Missouri law contains at least two provisions that allow certain programs for teens to run without a state license. The first excludes faith-based programs from state oversight, a provision that has made Missouri a haven for such ministries.

But Missouri also exempts child residential programs from regulations if they are connected to a school, as is the case with Thayer. Some believe Thayer is the first teen reform operation to make use of the school exemption in Missouri, signaling the entry of a new kind of teen industry to the state.

No More Nightmares at Tranquility Bay?
By John Gorenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on January 23, 2006, Printed on March 28, 2006

LINK

From the Czech Republic to Costa Rica and Mexico, cops have seized American overseers for caging or mistreating American teens at harsh "boot camps" run under foreign flags to escape U.S. law.

But here at home, the companies that ship teenagers to remote reform schools can freely go about their business in many states. You can dial 1-800-355-TEEN to reach the sales staff of Teen Help, LLC, who can arrange for your child to be spirited away. They might put you in touch with "escorts," guys who can pull up to your driveway in a van and transport even the most defiant child to the airport. The next destination is up to you: a "tough love" school here in the 50 states, like Majestic Ranch in Utah or Spring Creek Lodge Academy in Montana?

Or perhaps Tranquility Bay, a barbed-wire discipline facility in Jamaica, where some of the approximately 250 teens can find themselves confined against their will and marched around by guards. Only the devil stands in the way of your consumer choice. The devil, that is, and a lone congressman, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.

Just ask Ken Kay. He's the president of the tightly knit group of Utah men who run these outposts with their families, under the umbrella company World-Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS), whose leaders, critics say, try to hide their role in running the schools by running them under different names. Ken's son Jay, a college dropout who ran a mini-mart in San Diego, now oversees Tranquility Bay, where he had admitted to the media that he squirted pepper spray on his charges in the past.

As a teen at Tranquility Bay, you can't call home and are escorted between rooms by Jamaican "chaperones." Talk out of turn and your punishment might be that a trio of guards wrestles you to the ground. "They start twisting and pulling your limbs, grinding your ankles," a student told the British newspaper The Guardian. Not knowing when you'll go home, you might take cold showers and watch "emotional growth" videos. The promise is that you will return a respectful, happy teen. But many WWASPS alumni who've banded together at online survivor websites like Tranquility Bay Fight and Fornits say their lives haven't been saved, they've been devastated.

Several WWASPS schools have been shut down after abuse claims. Tranquility Bay's counterpart, High Impact, a WWASP affiliate in Mexico, closed in 2002 after dark stories emerged. Teens said they were kept in dog cages. Two parents, Chris Goodwin and Stephanie Hecker, told the Rocky Mountain News their children were made to lie in their underwear for three nights with fire ants roaming over them and were threatened with a cattle prod if they scratched.

In December, Rep. Miller asked Congress's nonpartisan General Accounting Office (GAO) to launch a fact-finding probe into similar schools, claiming the $1.2 billion teen rehabilitation clinic industry is shrouded in secrecy. Miller's office is awaiting word from the GAO on the investigation request. After a call to the GAO, AlterNet was told no decision had been made yet as to whether to launch the study, which would look into whether the industry was receiving special tax treatment or using fraudulent marketing techniques. Asked why he requested the probe, Rep. Miller explained, "Far too little is known about the so-called 'behavior modification' industry, even as it has surged in size since the 1990s, and that is why I have asked the GAO to review it... There is no excuse for allowing children to be placed in unlicensed programs where their physical or emotional health is jeopardized."

But company president Kay told AlterNet he questioned the congressman's motives. "I think that he must just want to be powerful, or seen as, 'oh, the guy that saved all these children from abuse,'" says Kay. "My fear is that he has a vendetta."

The WWASPS schools rake in about $80 million a year. Claiming to enlist about 1,250 students (the official number has dropped from 2,500 in 2003), the company schools are part of a wider industry, estimated to hold 10,000 teenagers, that is rarely covered by the news media.

Miller, senior Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, is pushing for a bill, H.R. 1738, to increase state licensing of the teen control trade and hold Americans who run foreign discipline schools accountable to U.S. laws. Company president Kay, however, suggested Miller may also have a partisan, anti-Republican motive against WWASPS.

It's true that WWASPS is generous to the GOP. The schools and "teen transport" company are run by a web of cell-like corporate entities that deny their interconnectedness -- but share family members, billing addresses and other obvious signs of affiliation. At the top is founder Bob Lichfield, who lives in Utah on a posh ranch, his lifestyle and political presence fueled by tuition payments. According to the Salt Lake City Tribune Bob Lichfield and his family and business associates have given given over $1 million to GOP politics at the local and national level.

The lobbying seems to have paid off. Seeing as how the National Mental Health Association has categorically condemned juvenile boot camps as counterproductive "bullying," the goal would appear to be keeping oversight out of the hands of mental health experts. Like some timber companies and others, a number of "troubled teen" companies have promoted the idea that they should be their own watchdogs. While the rules are tightening this year in Utah, a frontier is opening in Montana. As Michelle Chen reported in the NewStandard, a pro-WWASPS plan is winning out in the state over a tougher one, coinciding with WWASPS school Spring Creek Lodge Academy's $50,000 lobbying push to water down the rules. Instead of the state Department of Health, the new plan lets industry insiders watch over schools such as Spring Creek and others. And there will be exemptions for "faith-based" schools.

