Dundee Ranch Investigated   
More than 50 teens walked out of a controversial behavior program in Costa Rica that has this week after government officials told them they could not be held against their will.

The teens left the Academy at Dundee Ranch after officials with the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia or PANI (Costa Rican Child Welfare Agency ) made an unannounced visit Tuesday to the school in the town of Orotina, 45 minutes southwest of San José. 

The academy is affiliated with World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools of St. George.

Officials with PANI, which has been investigating the academy, told the teens Tuesday afternoon they could not be kept against their will or denied contact with their parents. They told the teens they were free to go, according to Ken Kay, president of World Wide.

Of the 200 or so teens enrolled in the program, nearly one-fourth immediately walked out the door. They had no money, passports or return plane tickets, Kay said. "The police apparently stood right there," he said. "They had a bus out front and offered rides."

Kay said 46 students returned by nightfall.

Seven teens asked PANI officials for help in returning home. The U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica is assisting those teens in reaching their parents.

"The U.S. embassy has been periodically monitoring and going to Dundee to check things out," a spokeswoman said. "PANI was doing that as well."

Two teens were still unaccounted for, though Kay said one had been living in Costa Rica before entering the program and had probably "gotten in touch with people to keep him safe."

Kay said he had been contacted by two parents who do not want their children taken out of the program. They planned to pick up their children and move them to another program affiliated with World Wide, he said.

No one answered telephone calls to Dundee Ranch, owned by Narvin Lichfield, early Wednesday evening. Kay said it is business as usual at the ranch following the uproar.

PANI also released a report on the ranch and filed a criminal complaint seeking a judicial inquiry into the academy, according to the Tico Times.

Al Dia, reported that an immigration inspection determined four Jamaican staffers had no permits to work in Costa Rica and that nearly half the adolescents at the program had expired tourist visas. The newspaper also said the academy has no national permits to operate as a rehabilitation program for drug addicts, or for modifying behaviors of children.

The newspaper reported on Monday excerpts of letters it said were sent by teens who attended the school. They said they had been victims of abuse, punishment and unhealthy living conditions.

Fernando Vargas, a prosecutor in the town of Atenas, told Al Dia he is investigating a case involving a North Carolina woman and her daughter, who was at the ranch.
"We're investigating possibilities that there may have been some infractions against the teens living there, specifically against their freedoms, that constitute a crime," he said. "In these academies, there's no control from the United States nor from the country where they are operating, and the money that's being paid isn't regulated by anyone."

Attorneys for Dundee Ranch and PANI are scheduled to meet today, Kay said.

"We've been in touch with the Embassy, the State Department and the Department of Social Services down there to find out what their concerns are," Kay said.

"We were going along under the understanding that PANI had requested that Dundee Ranch make some corrections and changes in the way it is doing things," he said. "As I understood it, we had an agreement and had 30 days to comply and had every intention of complying."

He characterized PANI's action as "extremely irresponsible."

"Telling a bunch of kids they can do what they want and can leave is totally irresponsible," he said, calling it contrary to government policy, parents' expectations and a violation of United Nations protocol.

"If they were truly concerned about the safety of those kids, why not stay there instead of cutting them loose and leaving?" he said.

Dundee Ranch, which bills itself as a "paradise for change," opened about 18 months ago in what used to be a former adventure ranch set in the lush tropical environs of Orotina. It accepts teens who are "struggling in their home, school or community" and pledges that "inappropriate behavior is confronted, consequented and redirected."

Dundee Ranch is one of nine residential school programs affiliated with World Wide, all of which use tough-love techniques to rehabilitate teens.

That approach is too tough, according to some parents.

Since the late 1990s, the association has been sued seven times in Utah's U.S. District Court by parents alleging negligence and abuse at three member facilities. Kay points out his association has never paid a dime to any plaintiff and that most of the cases were dismissed.

California attorney Thomas Burton, who represented three plaintiffs, is appealing their cases to the 10th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Denver.

A week ago, Amberly Knight, former director of the Dundee Ranch, told Al Dia details about alleged abuses at the academy. She said students were made to kneel on concrete for hours, they were forced to enter a dark room where they had to write 3,000 to 150,000 words before being let out and had to swim 100 laps around the pool.

"As an employee, the only training I received was how to manipulate parents," she said in a document sent to the welfare agency and cited by the newspaper.


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