Has anyone heard about this?

[A Happy Medium 0]

Ok, that was a very fucked up few minutes of my life. These people are cruel and bad parenting is given another out.

 

And I thought Jamaica was a fun happy place too.

[Guest cobainwasmurdered]

Places like this are very real. My parents were going to send me to a place like this until they heard about the price. (Thank god for poverty.)

 

As it is i've been to places with simaler concepts but I gotta say that's the most brutal one I've ever heard of.

[Guest MissMattitude]

I know its not really the same thing, but Im sorta reminded of the movie Disturbing Behavior.

That is precisely what I was thinking when I read it.

[Anakin Flair 0]

In my mind, I'd like to go down ther and be as disruptive as possible, just to see how far I can take it. Lie on my face al day? Fuck that. Share my feelings and get shit on? Screw you. I'd tell them all to fuck off and die.

People who think that this idea are idiots. It's just another out for bad parenting.

Personally, I wonder why more major news media outlets haven't picked this up yet.

[Guest Moses The Monkey]

That's the most fucked up thing I've ever read. And the fact that parents actually send their kids to this place is even more fucked up. What is wrong with this world?

 

What that place is doing is no less than child abuse, mentally and physically. Someone needs to put that guy behind bars.

[EricMM 0]

Lil Naitch it said they physically force you to lie on the ground if you don't comply. To my mind that's either someone sitting on you or you being bound in some way.

[Guest Crux]

That has to be the most horrific piece of shit Ive ever read. It's brainwashing, plain and simple. All these 'reformed' kids sound the same. It's sickening and pathetic that their parent/parents would send them there because they werent strong enough to step up to the plate and take care of the kid they created.

[A Happy Medium 0]

we should start e-mailing this story to some authorities to try to get some laws changed in states...or send the story to some major newspapers and see if they care to pick up the story.

 

Remember when they reprogrammed Alex in A Clockwork Orange? This kinda reminds me of it.

[Yuna_Firerose 0]

What's even more scary is the fact that the name sounded familar to me. As I was reading over EricMM's quotes on the first page, I kept thinking it sounded so familar, but I couldn't figure out where. Maybe it was a description for an RP community that I'd read? I did a search and voila: Tranquility_Bay. The fact that someone made a roleplaying community based on sick shit like Tranquility Bay seriously scares me.

 

Lil Naitch it said they physically force you to lie on the ground if you don't comply. To my mind that's either someone sitting on you or you being bound in some way.

If that's the case, then I'm even more frightened of the things they don't tell the public.

[Lando Griffin 0]

Methinks this idiot read 1984 a few too many times.

[Jingus 0]

I have read some sick, sick things in my time, but this is possibly the worst I have ever come across. I want to Dissect the fucker, but am too goddamned angry to think right now. Can anyone get any info on this Jay Kay guy who owns the thing? Like, where he lives, etc? Because I so badly want to collect a "Send Jingus (and his friends) to beat the living fuck out of this detriment to humanity" charity fund here.

[Guest Retro Rob]

I'm still skeptical of this place. I think something like this exist, but this bad? It wouldn't shocke me if some of the stories where fabricated to possibly scare the kids.

A couple months ago one of these places was busted by our government. I remember reading about it in the newspaper, so yes, they are very real.

 

It is kind of pathetic that parents need other people to deal with their children because they just can't handle them anymore. People who aren't willing to stick it out until the end shouldn't even be having children in the first place.

[BX 0]

Methinks this idiot read 1984 a few too many times.

This shit is beyond Orwellian. These parents are voluntarily turning their children into fucking metronomes. No soul, no emotion, no spirit, just tik... tik... tik... tik... tik...

[Jobber of the Week 0]

...and, their website: http://www.tranquilitybay.org/ .. what's with the cage around the Earth?

Is that their website, or is this?

 

http://www.difficultteens-tranquilitybay.com/

 

I can't tell.

[Guest Retro Rob]

Look at how much fun they are having...

 

 

Too bad my parents didn't send me there. I could have learned guitar.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Okay, I just sat and read all that, and I've had it.

