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Trapped in
Christian Boarding School: You Think Your School Days Were Rotten?
Allison Tobey Has it Worse
September 13, 2000
by Nigel Jaquiss
 On
the evening of Aug. 8, Dan Skerritt's home phone rang. Skerritt, a
founding partner of a downtown law firm, couldn't understand the
hysterical teenage girl on the line and handed the phone to his
wife, Irina. She recognized the caller as Allison Tobey, her
daughter Katrina's best friend. "She was crying," Irina recalls. "It
was hard to get her to talk or to find out what was wrong."
Allison, 16, finally settled
down and told them she was in Boston with her parents and had just
been told that she was being shipped off to a Florida boarding
school for troubled girls.
"I asked her if she could
talk freely," recalls Skerritt, whose daughter was not home at the
time. "She said 'no.' I asked her if she knew the name or the
location of the school. She said 'no.'"
Allison was all set to begin
her junior year at St. Mary's Academy, the downtown Portland girls
prep school. An honor-roll student whose chief vices are reportedly
streaking her short brown hair with splashes of red dye and smoking
an occasional cigarette, Allison appeared to be thriving, classmates
say. "She was on the right track and doing better than ever," says
Katrina Skerritt, who described Allison as a girl of infectious good
humor who always carried a sketch pad, enjoyed theater and Tae Kwan
Do and was never in trouble.
Today, however, Allison is a
student at Victory Christian Academy in Jay, Fla., a so-called
"tough-love" boarding school. In 1998, the Pensacola (Fla.) News
Journal called Victory a "private reform school."
Located in cotton and peanut
farming country near the Alabama border, Jay is a village of less
than 1,000 people. The school's 75 girls leave campus only with
escorts and are rarely seen outside. "When you look at the back of
the school it's beautiful," says a local government official who
requested anonymity. "But it's got a fence around it, real high in
back."
Although Victory Christian
caters to troubled girls, the school has encountered some troubles
of its own.
In 1992, Dr. Michael Palmer,
Victory Christian's founder, moved his operation to Florida from San
Diego after a licensing dispute with California officials. In most
states, boarding schools are licensed; Florida, however, exempts
faith-based boarding schools from most state oversight.
In an interview with WW,
Palmer, 61, attributed his departure from California to
"harassment," noting that in Florida his school is certified by a
state-recognized religious organization.
Nonetheless, Palmer is no
stranger to local Florida authorities. In 1994, according to Santa
Rosa County sheriff's records, officers investigated sexual-battery
allegations a student leveled against Palmer. In 1997, records show,
four students complained to law enforcement officials of child
abuse.
Palmer blames the
allegations, none of which resulted in charges being brought, on
vindictive students. "They were girls who were angry with me," he
says. "Kids today have no fear and no respect for authority." Palmer
declined to let WW speak to Allison.
Meanwhile, Allison's friends
and their families are waging a campaign on her behalf. On Aug. 23,
Irina Skerritt and Linda Wiener, a former Clark County prosecutor
and court-appointed child advocate, drove to the Tobeys' Tigard
home. Their daughters, both classmates of Allison's at St. Mary's,
accompanied them. Allison's parents weren't home, Wiener says, but
Allison's sister Amanda answered the door and invited the group
inside. During the course of conversation, Amanda produced letters
that Allison had written from Florida.
The letters brought the
visitors no comfort. "They said she's surrounded by the worst people
she's ever met and she's followed every minute of every day," Wiener
recalls.
Amanda herself had been sent
to Victory Christian the previous year and, according to Wiener and
Skerritt, described instructional tactics that included isolation,
constant monitoring, "bellying down" (in which girls who seem to be
resisting Jesus are wrestled to the ground and held there), and such
punishments as being made to write thousands of times phrases such
as "I will open my heart to Jesus."
Wiener and Skerritt left the
Tobey house determined to meet Allison's parents face-to-face.
In a short telephone
conversation on Sept. 2, however, Kathleen Tobey reportedly told
Skerritt to mind her own business. (The Tobeys also have not
returned WW's calls.)
"I see their point,"
Skerritt says, "but my concern is that this school is designed to
break a child's spirit through intimidation and mind control."
When school started at St.
Mary's last week, the big question in junior class was "Where's
Allie." Two girls started "Project Allie Save" and are organizing a
letter-writing campaign. Others are calling the Tobeys, seeking
information. Wiener will visit Victory Christian this month during a
Florida vacation. "We just want to know that she's alright," Wiener
says.
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October 10, 2000
STILL TRAPPED IN A
CHRISTIAN BOARDING SCHOOL
After spending two days in
the Bible Belt village of Jay, Fla., Linda Wiener is no closer than
before to understanding why a 16-year-old Portland girl is locked up
in a Christian boarding school there.
Wiener, a former prosecutor
and child advocate, flew to Florida late last month for vacation and
spent a couple of days trying to visit Allison Tobey, a former
classmate of Wiener's daughter at St. Mary's Academy.
Accompanied by Inga
Zvejnieks, the aunt of another St. Mary's student, Wiener drove to
Victory Christian Academy, the remote "tough-love" institution that
Tobey's parents sent her to in August (see "Trapped in Christian
Boarding School!!!," W, Sept. 13, 2000).
At Victory Christian, Wiener
says, the women spent an hour speaking to Dr. Michael Palmer, the
school's founder. They asked to see Tobey and to present her with 50
cards and letters from students at St. Mary's. After consulting with
Tobey's parents, George and Kathleen Tobey of Tigard, Palmer
declined to allow the visitors to see the girl. (The Tobeys have not
returned WW's phone calls, nor are they speaking to Allie's
classmates' parents.)
After Palmer invited the two
women to leave, they staged a mini-protest outside the school's
gate.
While Wiener acknowledges
the awkwardness of inserting herself into another family's business,
she returned to the Northwest more concerned than ever about Tobey's
well-being. She says the recent death of a boy in a Bend tough-love
school underlines her fears. "I see major parallels in the two
stories," she says. "We regulate public schools and just about every
other type of institution. But it seems in these schools, we're
imprisoning near-adults without due process."
--Nigel Jaquiss
Taken from: http://www.wweek.com/html/leada091300.html
and
http://www.wweek.com/html/newsbuzz101100.html
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