posted on Apr, 1 2012 @ 11:48 PM
This court decision came down in 2007 -- hardly "breaking news".
I have followed horror stories of various "boot camp" operations for troubled teens. The one involved in the Florida case was an actual juvenile
prison, calling it a camp as if it had canoeing and marshmallows around the campfire is just a sort of deception. It was a prison for children, the
guard (that's what they were) felt entitled to beat children, etc. If they had been convicted those guards would have had lots of fun in adult prison;
many of those convicts were mistreated as children and someone who both beats children and qualifies as a demoted prison guard is gonna be prime
target numero uno. On the other hand, the State already made a $5 M settlement with the boy's family.
Other boot camp operations have been unofficial, advertising to parents of teenagers. The parents hire these outfits, they send their goon squads to
scoop up the kid in the middle of the night, and he's usually in a worse situation than if he were in prison because he has no legal rights, not
outside contact, and the people in charge claim that his (or her) parents gave them permission to torment them in ways that would be illegal for the
parents themselves to do. I have not yet heard of any kid suing his parents for sending him to such a place, but there have been plenty of instances
of kids being killed or crippled in such places. They are usually characterized as "wilderness camps" - that means no running water, no beds, no
telephone, no electricity, just army surplus pup tents and the like, the camp's entire inventory worth less than $500, with the kids forced out twenty
miles into what is often a state or national park. There have been instances of children being injured or taking sick and nobody on staff knowing -
or even trying to do - anything. Instances of kids who were supposed to be given medication - including insulin - but the staff "forgetting" it back
at the office 50 miles away. Instances of kids being starved or beaten. Instances of emergencies that nobody bothered to report for hours - and
camps without any contingency for getting an injured child from the middle of nowhere to a hospital. At one Texas "boys' camp", the punishment was
that they'd be beaten with plastic pipes, and if that wasn't enough, they'd be sodomized! In some cases, someone at the camp office has a shortwave
radio tuned to the local police so they can snatch up an escapee before he can get the police interested in the way the kids are being mistreated, or
so they know in advance if the police are coming for a visit. Nobody checks the credentials of the people running these outfits -- they have their
own accrediting association which never finds fault with them so long as the check clears -- but they could have no training or experience in
wilderness or hiking, nor any training or equipment for first aid, and they might even have criminal records. Lots of fatalities over the years and
it turns out that the camps have no insurance, and no assets worth suing for.
edit on 1-4-2012 by Shoonra because: (no reason given)