Costa Rica Intervenes at U.S. - Owned Academy Dundee Ranch

See also: School for Teens Tries to Survive

The Costa Rican authorities moved yesterday (May 22) to seize the American - owned behavior-modification academy - Dundee Ranch, in Orotina -  for children after hearing allegations of physical and emotional abuse, officials said.

Parents and program officials described a chaotic scene at the site,  where about 200 children, ages 11 to 17, almost all of them Americans, live in a former hotel under a strict regimen.

Government officials said the program had been ordered by a local prosecutor to comply immediately with all Costa Rican laws. A parent at the academy, Jan Bezuidenhout, said the order "means that the program as it exists now will cease to function."

The Costa Rican authorities claimed that the academy's punishments included physical and emotional abuse, isolation and physical restraints; that its physical plant was inadequate; that it lacked trained personnel, that 100 of the 193 American children at the school had expired tourist visas; and that the school was overcrowded, forcing some children to sleep on the floor.

The Academy at Dundee Ranch is one of four foreign-based programs under the banner of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, or Wwasps. The association, based in Utah, has 11 affiliated programs with about 2,200 children, roughly half of whom are in Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica, and the rest in Utah, Montana, South Carolina and New York.

The organization is trying to transfer many of the children from Dundee Ranch to its site in Jamaica, called Tranquillity Bay, Costa Rican officials said. One boy begged his parents by telephone to let him return home, but they refused. It is likely that he will be sent to Tranquillity Bay, along with at least 30 other children, the officials said.

Other children sought refuge today with Costa Rica's child-welfare agency. Still others are being retrieved by their parents.

The highly profitable Wwasps programs, aimed at troubled teenagers and their parents, have faced licensing and legal challenges in the United States and abroad. Though many children and parents praise the programs for instilling discipline, others have complained of abusive treatment and deceptive business practices.

Dundee Ranch, which charges more than $30,000 a year, is owned by Narvin Lichfield, a brother of Robert Lichfield, a founder of Wwasps and its main marketing arm, Teen Help.

Over the past seven years, local governments and State Department officials have investigated accusations of abuses at Wwasps-affiliated programs in Mexico, the Czech Republic and Samoa. The Mexican program, in Cancún, and the Czech program closed. The Samoan program cut its affiliation with Wwasps.

State officials in Utah and South Carolina have cited at least four Wwasps programs for improper or nonexistent licenses.

Email this page to a Friend