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Religious Reform School,
State Clash
March 4, 1991
NANCY RAY
"You must realize that this
is very hard for us to admit, that we had failed with our daughter.
We owe our daughter's life to Brother Palmer. God bless him, he gave
us back our daughter. We are a family again."
Those words from a stocky,
sun-tanned father whose tear-stained face reflected the emotional
trauma he had just described are in sharp contrast to the angry
words of a former student at Victory Christian Academy.
Said Blackbird Willow, the
former student: "Student? I was a victim at Victory. They tried to
take control of my mind. They shut me up in a little room and played
tapes of preaching all day long. I tried to die. After two weeks, I
gave in to them. I played their game. I smiled."
Victory Christian Academy on
the outskirts of Ramona is a fundamentalist Baptist boarding school
for about 75 girls aged 13 through 17 who have broken away from
their parents' control to become "behavioral problems"-truants, drug
users, runaways.
For years, the California
Department of Social Services has been trying to force Victory's
operator, Pastor Mike Palmer, to license his school as a community
care facility.
On Feb. 14, state
investigators raided the grounds, taking away copies of the
students' private case histories and interviewing some of the girls
about their treatment at the school.
Tom Hersant, head of the
state agency's San Diego office, confirmed that an investigation is
under way. He said state lawyers are studying the evidence seized in
the search and Willow's statements and those of other former Victory
students to map a strategy for bringing Victory under state control.
He declined to elaborate
further on the state's investigation.
Palmer, who founded the
school almost nine years ago, is just as convinced that Victory
Christian is a church school that meets every criterion for
exemption from state licensing.
Both state and school
officials agree that the question of Victory's status will probably
end up in the courts. The overriding issue, they say, will be the
doctrine of separation of church and state.
"I welcome it," Palmer said
of the pending court battle. "We have nothing to hide here. They are
trying to close us down, but God is on our side."
The school that Palmer heads
sits on a knoll off California 67, up a rutted dirt road that ends
at a sturdy 12-foot-high wire fence topped with electronic sensors.
The gate opens only for those who have been cleared to visit.
Inside the compound, neatly
manicured lawns and colorful flower beds soften the austere
landscape. A cluster of buildings includes a chapel, schoolrooms,
dormitories, an office and a home of the pastor. All are neat and
clean. The smell of cooking-on this day, spaghetti and
meatballs-permeates the complex.
Teen-age girls move in lines
or in pairs, speaking only when spoken to, attaching a "ma'am" or a
"sir" to their short replies.
On a recent Sunday
afternoon, a group of parents and their children, selected by
Palmer, gathered in the chapel to tell their stories of frustration
and fear that had brought them to Victory.
"I had to bring her here
because she was running away," one father said. "She beat up on my
wife and I had to hold her down 'til the police came and rectified
the situation."
Another father, a law
enforcement officer, admitted that on his job he had talked with
countless parents about their wayward offspring, only to feel as
frustrated as any of them when his own daughter went from being a
popular school cheerleader earning A's and B's to "a dirt bag" who
ran away.
One parent, an attorney,
told of his initial suspicions about the school: "I had the
resources and the contacts. I picked up the phone and I checked and
checked, and I checked again before I put her in here. I kept on
checking after she was here. I had heard all the rumors. I found
nothing."
Many of the adults told of
spending thousands of dollars on teen drug programs, hospitals,
psychiatrists, counselors, all to no avail, before they came to
Victory and Palmer for help.
The teen-agers all readily
admitted that they had "hated it here" when they first arrived, some
in handcuffs.
"Where were they when we
needed them?" asked one teen-ager of the authorities now
investigating the school that she felt should have helped to keep
the teens out of trouble in the first place. "They don't care about
us. They don't understand."
Other students described the
panic that invaded the school when Department of Social Services
investigators, local Child Protective Services workers and deputy
sheriffs armed with a search warrant raided the campus on
Valentine's Day.
The minister pledged to
rally an army of parents and teen-agers to fight the state's attempt
to control Victory Christian Academy or shut it down. He also
pledged to muster 800 voices to believe the statements made by a
former Victory student, Blackbird Willow-a name she chose when she
emancipated herself at age 16. She is now 19.
She left the school four
years ago, after staying there for 11 months. She said she has taken
her complaints to various authorities but that little was done. She
now has decided to publicly describe what she considers
"brainwashing" at the Ramona school-which she recently did in a
television interview on an Orange County public access station and
by speaking to the The Times.
Willow's allegations center
on what she calls mind control. She has not accused the school of
any physical abuse.
Willow was placed in Victory
after she had run away from home when she was 14.
At Victory, new girls are
first subjected to isolation, she said. No television, no radios, no
magazines, no telephone calls, Willow said.
Willow said that when she
arrived at the school, she was put in a small room and kept away
from the other students for two weeks. She said she saw no one
except when her meals were brought in to her and when staff members
took her out for showers.
"All the time there were
religious tapes playing. I couldn't turn the damned thing off," she
said.
"They force-fed me when I
wouldn't eat. Baby food. They gave me ice-cold showers. They wanted
me to stop being listless," she said.
When Willow gave in to the
school's system and was allowed to move into a dormitory with the
other girls, she began keeping journals of daily events, only to
have them confiscated and destroyed, she claimed.
"I finally decided to write
home about what went on and hope my parents would save the letters,"
Willow said. "They did and I have everything documented.
Willow said the daily
routine at Victory consisted of schoolwork, Bible study, sermons,
singing and testimonials by the girls. She estimated that seven to
eight hours of each day were taken up with religious indoctrination
of some kind or other.
Although Willow went through
the motions, she did not submit to the religious fervor she saw
about her, "except for the singing," she said. "That's where I felt
myself getting into the spirit. The beautiful music. The chance to
feel something. It was charismatic."
Palmer shook his head when
he was told of Willow's statements and called them lies.
All that Victory uses to
convert girls with behavioral problems into respectful young ladies
is God and love, Palmer said. "And God is love."
Religious Reform
School: An 12-foot-high fence with electronic detectors surrounds
the Victory Christian Academy near Ramona where about 75 "problem"
girls are confined. Some families praise the school, but state
officials recently raided the institution. The state wants the
school licensed, a move opposed by school operator Mike Palmer.
Victory
The school's methods are
being criticized by former pupil Blackbird Willow.
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