So far, WWASPS hasn't chosen the God loophole, but its officials attach such religious zeal to teen control that the "faith-based" label would fit the company snugly. "Do I believe that God is finding a way for teens to get help? I do," Lichfield once told the Los Angeles Times. "Do I believe that Satan is interested in thwarting it? I do." Asked in December about his boss's remarks, Kay waxed philosophical: "If you have a spiritual side, I think you can truly believe that there may be some adversarial part of our nature and makeup that gets involved." Then there are other adversaries, some of whom Kay has called "wackos" -- a steady parade of unhappy mothers and teens, as well as the pesky foreign cops who have arrested camp leaders at Kay's schools for "human rights violations."

The company has spent the last decade trailblazing an unregulated frontier. Like manufacturers, they've outsourced to foreign countries which have different laws and standards. A predecessor like STRAIGHT, Inc., from 1976 to 1993 the foremost teenage drug rehab outfit in America, was driven out of business by liability and sued for false imprisonment and manhandling of children. But as industry watchers have discovered, the early 1990s saw new business models emerging for "tough love." WWASPS' approach has been a goldmine. By splintering its business empire into fragments -- including Teen Help, Adolescent Services, Inc., and Teen Escort (the teen retrieval arm) -- it has received much more leeway to conceal accountability and money trails, its critics argue. Draw a map of the network, Utah state prosecutor Craig Barlowe told the New York Times in 2003, and you'll see "a lateral arabesque with no hub except for these connections in Utah." Barlowe was pursuing a child abuse charge against the director of a WWASP-affiliated school at the time.

On the consumer end, parents are offered thousands of dollars in sales incentives for finding new kids or promoting WWASP schools, the New York Times has reported. The schools' hunger for pupils has created a proliferation of promotional websites -- like FamilyFirstAid.org -- beckoning mom and dad to ship the kid to the "friendly tourist Island [sic]" of Tranquility Bay, the "prime forest land" of WWASPS' Spring Creek Lodge and other pleasurable-sounding destinations. (As author Maia Szalavitz documents in her upcoming book, Help at Any Cost, at WWASPS program Paradise Cove in Samoa, which is now shuttered, kids caught scabies, and guards confined bad kids to a 3 feet by 3 feet plywood chamber that teens referred to as "The Box.")

School of hard knocks

Two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, Lou Kilzer of the Rocky Mountain News and Tim Weiner of the New York Times have written exposes of the kennel cages, bug infestations, unqualified staff and confinement to punishment rooms that have been passed off under the Harry Potter-esque language of "boarding school." Rep. Miller's spokesman Tom Kiley said that substandard education is just one of the areas of concern that the GAO needs to help resolve about WWASPS and the wider industry. This August, one facility with the prestigious name "Academy at Ivy Ridge" in New York had to refund more than $1 million after pretending to offer legitimate high school diplomas.

WWASPS eludes the attention and regulation it might receive if its institutions were presented as health care facilities instead of schools. There is little to show for them as high-water marks in American education, however; when not being bombarded with Tony Robbins motivational tapes, kids learn by rote and fill out multiple-choice tests. While a promotional website claims that "more than 80 percent of the graduates of these programs go on to attend some of the best universities and professional schools in the country," Kay didn't respond to a request for an example of a student at an Ivy League or other top school. Referring to WWASPS-affiliated institutions, Maia Szalavitz said admissions officers are unlikely to be impressed by the education, which not only stresses conformity over critical thinking but can include long stays in solitary confinement.

Over two years ago, Rep. Miller was turned down by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft when he asked him to investigate possible crimes revealed in the New York Times reports. "Congressman Miller sees this as a top priority," says Miller's spokesman Kiley. "The promise is that your child is going to be treated with respect, and that these are the people meant to help them. In fact, the opposite is happening."

The money linking WWASPS and Republicans, says Kiley, "definitely sends up red flags," but he wouldn't go so far as to claim a web of connections. Miller's proposed End Institutional Abuse Against Children Act, would give states $50 million to help license schools, establish new criminal and civil penalties for leaders of abusive programs and let the government regulate overseas camps that are presently beyond the arm of the law. Right now, the State Department warns that it "has no authority to regulate these entities."

Company president Kay, however, told AlterNet that local authorities already do a "great job" regulating the schools.

Under Montana's new plan, that board, dominated by industry insiders, will be responsible for making sure companies avoid some of what has befallen WWASPS's 450-teen Spring Creek Lodge Academy campus in Thompson Falls, Mont., in the last three years. Such as the time that Karlye Anne Newman from Denver, days shy of 17, hanged herself in a bunkhouse there in 2004. Or making sure the firm doesn't again allow a man like former employee Keith Wood, 31, in the proximity of troubled youth. Wood last February went to nearby Plains and shot a romantic rival seven times with a Glock pistol before turning the weapon on himself.

According to a 2004 report in the Missoula Independent that re-opened Karlye's forgotten death, the kids are forbidden to speak of her suicide -- or spread tales of Jamaica, a distant island that looms over them as a fate worse than Montana. "That's a Cat-4," a student said when the paper asked about the dead girl. "We can't talk about Karlye." A card around the student's neck helpfully informed the reporter that a Cat-4 meant losing rank in the program, meaning staying longer at the camp and costing dad thousands more in tuition. Tuition at the lodge runs at about $40,680 a year, a typical figure for these schools.

Abuse, says Kay, doesn't happen anymore often than in the public school system. "That doesn't mean we're gonna shut down the public schools," he said.

Unless, of course, if your middle school principal kept girls in multi-day "stress positions" similar to the kind approved by Donald Rumsfeld for use on Muslim prisoners. As Maia Szalavitz relates in "Help At Any Cost," that was the case at a WWASPS school for girls in Mexico. It was called Sunset Beach and was shut down after being raided by local police in 1996. Authorities seized and later released overseers Glenda and Steve Roach. A company official blamed "the local legal system" for the ensuing closure of the school.

