being prevented from doing so by the parentals who were trying to effectively isolate me from everyone outside of their cult). Getting legal emancipation is a lot harder than people realise. :P)

2) Agreed--unfortunately, there is an entire industry centered not only around the promotion of religiously motivated child abuse, but legal protection of religiously motivated child abuse.

2a) The reason the US is the sole government which has willingly refused to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child (at least Somalia has the excuse of not having a government to ratify the Convention, and South Sudan is in the process of getting a government together to ratify it) is because of lobbying by "Religious Right"-linked congresscritters, often with very close linkages to the "Jesus Gulag" and "Jesus Gitmo" industries (and to the person asking "What elected officials are connected with this?"...well...look for anyone with an "R" next to their name; as deeply as the GOP is steeplejacked anymore and is functionally RUN by the dominionists, you can literally say The Republican Party as a whole supports religiously motivated child abuse). (As a note--yes, the Convention has been used on rare occasion to shut down facilities like this.)

2b) In addition to lobbying against the one international treaty that would actively give kids a tool to fight this stuff (a treaty, I'll note, that FARKING IRAN, SAUDI ARABIA AND EVEN BEST KOREA HAVE RATIFIED...yes, the US is actually worse in this regard than North Korea), there tend to be (thanks to lobbying by the same bunch of dominionist asshats) very wide legal leeway given to stuff that would normally be considered abuse if it is done out of "religious conviction". In some cases this is literally legally written into the laws; in other cases, it's de facto in place as judges will rarely touch child abuse cases involving religiously motivated child abuse linked to "Bible-based" groups.

2c) In some cases--as noted above--dominionist-friendly judges are actually using sentencing to "Jesus Gulags" and "Jesus Gitmos" as a form of alternative sentencing--meaning that the kid would literally have to go to a different jurisdiction to avoid this, and may well have a warrant in his name for arrest on grounds of violation of probation if he DOES manage to escape.

3) Also agreed on this--there are, again, some issues in getting this done as well:

3a) Groups running Jesus Gitmos almost exclusively seek out states and countries that have no regulations on operation of "religious children's homes"; a lot of the Caribbean and Latin American nations, as well as American Samoa, have no regulations at all regarding "children's homes" at all. Laws originally designed to exempt religious orphanages are widely abused by Jesus Gitmo operators.

3b) Most of these are strategically placed in remote areas where most people would have no idea what's going on--certainly not the main government of a country or territory. (That said, in rare cases--like the WWASPS raid in Costa Rica--facilities HAVE been shut down when kids escape and report what's going on.

3c) Most of the places where "Jesus Gulags" and "Jesus Gitmos" are set up tend to have biases against foreigners, or against kids, reporting abuse--quite simply, the kids are not taken seriously even if they DO get out.

3d) Sad to say, more than a few areas where "Jesus Gitmos" and "Jesus Gulags" get set up are actively supporting of the perps who run them. Dominionism (American style) has been an unfortunate export in the Pacific and Latin America; Jamaica, whilst not as heavily "dominionist-infested" as American Samoa or Latin America, has a culture that is so vociferously anti-LGBT that it's hard to find anything to compare it with short of SPLC-listed dominionist hate groups in the US or Uganda (which has yet again resurrected the "death to gays" bill, hoping it'll eventually slip below notice of the world media).

3e) Quite a lot of areas where "Jesus Gitmos" are set up can be said to be actively "on the take" from the operators of said "Jesus Gitmos"; bribery is not unknown to keep these facilities operating, and in Latin America and the Caribbean it's not uncommon for countries to essentially sell citizenship in exchange for a minimal amount of investment in the country (usually around $100,000 US). Few folks are willing to upset the "gringo gravy train" in these instances.

The Life Of Brian: Put him on ignore now and beat the rush

Did that this afternoon.... with about 3 or 4 other 'new accounts' that all jumped in with name-calling and race-baiting crap. Rant posts. "Farklibs". etc.......

HeartBurnKid: sethstorm: HeartBurnKid: themindiswatching: How are any of these farks not in prison? Surely kidnapping is illegal in the Dominican Republic too.

It's not kidnapping if it's done with the parents' consent, unfortunately.

It's kind of hard to discern consent when you see them take them away. What says one couldnt send the kidnappers to Hell since you were too afraid for your life to ask what they were doing?

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'd think the kid taking somebody's ear off would be entirely justified. I'm just pointing out why these farkers don't get the prison sentence they so rightfully deserve.

The more reason to blow the kidnapper's heads off while in the act. Kind of hard if not impossible to tell the difference between a real kidnapping and this flavor of extraordinary rendition when they look too similar.

You may not be able to send the folks to prison, but you can assure that they harm no more. Explain to the kid that their parents have violated the closest trust - between parent and child - and must learn to live independently as they otherwise risk future kidnappings. Finally, see to it that the child is out of reach until they are legally emancipated from their parents or reachthe age of 18.

Repeat as necessary until such folks no longer roam the earth.

/imperfect Roman Catholic that has a huge problem with such un-Christian camps.
//I'd rather these folks seek forgiveness for what is wrong

Great Porn Dragon:

Don't know what to say, but thank goodness you got free.

The people that aid, abet or otherwise participate are doing a disservice to Christianity by committing acts that betray the teachings of it.

Wellon Dowd: Spare the rod, spoil the little queer.

I think you have that exactly backwards.