New Horizons Youth Ministries Founded by a Pedophile

New Horizons Youth Ministries (parent organization of my reform school, Escuela Caribe) was founded in 1971 by Pastor Gordon  Blossom, a former juvenile delinquent who'd served a stint at Michigan's Floyd Starr Commonwealth Home.* By the time I arrived at Escuela Caribe in January 1990, Pastor Blossom was not active in the "ministry"  except during Spiritual Emphasis Week in the Canada branch, Missanabie Woods Academy. Then he would deliver a sermon in the chapel, segregated by sex, first to the boys, then the girls.  I don't even want to go into details here- but it was awful and we had to sit there and take it because the Pastor was speaking and he was always right. Scarred me for years.  I wrote a chapter about it this summer.

Yesterday a fellow alum rocked our cyberwaves- she discovered Pastor Blossom molested one of his daughters, Shirley Jo Petersen.  Petersen wrote a book, the Whisper, about healing from sexual abuse.  Petersen also alleges (and I believe her) that the pastor physically and emotionally abused her other siblings. She says that in part she has healed because she realizes that he was abused. Which I get on one level, yeah we all are constantly replicating trauma until we resolve it, but there is no excusing it, because at some point you have to face the monster within yourself and change. And I know that I probably am thinking more about my situation with my parents than hers. It is important to note- when she wrote my friend, Petersen said it didn't excuse what he did.

But I don't know what to do with the concrete proof that my parents entrusted me to a pedophile over my grandparents, who loved me and wanted me, to reform me, all because Blossom's "ministry" was Christian®.  And I don't want to think of all the predators who blatantly abused me and my friends.  I'd rather focus on how my writing is taking off in Sabrina Orah Mark's workshop, or the way right now the gingkos are my favorite gold, or that on Thursday night my guy and I saw one of Television's only U.S. shows.  

*Fun fact:  Blossom was once recognized for his civic work by Gov. George Romney, father of Mitt.

Presidential Candidate Romney Linked to Abuse at For-Profit Teen Treatment Facilities

    Several recent articles connect Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to abuse in the troubled teen industry. 

    Art Levine’s The Dark Side of a Bain Success details how neglect at Bain controlled-for-profit teen residential programs have resulted in patient abuse, emotional trauma, and even death.      

    Susie Madrak’s Child Sexual Abuse in the World of Romney's Top LDS donors links Romney not only to mistreatment at the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs, a chain of for-profit teen treatment centers founded by former Romney financial co-chair, Robert Lichfield (see details below) and also to molestation in the Scouts program. 

    Lastly, the Daily Kos collects several links documenting Romney’s connection to torture and abuse in the teen treatment industry in this piece. Of particular note is a 2007 article by Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids author Maia Szalavitz. 133 plaintiffs have filed suit against Romney’s associate, Robert Lichfield. Teens allege that they were “locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.”

    Lichfield was previously mentioned here and here.

Escuela Caribe and Crosswinds/ Caribbean Mountain Academy Updates

This past Wednesday, Kidnapped for Christ filmmaker Kate Logan, Jesus Land author Julia Scheeres, journalist Kathryn Joyce (who wrote the Roloff/Hepzibah House expose for Mother Jones), and others appeared on the Ann Walker Show (September 12 edition).  They discussed the history of New Horizons Youth Ministries and similar fundamentalist reform schools, their abuses, the lack of regulation of such programs, and the stigma that hampers survivor allegations of abuse from being taken seriously.  
Joyce noted that many of the female survivors of the Roloff programs often "ricochet into addiction" in order to deal with the trauma.  Scheeres provided anecdotes from discussion between many NHYM alumni, who acknowledge struggling with failed relationships and/or addiction.  A high percentage of us have died early or committed suicide, which, whenever I force myself to remember, always reminds me of that Jim Carroll song, People Who Died.
Walker briefly noted the connections of the Romneys (George and Mitt) to the troubled teen industry.  Mitt Romney has received financial backing from numerous Utah troubled teen programs.* His father, George Romney, was a supporter of the Floyd Starr Commonwealth Home.  Pastor Gordon Blossom, who founded Escuela Caribe, the school where myself, Scheeres, and hundreds of other alumni were abused, was a Floyd graduate . EC alumni from the seventies have told me stories of how Blossom would tell them that even though they were being beaten and locked up in the Quiet Room, etc., they didn't have it bad---Blossom's hands were permanently deformed from having them beaten by a leather belt at Floyd.
What constitutes abuse is all context I suppose. Which leads me into update two. 
Mark Terrell, CEO of Crosswinds/ Caribbean Mountain Academy, the organization that purchased New Horizons Youth Ministries, recently held a webinar where we alumni were allowed to send in questions.  Ever awesome alum Tim S. compiled a list. 
We appreciate Crosswinds holding a forum to answer our questions.  We appreciate that they understand that our mission is to help them help kids.  We don't want kids to be damaged the way we were by Escuela Caribe, which is why we are so focused on the CMA campus.
However, we are troubled by their decision to continue to employ former Escuela Caribe staff. At least five of the eight staff employed by Crosswinds are former Escuela Caribe employees.  Many were there in 2006 when Kate Logan filmed the original footage for Kidnapped for Christ, when (among other abuses) teenagers were receiving swats and were being sent to the Quiet Room. They were also anti-gay.
I visited the same year (separately)- I met a girl who suffered from an anxiety disorder (before she went to the program), who was "on silence" to everyone but staff, who was given swats frequently.  Her parents were paying $6000/month for this "treatment."  (They pulled her- but not before they spent their retirement trying to help their daughter).
Many alumni and I find the presence of these former individuals as current staff members unacceptable. We believe that by witnessing abusive behavior over a period of years, their norm for what entails abusive behavior is WAY out of whack...they have mental blinders to what would actually be abuse.  Even if these individuals did not commit abuse, through their silence they were complicit in the abuse of numerous children, and therefore are not trustworthy to counsel the teens who are currently there.
Understand, I offer this opinion with utmost respect.  Like many of my fellow alumni, I appreciate the strides Crosswinds currently is taking to improve their program.

*Robert Lichfield, Mitt Romney's co-chair for fundraising in Utah, founded the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs, a coalition of twenty plus programs wracked with allegations of extreme physical and sexual abuse---interestingly, Lichfield was employed by Provo Canyon [a WWASP school] around the same time as the 1979 Congressional Hearings into the Abuse and Neglect of Children in Institutions; Escuela Caribe was also cited in the same report.