Tico Times excerpt: U.S. Representative George Miller, Senior Democrat on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday requesting a federal investigation into allegations of abuse by the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP). . . . WWASP is the umbrella organization under which Dundee Ranch Academy, a behavior-modification program for troubled teens, operated here, before being closed last May following government interventions to investigate allegations of rights abuse.

Rukus excerpt: While at PCS, the staff punished severely for breaking rules that were never made clear. Fourteen years later I still suffer from the permanent knee and back damage they caused my body. Describing what has happened to my mind and my perception of the world is nearly impossible: I witnessed and/or experienced beatings by staff, being drugged, being threatened with death, and absolute renouncement of anything that resembled independent thought. . . . Every appointment with my “counselor” I was threatened with death and warned to not say anything negative about PCS or else I would suffer the same consequences as a fellow prisoner/student who had been beaten severely and was currently in a wheelchair, possibly for life. After three months, my mother and grandmother came to Utah and demanded my release. I believe that if they hadn’t, I would not be here to write this article today.

New York Times excerpt: A log cabin with tiny isolation rooms, called the Hobbit, sits on the edge of Spring Creek Lodge's compound in the woods. Some teenagers, like Alex Ziperovich, 16, say they have spent months in the Hobbit, eating meals of beans and bananas. "He came out 35 pounds lighter, acting like a zombie," said his mother, Michele Ziperovich, a Seattle lawyer. "When he came back, he was worse, far worse." . . . . A crucial part of the company's effort to shape its success is a requisite series of emotional-growth seminars for parents. "The seminars are the most important thing we have experienced as a family," said Rosemary Hinch, a teacher in Phoenix. "It was painful; it was hard," Ms. Hinch said. "They teach you to take a really good look at yourself."  But the seminars persuaded Michele Ziperovich to pull her son Alex out. "It was 300 adults screaming and beating on chairs, three days of no sleep, and after that, you'll buy into whatever they say," Ms. Ziperovich said. "They berate you, they scream at you, exhaust you. It's basically mind control."

Deseret News excerpt:  South Carolina's Department of Social Services has banned a Utah-based behavior-modification school owner from the premises of his campus there. In a letter sent to Carolina Springs Academy recently, state officials say the ban stems from allegations of abuse at another school owned by Narvin Lichfield, the Dundee Ranch in Costa Rica, which was closed following investigations of mental and physical abuse. .  . Dundee and Carolina Springs are both part of World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools Inc. in St. George, Utah -- a referral service for behavior modification schools.  . . . A closer look shows that five of its schools have been shut down in seven years.

The Guardian excerpt: Were you to glance up from the deserted beach below, you might mistake Tranquility Bay for a rather exclusive hotel. . . You would have to look closer to see the guards at the wall. Inside, 250 foreign children are locked up. Almost all are American, but though kept prisoner, they were not sent here by a court of law. Their parents paid to have them kidnapped and flown here against their will, to be incarcerated for up to three years, sometimes even longer.

New York Times excerpt:  The Costa Rican authorities moved today to seize an American-owned behavior-modification academy for children after hearing allegations of physical and emotional abuse, officials said. . . The Costa Rican authorities claimed that the academy's punishments included physical and emotional abuse, isolation and physical restraints. . . The Academy at Dundee Ranch is one of four foreign-based programs under the banner of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools. . . The association, based in Utah, has 11 affiliated programs with about 2,200 children, roughly half of whom are in Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica, and the rest in Utah, Montana, South Carolina and New York.

New York Times excerpt: Ryan Fraidenburgh was 14 when he was brought here shackled, kicking and screaming. Two men carrying handcuffs and leg irons came for him at his mother's home in Sacramento, Calif., shoved him into a van and bound him hand and foot. They drove him 12 hours south, over the Mexican border, into a high-walled compound near here called Casa by the Sea. . . . Ryan was not a criminal. He was only skipping school, his parents said in telephone interviews. But in August 2000, they said, in the middle of a bitter divorce and custody battle, they decided to send him away to Casa by the Sea, which calls itself a "specialty boarding school" for behavior modification. Like hundreds of other parents, the Fraidenburghs made their choice largely on the basis of a glossy brochure and a call to a toll-free number in Utah. They came to regret their choice.

Tico Times excerpt: Dundee Ranch is a controversial non-therapeutic behavior modification institution for troubled teens. Currently home to 183 boys and girls ages 11-17, most from the U.S., the program and its WWASP affiliates in the U.S. and Jamaica have come under fire over the years by critics who claim the program's "tough love" tactics - including the use of physical restraint and sentencing kids to solitary confinement - are abusive. . . . Former Dundee Ranch director Amberly Knight - one of five directors who have worked at the Costa Rica program in its 18 months of existence - this week added her voice to the chorus of concern in a five-page letter to Costa Rican Child Welfare (PANI) Minister Rosalia Gil. . . A second former Dundee Ranch employee contacted by The Tico Times this week said he could vouch for everything Knight had said in her letter.

New York Times excerpt: The parents of a Massachusetts teen who hanged himself at a Tucker County wilderness treatment center say counselors neglected their son when he killed himself, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday. Ryan Christopher Lewis hanged himself using a tent cord, one day after showing instructors at the Alldredge Academy a slash on his arm where he tried to kill himself.

New York Times excerpt: Two employees of a wilderness therapy camp in central Utah have been charged with child-abuse homicide in the death of a 14-year-old boy two months ago on a desert hike. The boy, Ian August of Austin, Tex., was the fifth child to die since 1999 while in the care of such a camp in Utah . . . Though the outdoor therapy camps have gained in popularity in the last two decades as options for frustrated parents, the camps have come under a cloud for the deaths of nearly three dozen youngsters since 1980.