Lost in the Letters, Elf Power, & a User's Guide to Unreformed

I read for Atlanta’s Lost in the Letters this weekend. Listened to some fab writers (Jamie Iredell is hilarious!). Really enjoyed meeting LIL curator Scott Daughtridge. Am looking forward to future collaborations- he's doing much to build the regional lit scene, like this festival in November (to be linked soon) which features some of my heroes- Roxane Gay, Jericho Brown, Mary Miller, and more. Stoked!

I read two Unreformed excerpts*- Certificate of Affection (you had to have a commitment ceremony to have a relationship at Escuela Caribe- which was then horrifying but now is funny- provided you yourself didn't experience it) and First Gulf War, which delves into some of the apocalyptic dogma.  My husband, who is a musician (fave album- Ham 1: The Captain’s Table), helped me prep. When I came to the part where I referenced this verse in First Gulf War, he stopped me. “Wait, so that’s why you make jokes about riding the beast (when referring to difficult situations/people)?" “Totes, babe!”

Saturday night we walked down to the World Famous for Elf Power- a band we LOVE to see live, especially in this current iteration.** Former collaborators Bryan Poole and Jamie Huggins have reunited with Andrew Rieger and Laura Carter, and Peter Alvanos (who plays in our off/on project, High Ranker) is on drums. They closed with one of their oldest songs, Down to the Drugstore, which is about being all messed up in high school. Adored!

And after the show Andrew and I were talking about how much I enjoyed their set. When I watch them play they remind me of how my life could have been- had the adults in our town not shipped so many of us off to teen mistreatment facilities (and my parents not been religious control freaks) but instead helped us find some sort of creative outlet. But that's why I love how my Athens' friends were raised in Greenwood, SC, Ruston, LA, Charleston, Orlando, etc., because they have helped me discover how to be. And even better, that's how the kids in my town (especially my son) are being raised now.

One last thing- a reader (<3) emailed and asked for excerpts from Unreformed. Danzas Con Lobos en Santiago was published in Marco Polo. This Rumpus interview with Craig Zobel begins with a scene from Escuela Caribe. My Guernica interview with Julia Scheeres is essentially a comparison and contrast between Escuela Caribe and Jonestown. And the following posts from this blog include research or explore various topics pertaining to Escuela Caribe/ Caribe Vista/ Caribbean Mountain Academy. Enjoy!

• More from that Guernica Interview with Julia Scheeres
• Everyone Carried the Cross at Escuela Caribe
• Stockholm Syndrome Is for Real
• Caribbean Mountain Academy in Need of Reform
• Lifeline Youth and Family Services Under Scrutiny Stateside
• Escuela Caribe/ Caribbean Mountain Academy/ Crosswinds Updates
• Why NHYM Alumni Are Concerned About Crosswinds
• Petition to End Abuse of Children at Crosswinds
• New Horizons Youth Ministries Expelled from Haiti in 1974
• Abusive Tactics at Escuela Caribe Featured in 1979 Congressional Report
• Romney Linked to Abuse at For-Profit Teen Treatment Facilities
• 1988 Escuela Caribe Promotional Video
• About Unreformed
• For years, I wrote as Deirdre Sayre.  There is so much more on this blog.

*My buddy Scott M. and I were both super stoked that Eno's Needle in the Camel's Eye was my entry music to walk onstage, a song which (ZOMG- coincidence!) Elf Power also covers.

**Not that we haven't loved the other combos- Eric Harris and Derek Almstead from the In a Cave era- wow!

Interview With Julia Scheeres in Guernica Magazine

Recently I interviewed Julia Scheeres.  She wrote Jesus Land, a memoir about our reform school, Escuela Caribe, and A Thousand Lives: the Untold Story of Jonestown.  