But across the world in the Czech Republic, two years later, authorities reached similar conclusions after finding that the WWASPS-affiliated Morava Academy was holding kids in windowless rooms and forcing them to remain on their stomachs for days. Czech cops arrested and released the overseers on bail for illegal imprisonment and torture, the British Guardian reported.

The accused were the Roaches, the same people arrested in Mexico. At press time AlterNet could not locate the Roaches for comment or determine the outcome of their case, though industry watchdog group International Survivors Action Committee has claimed to have located them in the Bahamas living under new names. Czech press reports paint a cloudy picture as to their whereabouts, with Glenda leaving the country before trial on a health waiver, and Steven "at large" to avoid criminal investigation, according to Radio Prague and other sources.

But somehow, according to WWASPS officials' statements to the press, it was the teens' fault for being "master manipulators" who'd tricked the European officials into thinking there was abuse. In 2003, a dramatic teen uprising in Costa Rica at the company's Dundee Ranch school brought WWASPS to the attention of Times national security reporter Tim Weiner. The uprising began after a visit by Costa Rican officials, who told students they had more rights under local law than WWASPS allowed them. "They told us you have the right to speak, you have the right to speak to your parents, you have the right to leave if you feel you've been mistreated," 17-year-old Hugh Maxwell told the Times. "Kids heard that and they started running for the door. There was elation, cheering and clapping and chaos. People were crying."

Six people told the Times that staff beat the children to stop them from leaving. As order collapsed, Costa Ricans seized control and hauled off the founder's brother, Narvin Lichfield, in handcuffs for holding kids against their will, releasing him a day later. In a statement, the company complained that the Latin American prosecutor, with his "Rambo-like tactics," had told kids they could "do whatever they wanted, without consequences." According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Narvin Lichfield was charged in Costa Rica with "aggravated privation of liberty, coercion and international crimes." A Costa Rican judge ordered him to stay in the country for six months, but ultimately Lichfield did not stand trial.

An evil world without consequences, populated by lying teens, is what WWASPS's officials and pro-company parents often say they're up against, a nearly metaphysical threat. Participating families must attend motivational seminars on the struggle. Ex-participant Karen Lile, a piano seller in Northern California, has written an essay alleging that she suffered "distress and emotional shock" from a Teen Help "discovery seminar" she attended at a Holiday Inn which, she wrote, encouraged her to keep her child in the program. Witnesses at similar events describe the atmosphere as rising to the fever pitch of religious revival road shows, with adults wailing and beating on chairs.

So how are mom and dad talked into keeping their kids at a foreign detention center? The pamphlets for one Teen Help-affiliated school show kids playing basketball and wandering amid natural wonders, rediscovering lost innocence. As long as parents ignore the small letters warning, "Not all Photos [sic] taken at the facility," they can tell themselves they are buying a snooty private education.

And they are told it's this or death on the streets. "If your child needed a kidney transplant to save their life, you would come up with the money," Kay said. "If the value of your child's life isn't worth the cost of a new car " And they're warned not to believe teens who may spin tall tales of abuse. After a high school basketball player named Paul Richards was sent to Paradise Cove in Samoa, Szalavitz recounts in her book, his parents received a newsletter, "WHUTZ UP in Paradise Cove," offering a lesson in how to avoid being "manipulated" by letters from the front.

The lesson presents a sample letter reading, in part: "It is not the camp you promised ... The [program staff] are mean and beat me when I do something they don't like."

Parents are encouraged to write back with dispassionate jargon: "Work your program."

The young basketballer later told Szalavitz that "working" his own $2,000-a-month "program" meant letting groups of shaved-headed teens belittle him for refusing to "see the light" and be grateful. "They just circle you up, and they all start yelling at you at the same time and say how shitty a person you were," he said. "'You're worthless, you're pathetic, you're a piece of shit, you're a compulsive liar and nobody likes you,' just basically stuff 'til they broke down your self-esteem."

Was a shipment to the Jamaica security complex appropriate for a teenage girl who'd been sleeping around? Kay, asked the question, stressed that being flown to a school like Tranquility Bay is "a child's right." Teens "should expect that their parents have the right to step in on their behalf and make some decisions for them," he said. Some kids have entered WWASPS-affiliated schools for no infraction more serious than fighting with a stepmother. No court order is required.

Szalavitz says there's no evidence for the legitimacy of the "treatment" at most of the schools, which operate in a regulatory climate without consequences. As there is no research into long-term effects, she'd like to see studies done on whether any WWASPS alumni have been left with post-traumatic stress disorder. Some parents have described their kids' WWASPS transformations with language more "Dawn of the Dead" than "Dead Poets Society." Alex Ziperovich, 16, emerged from Spring Creek Lodge "35 pounds lighter, acting like a zombie," his mother, a Seattle attorney, told the New York Times.

Where's the outcry?

Why haven't stories like the ones by Weiner and Kilzer, Pulitzer winners both, caused a public outcry and swift government reaction? Do press accounts give WWASPS too much equal time? "It's a ridiculous way of covering things. We don't cover any other kind of health care that way," Szalavitz says, suggesting the press wouldn't be so charitable to non-doctors who claimed to have a new method for extracting tumors. Most news features take the he-said-she-said approach familiar to us from recent reporting on Intelligent Design: "WWASPS isn't for everyone ..." But, says Szalavitz, "This is not a story of 'some people go to this church, some people go to that church.'" Szalavitz added, "We're selling what they stamped out of psychiatric institutions 100 years ago."

