"Kidnapped for Christ"

[Ralar]

"Kidnapped for Christ" is a compelling new documentary that follows the experiences of several American teenagers after they were kidnapped from their homes and shipped to Evangelical Reform schools located in the Dominican Republic. Many of these teenagers' parents discover their children are either gay or experience same-sex attraction, and are sent to “therapeutic Christian boarding school†in order to "transform into healthy Christian adults" in an environment outside of U.S. law. . . . The "treatment" was called "Culture Shock Therapy" by the administrators. So their actual methods involved jarring kids enough that they were more malleable emotionally and mentally. That was Step One, and it involved strenuous and intense physical labor and exercise, constant repetition of religious and program-written texts, and severe punishments for students who "acted out." Those punishments could be hours of manual labor, exercising, or actual physical beatings, which they called "swats."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/12/kidnapped-for-christ_n_4427968.html

[debrand]

This is why I think that children should have certain rights that their parents can't take away. Yes, parents have a unique relationship with their children and should have the right to make decisions in a way that isn't allowed for most other relationships. However, the fact that parents have so much natural control over another human's lives means that we should make certain that kids' have certain rights. Among those rights, in my opinion, should be the protection of sexual identity, an education to prepare a child for a future outside of their parents' control, and identity papers(Birth certificates) that are needed to establish a life outside of their parents' control or belief system.

[Lillybee]

Making this film cost the film maker her faith.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/14/d ... -my-faith/

[Talitha Cumi]

Oh fuck, Escuela Caribe? That's a bad one.

I've been following the WWASP (World Wide Association of Special Programs) schools off and on for years now. These places are inhuman. High Impact was one that was (finally) closed down, where they had teens hold stress positions in dog cages. Their programs come out of the Synanon cult. When one school is closed down, they just send the kids and the (mostly untrained) staff members to another one.

"Help At Any Cost" by Maia Szalavitz is like the Kathryn Joyce Quiverfull book for this system. I have a bunch of websites somewhere in my files, if anyone would like to read more.

[AnnieC 305]

This is why I think that children should have certain rights that their parents can't take away. Yes, parents have a unique relationship with their children and should have the right to make decisions in a way that isn't allowed for most other relationships. However, the fact that parents have so much natural control over another human's lives means that we should make certain that kids' have certain rights. Among those rights, in my opinion, should be the protection of sexual identity, an education to prepare a child for a future outside of their parents' control, and identity papers(Birth certificates) that are needed to establish a life outside of their parents' control or belief system.

You mean something like this?

http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/humanr ... /child.asp

Which has been signed and ratified by every country except Somalia, South Sudan and (drum roll please) the United States.

Why?

Because the people we snark on don't like it

It has been claimed that opposition to the Convention stems primarily from political and religious conservatives.[48] For example, the Heritage Foundation sees it as threatening national control over domestic policy[49] and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) argues that the CRC threatens homeschooling.[50]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention ... ted_States

This goes back to that post on Christian Reconstructionists that you put up recently. The Heritage Foundation is a fairly influential DC think tank

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation

Started by Jim DeMint

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_DeMint

Who is a member of the Tea Party movement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement

And who speaks at the Value Voters Summit along with a whole lot of both influential and scary people including the Duggars

http://www.valuesvotersummit.org/speakers

I personally wonder if JimBob and offspring aren't a little smarter than their public persona makes them out to be.

These people are out to do more than take over Christianity, I swear.

Oh, and speaking of the Tea Party, the tool spoke at their big rally at the Alamo

((Not breaking the links because they don't go anywhere personal))

[LittleMama]

My husband works for the company that now runs the school. It is no longer run by New Horizons, which is the fallout of this abuse. I do not know about what happened then, but I know it has changed hands and is also now with completely different policies (of the new parent company). I hope the movie sheds light of abuse in situations like this, but to not share that it is no longer going on isn't right either.

[myanimus]

My husband works for the company that now runs the school. It is no longer run by New Horizons, which is the fallout of this abuse. I do not know about what happened then, but I know it has changed hands and is also now with completely different policies (of the new parent company). I hope the movie sheds light of abuse in situations like this, but to not share that it is no longer going on isn't right either.

I've been quiet for month and months just quietly reading but must ask, might you know what policies have changed?

[Cleopatra7]

This is why I think that children should have certain rights that their parents can't take away. Yes, parents have a unique relationship with their children and should have the right to make decisions in a way that isn't allowed for most other relationships. However, the fact that parents have so much natural control over another human's lives means that we should make certain that kids' have certain rights. Among those rights, in my opinion, should be the protection of sexual identity, an education to prepare a child for a future outside of their parents' control, and identity papers(Birth certificates) that are needed to establish a life outside of their parents' control or belief system.

I totally agree. I think there needs to be children's rights movement to guarantee that kids are regarded as individuals with inalienable rights, not extension of their parents.

[bionicmlle]

Where can you watch the documentary?

[Talitha Cumi]

My husband works for the company that now runs the school. It is no longer run by New Horizons, which is the fallout of this abuse. I do not know about what happened then, but I know it has changed hands and is also now with completely different policies (of the new parent company). I hope the movie sheds light of abuse in situations like this, but to not share that it is no longer going on isn't right either.

The Raw Story article says that the school still works from the same charter. Do you know if they still use the levels? Do they still conduct the seminars? Is there still solitary confinement or "laying on your face?" (Forcing children to lie facedown for hours on end without moving, for days or weeks at a time.)

On the website, there's a pull quote from one of the kids. "If it wasn't for Crosswinds, I would be a street junkie. Or I would be in prison. Or I would be dead... and that is a fact.†That's a common mantra in these programs. It doesn't sound like anything much has changed.

Hey, I found those websites, y'all. Crosswinds isn't a WWASP member (WWASP seems to be defunct, though the schools that belonged to the association aren't all gone), but it operated/operates from the same playbook.

http://wwaspdiaries.com/

http://www.antiwwasp.com/

[LittleMama]

To be honest I had not even heard of the company until it was bought out and changed to Crosswinds. I don't even know if the other campuses are still in existence, just the one in the DR. I asked my husband simply if it was the same and he said no, it is now fully the parent company's policies, since it is under them. My husband does not work for Crosswinds, but he works for the company that runs a juvenile detention campus here. So really all I know is that it is private pay (which is rediculously expensive so I wonder that all these parents are rich?) and that this year it switched policies to fit with the parent company that is state regulated. Sorry I can't be more help, I just know it is not the same company and is now under different regulations. My husband's job deals with kids in the system, mostly sent to a campus because they are too young for jail and are hopefully young enough to learn to not offend people or pursue a life of gang activity. But private placement (from parents) is a whole different thing compared to that.