One of my favorite aspects of the Jonestown book is how Scheeres captured the day to day tyranny of life under Jim Jones' rule.   I was intrigued to discuss how living in captivity at Escuela Caribe helped inform her Jonestown work, but I came to understand so much more not only about Jonestown, and racism, and religion, but also about myself.  Like why I shut down emotionally. And why one of my integral values as an adult is living in an open-minded community. But this is just why I'm interested personally.  There's so much more to be gleaned (such as how Jones used deceptions like the King Alfred plan and staged shootings to trick people into following him, his theory of revolutionary suicide, or details of racism in the heartland) in Guernica Magazine. 

2013 Hambidge Residency Recap

Arrived home yesterday from my third residency at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts.  It's located in the foothills of the Appalachians- the birds would sing and the sun stream green through dense trees and I'd write- hiking the trails or running or reading* whenever I got stuck.

The conversations and work shared by my fellows were hugely impactful.  I devoured the upcoming dystopian adventure, Mira Corpora of playwright, jazz writer and novelist Jeff Jackson- such tight prose!!!  Susannah Felts' This will Go Down on Your Permanent Record inspired me to delve much more deeply about being a music-obsessed teen in the South- and captures the sticky dynamics between teen girls.  I adored visual artist Jessica Caldas' work in progress on connections (which will premiere at an October show in Atlanta- have to go), ditto for the compositions of Charles Zoll. 

My last night we watched Josh Zeman's trailer for Finding 52: the Search for the Loneliest Whale about a whale whose voice can be heard by no other due to frequency- but it’s also about loneliness and lack of connection in this modern world. Part of my heart is still stuck in my throat.  Jeff and Josh also were collaborating on a screenplay about sentient plants turned evil- we three shared an obsession with cults- can't wait to see what they've wrought. Also am very excited about Barbara Blatner's poetry and her upcoming play about race and the South in 1963. We had great discussions- my other project, Delta Drive, taps a similar vein.  Excited to see how Ginger Krebs' performance art is impacted by Hambidge, and can't wait to read the work of Nova Ren Suma, who arrived right before I left. 

It might sound like all play but I worked hard for ten days - churning out eight chapters, plus drafted notes for three more- under the advisement of my Tin House wolf pack (you know who you are)- it was the last original material I needed for Unreformed. Plan now is to finish the beginning- then ready to excise the entire draft with a scalpel- (see above admiration for tight prose).

*Inheiritance (Chang), Financial Lives of Poets (Walters), Brain on Fire, Center Cannot Hold (Saks), American Dream Machine (Specktor), Dark Side (Mayer), Chain of Command (Hersh), Mira Corpora (Jackson), This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record (Felts)

2013 Hambidge Residency

I'm leaving for a residency at the Hambidge Center for the Arts- one of my favorite places on the planet. Savannah sugar heiress turned bohemian Mary Hambidge established this artists retreat in the foothills of the Appalachians in the 1950's- it's an amazing place.  This will be my third visit.

I completed this interview for Hambidge in July 2012.

·   What are you writing?

I am writing Unreformed, my teenage captivity narrative, which is set in the Dominican Republic at the evangelical Christian reform school, Escuela Caribe, (also the setting of Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres).

·          

·  What inspired you to write your most recent work?

  After my son was born, an event that coincided with the War on Terror and abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, I returned to writing. (They read everything I wrote in reform school- I didn't write anything personal for years). The Iraq War and 9/11 triggered many repressed memories. I had to make sense of not only what happened to my me and my friends at Escuela Caribe, but to understand how and why individuals can be coerced into hurting others.  I also had to face my worst memories in order to be a healthy parent. 

·   

    How did you come up with the title? 

  Writing helped me reform the individual I was before I entered reform school.

·  

    What books or people influenced your writing? 

  The Lucifer Effect by Phillip Zimbardo, Help at Any Cost:  How the Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids by Maia Szalavitz, Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres, The Ticking Is the Bomb by Nick Flynn, The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott, The Road to Whatever by Elliott Currie, To Be Human (essay) by Anouar Benmalek, the poetry of Langston Hughes and T.S. Eliot, the music of Vic Chesnutt, particularly North Star Deserter…and so much more….

·   How did you research your book?  

