Abuse found in teen confinement facilities

This is yet another story that has to keep getting repeated over and over because hardly anything is ever done about it.

I was invited to a public protest that took place last Friday against a confinement facility for teenagers outside Cincinnati. The facility is actually a cult. Although I was never confined at that abusive facility, I've had experience with how the system suppresses all dissent and preys on troubled youth. Our demonstration had about 10 participants and was a smashing success.

Here's a website that sums up the outrageous actions of the cult that we protested against:

http://www.isaccorp.org/kidshelpingkids.asp

In 1990, when I was 17, I had firsthand experience with another torture facility. I was confined at this facility because I was expelled from an ultraconservative Catholic high school (which resulted from the constant harassment I was forced to tolerate there) and because my political views disagreed with what were accepted. I don't necessarily view the concentration camp where I was confined as truly a cult (although it met 31 of ISAC's 41 warning signs for abusive facilities), but it was a money-grubbing venture that broke several laws and administered heavy forced druggings.

I know conservatives are going to assail me again, saying I deserved to be placed there just for being expelled from a Catholic school, because conservatives think private schools are perfect. But anyone who thinks I deserved it is an idiot.

A recent article in USA Today says the Government Accounting Office has found widespread abuse in America's residential "treatment" facilities for teenagers. The GAO looked at 10 deaths of young people in these programs and found problems ranging from lousy food to incompetent staff to deceptive marketing. Members of Congress were angered and promised action to remedy the near-total lack of regulation governing these programs.

Right now, some states do not regulate them, period. In addition, investigators say programs that have been disciplined in one state simply start anew in another state - and there's no law to prevent this. Abuses found in these facilities include forcing people to eat their own vomit and making them brush their teeth with a toothbrush that was used to clean toilets.

Hopefully Congress will act. Not like I expect the Bush regime to give a shit, because Bush's cronies like Mel Sembler are involved in the teen torture racket themselves. Also, Jeb Bush and that asshat Dan Lungren are on the advisory board for one of Sembler's organizations that's actually a front for his torture center, so the right-wing links between abusive facilities and Republican politicians run deep.

The problem isn't completely confined to the United States, because some of the companies that run these programs kidnap American teens and ship them to facilities in foreign countries in an attempt to evade American laws. I think it's time Congress outlaws this practice - assuming it's even legal to begin with.

I may be expecting too much considering today's political climate. The Bush regime actively frames dissenters, prosecutes them while admitting there's no case, and subjects them to trials by the media so they have their careers ruined for good. And if the ruling regime doesn't accuse them of something criminal, they bring them down in other ways. But the real sick fucks like Mel Sembler and Dan Lungren never get prosecuted or punished, even though they've been at it for decades. I've known since I was a teenager that the youth torture racket is one of the biggest national shames, but the government has hardly done one fucking thing to halt it.

(Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-10-boot-camps_N.htm;
More info: http://www.isaccorp.org/warningsigns.asp)