'Tough-Love' Program Center of Firestorm

As the dust settles after a week of rioting and violent upheaval at Dundee Ranch Academy, hidden in the backwoods of the Pacific-slope town of Orotina, questions are being raised about the future of the controversial behavior modification facility and the government's handling of last week's interventions.

Dundee Ranch, a member of the Utah-based World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), was closed indefinitely on Saturday by U.S. owner Narvin Lichfield, who was jailed for 24 hours last week on allegations of detaining minors against their will, coercion and international rights violations.

The arrest culminated a week of chaos sparked by Prosecutor Fernando Vargas, who visited the "tough-love" academy with a judge and government officials last week and told the 200 students they did not have to stay there against their will. Many students rioted, committing acts of violence and vandalism, and 35 ran away (TT, May 23).

Lichfield was released from jail Friday at midnight on condition he not go near the academy until all the students have left, and not leave the country for six months. His Costa Rican wife, Flory Alvarado, is under the same court order (TT Daily Page, May 26).

By week's end, all the students had left the country for their homes in the U.S. or to WWASP's notoriously tough facility in Jamaica. Both Lichfield and WWASP president Ken Kay denied knowledge that some former Dundee students had been shipped off to Jamaica, but, according to parents, more than a dozen youths from the Costa Rica program are now at the Tranquility Bay facility on the Caribbean island.

Kay, despite his claims of ignorance, sent a private letter to Dundee parents last week recommending that their children be sent either to Jamaica or one of two other similar WWASP programs (TT, May 23).

Inspector Curtis Jones of the Jamaican Tourist Police told The Tico Times Tuesday he had already received reports of children shipped to the WWASP program on his island and was planning to visit the remote facility next week to investigate.

Lichfield, who compares himself to Joan of Arc, told The Tico Times this week that he hopes to work out a legal agreement with Costa Rican authorities about what he "can and can't do" and reopen Dundee within the next two months. The Child Welfare Agency (PANI) last week issued a report notifying Dundee that it had to make 15 critical changes if it hoped to get legal and remain open (TT, May 23).

However, Lichfield admits that it is still too soon to predict the fate of his correctional facility here, or whether he will face criminal charges for rights abuse.

"I am scared crapless," he told The Tico Times this week. "I am afraid because they are going to try and make me the poster child for rights abuses that didn't happen. "

Lichfield and Dundee supporters, including many parents who fiercely defend the program, maintain that the academy's extreme disciplinary tactics - including physical restraint and solitary confinement - are necessary for teenagers with extreme discipline and drug problems (TT, Oct. 25, 2002; Jan. 17, March 14). Lichfield reportedly paid for four former Dundee students to fly back to Costa Rica this week to give testimony about the merits of the program.

Critics of the facility, meanwhile, argue that the academy's tough-love practices bordered on rights abuse and torture. Child advocacy group Casa Alianza last week went so far as to request international intervention from the UN Committee on Torture.

New concerns were raised this week following allegations by several former students that Dundee's nurses gave youths unidentified pills and injections. Upon returning home to California last weekend, Codi, 14, told her mother she had been given "little white pills." Codi's mother told The Tico Times this week that her daughter had been instructed to take two pills "for allergies" after police brought her back following last Tuesday's breakout. On at least one occasion, her mother said, Codi reportedly took pills that made her dizzy and "walk into walls."

Former Dundee student Michael Zighelboim, 17, alleges that some students were given injections of some sort of "Valium knockoff drug" to make them sleep when they were crying at night. One student was reportedly given such a strong dose that he stayed asleep for two days, Zighelboim charged.

Asked whether Dundee staff medicated the teens, Lichfield told The Tico Times this week: "I don't know anything about it. "

While Dundee's future in Costa Rica is unclear, the debate over the government's handling of the investigation and subsequent interventions raged this week.

The Tico Times this week learned from an inside source that Prosecutor Vargas requested government intervention of Dundee before the Child Welfare Office (PANI) submitted its criminal complaint against the institution, despite initial reports that Vargas was acting on the PANI's complaint (TT, May 23).

Vargas, reportedly unaware that the PANI had been investigating Dundee for several months, based his request on an earlier complaint filed by Dundee mother Su Flowers, who came to Costa Rica last March to try to get her daughter Nicole out of the program (TT, March 14).

Flowers filed her complaint with the Prosecutor's Office May 16, according to lawyer Adelia Caravaca. Flowers' allegations that her daughter was being held at Dundee against her will reportedly prompted Vargas to request an immediate intervention and forced the PANI to scramble to file its own complaint before the intervention took place.

PANI technical director Ana Teresa León, who headed the PANI's investigation of Dundee and authored the institution's report, this week admitted that that the government agency's complaint was filed Monday afternoon, apparently several hours after Vargas had asked the judge to authorize intervention. She expressed frustration that the prosecutor hijacked a three-month-old process headed by the PANI.

León told The Tico Times PANI had been planning a government intervention since February. However, she said, the intervention was being coordinated carefully with other government institutions and the U.S. Embassy.

But once Vargas set the wheels in motion, the PANI was forced to play catch-up.

When the intervention began to spiral out of control, the PANI reportedly tried to convince the 35 youths who escaped from the facility to return to Dundee - even though it had just filed a complaint against the facility alleging, among other things, physical and emotional abuse.

"The PANI told the students they should return to Dundee because the ranch had custody of the children, not us," León told The Tico Times this week. "The children were Dundee's responsibility, not ours."

"The situation of any child who is in danger is the responsibility of the PANI, according to the Costa Rican Constitution. Especially in this case, where we have children from another country who don't speak the language and who have reportedly suffered emotional and physical damage," countered Bruce Harris, director of Casa Alianza. "There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the responsibility for caring for these kids is the PANI's."

There are also discrepancies about when the government actually began to investigate Dundee. PANI Minister Rosalia Gil said Jan. 15 that child welfare authorities were opening an investigation based on The Tico Times' Oct. 25 report on the facility (TT, Jan. 17). However, Gil reportedly told the daily La Nación this week that the PANI started investigating Dundee last March. The PANI's León, meanwhile, said this week that the investigation began in February.

Vargas, an interim prosecutor, was replaced Monday by full-time Prosecutor Marielos Alfaro. The Prosecutor's Office is still trying to gather testimony from former Dundee students - a difficult task now that all but a few have left the country (TT Daily Page, May 26). A movement started this week to bring some of the students back to Costa Rica to give declarations.

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

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