  I transcribed journals and diaries from the time period about which I am writing, read the above books, and reflected upon them, connecting them to my experiences.  I have interviewed people I went to school with.

·  Did you base any of your characters on real people? 

  Everything I have written is based on actual events and people.

·         

  Do you have any other books planned in the future? 

  I’d love to write a biography of my friend and neighbor Vic Chesnutt. I would like to write about growing up in the Mississippi Delta, where my family lived for seven generations.  

·   Which of your stories or characters are your favorite? Do you dislike any of them? 

  I had a friend I call Crystal.  She wasn’t raised religious.  She constantly challenged my acceptance of dogma.  I am trying to learn to love all my characters, even those who did me harm.

·       

     What advice can you give to young writers who want to publish their books? 

  Even if you have a full-time job, aim to write every day (I’m a school librarian).  Revise. Revise. Revise.  If you are writing memoir, when you begin, focus on scenes/ memories, as opposed to a chronological structure. Everything else will fall into place.(I learned this the hard way).

How did you hear about Hambidge?  

I wanted to attend a residency in the South.  Hambidge’s location, an hour and a half from my front door, is ideal.

·        

  What made you decide to come?  

  Initially I came because of its proximity to Athens.  I returned because it truly is an amazing place.  It’s beautiful, the staff is amazing, the residents are all creating inspirational art.

·         

  How has the experience affected you or your work? 

  Uninterrupted time for reflection cannot be overestimated.  I love roaming the trails in between writing bouts.

·   What do you do when you’re not writing?

  Spending time with my family, taking my dog on runs or dancing to zumba with my girlfriends, reading, rocking out to one of Athens’ 500+ bands.

·  Do you have any pets? 

  A Borador I adopted on my last Hambidge visit, named Mary Hambidge.

·  Is there a specific place in the house (or out of the house) that you like to write?

  My husband restored a ‘58 Mercury teardrop trailer….it’s my backyard studio.

·         

  If you could go anywhere in the whole world, either for a vacation or to live there, where would you go? 

  The Dominican Republic

·         

  What book are you reading right now?

  I just finished Anna Jean Mayhew’s a Dry Grass in August and Erin Tocknell’s Confederate Streets.  Both were written by Hambidge residents---great reads!  I also am reading the Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick, Come On All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder, and re-reading (Not That You Asked) by Steve Almond.

New Red Flag for Caribbean Mountain Academy- Former Students Employed as Staff

The Coalition Against Institutionalized Child Abuse (CAICA) has a 40 point list of warning signs of potentially abusive facilities. Caribbean Mountain Academy (formerly Escuela Caribe &  Caribe Vista- this facility has a history of changing its name) fulfills many of these (i.e. communication monitored, outside of the U.S., students denied access to telephone, level system etc.).  What troubles me today is that they now are boasting about violating #13- The staff includes former clients/students of the facility. 

Don't get me wrong, I am not making a character attack on the staff member in question.  He's probably a decent guy, a pawn in their game.  He probably cares for the kids- I had several friends who went back as staff- some were great, others were NIGHTMARES.  However, having been a former student, especially a former student under the old order, when Tim Blossom, Phil Redwine, and Jeff Seabrooke were in charge, parents considering CMA need to understand that his norm for what typifies abuse is skewed.  

Also troubling, his answer for what drew him back to the D.R.: 

"God solely drew me back to CMA...Even when I came home after a student I did well in the program...but the day I left and went home...I was back into it...The battle I have from there from all the way up to when I came back to Christ all the way up to when I came back to here...it's just been a crazy story.  I just felt I had something to offer to students.  I had a heart to help. I know how it is when you go home after being in the program..it's one of the toughest times you can endure..I just wanted to help the teenagers here."

For how CMA enacts change in students:

"Culture shock helps...it gets them out of their comfort zone..." (note: culture shock is code for brainwashing). 

The answer for how he deals with students anger is revealing because it shows the petty reasons why students are sent to CMA.

I let them verbalize that anger...I let them verbally process what they were doing at home...skipping school or talking back or whatever it may be.