 

I'm sending this link off to an ex-friend (you all briefly met him when he hijacked my account while I was vacationing and stuff) so he can discuss it with his cronies. I'm sure the shit will hit the fan when he's done reading.

[BX 0]

Does he work for a major magazine or something?

 

Or is he a government offical in Jamaica?

[Jobber of the Week 0]

No, but I'm sure I'll find out a lot more about it than we've found out so far. But he disappeared from AIM this morning after a flurry of online activity. =/

[Guest Vitamin X]

I agree with Agent and Corey...I'd kick some rasta ass and I'd just as much would want to go there and free the slaves.

 

Then if for some reason they're too brainwashed to see it as a good thing, they'd get shot execution style too. Fuckers.

[Guest MikeSC]

I agree with Agent and Corey...I'd kick some rasta ass and I'd just as much would want to go there and free the slaves.

 

Then if for some reason they're too brainwashed to see it as a good thing, they'd get shot execution style too. Fuckers.

Speaking as somebody who once smoked pot, I find your comments to be offensive and would lead to the assassination of, say, Bob Marley.

 

What a jerk.

-=Mike

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

What a jerk.

-=Mike

 

Pot, meet kettle.

[Placebo Effect 0]

 

Too bad my parents didn't send me there. I could have learned guitar.

And have sex with the fat chick...

 

If the story is actually true, this is seriously fucked up. I'm going to pass the link around to some friends I know in higher places, and hopefully this will start to get some attention.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Did some research on the referenced 98 case. Turns out it was pretty local. The most informative article came from the archive of the Examiner before they got bought up by the Chron:

 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file...18/NEWS6218.dtl

 

In the darkness of night and the haze of dawn, thousands of teenagers across the country are spirited away each year to faraway residential programs designed to make them model children.

 

Most are delivered against their will by professional

 

"escorts" - many of them moonlighting cops, bounty hunters and probation officers - permitted by parents to bring the kids in by any means necessary, including handcuffs.

 

The programs - adolescent psychiatric hospitals, behavior-modification schools, residential treatment centers, wilderness camps and boot camps - have been in the limelight recently.

 

In an unprecedented court case, the Alameda County prosecutor's office is seeking the return of a 16-year-old Oakland teenager shipped to a school in Jamaica.

 

Superior Court Judge Ken M. Kawaichi has promised a decision on Tuesday.

 

To parents at their wits' end on how to cope with a troubled or troublesome kid - whether defiant or drug-addicted - these programs seem to offer the last hope.

 

To most child and patient rights advocates, however, these programs raise disturbing questions about the rights of minors, and the effectiveness and wisdom of institutionalizing youth.

 

"The aim of these behavior-modification programs is: "You're going to break down and we're going to bring you back up,' " said James Bell, staff attorney for the Youth Law Center in San Francisco. "It's a terrifying thing.

 

"I'm reluctant to blame the parents. My question is: Why is it these places are allowed to operate?"

 

Critics like Bell say these programs - many in Utah - are loosely regulated and barely monitored. Most could not legally operate in California, which bans locked treatment centers and has strict guidelines requiring court proceedings or independent psychiatric reviews before a minor can be admitted to a mental facility.

 

All sides agree the private centers, some of which cost $100,000 for a two-year residential program, are big business and getting bigger.

 

 

"A lot of shame'<

The Oakland case has gotten national attention because of its potential to create legal precedent on several fronts. The rights of minors and patients have been debated in the Legislature and courts for decades, but although the programs hark back to the 1970s, they've been largely unchallenged in the courts.

 

Legal experts say Tuesday's ruling in the Oakland case will likely affect other families, especially in California, who are seeking similar treatment for their children.

 

Although nobody keeps statistics, advocates, treatment centers, escorts and other experts believe that over the years, thousands of California teens have been sent out of state. Most are white, and middle to upper class.

 

"You can name any high school in the Bay Area, and you've probably got at least one kid who's been airlifted" into a program, said Deborah Trounstine, a San Jose educational consultant.

