Report: PANI Failed to Protect Kids

Blasting the Child Welfare Office (PANI) for acting "permissive and tolerant" of alleged children's rights abuses at Dundee Ranch Academy, the Ombudsman's Office this week recommended the PANI develop new protocol for situations where children are at high risk and to conduct an internal investigation to determine who is responsible for the Dundee disaster.

The Ombudsman's report noted the PANI was first informed of alleged child abuse at Dundee from a report published in The Tico Times Oct. 25, 2002, but did not intervene until four months later, in 2003. Once the PANI investigation officially began last February, it was not conducted with the urgency or inter-institutional cooperation the situation required, the report charges.

"The PANI did not alert or coordinate with corresponding [government] institutions to guarantee the attention and protection of the minors interned at Dundee Ranch Academy," the Ombudsman's investigation found.

The report concludes by recommending that the PANI - in compliance with its own legal mandate - develop a manual to coordinate inter-institutional attention to minors, elaborate clear new policies to respond immediately to situations where children are at high risk, and conduct an internal investigation to determine whether any child-welfare authority requires disciplinary actions.

PANI Minister Rosalia Gil this week said, "We are taking all the recommendations," but did not elaborate.

The Ombudsman's Office also recommended that the Ministry of Health develop better controls to monitor sanitary conditions at facilities where minors are lodged. The Ministry has 15 working days to notify the Ombudsman's Office how it will implement the new controls, according to the report.

The Ombudsman's Office - an independent government watchdog organization - has no legal authority, but in the words of former Ombudswoman Sandra Piszk, is empowered by a "moral force."

DUNDEE Ranch, a U.S.-run behavior-modification facility that housed about 200 troubled teenagers from the United States, was closed May 26 following a week of rioting, vandalism and students running away from its campus on the remote grounds of a former hotel in the Caribbean slope town of Orotina (TT May 23, 2003). The chaotic student revolt was sparked by a government intervention ordered by the Prosecutor's Office in Atenas to investigate allegations of abuse and students being held at Dundee against their will.

According to an incident report by the Health Ministry - one of five government agencies present during the intervention - the situation at Dundee spiraled out of control when Prosecutor Fernando Vargas assembled the students and asked them to attest to the positive and negative aspects of the Academy.

Once the kids started to discuss openly the disciplinary tactics employed at Dundee, they started to challenge the academy's authority and the situation became "unmanageable as the youth started to express their desires to leave and communicate with their families because they were uncomfortable with the Academy's norms," according to the report.

Academy owner Narvin Lichfield, of St. George, Utah, was arrested on allegations of abuse, coercion and international rights violations. He was released from jail 24 hours later under a series of conditions, and Dundee was closed (TT May 23, 30; June 6, 13).

Lichfield told The Tico Times last week that he is still not sure what he did wrong, and hopes to reopen an improved version of Dundee Ranch in compliance with Costa Rican law, by December (TT, Sept. 5). PANI Minister Gil, meanwhile, said last Friday that she will do what she can to make sure Dundee does not reopen.

"We don't want them here," she said.

THE Ombudsman's Office opened its investigation of the government's handling of Dundee last June and requested detailed reports of actions taken by the PANI, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and the Drug and Alcohol Institute (TT, June 13). The Ombudsman's final report found only the PANI and the Health Ministry to be accountable.

The PANI's report to the Ombudsman, obtained this week by The Tico Times, indicates that child welfare authorities had been conducting a confidential preliminary investigation in coordination with the U.S. Embassy since the beginning of 2003. The report claims the PANI gave Dundee an extra-official verbal warning that it needed to make drastic changes to its sanitary conditions, health services, disciplinary tactics - including physical restraints and solitary confinement of students - and respect children's rights to free communication, recreation time and privacy, if it hoped to remain open.

The Academy also was told it was not allowed to open its facility known as "High Impact" - a walled compound under construction at Dundee to "jail" habitually disobedient students (TT, Oct. 25, 2002).

The PANI claimed it was trying to handle the issue discreetly and confidentially, given the complicating fact that most of the students were from the United States and placed at Dundee with the consent of their parents or custodial guardian.

However, when the issue attracted international attention in the New York Times last May, the PANI was forced to show its cards and play catch-up with the Prosecutor's Office, which ordered an intervention the morning of May 19 based on a complaint filed by Sue Flowers, mother of a student at Dundee (TT; May 30).

UPON receiving notice of the planned intervention, the PANI quickly went public with its probe. It notified the Academy it had 30 days to make 15 necessary changes to remain open, and filed a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor's Office the same day ordering authorities at Dundee to "immediately cease all situations that violate or threaten to violate the rights of the children there." The first of the two government investigations occurred the following day.

Despite failing to notify other government institutions of its three-month-old confidential probe of Dundee, the PANI expressed outrage that the Prosecutor's Office took the initiative to intervene, effectively hijacking the child welfare agency's investigation.

"The events that occurred following the intervention of the Prosecutor are precisely what the PANI did not want to happen," according to the PANI's report to the Ombudsman's Office.

DESPITE claims by Dundee defenders that the Academy's extreme "tough-love" tactics were necessary to help youth dealing with extreme discipline problems, the Ombudsman's final report confirms allegations made by the former facility's many critics.

The program was based on a "methodology of behavior and environmental modification" without proper professional support, according to the report. The program was drastic, using extreme measures to control the teenagers, such as food deprivation, harsh living conditions and diverse punishments to force the kids to behave.

The Health Ministry also found several heavy drugs - psychotropic, sedative and anti-convulsant medications - that were distributed in the Academy infirmary, even though it lacked a proper license from the Health Ministry. The finding seemed to lend credence to allegations made by several former students that youths were drugged with "morphine" and a "lithium knock-off" to keep them under control.

Lichfield denies knowledge of the alleged druggings.

The U.S. Congress also has taken interest in the Utah-based WorldWide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), the behavior-modification umbrella organization to which Dundee belonged.

House Representative George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee, last month asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to review WWASP's tax-exempt status and investigate whether the organization has received any special tax treatment in the past.

One of Rep. Miller's congressional aides said this week that the congressman also is preparing to ask U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to open a federal criminal investigation into alleged child mistreatment at WWASP programs.

This article was reprinted with permission from
The Tico Times; www.ticotimes.net

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