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Parents Divided
Over Jamaica Disciplinary Academy
By Tim Weiner
The New York Times, June
17, 2003
ST. ELIZABETH, Jamaica
Tranquility Bay is a troubled paradise.
A tightly guarded compound
in a lovely Caribbean hamlet, it is the oldest foreign outpost in a
booming network of behavior-modification programs for American
teenagers. Tranquility Bay has a reputation as the harshest of them
all.
 Many
who have been there describe a life of pain and fear. They say they
spent 13 hours a day, for weeks or months on end, lying on their
stomachs in an isolation room, their arms repeatedly twisted to the
breaking point. Others say the program took them off a road to hell
and saved their lives.
Tranquility Bay's methods
have spawned fierce supporters and critics, none more passionate
than the children who have been through the program and the parents
who sent them there.
The children say their
parents have no idea what goes on behind the walls. The parents say
program directors tell them to ignore all accusations of abuse.
"They tell your parents,
`Your son may say he's been beaten, but he's lying,' and that, to
me, is the greatest manipulation they pull," said Andrew Emmett, 16,
of Washington, Pa.
Tim Weiner for
The New York Times
Mike Neumann, 42, of Minnesota, came
to Tranquility Bay to look for his niece,
Amanda Campbell
Enrollment at Tranquility
Bay, founded in 1996, has grown in the past two years from 140 to
300 youths, most of them 12 to 19 years old. It is becoming a
battleground for the warring camps of parents and children, a
growing number of whom oppose the program.
That fight may shape the
future of Tranquility Bay's parent organization, the Utah-based
World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, known as
Wwasps, one of the biggest and most lucrative businesses of its
kind.
In a statement sent to
parents last month, Ken Kay, Wwasps' president, wrote: "The
accusations are from students. The parents may believe them, but the
parents weren't there." He continued: "The teens making the
allegations generally have a long history of lying, exaggerating and
dishonesty."
By telephone, he said that
he did not welcome new requests for comment, as Wwasps had signed a
television contract to tell its story in its own words.
Mr. Kay's son, Jay Kay,
director of Tranquility Bay, said in an e-mail message declining a
face-to-face interview that criticisms come from "one-tenth of one
percent" of past clients a few people with "axes to grind."
There is little question
that Wwasps programs including two in Mexico and at least eight in
the United States, with a total of roughly 2,300 children fill a
crying need for parents unable to cope with their children.
Many parents who strongly
support Tranquility Bay, which costs more than $33,000 a year, see
it as a near-miraculous crucible for changing defiant and delinquent
teenagers. But others who sent their children say the program
damaged their sons and daughters. A striking number of youths say
that, while the program's goals may be noble, its methods are not.
In all, 32 children and
parents spoke by telephone for this article, 23 others communicated
by e-mail, and five face-to-face interviews took place in Jamaica.
"I got some good out of it,"
said Colin Johnstone, 15, of Louisville, Ky., who came to
Tranquility Bay at 13. "But it is kind of like torture. It did me
more damage than good."
He was not drinking or
taking drugs, said his mother, Lisa Todd. He was "just immature."
She said Colin had two teeth knocked loose by a staff member's fist
and spent at least eight months in the isolation room. "They are
very physically severe in Jamaica," she said. "For sure, they did
things they couldn't do in America." But, she added, "I do think the
program helps a lot of families that are desperate and don't know
where to turn."
Oliver Bucolo, 18, of St.
Petersburg, Fla., spent more than two years at Tranquility Bay. "You
can't go there and not be changed," he said. "The program's
intentions are good. They do help some people."
But, he added: "The staff
has no training. They know how to restrain kids."
Restraint, as practiced at
Tranquility Bay, can be punishing. Many children, mostly boys, say
staff members twist their arms behind their backs until their hands
touch their heads, inflicting intense pain without bruises.
"You could hear kids
screaming when they were getting restrained," Mr. Bucolo said. "It
was horrible. They would do it behind closed doors. And say the kids
were lying if they complained."
Jill Himmelfarb, 18, of
Coral Springs, Fla., spent two years at Tranquility Bay. At
Christmas, she graduated, as have one in every five enrollees. She
grew to love the program. "The place saved my life," she said. But
soon after leaving, she said, she was taking heroin and trying to
kill herself with pills.
Deborah Stilwell, 49, of
Lake Forest Park, Wash., one of the parents who supports the
program, said it was "nothing short of miraculous."
"It was the best thing we've
ever done," said Mrs. Stilwell, whose 16-year-old daughter is at
Tranquility Bay, on Prozac, but off drink and other drugs.
"Tranquility Bay is not cushy," she said. "It's harsh. But it saved
her life."