 

She and her husband, Philip J. Trounstine, political editor of the San Jose Mercury News, started a referral service, Teen Recovery Strategies, after sending two of their five kids to two-year programs. They've placed 70 teens.

 

Although these programs are well advertised, with Web sites and ads in such regional magazines as Sunset, they are surprisingly little known. Parents usually learn of them by word of mouth from other families who have used the programs, or from therapists.

 

Once parents send their kids away, they usually tell only relatives and close friends.

 

"There's a lot of shame for parents," said attorney Shannon Minter, of the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, which has received more than 200 calls in the past few years from gay youths sent to the programs.

 

"They're embarrassed and defensive."

 

Child advocates universally oppose escort services, referring to them as "kidnappers" and to the teen's involuntary removal as "abduction." The escorts are not committing a crime, however, because they have the parents' permission, legal experts said.

 

Parents hire escorts, who charge about $2,500, because kids are unwilling to go to the centers, and tend to behave better with authority figures who are strangers.

 

In Utah, escort services are licensed as businesses, like a laundromat or clothing store, said an employee at Intercept Escorts. There is no other state regulation.

 

The employee, a former cop named John who refused to give his last name, has been in the escort business for 10 years and handles calls from parents.

 

Most escorts are in the law enforcement business, he said. Intercept provides them with a few hours of training. Handcuffs are common in the industry, he said, but escorts, who always travel in pairs, rarely need to restrain a kid.

 

The escorts are "pretty good-sized guys," said John.

 

"We try to send people who are intimidating."

 

They usually arrive at the teenager's home when he is likely to be asleep and off-guard, said John. The parents introduce them, tell their child that they love him, and that the escorts are going to take him someplace to get help.

 

Most kids react with disbelief, said John. Some cry. Some argue. Others promise that they'll change.

 

The teen is placed in a car with child locks on the doors to prevent escape. At the airport, the escorts give him weighted boots to slow him down if he makes a run for it.

 

After a while, the kids warm up, he said. They're full of questions.

 

"We chitchat and we're full of information," said John.

 

"Hey, the kids are being sent to Timbuktu. They want to know what it's like."

 

Trounstine said one of her sons had such a good experience with his escort, Sam - a bounty hunter who also tracks down Hells Angels who have skipped bail - that he asked for Sam when he was transferred to another program.

 

The Trounstines are such fans of escorts that they are thinking of starting an escort service for their business, she said. They already have two applicants: their sons, soon to return home from treatment centers.

 

Using escorts or sending kids to treatment centers is not giving up on your kid, said supporters. Usually, it's a last resort.

 

"Sometimes we can't keep up with the desperation," said Jeri Fontaine, admissions coordinator at Teen Help in Utah, which referred the parents in the Oakland case to programs in Utah and Jamaica.

 

In years past, "out of control" kids were sent to juvenile hall for their "wake-up call," a popular slogan in the ads, even if they had not committed a crime.

 

Runaways, truants and other unruly kids were categorized as "status offenders" until the mid-1970s, when the federal government called for an end to institutionalization of non-delinquents, said Jan Costello, a Loyola Law School professor in Los Angeles who specializes in legal issues involving children and mental health.

 

Private psychiatric hospitals stepped in to fill the void. They lost favor when insurance companies and advocates complained that kids were being admitted who didn't need in-patient care.

 

Schools and residential treatment centers then took off, promising to change children's behavior through a system of rewards and "consequences," or punishment.

 

Tales from teenagers, parents and experts differ about the effectiveness of the centers.

 

Trounstine said she cannot recommend 25 percent of programs she has visited because of overcrowding or lack of counseling.

 

Some youths, like Charles Mitchell, who spent a year in a Samoa program and testified in the Oakland case, think it's the best thing that ever happened to them. By leaving behind family conflict, these teens say, they can concentrate on getting their act together.

 

Others, like Lyn Duff, feel they are places of horror, where children are made to march to their parents' drummer. The Oakland resident said that when she was 15, her mother sent her to a Utah psychiatric hospital to change her from being a lesbian. She spent six months there, then ran away during a visit to her L.A. home.

