Pastor accused of dragging teen behind van at boot camp (a blast from the past)

This story is from a few months ago, but I haven't been able to find anything about it since. It underscores the national scandal of youth confinement facilities. Most of these centers are money-grubbing scams, outright cults, or both. Many of these facilities commit insurance fraud. At one boot camp for troubled teens in Mississippi, kids were frequently molested by counselors.

A few months back, a pastor from San Antonio, Texas, named Charles Flowers was accused of dragging a 15-year-old girl behind a van at Nueces County Ranch, his so-called Christian boot camp near Corpus Christi. He and one of the drill instructors allegedly tied a rope around the teenager and dragged her behind the vehicle because she wasn't able to complete a forced run. As the minister was taken away from his church by police, he said, "It is not as it appears. I'm not going to comment to that issue."

It's not as it appears??? All the years I've kept an eye on facilities like this, I've heard that one before. Photographs reportedly showed the teen had injuries, so clearly something happened. I can't find anything about the pastor or his assistant - who were both charged with aggravated assault - being convicted or acquitted, but it looks like somebody obviously did something wrong. A cook at the boot camp said she witnessed the teen being dragged behind the van.

Corpus Christi was also the home of the late Lester Roloff, a right-wing preacher who ran several homes for teenagers in which detainees were required to listen to tapes of his loopy sermons for literally days on end. Roloff's facilities were investigated for beatings and starvation, and he was arrested for refusing to obey laws requiring youth homes to be licensed. Many of today's youth confinement centers have borrowed many of Roloff's toxic practices.

I don't know whether or not Flowers based his boot camp on the Roloff death camps, but Flowers's wife said, "When you deal with young people, you're going to have allegations." Yep, I've heard that one before too. But that's obviously bullshit, because I'm almost 35 and I haven't softened my stance towards these centers since I was a teenager.

If the pastor and his drill instructor are guilty, I hope the jury throws the book at them. The abuse has to stop.

(Source: WOAI-TV 8/10/07;
http://www.ksat.com/news/13869554/detail.html)