Oddly enough, WWASPS president Ken Kay himself has raised unsettling questions about the programs Rep. Miller is waging his battle to regulate. During a period in 2002 when he'd split with WWASPS, he told the Rocky Mountain News' Kilzer: "These people are basically a bunch of untrained people who work for this organization. So they don't have any credentials of any kind. We could be leading these kids to long-term problems that we don't have a clue about because we're not going about it in the proper way ... How in the hell can you call yourself a behavior-modification program -- and that's one of the ways it's marketed -- when nobody has the expertise to determine, is this good, is this bad?"

Kay has since rejoined WWASPS as president. Asked in an email interview in December whether his concerns had since been calmed since 2002, Kay said he was quoted out of context. "Nobody [calmed] my worries for children," he wrote back. "There are trained authorities that deal with abuse. All necessary systems are in place ..."

John Gorenfeld is a freelance writer in San Francisco. He has a blog at gorenfeld.net.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31000/

Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth

Troubled NW Missouri boot camp suing one of its most vocal critics April 2005
Written by Administrator
Troubled NW Missouri boot camp suing one of its most vocal critics
Posted on Thu, Apr. 21, 2005

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Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A northwest Missouri boot camp that's facing a wrongful death lawsuit for the death of a 15-year-old California boy is suing one of its most vocal critics for causing "irreparable harm" to the institution.

Thayer Learning Center, a military-type home for about 100 troubled teens in Kidder, filed the suit last week against former employee Timothy J. Rocha for breaching a signed employment agreement that stated he would not "divert, take away ... or interfere with any present or future customer."

Rocha, who earned $9 an hour as a "sergeant," worked at Thayer from Aug. 28, 2004, until he was fired about two weeks later. The lawsuit seeks more than $75,000 in damages.

Thayer claims Rocha has contacted customers and attempted to steer them away from Thayer, and has "successfully diverted away many potential customers."

The lawsuit says Thayer "has experienced a significant decrease in revenues" because of Rocha's actions. An accompanying document puts those losses in the "thousands of dollars" and says the school "is in danger of losing more."

Rocha has been an outspoken critic of the camp, saying he was stunned by what he thought were abusive practices.

He filed two reports of child abuse with the Caldwell County sheriff's office in September, claiming a student had been placed in "half a chokehold" and that a Thayer employee then sat on the student's legs.

In a Dec. 19 story in The Kansas City Star, Rocha said he was troubled by some of the actions he says he saw during his brief tenure at the facility.

"By the second day, I was telling my wife, 'This isn't right,'" he said in that story.

Thayer officials say the allegations of child abuse are "ludicrous and false."

Rocha is listed as a witness in a state investigative report conducted after 15-year-old Roberto Reyes died Nov. 3 of what an autopsy report said were the likely complications of a spider or insect bite.

His parents sued the center, three employees and a referral service in February, alleging that physical exertion and abuse caused or contributed to the teen's death.

Teenager dies at school known for strict discipline

Boot camp sued in Santa Rosa teen's death -- Suit says Missouri center failed to give prompt, competent medical care, also abused youth

False allure of the boot camp

Prosecutor: Boot camp won't face charges
Steve Rock, Kansas City Star, October 2, 2005

LINK

KIDDER, Mo.  Eleven months after the death of a 15-year-old resident of a home for troubled teens, the local prosecutor said he doesn't expect to file criminal charges.

Yet questions persist about the death of Roberto Reyes and previous unrelated allegations of child abuse at Thayer Learning Center.

Caldwell County Prosecutor Jason Kanoy said he's not convinced any criminal abuse or neglect was involved in the death of Roberto, a Californian who had been at the northwest Missouri military-type boarding school for less than two weeks. His death was attributed to a spider bite.

"The question boils down to: 'Did somebody commit a crime to cause his death?' & As of right now, I just haven't seen that sticking out like a sore thumb," said Kanoy, who admits his investigation was hampered by lack of access to the private facility.

In a response to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Roberto's parents, Thayer's owners, John and Willa Bundy, denied wrongdoing. In a statement submitted to The Kansas City Star shortly after Roberto's death, Thayer officials said general allegations of abuse were "ludicrous and false."

The Bundys, who opened Thayer in mid-2002, have not responded to several recent interview requests. But an attorney for Thayer, Rhonda Smiley, said in a Sept. 22 letter faxed to The Star that "Thayer chooses to try the facts of this lawsuit in the appropriate forum, not in the newspaper." She called the allegations unsubstantiated.

Despite Kanoy's reluctance to file charges, he said it "sounds like there's (civil) negligence all over the place" in Roberto's case.

A five-month investigation by The Star found that:

  According to a state investigative report, a former Thayer student said that Roberto had been "almost lifeless" for several days before his death. Two former students told The Star that Roberto had barely moved when they saw him in the days before he died. And a business owner who installed surveillance equipment at Thayer told The Star that Roberto had been unable to climb a short staircase the day before he died.

  A state investigative team said "it appears that those responsible for the safety and well-being of Roberto Reyes failed to recognize his medical distress and to provide access to appropriate medical evaluation and/or treatment." A panel of county and state officials previously had determined that earlier medical treatment "may have prevented this fatality."

  Two local experts in spider-bite care told The Star that, in a combined 51 years of experience, they had never seen a spider bite induce the condition that killed Roberto.

  Police reports reviewed by The Star show that since April 2003 at least seven persons had reported more than a dozen allegations of child abuse at Thayer to the Caldwell County sheriff's office.

  Kanoy has asked the attorney general's office to assist in a criminal investigation of the alleged abuse of more than a dozen students.

