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COSTA RICA
May
28, 2003
Orotina, Costa Rica - Shortly after stealing her
father's credit card for a $2,500 shopping spree, high-school dropout
Alexandra Slavis woke up before dawn in February to
find strangers, a man and a woman, looming over her bed in Midwood, Brooklyn. "They said ... 'You can go
to jail or you can go to Costa Rica for a week's vacation,' " recalled Slavis, 17. Slavis
eagerly opted for the latter - but her escorts dropped her at Dundee Ranch
Academy, a behavioral modification program for troubled U.S. teens whose
regime was tougher than that of many New York jails. Costa Rican
authorities raided the school Thursday and announced they were investigating
its owner, Narvin Lichfield,
for alleged physical and psychological mistreatment of students. Yesterday, Lichfield announced he was closing the academy. The
implosion of Dundee Ranch opens a window on the flourishing tough-love
industry, which increasingly is creating programs for troubled U.S. teens in
foreign countries where the dollar goes further and oversight often is far
weaker. Dundee Ranch was part of a Utah-based network - the World Wide
Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, or WWASP. Two other foreign
WWASP schools shut down and a third dropped out of the association in recent
years. WWASP still operates 10 schools in Mexico, Jamaica and the United
States, including Ivy Ridge Academy, near Ogdensburg in upstate New
York. As Dundee students were flown home or to other WWASP schools, Lichfield yesterday denied wrongdoing. "I'm a sinner
or a saint, depending on which side of the story you're on," he
said. WWASP president Ken Kay defended his programs as
"character-building in a structured environment." Thomas
Burton, the California attorney who filed lawsuits against WWASP affiliates,
called the programs "private prisons" that are "neither
educational nor therapeutic," even though they typically cost $30,000 a
year. Dundee's purpose "is not to help teens in crisis or their
families. It is to make millions of dollars for the owner," wrote Amberly Knight, the academy's director for six months
until August, in a January letter to Costa Rican authorities. Knight
wrote that the school for a time gave students unfiltered drinking water that
she suspected was the cause of widespread intestinal problems. She said it
lacked staff trained to deal with at-risk youths and improperly restrained
students - in one case dislocating a teen's shoulder. It kept them far longer
than necessary to rake in extra tuition payments, Knight wrote, and hushed up
the rape of a female staff member by a colleague. (Newsday)
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