His final thoughts on CMA are taken straight from the Escuela Caribe playbook- lines I once used myself.

If I were never to come down here, I'd be dead right now...it essentially saved my life.

Stockholm Syndrome Is for Real (for all NHYM Survivors...and anyone who has triumphed over trauma)

I was fifteen.
We were building the Director's house.
Our housefather would punish us if we didn't move
 faster, faster, faster...

What I need to tell you now is about Stockholm Syndrome and how it impacted me.

I need to tell you because for the past eight years I have been working on my book about the evangelical reform school Escuela Caribe. I have been vocal in speaking out against Escuela Caribe, both here and in an online private group for survivors of New Horizons Youth Ministries.  I need to tell you because I wasn't always like this, concrete that what happened to us was wrong.  I need for you to know that I had a (short) period where I adopted the party line and thought the program saved me, followed by years of ambivalency, all this before the outright surety I have advocated for the past several years ...

I need to tell you because I keep getting responses to this one post I wrote last summer.  And because of that post I need to tell you again- I wasn't always like this- concrete that what happened to us was wrong- because I too had Stockholm Syndrome, that phenomena where survivors of captivity relationships defend those who abused them.  

The last time I experienced an extreme version of Stockholm Syndrome was in 2006.  It was after Julia Scheeres' Jesus Land had been released (thank you, Julia for confirming I was not alone), when I (accompanied by the ever-amazing esposo) visited the Dominican Republic.  I had to see with my own eyes whether Escuela Caribe was abusive.

I went back to the campus outside Jarabacoa. It is beautiful-nestled high in these emerald mountains, the Cordillera Septrional. I haven't hiked the pine forests at the top of the mountain in over twenty years but it's still my safe place.

I was met at the gate (still guarded by locals- this time they had guns) by A. B.S. ( a staff member who has been affiliated since the eighties.) She took me on a tour of the school.

It was all prepped just like when we had visitors back in the early nineties (my time)- everyone smiling- no one being yelled at- no one receiving exercises- no one in the director's office being slammed. Certainly no one doing forced labor- digging a garbage pit, macheteing, moving rocks. After the tour, A and I sat alone in a new (to me) gazebo (which I recognized as being built by student labor- nice craftsmanship, my friends).  She brought out photo albums- she had all these pictures I didn't even know existed (there is one of me by the trash pit, back when I was on zero that I would love to own--I can't remember ever looking that young). 

As we talked, she reminded me of all the good memories- Bacardi Beach and whale-watching in Samana, the aquarium and Tropi-Burger in Santo Domingo, eating helados in Santiago’s park- things I had forgotten were amazing- things that looked fun but that I could remember turned ugly, once the camera was off.  And for a little while I was overwhelmed with love. I smiled and laughed mechanically all the while thinking "Is speaking out wrong?" and other variations of "Do I dare disturb the universe?"...We smiled and laughed and looked into each other's eyes and I was so overwhelmed with love that I almost caved and agreed that “Yes, you worked miracles.” 

I almost caved until I pushed back. Because we were looking at pictures back when my friends and I were young and beautiful---but then the rational part of my mind remembered how we all have struggled as adults and I had to fight those Southern girl/ Christian submissive repressions against speaking out- I had to question the system.  I asked her "why did we had to have zero level?" "Why did students have to broken in order to be fixed?"  Because do not mistake me- that is Escuela Caribe's (and most teen treatment centers) philosophy- that students HAVE to be BROKEN through demeaning loss of all freedom (to stand, to sit, to eat, to use the restroom without being watched, etc.) in order to enact change. For some people, this "change" has devastated their life. I told her that for me to believe that they were doing no harm they had to abolish the level system.  

And A. was startled. Her hazel eyes widened.  The smile dropped.  "But students have to be broken," she insisted "You have to have zero level.” 

And that's when the rational part of my mind took over, and I began more pointedly (quelling that Southern female, Southern female- never say what you really think) pushing back.  "Oh yea this person (you are showing me) has an eating disorder.  That one (and that one, and that one) is a drug addict.  They found that boy’s body in the desert...his corpse was burned."