After looking at police reports and portions of the state investigative report on Roberto's death, Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison said, "If half of what some of these people say is true, then there are some serious problems there that I think would probably allow for some criminal justice system intervention."

Kanoy said he hasn't filed charges against anybody at Thayer because some allegations don't rise to abuse, some can't be proved and others simply aren't credible. And investigations at Thayer are difficult, he said, because under state law, private facilities that provide care "in conjunction with an educational program" are exempt from state licensing and regulation.

"We can't get in the front door," Kanoy said.

Since Roberto's death, The Star has spoken with 14 former Thayer employees, 18 former students and the parents of 10 other former students.

Many of those students have troubled pasts, but their descriptions of life at Thayer generally were consistent.

Many of those students, as well as many parents and former employees contacted, noted a reluctance by Thayer officials to seek medical attention for sick or injured children. Many characterized the rigorous exercise regimen as capricious at best, sadistic at worst. Some described painful punitive measures.

Anjani Vyas, 18, of Pennsylvania, who attended Thayer from December 2003 until November 2004, said she had suffered through a stomach virus without getting medical care and had been forced to stand with her legs bent and her back against a wall for long periods.

"My right knee still hurts to this day," Vyas said. "I hated being there."

Roberto's death

A state social services investigative team spent more than four months examining Roberto's death, then sent its findings to Kanoy.

The team's report criticized the lack of medical treatment in Roberto's case and included written testimony from a 16-year-old former student who currently lives in Florida. According to the report, he told a state investigator that Roberto sometimes couldn't stand on his own to clean up after he had defecated on himself, that Thayer officials had dragged Roberto up steps and that he had seen dark bruising all over Roberto's upper body before he died.

That student wrote that Roberto had been so lifeless he could not get off the floor to lie on a nearby cot. He also wrote that he had told a Thayer employee that the school "would be in a lot of trouble if a cop saw this."

"I will be happy to speak to you anytime about more details," the student wrote.

The student's mother, Carol Rickless, asked that her son's name not be used. She said she had contacted the state investigator, but her family has not been questioned since then by law enforcement or state officials.

In their wrongful-death lawsuit, filed in Buchanan County Circuit Court, Victor and Gracia Reyes alleged that Roberto's failing health "would have been present for a significant period of time prior to his death" and that he would have survived had he received competent, timely medical care.

In court records, Thayer officials denied those and other allegations. The case is scheduled to go to trial in June.

The autopsy report identifies "complications of rhabdomyolysis" as the cause of death. It says the rhabdomyolysis, a breakdown of muscle fibers, probably was due to a spider or insect bite.

But Steven Simpson, a pulmonary and critical care physician at University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kan., and an expert in spider-bite care, said the mortality rate for spider bites is "exceedingly rare." He said that if a bite was life-threatening, the person likely would be unusually sick within 24 hours.

Simpson also said that, in 16 years of practice, he had never heard of a spider bite inducing rhabdomyolysis. From his experience, the primary cause of rhabdomyolysis is lying motionless or even comatose for a lengthy period.

Another less-common cause of rhabdomyolysis is dehydration and over-exertion triggered by excessive physical activity, he said.

Gary Wasserman, a physician and chief of medical toxicology at Children's Mercy Hospital, has written chapters on brown recluse spider bites for three toxicology textbooks. He wouldn't discuss Roberto's case specifically, but speaking in general terms, said he had dealt with hundreds of spider-bite cases in 35 years and couldn't recall a single one in which a bite had triggered rhabdomyolysis.

"It's not impossible," Wasserman said. "But it would be very unusual."

Miguel Laboy, the physician who performed the autopsy for the Jackson County medical examiner's office, said the diagnosis was based on toxicology tests and other factors. He said he identified "an area of ulceration on the skin with infection, with inflammation" that was the likely location of the spider bite.

Police and autopsy reports also referred to several abrasions and bruises on Roberto's body.

The state's investigative report quoted witnesses who said Roberto had struggled to keep up with the rigorous exercise regimen during his short stay at Thayer. Some witnesses said he had complained of sore muscles or needed assistance walking and at times used other people as "a crutch." It also said that, according to one witness, Roberto was forced to carry around a 20-pound bag of sand shortly after he had gotten to Thayer.

Two former students told The Star that Roberto looked normal shortly after his arrival. His parents sent him to Thayer after he had struggled with grades and run away from home.

Erik Ayers of South Carolina said Roberto had "looked horrible" as long as five days before he died.

"You could tell something was wrong," said Erik, 15. "He really needed help."

James Young, 17, of Oregon, said he had seen Roberto "probably three times" over two or three days.

"He was just lying there, like sleeping, all day," James said.

Bill Sanders, who operates Security Protection Systems and Sanders Private Investigations in Paola, Kan., said he was hired by Willa Bundy in October to install surveillance equipment at Thayer. Sanders said he was paid more than $100,000, and that he and Willa Bundy have a dispute about an outstanding balance of about $3,000.

Sanders remembered seeing Roberto after he had collapsed at the bottom of some stairs. As school officials ordered him to get up, Sanders said, "Roberto was literally trying to climb up the stairs on his arms. He just couldn't do it."

Roberto was helped to the top of the stairs, Sanders said, collapsed again, then was walked to the dining hall by fellow students and school officials.

The next day, Sanders said he saw Roberto lying on the floor as three or four school officials berated him shortly before lunch. Roberto was eventually picked up and placed on a cot in a small room, Sanders said. Sanders walked into the room at least twice to work, he said, and "never saw him move once."

