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'Sure, he complained like hell at first,' he recalls fondly. 'Typical case of manipulation, just like they said in the handbook. He said the staff were mean and violent, they beat you, the food is terrible.' He chuckles, pleased by the neat symmetry of the handbook and letters.

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Originally posted by PVS
What it was is, he was going through this identity crisis. Peer pressure. Pot got involved.'[/i]

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Students are moved around the property in silence by guards in single file, 3ft apart - a complicated operation, because girls and boys must be kept segregated at all times, forbidden to look at one another.

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One explains: 'It's a completely degrading, painful experience. You could get it for raising your voice or pointing your finger. You know you're going to get it when three Jamaicans walk in and say, "Take off your watch." They pin you down in a five-point formation and that's when they start twisting and pulling your limbs, grinding your ankles.'

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Before sending their teen to Tranquility, parents are advised that it might be prudent to keep their plan a secret, and employ an approved escort service to break the news. The first most teenagers hear of Tranquility is therefore when they are woken from their beds at home at 4am by guards, who place them in a van, handcuffed if necessary, drive them to an airport and fly them to Jamaica. The child will not be allowed to speak to his or her parents for up to six months, or see them for up to a year.

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You are walked to a classroom to watch an 'EG' - a 30-minute video intended to promote 'emotional growth' - on a theme such as why you shouldn't smoke. Then the family is lined up, counted and walked to the canteen to eat a plate of boiled cabbage and fish in silence while listening to an 'inspirational tape' broadcast loudly through the room, urging you to, for example, eat healthily.

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[E]ating less than 50 per cent of any dish is forbidden.

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Some shower (three minutes, cold water), others wash clothes (outside, in buckets, cold water), or exercise (walk round the yard).

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But Tranquility's handbook for parents warns them not to believe anything that sounds like a 'manipulation', the programme's word for a complaint.

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He has no qualifications in child development, but considers this unimportant.

'Experience in this job is better than any degree. Am I an educational expert? No. But I know how to hire people to get the job done.'

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Students are judged ready to leave only when they have demonstrated a sincere belief that they deserved to be sent here, and that the programme has, in fact, saved their life. They must renounce their old self, espouse the programme's belief system, display gratitude for their salvation, and police fellow students who resist.

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On level 1, students are forbidden to speak, stand up, sit down or move without permission. When they have earnt enough points to reach level 2, they may speak without permission; on level 3, they are granted a (staff-monitored) phone call home...

Every time a member of staff or upper-level student feels a student has broken a rule, they 'consequence' them by deducting points. Rule-breaking is classified into categories of offence. A 'Cat 1' offence, ie rolling your eyes, is consequenced by a modest loss of points. A 'Cat 3' offence, eg swearing, costs a significant number, and may drop the student's score beneath their current level's threshold, thus demoting them and removing privileges.

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The strategy of coercing children to rewire themselves is the concept Kay is most proud of[...]

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Guards take them (if necessary by force) to a small bare room and make them (again by force if necessary) lie flat on their face, arms by their sides, on the tiled floor. Watched by a guard, they must remain lying face down, forbidden to speak or move a muscle except for 10 minutes every hour, when they may sit up and stretch before resuming the position. Modest meals are brought to them, and at night they sleep on the floor of the corridor outside under electric light and the gaze of a guard. At dawn they resume the position.

This is known officially as being 'in OP' - Observation Placement - and more casually as 'lying on your face'. Any level student can be sent to OP, and it automatically demotes them to level 1 and zero points. Every 24 hours, students in OP are reviewed by staff, and only sincere and unconditional contrition will earn their release. If they are unrepentant? 'Well, they get another 24 hours.'

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If your son is willfully disrespectful, the most loving gift a parent can give him is incarceration in an environment so intolerable that he will do anything to get out - where 'anything' means surrendering his mind to authority.

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'Sure, he complained like hell at first,' he recalls fondly. 'Typical case of manipulation, just like they said in the handbook. He said the staff were mean and violent, they beat you, the food is terrible.' He chuckles, pleased by the neat symmetry of the handbook and letters. While he is talking, Josh hovers nearby, with bright eyes that dance longingly on his father's face. It took Josh a whole year to reach level 2, some of it spent in OP, but his father feels only awestruck gratitude for the treatment his son has received.