That boy, M, haunts me. He had the face of a choirboy- and oh! the voice.  Large blue eyes.  Brown curls.  After his parents’ divorce he was sent to Escuela Caribe- not once but twice.  He’d come in young---I want to say twelve---I guess they convinced the family when he came back to the States the first time and acted out (because that's what PTSD does to you) that the second time would be the charm. 

I heard they identified his body with dental records. I could be wrong. Whatever happened was gruesome and undeniably in part connected to his trauma. Part of my mission is to pay you tribute, my friend. I hope you have found peace.

So I am telling you all of this to say that yes, I comprehend that people can feel affection for people for staff at my reform school, Escuela Caribe.  And I am telling you that even though face to face I spoke up, that later, when I went back to my hotel, I was still conflicted.  Somewhere (I WILL find it) I have this notebook where in BIG BLOCK LETTERS I wrote (like Mulder) I WANT TO BELIEVE.  Because OH I wanted to. I wanted to believe that what they were doing wasn't wrong.  I wanted to believe that in my silence I had not been complicit in allowing two more decades of student abuse.  I wanted to believe because that's what bonding under trauma does to you.  You have all these intense emotions and love for the one who hurt you and it is super hard to break.

Caribbean Mountain Academy in Need of Reform

 This summer, I signed a petition addressed to Crosswinds/ Lifeline Youth and Family Services CEO Mark Terrell.  Jesus Land author Julia Scheeres wrote the petition after requesting input from various survivors of New Horizons Youth Ministries, including myself. 

Why NHYM Alumni Are Concerned about Crosswinds

In 2011, Escuela Caribe and its parent company New Horizons Youth Ministries shut down. The property was donated to Crosswinds, a subsidiary of Lifeline Youth Ministries.  At first we celebrated. However, now we alumni are concerned.
Caribbean Mountain Academy, a division of Crosswinds, is predominantly staffed by former New Horizons Youth Ministries/ Escuela Caribe employees.  These are employees that were employed by an organization that professed that children must be broken in order to be fixed. They worked during a time when students, teenagers, were given swats and being sent to the Quiet Room (often for days) for minor violations, when students were being "slammed" against the wall for minor infractions, even when the story of waterboarding recounted by "Emily" occurred sometime around 2009. (For further reference, read this student's account of abuse in 2008, when many of these staff were employed).
Another troubling aspect is that this summer Crosswinds uploaded a parents' guidebook (since removed from their website).  The students are on a level system similar to the one utilized by Escuela Caribe. It does not say how their placement on levels is determined.  (In the past it was via a point sheet).Zero Level, which we all considered an abomination, is no longer mentioned in the guidebook.  However, it seems to have been replaced with Level One.  
This summer, Jesus Land author Julia Scheeres created a petition to protect students at Caribbean Mountain Academy.  A series of requests to protect basic human rights was outlined.  Nearly 600 individuals have signed, including Caribbean Mountain Academy/ Crosswinds CEO Mark Terrell.  
Terrell added comments.  Many are problematic. The two things that worry us most is that he carefully qualified his answers on employing former staff and on uncensored communication between students and families. 
In order for students to be protected, they need uncensored communication with their families.  They need a hotline to report abuse, and an outside agency that monitors the facility to ensure that abuse is not occurring.  For students to be safe, they shouldn't be in the Dominican Republic at all, cut off from their families.
We believe all former staff should be dismissed.  Two of the current staff members have written a post for the Crosswinds facebook page defending why they should still be employed. Even if they did not commit abuse, they still were there while it was occurring.  In the United States, teachers or counselors who do not report abuse happening to children lose their jobs.  Why should the rules be different in a therapeutic program?

Petition to End Abuse of Children at Caribbean Mountain Academy (Escuela Caribe)

In 2011, Escuela Caribe, the Christian reform school where I was incarcerated in the early '90s, was taken over by Lifeline Family and Youth Services. The Escuela Caribe campus is now called Caribbean Mountain Academy.  (This is the fourth time this school's name has been changed).  Many of the staff who were employed by Escuela Caribe now work at Caribbean Mountain Academy.