Police reports said that on Nov. 3, Thayer officials found Roberto unresponsive and began performing CPR. They called 911 at 3:32 p.m., and Roberto was pronounced dead on arrival at Cameron Regional Medical Center about an hour later.

In interview excerpts in the state's investigative report, the Bundys and some Thayer employees said they didn't know or didn't think Reyes had been sick before he died. One witness said Roberto appeared lazy, and another said he had had a bad attitude.

Records questions

The investigative report also said that interviews and evidence "suggest significant contradictions and possible deliberate falsification of written records" by Thayer officials. In court records, Thayer officials denied altering any written records, which were kept by Thayer staff about various students and their activities.

Kanoy said there were some "alarming" elements in the state report.

"I think we have a decent idea of how this child spent the last five or six days of his life. & I think he was in a world of hurt," Kanoy said. "I think he was in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people who may not have been treating him as nicely as he would like. I think he may have been in pain. I certainly think he was uncomfortable.

"& Do I think there's all kinds of fodder for a lawsuit? You bet."Both Morrison and Kent Gipson, a criminal defense attorney and adjunct professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, were alarmed at reports that Roberto hadn't received prompt medical attention.

"That's particularly troubling," Morrison said.

Gipson said, "My impression is: It looks like there is certainly enough there that a prosecutor could file charges if he wanted to."

But he added that prosecutors "have almost unfettered discretion. Obviously, there are some disputed things. & It would be hard for me to categorically or unequivocally criticize a guy for not filing charges based on what I know."

For former Thayer employee Kim Gertz, who has some fond memories of Thayer, it wasn't just Roberto's death that he found so unsettling. According to the state report, he didn't witness any physical abuse of students but wrote in a statement: "What strikes me most about my experience at Thayer is that after Roberto's death, no one seemed particularly concerned, and policy was not changed. &

"I am convinced that I was terminated because of my raising the issue of (inadequate) medical care."

Other allegations

Allegations of abuse and medical neglect began trickling out of Thayer long before Roberto died, according to police reports.

They came from students like Brittany Herrmann, who wrote in a complaint to the sheriff's office in April 2003: "I have been dragged outside on the ground by my wrists after being pushed down by a sergeant. I have scrapes and bruises all over me, particularly on my arms and legs. & I am very scared in writing this, for fear of further abuse. & There's much more going on with other kids."

Herrmann, now 18 and living in Texas, said recently by phone, "It totally blows my mind that a place like that can continue to run despite the complaints that have been filed."

Theodore Rights, a Hamilton, Mo., doctor who saw Herrmann for a possible urinary tract infection, wrote in a statement to sheriff's deputies: "(Herrmann's) hysterical cries were that she was afraid of what they would do to her if she went back. She wanted protection." Rights told The Star he had seen no signs of physical abuse on Herrmann but he wrote to sheriff's deputies, "I have witnessed evidence of neglected medical problems in two other cases."

In January 2005, former Thayer student Elizabeth Ramirez, 15, of California faxed to the sheriff's department several allegations, including:

  A student was "taken down" and said, "I can't breathe," as her face turned red and purple.

  A girl's gums began to bleed because she was forced to brush her teeth for four hours.

  Students were denied medical attention for things such as infections.

She also sent the allegations to a state investigator.

Reached recently by phone, Ramirez said, "(Thayer) didn't help me at all. I think it's evil."

Some allegations have come from employees.

According to the state report, former Thayer Director Gail Ledesma said she once got into trouble with John Bundy for having a student with a swollen and infected knee taken to a doctor. Another time, she was denied permission by John Bundy to take three girls to the doctor because, Bundy told her, the students would run away if they got the chance.

Kris Kessinger and two other Thayer employees went to the sheriff's office in May 2004 and outlined an array of allegations involving more than a dozen students:

  A drill sergeant was "helping" a student do push-ups, causing the student's head to bounce off the concrete.

  A student was tied up and dragged around a sand track behind an all-terrain vehicle.

  Students weren't allowed to use the rest room and, consequently, suffered bladder infections, kidney infections and constipation.

Two of the three women said they were fired almost immediately, and they thought it was because they had contacted law enforcement. They said the third woman also was fired, but she could not be reached for comment.

Sheriff's Deputy Donald Fuller said he found the women's reports credible.

Fuller asked Kanoy to subpoena medical records that might substantiate the allegations. In a report he submitted to Kanoy, later included in the Reyes lawsuit, Fuller wrote, "I have a reasonable belief & the crime of abuse of a child has been committed at Thayer Learning Center."

Kanoy said he subpoenaed records of Thayer students from Renee Claycamp, a Hamilton, Mo., physician. It's in connection with those allegations that Kanoy, 31, the sole prosecutor in his office, asked for assistance from the state attorney general.

"We'll work with the prosecutor in determining whether there's sufficient evidence to file charges," said Scott Holste, a spokesman for Attorney General Jay Nixon. "But that decision will rest with Mr. Kanoy, ultimately."

Claycamp's office referred calls to attorney Ed Proctor in Liberty. Proctor, who previously represented Thayer, said Claycamp was cooperating with the investigation.

Kanoy said his office takes abuse allegations at Thayer seriously. But some allegations don't name the victims or are second- or third-hand reports. He's not sure others constitute criminal behavior. One report, for example, says a girl was forced to sit in a plastic tub of urine for at least 2½ hours.

"That's disturbing," Kanoy said.

But is it child abuse?

"I don't know," he said.

There are also reports about kids being pushed and dragged.

"When you're trying to motivate somebody who's very obstinate, very anti-establishment, is pushing them and dragging them abuse?" Kanoy asked. "Personally, I don't think so."

