Romney, Torture and teens

[bkdelong]

While everyone seems to be focusing on how Romney treats his animal companions, there seems to be a bit of a block as to how some of his chosen staffers treat children and teens - en masse.

Reason Magazine posts an article by Maia Szalavitz about Romney's "money man" in Utah - Robert Lichfield. Those who know me or have read this blog since I started it will know that name. Robert Lichfield is beyond a large number of shell companies and overseas behavior modification schools for "defiant teens".

Lichfield has been supporting Romney since he ran for Governor of Massachusetts - this isn't new. He's also being sued by 133 plaintiffs alleging abuse at his "schools". Mind you, he's opened up these schools in companies with flexible laws - Czech Republic, Jamaica, American Samoa, Mexico, Costa Rica, Fiji - and many of them still got closed down after investigations into abuse allegations - they just restart and reopen elsewhere.

Some of these schools are in the US as well - Utah (of course), Montana, south Carolina, New York, and they're always looking for small, rural locations where they can fly under the radar.

Full disclosure: I worked with a social worker named Donna Headrick back in the late 90s to research Lichfield, his shell companies, "escort services" who parents hired to kidnap the teens out of their beds in the middle of the night and take them to these schools. You can read those years worth of research online.

The trick? They spamdex the web with loads of domains filled with thousands of keyworded pages to draw in desperate parents at their absolute end with kids. They hold a seminar for these parents and use techniques based on LifeSpring which traces its way through est and eventually to Scientology through a man named Werner Erhard.

They give these parents such an ecstatic, overwhelming, emotionally charged experience combined with cultish mantras that the parents turn their kids over to this "therapeutic program" to be cured. See - they become hooked and the only way they can continue such experiences is to continue paying for these seminars, (meanwhile paying exorbitantly to put these kids in the "residential treatment facilities") or help sell the program themselves.

It's like a pyramid game - we saw tons of parents setting up regional branches of Lichfield's "Teen Help" and even their own recruitment programs for desperate parents. Lichfield and his business partners setup more companies that included services such as helping parents use insurance and educational grants to pay the enormous fees for having the kids in these programs and for them to continue the parallel process of being brainwashed themselves.

As part of the ecstatic experience, parents are drilled that ANY negative comments about the program, how they're being treated, what's going on by their kids is "lies and manipulation". Pretty smart way to completely discount any naysayers - sound familiar? Parents and relatives don't find out just how true the abuse allegations are until they basically sneak on site to these schools and demand to be let in - in some cases having even to sneak in. Parents and children are kept separated from each other for long periods of time as part of the "treatment". Uh huh.

When parents and "program kids" are asked about the experience they say "[My Kid/I] would have been dead or in jail". It was disturbing how robotic these responses became.

Unfortunately, it's not just the "defiant" teens who end up there. The program had or has gotten very good at presenting itself as a way for one side of a divorced couple to get back at the other. I saw numerous, numerous cases where one side of the couple got remarried and sent the kid into the program to punish the other side. In some cases, kids who were GLBT, had a learning disorder, or just didn't get along with their parents or conform to society were sent into this "one size fits all" program.

As time went on, Lichfield churned out program kids and parents who continued the creation of these companies, every so often hoodwinking the press into believing their life-changing experience. The schools would get shut down due to abuse allegations, poor sanitation (by the Mexican Govt of a US company?), and even complete lack of passports and papers.

Often the kids in them would be transferred to another school and the parents told they had to shut down the facility for one reason or another. Even the staff who ran these facilities would go to start new ones allegedly severing ties with Lichfield only to have them taking referrals from one of Lichfield and his partners many companies.

Again, read the IntrepidNet articles - do some due diligence yourself. I have personally spoken with parents and kids who suffered horribly and the psychological damage is lifelong and painful.

Why is Romney letting this many play such a role in his campaign in Utah? Even more - why is he letting Mel Sembler handle the money of his National campaign? Sembler's ties to the long-time corrupt Straight Inc "residential treatment facilities" is well known. Why does Romney condone this? WHY AREN'T MORE PEOPLE QUESTIONING THIS?

Comments

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Yet ANOTHER reason to hate Romney. Evil, evil, evil man.

[cellio]

Eww. How revolting. :-(

[chrystie69.livejournal.com]

Well I KNEW He was evil before...my ex's new wife is friends with his family...After read the article about his dog I believe that he belongs in Jail...if it had happend in NY he would be! A man who is that stupid cannot run this country! Ughhhh.....

[elizabear.livejournal.com]

FYI - in the 3rd paragraph, you wrote "companies" when I think you meant "countries".

Thanks for the info - very disturbing.