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Congressman
raises questions about Kemper suitor
By JOHN SULLIVAN
of the Tribune’s staff
Published
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
A U.S.
congressman from California says Boonville city officials should
have "serious reservations" about selling the Kemper Military School
property to associates of a controversial network of international
boarding schools.
Rep. George
Miller, D-Calif., warned that Boonville should "get the facts first"
before accepting a purchase offer from Robert Lichfield, founder of
World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, or WWASPS.
"While many
residential treatment facilities do provide good quality services
for children, there is a long history of allegations of mistreatment
of minors at campuses operated by the World Wide Association of
Specialty Programs," Miller said in an e-mail to the Tribune. "The
City of Boonville should have serious reservations about the sale of
city property to an organization with such an egregious record of
child abuse complaints."
Officials of
Miller’s office said the congressman has not contacted the city of
Boonville directly.
Lichfield and
his associate, Randall Hinton, a former director of schools under
Lichfield’s network, have proposed buying the Kemper property and
opening a military-style school for difficult teens. A purchase
contract sits before the Boonville City Council, and Boonville
officials confirmed last week that they received a deposit check for
$100,000 signed by Lichfield.
The council
voted last week to delay making a decision on the sale until a
public hearing. The meeting, held Monday night, drew a crowd of
local residents who asked pointed questions of Lichfield’s
associates.
Boonville police
recommended a thorough investigation into Lichfield, his association
and Hinton, who would operate the school with his brother, Russell
Hinton. A preliminary investigation by the department found WWASPS
schools appear to "regularly engage in physical restraint of
children including the use of pepper spray, handcuffs, duct tape and
wooden boxes to isolate the children."
Hinton
acknowledged using pepper spray at a WWASPS school in Jamaica eight
years ago. He described it as a two-month experiment that failed to
subdue violent children.
Miller is the
ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the
Workforce. The Department of Justice has turned down repeated
requests by his committee to investigate WWASPS.
Miller’s office
has described the organization as a St. George, Utah-based umbrella
organization that oversees seven behavior modification programs in
the United States and two abroad. The schools, formerly known as
Teen Help, treat about 2,200 children at a cost of $30,000 to
$50,000 in tuition and fees. At least eight affiliated schools and
related programs have closed or been shut down since the mid-1990s.
A 2003 letter
from Miller’s office to former Attorney General John Ashcroft
alleges the association engaged in "human rights violations,
fraudulent and deceptive advertising, fraud and unjust enrichment
under the Internal Revenue Code."
So far, only one
allegation against a staff member or official of WWASPS-affiliated
schools has resulted in a criminal conviction. And many parents
whose children have undergone treatment at the schools vouch for
their effectiveness in transforming often severely troubled
children. These parents claim that had it not been for the schools,
their children would be dead or in prison.
Groups who
oppose the programs claim they indoctrinate parents and children to
worship tough-love ideals that can transform behavior but leave
psychological scars. No professional, long-term studies on the
psychological and emotional impact of WWASPS programs on children
have been conducted.
Ashcroft and his
successor, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, have said they lack
jurisdiction to investigate privately owned schools. Miller,
however, cites an investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer into an alleged assault of a teen at Ivy Ridge, a WWASPS-affiliated
school near Ogdensburg, N.Y. "The powers of the U.S. Attorney
General are hardly more constrained than those of" state
"officials," Miller wrote in a May 2004 letter.
Justice
department spokesman Bryan Sierra said his office does not comment
on cases with no charges or public records of crimes.
WWASPS President
Ken Kay said he does not oppose tighter regulation of his programs
but that such regulation should be conducted at the state and local
level.
Kay called his
schools "specialty programs" that succeed where government programs
fail. "The federal regulation of the juvenile system and public
schools as a whole has been less than effective in dealing with the
youth population we deal with," he said.
Reach John
Sullivan at (573) 815-1731 or jsullivan@tribmail.com.
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