Why is this disturbing?  These same staff were complicit in the abuse of children. Read the case of "Emily," a student from 2009...

"Emily was suffering from severe depression when her parents decided to send her to this self-described “Christian therapeutic boarding school.” Shortly after her arrival, she was confined to the “Quiet Room” for several weeks, where she was forced to sleep on a concrete floor and use a bucket as a toilet. The other students were told to ignore her anguished cries. After releasing her from solitary confinement, the staff gave her a potent sedative each morning whose sleep-inducing side effect prevented her from completing her chores. In an attempt to rouse her, three men routinely dragged her outside, pinned her to the ground, and poured water over her face with a garden hose. She was terrified they would drown her."

Julia Scheeres, author of Escuela Caribe expose Jesus Land, crafted this petition to Mark Terrell, CEO of Lifeline Family and Youth Services.  It includes the previous example.  It requests that Terrell dismiss all staff employed by Escuela Caribe, ends the level system (where students are required to ask permission to enter each room, stand, sit, eat, use the bathroom, etc.), allows uncensored communication between children, their families, and other students, and abandons harsh physical and emotional confrontations, among other requests.

Please sign this petition.  Please share it with your family and friends.  Thank you for helping protect the students of Caribbean Mountain Academy. 


xoxo, Deirdre

Tin House, Hambidge, Missing Vic Chesnutt

At Tin House Writer's Workshop...attending creative nonfiction workshop with Stephen Elliott...Big fan of his work as well as his instruction style.

Have seen great readings:  Wells Tower, a mind-blowing performance on said topic by Dorothy Allison, Elliott, etc...


Feels like I have found my tribe...


Two weeks ago, I attended a residency at Hambidge. Finished the final ten percent of UnReformed.  Next up... revise, revise, revise.

Finishing fulfills the last promise I made Vic Chesnutt. I wish he were here every single day.


Three years ago, he wrote me a recommendation.  Whenever I feel lost, he guides me back.

"She's working on an ambitious psychological memoir project about her teenage years as a rebellious daughter of a Mississippi doctor sent off to a brutal Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. Now a schoolteacher with her own son in grade school and with the political tenor of the times, her story has a fresh relevance informing a shadowy current surging through fundamentalist Christianity in the American south."

New Horizons Youth Ministries Expelled from Haiti in 1974

New Horizons Youth Ministries' first overseas academy, Caribe-Vista Youth Safari, was established in Haiti. 

In 1974, they moved to the Dominican Republic. They changed their name to Caribe-Vista. (Five years later, after a 1979 Congressional Report alleging abuse, it would become Escuela Caribe...today it is known as Caribbean Mountain Academy).Various rumors were given for the program’s move, usually casting blame upon the students:  some kid had burned down native huts in Haiti.  A girl had run away and been forced into prostitution.

However, an article from 1974, tells the truth.

The program was cited by Michigan officials for being unlicensed and not offering proper care.  They were particularly concerned with Blossom’s advocacy of corporal punishment resulting in excessive bruises and bleeding.  He also was sending court-ordered students to Haiti who were supposed to be housed at Michigan’s Honey Creek Christian Homes.

The Haitian officials deported Blossom’s organization on drug charges and for not keeping their visas and other documents current.  If the Duvalier regime expels you, you must be really corrupt.

Caribbean Youth Camp Attacked As Unfit by Paper

Detroit (AP) A Caribbean camp housing 18 Michigan youths is unlicensed and may not offer proper care, according to a Detroit newspaper. Half of the youths at the camp were sent there by state probate judges and five of those six judges have ordered their charges returned to the states pending an investigation of the Caribe Vista Youth Safari. The nine other Michigan youths were placed in the camp by their parents.

The sixth judge said he planned to make a decision today after reading a state Supreme Court memo which questioned whether the courts could legally make the placements and which said use of state funds for the care of youths at the facility “may be improper”.