Kessinger though is haunted by the memories of what she saw at Thayer. Now a full-time nursing student, she worked at Thayer from November 2003 until May 2004.

"I knew in my heart I'd be having this conversation one day about a child dying," Kessinger said.

Lax regulation

Some provisions in Missouri law allow certain individuals to safeguard children if abuse is suspected. But other laws are so lax that it's difficult for state agencies to afford protection to children in private facilities such as Thayer.

For example, law enforcement officials and physicians who have reasonable cause to suspect that a child is suffering from illness or injury or is in danger of personal harm may request that a juvenile officer take a child into protective custody. A law enforcement official or a physician also can take temporary protective custody of a child but only if there is reasonable cause to believe the child "is in imminent danger of suffering serious physical harm or a threat to life as a result of abuse or neglect."

The Department of Social Services, however, cannot make unannounced visits to private facilities or remove children without a court order. And the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has no oversight over private schools.

State social-service workers don't have the authority to speak to students on demand, and they can't shut down an unlicensed facility.

Officials with the Division of Children's Services investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect with law-enforcement agencies and officers of the juvenile court. But even sheriff's deputies have been turned away at Thayer, Caldwell County Sheriff Kirby Brelsford said.

Kanoy said, "There has to be a search warrant to get in the front door, or consent." He's been inside Thayer on one occasion, he said, but "consent has never been given" pursuant to any investigations. He said state officials "kind of get stonewalled" at Thayer, and that he's never had sufficient evidence to pursue a search warrant.

In a statement submitted to The Star in December 2004, Thayer officials said, "No state agency or law enforcement agency has substantiated any improper activity at Thayer. These agencies have scrutinized Thayer frequently over the past 2½ years and found any and all allegations unsubstantiated or unfounded."

Brelsford said that, most of the time, Thayer officials eventually let officers see the students in question. But it's often several hours later, and sometimes he's been told that the students are no longer at Thayer.

He'd like to see legislation enacted that would force schools such as Thayer to be licensed and regulated by the state.

"I'd love to be able to go to that door and walk in whenever I need to," Brelsford said.

But Missouri is hardly alone with its lax licensing requirements.

U.S. Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat, is so concerned about the troubled-teen industry nationwide that he has introduced legislation that would provide more monitoring of facilities such as Thayer. The End Institutional Abuse Against Children Act would, among other things, provide $50 million to states to support the licensing of child residential treatment programs. A spokesman in his office estimated that there were hundreds of unlicensed facilities throughout the United States and that only about a dozen states  Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania, among them  have any type of licensing requirements.

The Washington, D.C.-based Child Welfare League of America submitted a letter to Congress in August urging the Government Accountability Office to conduct a nationwide investigation. It urged Congress "to take action to ensure the safety of the children" and said "allegations of neglect and abuse at many of these programs include & the employment of vigorous physical means of restraint or individual seclusion or isolation."

The letter also said, "Since there is little public oversight of these residential programs and camps for troubled children and youth, we do not yet know the full scope of the problem."

The Child Fatality Review Panel, composed of county and state officials and charged with looking into all child deaths in the state, addressed the lack of state oversight in its final report on Roberto's death: "The panel feels appropriate legislation dealing with access to the facility by juvenile authorities, social services and law enforcement should be enacted to help remedy the lack of cooperation."

State Sen. Pat Dougherty, a St. Louis Democrat who has proposed legislation in the past that would regulate schools such as Thayer, said he doesn't expect Roberto's death to be a catalyst for legislative change "unless there's a lot of public outcry."

"Missouri legislators should step up to the plate and engage this and find a solution," Dougherty said. "But it's so easy to push it back and to ignore it, because people jump up and cry, 'Here's big government again.'"

Sen. Matt Bartle, a Lee's Summit Republican, said state intervention wasn't necessarily a cure-all. "A lot of times, I think, state licensing gives the appearance of oversight, and the reality is: There's very little," he said.

Sue Warner of Connecticut, whose son attended Thayer for four months in 2003, said Missourians needed to wake up. She submitted a lengthy letter to the Missouri attorney general's office two years ago, outlining various complaints:

  Her son hadn't received medical care for his injuries.

  She hadn't been advised that Thayer and Parent Help, the referral service that recommended Thayer, were both owned by the Bundys.

  The academics of the program were "inaccurately and inconsistently communicated."

Nothing ever came of her complaints, she said.

"I'm far away, obviously, but it's become obvious to me that people (in Missouri) almost have their hands over their ears and their eyes and don't want to know," Warner said. "I think that's a travesty."

The Star's Scott Canon contributed to this report.

Discipline crosses line, critics say
By Matthew Franck, St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 3, 2004

LINK

KIDDER, Mo. - Desperation prompted Paula Marsteen and her husband to ship their defiant son, Michael, from their home in Phoenix to a teen boot camp in a remote corner of Missouri.

In the desperation of witnessing Michael's violent fits and uncontrollable behavior, Marsteen came to terms with her choice. She knew the boot camp would expose her son to a kind of discipline he never encountered. But she felt he needed to be broken down, to have his privileges and freedom stripped away.

So off Michael went to Thayer Learning Center Boot Camp and Boarding School in Kidder, and along with him the $4,000 monthly tuition the family raised by taking out a $30,000 loan.

Doubts lingered, but Marsteen stood by her decision, hoping that after weeks in the program Michael was going through a transformation. Then came a phone call from a former school employee who warned the family that he believed Michael was being mistreated.

Within hours, Marsteen had crossed the country to reach her son. She found him in a small isolation room, where he said he had been kept for 11 days. "For all I knew he could have been dead in that little room," she said.

