More Questions about 'Tough-Love' Program

By Tim Rogers
Tico Times


Concerns are growing that there may be more than meets the eye at the U.S.-run behavior modification program Dundee Ranch Academy, as two new Web sites appeared this week advertising the institution as a juvenile military boot camp.

Despite academy owner Narvin Lichfield's repeated insistence that his program is not a boot camp for troubled teens, the discovery of Web sites "1-To-1 Juvenile Boot Camps" (1-to-1-juvenile-boot-camps.com) and "Basic Training Boot Camp Military School" (basic-training-boot-camp-military-school.com) fueled critics' arguments that Dundee Ranch is not what it is advertising itself to be.

Although neither Internet page mentions Dundee Ranch, The Tico Times this week learned that the boot camps are located at the academy's facilities on the remote campus of a former hotel in the Pacific town of Orotina.

Lichfield, whose brother Bob runs Dundee's Utah-based umbrella organization WorldWide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), said he was unaware the boot camp Web sites had been published on the Internet.

"That is not what we are offering; I will have to tell them to take those down," he told The Tico Times during a phone interview from his other WWASP program in South Carolina.

Lichfield said the sites were erroneously published by Parent Resources, a Utah-based marketing firm that handles enrollment and admissions for the WWASP's nine programs in the U.S. and abroad. He explained that the idea of running a separate military boot camp at Dundee's recently constructed "High Impact" walled compound was an idea he toyed with a year ago, but eventually decided against, due to Costa Rica's long history of demilitarization.

Lichfield claims he is reworking the concept of the "High Impact" - scheduled to be operational next month - and said he must have forgotten to tell Parent Resources about the change of plans. He blamed the Web sites on "an honest lack of communication."

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 (TT, Oct. 25, 2002; Jan. 17).

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.

"I feel that Dundee Ranch Academy should not be allowed to operate because it is poorly managed, takes financial advantage of parents in crisis, and puts teens in physical and emotional risk," she wrote.

Gil told The Tico Times this week that her organization is investigating Dundee, and that last week she sent three child welfare workers to the academy to talk with kids and staff. She declined to comment on details of the PANI report, which was discussed at length with the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday. The Embassy also declined comment.

Lichfield said last week's visit from the PANI went well, and that he has a meeting scheduled with Gil and the U.S. Embassy in the coming weeks.

He dismissed Knight as an "immature" and disgruntled former employee.

"If she felt like there was abuse at the camp, why didn't she talk about it when she was director?" he asked.

Lichfield added that Knight, by talking to the press and the PANI, has violated trade-secret and confidentiality agreements, and will be sued in Costa Rica as a result.

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.

Speaking on condition that his name not be used, the former employee said: "If you put a spy camera in Dundee for a day, you would find abuse and an ill-trained staff."

"I know the kids are being mistreated there," he added. "What is being promised to the parents is not happening; the kids are not being educated, and they are not being helped emotionally in any way. The kids only learn how to lie to get out of the program."

Lichfield, however, claims it is the former employees who are lying, because they have "an axe to grind."

In addition, he added, the only service that Dundee Ranch promises to perform is "supervision."
"Our contract says we don't guarantee anything," he said.

Lichfield said he has been threatened with a lawsuit from only one Dundee parent, and settled out of court for $7,000. In the 24-year history of WWASP, he said, seven suits have been brought against the program, and all have been thrown out of court because "they had no merit." Lichfield estimates that WWASP has settled some 50 other cases out of court over the years.

No legal action has ever been brought against Dundee Ranch in Costa Rica.

Meanwhile, opponents of the program are voicing increased concern about the academy's "High Impact basic training facility."

During a Tico Times visit to Dundee last October, Lichfield explained that habitually disobedient youths from the academy or any of WWASP's eight other programs could be sentenced to do time at High Impact, where they must walk 100 miles around a perimeter track to win their freedom (TT, Oct. 25). This week, Lichfield described the walled compound as a "low-impact" facility meant to take kids out of their comfort zone to make them reflect on their behavior. Youths sentenced there will have the option of walking for two hours a day to win points toward graduating in a month, he said.

Critics of WWASP worry that the compound Lichfield is putting the finishing touches on is really a replica of the High Impact facility in Mexico, which was closed by Mexican authorities in 2001 for rights abuses. WWASP has also closed or been forced to close similar programs in Utah and the Czech Republic.

California father Chris Goodwin, who led the charge to close High Impact in Mexico, told The Tico Times this week that his son had been transferred to the Mexican facility from a WWASP program in 2001. At High Impact, Goodwin claims, his son was locked in a dog cage for a week at a time, hog-tied for three days, had his thumb twisted back and broken by a staff member, had his teeth knocked through his lips by a staffer who smashed his face in the ground repeatedly, and was forced to walk around the compound's perimeter track in the sun wearing flannel underwear and a sweatsuit.

Lichfield said Dundee's High Impact will be more of an "evaluation facility," and will be nothing like the operation closed in Mexico.

"We are trying to improve on the positive elements of the program, and eliminate the negative ones," he said.

Not everyone is convinced that the new facility will be more user-friendly.

"High Impact is going to be bad; it is set up identical to the one that was in Mexico," charged the former staffer who wished to remain nameless. "That is the only model Lichfield knows."

Charges that Dundee Ranch is more sinister than its marketing would suggest have worried some parents, too.

Louisiana mother Carey Bock, with the help of hired muscle from the U.S., went so far as to bust her twin boys out of Dundee last October (TT, Oct. 25). Virginia divorcee Su Flowers, who two weeks ago lost joint custody of her children, has tried twice in the last month to get her daughter out of Dundee. The eccentric Flowers is currently living in the Pacific beach town of Manuel Antonio, trying to organize rock concerts to raise awareness about the academy.

but other parents defend Dundee passionately. Responding to a Jan. 17 Tico Times article, several dozen parents wrote letters defending the program, at the request of then-director Joe Atkin.

Lichfield, meanwhile, maintains that Dundee Ranch Academy is not doing anything that is not already being done in similar teen programs in all 50 States in the U.S.

"We are viewed as sinners or saints, depending on what side of the argument you are on," he said.