The youths and their director Rev Gordon Blossom, a Baptist minister from Grand Rapids, were deported from Haiti to the Dominican Republic because of drug charges and because Haitian officials said they failed to keep visas and other documents current, the Detroit Free Press said.

They have since been lodged at two sites on the island, and will be moving to a third camp soon, the paper said.

Judges ordered the youths placed in the camp, believing the 53-year old minister was running a legitimate operation based on what he called “culture shock.”

Blossom believes the disorientation resulting from living in a different country with a strange language, monetary system, life-style and social-political problems will make it easier for the campers to overcome influences that get them into trouble in the first place, the paper said.

Blossom runs a licensed Michigan camp called Honey Creek Christian Homes in Lowell, Michigan. He told judges that their wards would be sent to Honey Creek, then to the Caribbean.

However, the paper said it learned the youths were flown directly to Haiti. Part of the stir that has prompted some judges to order their wards back to Michigan stems from Blossom’s questionable maneuvering and advocacy of corporal punishment. They said they were worried by Blossom’s failure to keep them up to date on what was happening with his charges.

“Kids need a swat on the butt when they mouth off,” Blossom was quoted as saying. However, the Free Press said it learned excessive bruises and bleeding sometimes resulted. Physical punishment has been discontinued, however, and group therapy substituted, the paper said.*

Although some of the judges have deplored Blossom’s operation, he argued in his defense: “If authorities….. are unaware of the sexual abuse, social stigma, destructive influences, and psychological assaults experienced by children in the reform schools, detention centers and mental hospitals to which our kids otherwise would have been sent, we have just cause for their replacement.

“If, while knowing these things, they continue to stifle programs calculated to avoid these traumas, they justly indict themselves in the minds of all knowledgeable persons.”

from the The Daily Globe, Ironwood, Michigan, August 19, 1974, p.6.

*Physical punishment was resumed once NHYM moved to the Dominican Republic.  It was documented in a 1979 Congressional Hearing. 

Abusive Tactics at Escuela Caribe Featured in 1979 Congressional Report

On January 4, 1979, Congress began a hearing on the Abuse and Neglect of Children in Institutions.   Escuela Caribe, then called Caribe Vista, was condemned for its abuse of children.


Children's Advocate Kenneth Wooden delivered the following testimony:

"I would like to share with you my 1976 observations of the facility that is currently charging taxpayers in Evansville, Indiana $8360 a year per child. Caribe-Vista was totally unsupervised by any outside American. Blossom's daughter and son-in-law ran all three group homes. Staff was paid $100 per month and a promise of a better job elsewhere, because of their experience gained at Caribe-Vista. A key point is parents were not permitted to visit for the first four months. The mail was censored at all times. I submit to you parents cannot visit their children so Gordon Blossom can brainwash their children on his religious programs. If the child had any dental problems, local unqualified students who pulled tooth for quarter. Education was nothing more than correspondence courses.

Forms of discipline were demonstrated to me as I was talking to him about 10 kids. One young girl who had her head shaved was taunted by a staff member to tell me why she was bald. As she stood in silent shame, he harassed her about her weakness of the flesh-she ran away for the weekend and mingled with the local Dominican male.

The director of religion freely admitted that the children were beaten with a stick on the rump "hard enough to make them fear it." Three days of solitary confinement was given before the beatings.

 Can you imagine forcing a child 16 years old to explain to a strange man, myself, why her head was shaven and how the director of religion required that girl to talk about her sexual life on weekends when she would slip out of the facility and how she was beaten with a stick and how she was placed in solitary confinement?

The young girl who was so degraded by these people was there without any government scrutiny on the part of the United States.

Gordon Blossom is making a lot of money figuring the amount of kids there down there, figuring what he is paying, the cost he is paying for his program-what appears to be a glorified babysitting outfit, could have made Gordon Blossom a millionaire and four years. His program is now eight years old. I believe that the state of Michigan is refused to allow New Horizon's Youth Ministries to operate at home, certainly someone from the State Department with a background in public health, should visit and evaluate the operation in the Dominican Republic."