Marsteen and at least one other parent have removed their children from Thayer in the past several weeks following concerns about their treatment. A third parent pulled her son from the program in January.

The abuse allegations, which are being made by at least three former employees, range from prolonged isolation to medical neglect, from censored communication to excessive corporal discipline.

Yet Thayer Learning Center is thriving.

Some parents have ignored phone calls like the one Marsteen got. The program now enrolls about 100 youths and plans to double or even triple enrollment soon.

Kevin Mitchell, of Stow, Ohio, marvels at the turnaround in his son since he completed the program. "I'm still baffled," he said. "It has been miraculous." Jerry Banks, who operates Thayer, said any controversy is the work of a few disgruntled employees. He said the boot camp had opened its doors to investigators who were following up on the abuse allegations. State officials will not speak about the status of any inquiry.

"If we are abusing children, we want to be investigated," Banks said. "But what's the definition of abuse?"

Thayer's success is a sign of the vitality of the teen reform industry in Missouri, where hundreds of young people from across the country are enrolled in at least a half-dozen programs. Like Thayer, those programs have grown despite abuse allegations and, in a few cases, criminal charges. And like Thayer, the programs are almost entirely unregulated by the state.

Missouri law contains at least two provisions that allow certain programs for teens to run without a state license. The first excludes faith-based programs from state oversight, a provision that has made Missouri a haven for such ministries.

But Missouri also exempts child residential programs from regulations if they are connected to a school, as is the case with Thayer. Some believe Thayer is the first teen reform operation to make use of the school exemption in Missouri, signaling the entry of a new kind of teen industry to the state.

Similar programs have opened across the country, often in the West, where some states have few regulations of programs that operate as boarding schools.

Thayer's owners, John and Willa Bundy, opened the boot camp and school two years ago after relocating from Utah, where they had worked in that state's teen reform industry.

In months, the school was outgrowing its building at the site of the Kidder Institute, about 65 miles northeast of Kansas City. Construction crews are expanding the campus.

The meaning of "no"

Banks allowed a Post-Dispatch reporter a short visit to Thayer and was selective about which students could be interviewed. No photographer was allowed.

The program is based on a system of rewards and punishment, with a military-style hierarchy. The teens arrive with no privileges. They sleep at first in sleeping bags on a concrete floor; their days are a series of kitchen chores, yard work and exercises. They earn more freedom over time.

Thayer officials acknowledge using tactics the state would not allow at a licensed child residential program. They include:

Placing youths in isolation for days at a time. State licensed facilities can rarely isolate a child for more than 12 hours.

Strict controls on communication, with staff members screening incoming and outgoing mail and often requiring students to rewrite letters in which they complain about the program.

Denying academic instruction to teens who have not graduated from the boot camp program, which often takes more than three months to complete. Banks said Thayer teaches that school is a privilege.

Entrusting some youths to have authority over others once they have progressed in the program.

On Tuesday a teenage girl stood with her face to a gymnasium wall. A strapbelted around her waist was held at the other end by another student. Banks said the punishment had lasted for three days and was preferable to the girl becoming a harm to herself or others.

Banks says he knows such tactics fly in the face of what some might consider acceptable. But he said the approach was effective, particularly in light of the alternative of having teenagers involved in crime and drugs.

"We have to do 15 years of teaching the meaning of 'no' in a year's time," he said.

Brittany Sherrod of Thomasville, Ga., completed the program this year and said she never witnessed abuse. She entered hating the restrictions but said she grew to understand them. "You learn that this program is helping you," she said.

At least three former employees say the boot camp often crosses the line between discipline and abuse.

Chris Kessinger said she worked at Thayer for seven months. Her job was to keep parents abreast of their child's progress. She said workers kept such strict control of students that many would urinate in their clothing because they were denied a bathroom break. She also says the school often denies medical treatment to youths with legitimate illnesses.

Kessinger and a former teacher at the school, Connie Szczepanik, say they called the state child abuse hot line in May to report their concerns. The two say they were fired, along with another whistle-blower, the next morning. Another employee, Tim Rocha, worked at the school more recently and reports seeing similar incidents.

Rocha has since called parents directly with his concerns. Marsteen and another parent - Joanie Nations, of Henderson, Texas - responded within hours by removing their children.

Earlier in the year, Sheri Parker also pulled her son out of the program. Parker, a Texas resident, said that only when she visited the school did she learn that her son had been sick for much of his stay and had lost 30 pounds.

Support from town

Many in the town of Kidder say they doubt the allegations against Thayer. Dozens of Kidder's 300 residents work at the school, the largest employer in the area.

"There's too many people in town who would blow the whistle if something bad were going on," said R.L. Eaton, who delivers mail in Kidder.

Banks said the employees who are making claims against the school have grievances such as being passed over for promotion. He said the former workers had exploited the apprehension of parents, causing them to panic.

Mitchell, whose son spent eight months at Thayer, said he and his wife almost pulled him out after a former employee called to allege mistreatment. At the time, Mitchell said, his son was new to the boot camp, and the parents were struggling over the restrictions placed on their communications, including censored mail.

"It was a big concern," he said. "We knew he could be in there and they could cover anything he says and we wouldn't know it."

But Mitchell said he decided to trust the school and its owners. Today, he said, his son has a 3.8 grade-point average at a military academy in South Carolina.

Meanwhile, Marsteen said her decision to pull Michael from Thayer has brought its own heartache, with her son again acting up.

"He's exactly how he was before," she said. She says she has questioned her decision to take Michael out of Thayer, but she also feels she can't send him back.

The desperation has returned. And this time she has no idea where else she can turn.

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