Kristin Smith, 46, of
Bradenton, Fla., said her son Zack, 18, had benefited greatly from
Tranquility Bay. She said the program was not suitable for children
with emotional or psychological problems although many youths with
such problems are there but for those who had abused drugs and
alcohol, like her son did.
"It was the hardest thing we
ever did," she said. "It's tough. It's hard. And that's what he
needed absolute strict rules."
Other parents call
Tranquility Bay a Caribbean gulag. "It's like a communist regime,"
said Julie Wilkinson, 47, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., whose son,
Winston, just returned home from Tranquility Bay. "The tragedy is
that there is such a desperate outcry for help for kids, from
parents who are at their wits' end and will do anything."
Christine Smith, 42, of
Flemington, N.J., said she sold her home to pay tuition for her son,
Thomas Owens, 16. "I was doing research on the Internet, and World
Wide popped up everywhere. It looked good, it really did." She said
program officials led her to believe that her son would receive
counseling and therapy, but instead, she said, he spent two-thirds
of his time at Tranquility Bay in isolation. "They hurt my son," she
said. "Dramatically."
"They say the kids
manipulate, they lie, they embellish," she said. But so do the
program's officials, she said.
"You're paying Harvard
prices, and that's O.K. if it helps the child," she said. "But to
beat the child, just beat them into submission? If you did this to
your child, you would be arrested for child abuse."
Wwasps has sued some of its
critics and threatened others. But it is braced for new suits from
parents and children alike. One basis for those challenges was
expressed by Alex Wolland, 18, of Miami, who spent a year at
Tranquility Bay, "The parents have absolutely no clue what is going
on."
In his statement to parents
last month, Ken Kay, the Wwasps' president, wrote, "We run a tight
ship and a tough program where inappropriate attitudes and choices
are confronted and redirected and the living conditions are not as
nice as the homes the parents had so kindly provided the teen before
the teen sabotaged it.
"If these are the
accusations, then we have no problem with the accusations. If the
accusations are more than that, then there is no basis for the
accusations."
In a 1999 interview with The
Rocky Mountain News, however, Mr. Kay, who at that time had left the
Wwasps organization, criticized its programs and staff.
The staff was "a bunch of
untrained people," he said, according to the newspaper. "They don't
have 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," he said. "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
experience to determine: Is this good, is this bad?"
That question remains
unanswered. No long-term studies of the 1,500 youths who have been
to Tranquility Bay, or the 300 who have graduated, have been done.
Outside experts say the test will come after Tranquility Bay's
youths become adults.
Patrick Quinn, 18, now a
student at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, said: "There
were kids there who needed psychiatric help. Professional help. And
there are no professionals there."
Instead, he said, the staff
inflicted pain on the children, mostly on the boys. Among those
youths, he said, was Colin Johnstone. "Every night you heard him
there, screaming at the top of his lungs," Mr. Quinn said. "There
are a lot of kids there who will never be the same."
Some of the youths at
Tranquility Bay have histories of drug and alcohol abuse; 15 percent
to 20 percent have had a brush with the law, according to program
officials.
Many others have never had
encounters with the police, or with drugs. They are there, in large
part, because of family crises, including the divorce or the death
of a parent.
One such child was Tyler
Marshall of Tazewell, Va. "Tyler was 12 when he went to Tranquility
Bay," said his cousin, Gini Farmer Remines, "and he had never been
in trouble with the law. Basically, he did not get along with the
woman his dad was going to marry."
Ms. Remines won custody of
her cousin and obtained a judge's order releasing Tyler from
Tranquility Bay last year.
Tranquility Bay is the
oldest of Wwasps' surviving overseas operations. Wwasps affiliates
in Mexico and the Czech Republic have shut down under government
pressure; its Costa Rica program closed after a revolt by students
last month. In the United States, the organization has affiliated
programs, some of which are brand-new, in Utah, Montana, New York,
California, Iowa and South Carolina, according to public records.
With a payroll estimated at
$1 million a year, and gross annual revenues approaching $10
million, Tranquility Bay is by far the leading economic power in St.
Elizabeth, a poor parish on Jamaica's southern shore, where farms
are failing and the sea is fished out.
It employs more than 150
Jamaicans, some of whom wear crisp white shirts emblazoned with a
patch reading, "Tranquility Bay Working for the Future of the
World." Several have been dismissed recently after being accused of
assault or selling drugs, according to two parents and one
government official.
Throughout the Wwasps
network in the United States and Mexico, many youths say,
Tranquility Bay is held out as a warning.
"They threaten you with
Tranquility Bay," said Andrew Emmett, who said he was briefly
transferred here after attending Carolina Springs Academy, a Wwasps
program in South Carolina. "They tell you they can twist up and
grind your body and never leave a mark."
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/international/americas/17JAMA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
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