Guilty verdict in the Julian Academy infact murder case

The court has returned a guilty verdict in the case where a mummified baby was found dead on the campus belonging to Julian Youth Academy.

Originally the campus housed the infamous Cascade School, later a Christian boarding School existed on the campus for a few years until Julian Youth Academy relocated there some years ago.

The mummified baby belonged to an employee who used to be a student in the program who started to work for the program after her graduation. Taking into consideration that Julian Youth Academy only “enrolls” students by force it could be rather strange that they hire former students when most teenagers who struggle through the rite of passage towards adulthood benefit from talks with people with long life-experience.

But then of course a young adult with partly severed connections to her normal social network of family and friends is cheap labor because remember how we often seek and change work – by using our social network. The sentenced woman had no such network left, so when the school offered a position she of course took it.

Many know of the play by John Pielmeier named Agnes of God. The play based on a similar tragedy like the one at Julian Youth Academy where the court reached the conclusion that the nun was insane when she murdered the child. Can you compare the two cases?

Not exactly! In the case from Julian Youth Academy the mother had access to the free world. She knew what sex was. She was not raped by a priest which was theory in the original case from Rochester in New York. She engaged willingly in a relationship with a boyfriend.

Still she was not living a normal life. She was still under heavy influence by the school and their almost fundamentalist views on life. The normal rite of passage for teenagers involving partying and interests in the bodies of the opposite gender was put aside leaving the young adults poorly prepared for life once they graduated.

Could the baby have survived? Yes if the co-workers might have discovered it. The mother was so ill-prepared to be a mother that it would be a question of time before the baby would be seriously hurt or die as it did in the end.

Why did the mother not turn to the school co-workers? The answer is that it would not only have caused her to be fired. It would have resulted in the end of her life as she knew it. The school had become her life. She would have been as ill-prepared to the life outside as the baby to a world with her as a mother.

Can we learn something from this tragedy? We have to accept as parents that the world has changed since our childhood. Today it must be accepted that the teenagers and young adult party because we as a society don’t offer them the security of a job after only a few years in school. A job created an identity, strong morale and work values. It creates the feeling to belong to something when the teenagers share a beer with co-workers after work.

Here in Europe our biggest problem is not teenagers drinking or teenagers having sex. If only these small problems were the only ones. No, our problem is teenagers joining criminal gangs or traveling down to the Middle East to join the Islamic State in their acts of terrorism. Here the teenagers can find someone who invites them inside as accepted co-workers. As result the local population suffers. Later we will suffer.

There is no need for places like Julian Youth Academy. What are needed are jobs and safe zones for teenagers partying. What is needed is educating kids down to age 10 about sexual relationships. Here in Denmark teenage pregnancies are so much a thing of the past that we as a people is slowly moving forward extinction because the average of a mother giving birth to her first child is close to 30. We Danes are unable to reproduce ourselves because the demands of education and career are given priority over the creation of a family.

Knowledge is power and it saves lives. Had this mother been proper prepared for life instead of having been confined to a Christian boarding school, the baby would have survived; If not as her child then in an adopted family.

The Rochcester tragedy took place 40 years ago. If we should avoid taking about the same in 40 years then stop removing teenagers from our society and inform them instead. Give them jobs and a sense of belonging to something.


Sources:

• Julian Youth Academy (Wikipedia)
• About the case (Murderpedia)
• Nun proclaimed innocent in death of newborn son (Schenectady Gazette)
• Student testimony from a former student (Tales from the black school blog)

Long saga of Family Foundation School coming to an end

Allynwood Academy formerly known as the Family Foundation School has announced that they intend to close their facility early October 2014.

For the many of the former so-called students this news is good news because they will know that no other teenagers will endure the torment they had to go through.

A lot of the now adult victims continue to live with the emotional torment as a heavy luggage pulling them down as they struggle with the daily life.

It has been hard work to get the truth out into the public. While they were forced to remain at the facility their letter were censored. Their phone-calls were monitored as if they were held in a Supermax prison. They had no chance to get the child protection services to intervene. They had to try to survive the emotional damaging environment and for many that meant suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder most likely for the rest of their lives. One boy did not survive. He fell from a balcony to his death. If he intended it or it was an accident has never been fully investigated.

Some years ago the negative press forced the management to rename the facility and change a few details in their policies. However in the end they were unable to prevent their former clients from speaking out the truth about what went on. Even here in Europe the name became equal with emotional abuse.

August 2014 the world will be a better place.

Sources:

• Allynwood Academy Closing (Press-release - Industry Marketing firm)
• 21. The Family Foundation School (1000 places You don't want to be as a teenager blog)
• Unknown - 2004 (Today a child died blog)

Kidnapped for Christ has been shown on Showtime

This documentary was not meant to expose the school but it meant the end of New Horizons Youth Ministries, which had been operating what was basically an abusive program.

Escuela Caribe did for many years use corporal punishment, isolation, emotional abuse combined with hard labor to deal with the issues of the teenagers which counted normal teenage behavior like partying and consuming alcohol but also punishment of lesbian, gay, bisexual lifestyles.

During the filming the film crew became involved with the teenagers, their family and former students. As result the documentary exposed the cruel nature of the boarding school.

The media exposure created as result of this documentary meant the end to the company which had been involved in these activities since the 1970's.

Today another school management is using the campus trying to distance them from the former management. If they succeed and some actually return with a positive experience is yet to be answered.

The documentary can still be seen Showtime's on-demand services.

Sources:

• Showtime's webpage
• The documentary's webpage
• The Truth about New Horizons Youth Ministries
• About Escuela Caribe (Fornits Wiki)