The only outcome of this hearing seems to be that Escuela Caribe changed its name to Caribe Vista.  Prior to that, when the program came under scrutiny, it moved from Michigan to Indiana.

In 2011, after pressure from our alumni website, The Truth About New Horizons Youth Ministry, response to Julia Scheeres' memoir, Jesus Land, a protest at the Marion facility, publicity over Kate Logan's forthcoming expose, Kidnapped for Christ, etc., the program changed ownership. 

Escuela Caribe is now Caribbean Mountain Academy, operated by Crosswinds Youth Organization, a division of Lifeline.  At least seven former staff are employed.  Many alumni doubt that their tactics have changed.

Incidentally, in 1979 Wooden also delivered testimony detailing abuse at Provo Canyon, a facility where Mitt Romney's Utah finance co-chair, Robin Lichfield, was employed at the time of the hearing.  Lichfield went on to found the infamous World Wide Association of Specialty Programs, which is known for abusive practices, including locking teens in cages. 

1988 Escuela Caribe Promotional Video

Julia Scheeres, author of Jesus Land and A Thousand Lives, uploaded this 1988 Escuela Caribe* promotional video. I attended E.C. from 1990-91.  I knew many of the staff and a few of the students in this film.


In it, founder Gordon Blossom speaks of "youngsters who come from nice neighborhoods and good families" who are negatively impacted by the dangers of the "secularized culture in America...with its materialistic and humanistic values" and public schools. (According to the American Psychiatric Association, four out of five kids in for-profit teen treatment facilities are white and middle class).


Blossom speaks of how being in the Dominican Republic "psychologically disorients kids" enabling the staff to "plant new perspectives."  What he means is that students were brainwashed, a process hastened by separating them from their family, using abuse.


Phil Redwine, who was director when I was there, says "the most important part of my being here is not how I run the school, but how I love the kids."


"If a youngster completes all three phases of our training program, that youngster is going to be tremendously enriched, and so will all of us," Blossom concludes.




*Recently, Escuela Caribe was reported to be closed.  However, it has now reopened as Caribbean Mountain Academy.  It employs many of the same staff.

Kidnapped for Christ

In December, I flew to Los Angeles.  I was interviewed by Kate Logan, the director of the forthcoming expose about Escuela Caribe, Kidnapped for Christ. 
Since I began writing UnReformed, I've had lots of people ask about Escuela Caribe. Kate knows more about the school than anyone I've met---alumni included.  Talking with her was very strange, yet very cool. Cathartic.
Learn more about Kidnapped for Christ here.  Donations to help complete the film are appreciated.

Ah, Advocacy....

On April 12, the night of my reading with David Lowery, I came home thrilled at how people had resonated with the UnReformed excerpt.

And then...

That same night, I found out that my school library media assistant’s position hadbeen cut from next year’s Clarke County School Budget.  Other cuts of positions who directly work with children were made.

Instead of writing UnReformed, most of the past five weeks have been spent advocating on behalf of what’s best for the children of Clarke County.  It’s the school district where my son and his friends attend. 

It’s been exhausting, yet rewarding.  In this era, it’s important for all of us to become activists about a myriad of issues.

Of course, you are hearing this from a former reform school girl.

One aspect that is mind-boggling is realizing that in some places, school libraries are not just being underfunded, but cut. 

As a writer, a reader, and a school library media specialist, I know this is short-sighted.   

School let out Friday.  Tomorrow night is the last input session on the budget.  I'm gradually reabsorbing myself into editing and finishing my book. Over the past five days, much progress has been made. 
My summer goal-- to complete UnReformed before I go back to work in August. Also, to begin looking for an agent/ publisher.   Now’s the time---in September, director Kate Logan plans for Kidnapped forChrist’s rough cut to be complete (In December, I was interviewed). More updates on Kidnapped for Christ and the status of Escuela Caribe will be posted soon.

Stars are aligning.  Wish me luck!