Parents ordered to collect their children from Midwest Academy in Keokuk, Iowa

A police investigation has been launced against Midwest Academy in Keokuk, Iowa.

The school was founded by Brian Vaifanua who previous ran Paradise Cove in Samoa. Today the closed Samoa camp is mostly known for having housed two children who later moved on to kill relatives as revenge due their placement at Paradise Cove or at least it was what the conclusion the courts came to.

Both Midwest Academy and Paradise Cove was a part of the nationwide WWASP organization. Schools affiliated with this organization were closed by authorities in several states and countries out of welfare concerns towards the minors forced to attend these schools by their parents.

Of the schools who used to work with WWASP there are only two left.

• Red River Academy in Lecompte, Louisiana
• Sunset Bay Academy in Mexico

They use a structure very similar to the one Midwest Academy used to. A new student has to work through a level program in order to speak with parents again. Only monitored and censored contact is allowed from the enrollment until requirements are met. That leaves room for abuse.

Beside the WWASP related school also a number of so-called therapeutic boarding schools and treatment centers use the same approach and parents should be aware that they leave their children in huge risk of abuse by using the facilities which use this kind of structure.

It is only a question of time before a child is exposed to abuse or a child find itself so abandoned by family and social network back home that the only option seems to be suicide. Unfortunately a number of suicide attempts have been succeessfully. In a place like Diamond Ranch Academy in Utah a boy was able to hang himself and at the now-closed Spring Creek Lodge in Montana a girl committed suicide.

Should residential treatment be the last option as parent see to that you can visit as often you like and if possible from the very first day.

Of course you cannot expect your child to be happy about the placement but you can show your support for your own decision to show up and to a certain degree support the treatment approach you are paying for. Otherwise the treatment will have no effect. Children will return to their old ways. You would have lost a lot of money for nothing. Maybe you even will see that your child will need additional treatment as result of posttraumatic stress caused by the placement.

Now the parents have to collect their children from Midwest Academy. Some might consider to send their children to other places so they can find time for holidays or whatever activity they paid to get time for by paying for having their child placed at Midwest Academy. Maybe, just maybe they should second-guess their priorities in life.

Being a parent is the most important job in life.

Sources:

• 'Very complex, large area' part of investigation at school (KCCI news)
• Midwest Academy parents notified to pick up their kids (KHQA News)
• Search Warrants Executed at SE Iowa Boarding School (TSPR News)
• UPDATE: at 5 p.m. Friday – DHS gives parents 24 hours to pick their kids up from Midwest Academy according to a parent. (Daily Gate City)

Dangerous wilderness programs used in custody cases

A custody case attracted national and international attention when Judge Gorcyca threw 3 children in juvenile detention because they didn't want to be with their father who they claim where abusive.

Now the story get even more bizarre. One of the children were sent to a wilderness program and the father hasn't been fully committed in working with the therapists the court appointed.

Wilderness programs are often private-run programs who you can hire to conduct so-called therapy based on what you are willing to pay for. It might not be in the best interest of the child because there are very little oversight into what kind of operation these wilderness programs run.

Secondly it is among the most deadly types of therapy you can expose minors to. Opposite adults the minors cannot leave the program and too often they cause the death of minors in them.

Just last year late 2014 a teenager froze to death in North Carolina.

Lately a girl had a close call when she became separated from her group in Tennessee. She was unable to walk out of the woods and ended up in hospital.

It is asking for a tragedy to happen accepting that this child to leave the home state in order to attend a wilderness program. How far will the justice system go putting these children at risk? It is not a question of judging whether the father or the mother is the best parent. It is a question whether the court orders the parents to use neutral therapist hired and paid by the court to work the case where the kids started to live instead of splitting them up and putting them at risk.

Divorce can be a testing period for everyone especially the children but the court should not make it more difficult by putting the children in jail or allowing them to be exposed to untested and dangerous therapy methods they will be emotional damaged by the rest of their lives.

Source:
Tsimhoni custody case deteriorates (Communities Digital News LLC)

Carlbrook closes

Carlbrook School which was founded based on the twisted teachings of the CEDU-chain which closed due to threat of lawsuits in 2005 closed its doors this week. Now the students can return home a start to work to heal the emotional scar this line of teachings inflicted upon them. Some families didn't get their sons home. Forest Ferguson and Joshua Clay Inscoe are stilling missing. Ferguson left the school in 2010, Inscoe in 2012 and their families have still not heard from either of them.

If it was not for the students who got their emotional lives destroyed it could have been fun to research more into how the religious cult like praying of Synanon was developed into so-called therapy. The furniture reseller who founded CEDU was a long-time member of Synanon. It was persons from CEDU who took the initiative to found Carlbrook.

It is hard to understand why it took so many years to close Carlbrook. Why did parents continue to enroll their children at the school when the Internet is filled with testimonies from former students providing a picture of how Carlbrook messed their minds up? Did they trust educational consultants so much that they failed to investigate what the outcome could be?

Maybe. It is time to focus on the role educational consultants have in sending vulnerable teenagers to places where they are put in danger or exposed to methods which would hurt them disguised as therapy.

The fact is: Education consultants receive referral fees from the owners of the programs and school they refer students to. The extent of these referral fees are not known but they exist and various source place them in size almost as close to the amounts parents pay which make people question if the recommendations the educational consultants give are in the interest of the child or the interest of their pockets.

The troubled teen industry needs more overview. The flow of money between transport firms, residential programs and educational consultants is unclear. Some school districts have observed this and there are many cases all over the United States where parents sue the school districts based on the poor advice of private firms aiming at profit.

Money kept Carlbrook operational for too many years. It finally closed but there are still many places out there operating just like Carlbrook paying educational consultants money for referrals to their programs and schools.

Please help organizations like HEAL-online and similar in their work to close these programs down. Every voice makes a difference.


Sources:

• Halifax Co. Public Schools notified that Carlbrook School to close (WDBJ7 News)
• Carlbrook School Permanently Closes; Gives Students and Staff Short Notice (WSET News)
• Enrollment on the wane, Carlbrook School will close (South Boston News & Record and Mecklenburg Sun)
• Forest Ferguson (The Charley Project)
• FOREST FERGUSON – 2010 (CARLBROOK SCHOOL FORMERLY DIAMOND RANCH ACADEMY) (Missing TTI Victims Teens website)
• Missing: Joshua Clay Inscoe (Mark Turner dot net)
• Factsheet about the school (Fornits Wiki)