 

Now 21 and a college student, Duff tells of strip searches, days spent in pink-walled isolation rooms and hours spent standing at military attention. In a 1992 case that also drew national attention, Duff "divorced" her mother to prevent her return to the hospital.

 

"Parents just don't get it," she said. "You can't cure adolescence."

 

In the Oakland case, 16-year-old David Van Blarigan was sent in November to a behavior-modification school in Jamaica to deal with what his parents viewed as discipline problems.

 

The Skyline High School freshman did not take drugs or drink alcohol, was nonviolent, and was never arrested, said Daniel Koller, the parents' lawyer. But he was disrespectful to his parents, refused to go to church and was not faring well in school, in part because he has attention-deficit disorder, Koller said.

 

But to neighbor Neil Aschemeyer, a federal administrative law judge who has known David six years, the teen was merely rebelling against a strict upbringing. He described David as always respectful and well-behaved.

 

"David has a very strong personality," he said. "He's not a follower. He's a leader."

 

So when Aschemeyer learned that David's parents, Sue and Jim Van Blarigan, had sent the teen to Brightway Adolescent Hospital in Utah and then to the Tranquility Bay school in Jamaica, Aschemeyer went to the authorities. To him, David's rights had been violated.

 

The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Robert Hutchins, filed a civil suit on David's behalf, asking the court to order the parents to bring him back to Oakland.

 

In the court hearing on Jan. 7, Hutchins argued that as a resident of California, a minor like David has the right to make certain important decisions about his medical treatment. David also has certain protections under California's due process laws, Hutchins said, that his parents tried to circumvent by taking him out of state.

 

But Koller argued that parents have the right and responsibility to decide what is best for their child, and that government has no authority to interfere with a family's right to privacy.

 

Aschemeyer sees the merits of both sides. But to him, more than legal principle is at stake.

 

"This is an attempt to break his spirit," he said. "If you break this child's spirit, what's going to be left of this child's life?"

 

I had no clue there were so many of these in Utah. What in the hell is going on over there?

 

(WARNING: Long-winded personal story follows)

 

As for myself, I was in a far less strict school for a school year and two summers (no break), but it still had rules like no touching whatsoever, lots of asking for permission, and a similar points system.

 

I waited until I could walk legally and after confirming in the middle of class that there's really nothing keeping me there and they couldn't call the police on me anymore for truancy (ie, just leaving campus and running away, not being truant as in late or not coming to shcool), I just got up and left. I'm the only one who got away with that, I think, as the others weren't legal and eventually came back.

 

My school sounds nothing like this camp, though. Talking about your life is only for therapy hour, not to be probed or even openly divulged during classtime.

 

The odd thing is how it really does re-wire your brain. Four months after I walked out I found myself being an unusually meek and submissive animal around my parents. And I wasn't even in school 24 hours a day like these kids. Thankfully, I'm back to my usual crotchetyness. However, I'm guessing that's what the constant "You'd be dead right now if not for this program" stuff is for.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

LOL. My friend brought this issue up and got effictively punked out.

 

I guess this is pretty much old news to most. Eh...

[Anakin Flair 0]

Look at how much fun they are having...

 

 

Too bad my parents didn't send me there. I could have learned guitar.

anybody else picturing Austin in ther singing "Kumbaya"?

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

Ya know, I think it'd be cool if some kid that acted like Austin went there, Stunnered everybody, and then drank beer.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I agree with Agent and Corey...I'd kick some rasta ass and I'd just as much would want to go there and free the slaves.

 

Then if for some reason they're too brainwashed to see it as a good thing, they'd get shot execution style too. Fuckers.

Speaking as somebody who once smoked pot, I find your comments to be offensive and would lead to the assassination of, say, Bob Marley.

 

What a jerk.

-=Mike

I still smoke pot and I find nothing offensive about it.

 

If you're trying to pester me about the suicide thing, it's not working as you see, I'm above such petty levels of insult.

[Guest Jay Z. Hollywood]

I felt pure fucking rage reading this article.

 

At the same time you feel powerless, because there's nothing you can do to end this shit.

 

Cruelty and idiocy, the worst combination.