On January 4, 1979, Congress held a hearing on the abuse and neglect of youth in institutions. The U.S. government was spending millions of dollars to house teens in for-profit institutions where they were often beaten, drugged or sexually abused. The goal of the hearings was to authorize the Justice Department to intervene for young people whose basic human rights were being violated.
Kenneth Wooden, a former juvenile delinquent turned child advocate, investigated four facilities: the New Horizons program (then known as Caribe Vista) in the Dominican Republic, Provo Canyon School of Provo, Utah, and the Clinicare Corporation, which operated two different institutions in Wisconsin.
“During the last seven years,” Wooden told Congress, “as I’ve traveled all across the United States, I have witnessed countless children in solitary confinement without clothes, heat, toilets, or hope. Children who were beaten physically and psychologically. Children are sexually assaulted by both staff and older children. Children who finally lost hope and committed suicide with light bulbs, electrical wiring, bed bars, doorknobs and rat poison. Conditions in some facilities are so deplorable that they defy the imagination and therefore are dismissed by many as “sensational journalism” or “pure theater.” One thing is certain: as long as we through ignorance or educated greed, deny these conditions exist, the cruel and inhuman treatment you mentioned, Senator, will continue year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation.”
Wooden described the Caribe-Vista New Horizons program, located in Dominican Republic, as “a creation of Gordon Blossom, a retired clergymen living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Although the state of Michigan has refused to grant Blossom a license, and the State’s attorney’s office is currently trying to close down his operation, he is sending American children out of the country for such crimes as running away, school truancy and “being out of control.
…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 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 a local Dominican male.
The director of religion freely admitted that the children were beaten with a stick on the romp 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 degraded, 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 has refused to allow New Horizons 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.”
Congress refused to act on Wooden’s suggestions. In response to the hearings, Gordon Blossom said, “That guy is whistling Dixie! We’re not doing anything wrong.”
Blossom changed Caribe-Vista’s name to Escuela Caribe. The state of Michigan refused to certify the US branch of his program in Grand Rapids. In 1983, New Horizons Youth Academy was established in Indiana.
It’s been 35 years since Wooden delivered their report. Congress has not yet passed legislation to protect adolescents in residential teen treatment facilities.
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