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Also striking is the assumption parents make of entitlement to their child's affection, as though this is a legal right. 'She's a neat kid, she really is,' a former student's mother says. 'She just didn't like us.' But now, 'I don't believe she's lying to me any more, and that's a neat feeling.'

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'Oh, my relationship with my family was pretty bad. I just went to my room and avoided my parents. There was always arguments and stuff,' offers Pete. 'I was very angry with my parents, their divorce had a big influence on me. I'm not angry with them now, though. Not at all. I mean, I look at this as a punishment, obviously, but I deserved it. How I acted towards my parents.'

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Susie is 16, from New York, and here 'because of having sex. Not going to school. It was my attitude. It wasn't, like, drugs. The problem was, me and my mom, we just didn't have a relationship. We could say how was your day, that was about it.' The possibility that this was a normal phase is adamantly rejected by Susie.

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'If my mom hadn't sent me here I would have died.'

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'Tranquility showed me that I'd have been a minimum wager,' Nick says. 'This place saved my life.'

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A straight-A high-school graduate, she was heading for Harvard until an unsuitable choice of boyfriend had her sent here at the age of 17.

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The students all describe their pre-programme selves using the same subjective descriptions, such as 'ignorant' or 'disrespectful', as if these were neutral adjectives, like 'brown'. Their delivery, too, is disturbingly similar, for the words come out like empty envelopes, emotionally vacant.

'When I was sent here I was very upset,' Kate tells me. Her voice is careful but dull. 'My parents didn't tell me I was coming here. They tricked me.' She smiles a faraway, inscrutable smile. 'I had to have the police escort me on to the plane.'

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'The staff are constantly trying to work out what you are thinking about and constantly telling you what to think about, and then constantly checking to see if you are thinking about it. And if you're not, and they know you're not, you might as well be dead.'

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The first to her feet is frightened that her old problem of anorexia is returning. 'I feel really disgusting the whole time. I hate it so much because I feel so imperfect. I just feel so insecure, I didn't think this was going to come back, I don't know what to do.' She casts about, anguish bubbling out incoherently. 'Like, if I was to date a guy, and I was always hating myself, well that would push him away. Being alone really scares me a lot, but I know that's how I'm going to end up.' Now she is crying hard, gulping air, talking randomly. 'Like, if I get a Cat 2, I feel like I'm letting everyone down.'

After 10 minutes she sits down. But there is something odd about the atmosphere - hot grief has met ice-cool air. Hands go up for feedback.

'No one else is thinking about you, why do you think anyone notices you?'

'Don't you get it? The purpose of being here, and getting consequences, is to teach you how to pick yourself up. If you don't mess up, you go home.'

[...]

'Why is it that you feel so comfortable wallowing in your own crap? That's why you have that stuff [acne] on your face. It's because you're hurting yourself on the inside.' The family rep looks on with approval.

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A boy stands and clearly thinks just once he is going to come off best. There had been a dispute over his 'exit plan', the arrangement for his imminent return home. He had said he was not going to live with his mother and staff thought he was. His mother had now written to confirm that he was absolutely correct.

'So I just wanted to make sure,' he says, with biting diplomacy, 'that there were no other "misunderstandings" that need to be cleared up.'

His family rep stares hard at him hard, smarting. Defeat seems inescapable. The silence lengthens, and her eyes narrow.

'You know what? I'm going to review your exit plan. It will have to go on hold.'

'Miss! Miss, no!' He is aghast, panic-stricken. 'You can't mean that? Why are you punishing me?'

She studies him. 'I am not punishing you. You just gave me the idea. You have punished yourself.'

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'You can only move forward in the programme if you share intimate details of your life. If you don't share, you're not "working the programme", and they'll take away your points. In a meeting, your rep will suddenly pick on you and say, "Right, I want to hear something private, right now. Come on. Or do you want to go to OP?" And I'm going through this inventory in my head real fast, thinking what will hurt least to say? Because you tell her secrets and then she uses them against you later. Like, say a guy mentions problems with his girlfriend, a month later she'll have him up, and she's saying, "You don't think she's waiting, do you?" She's laughing at you behind your back. "How many of your friends do you think she's sleeping with right now?" So I start telling her something, and she just says, "I'm not listening to that, that's not deep," and she calls for the guard to take me to OP. And I've got until he gets in the room to give her something better, or he's taking me.'

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Points and privileges are awarded to students who tell on each other. If you don't tell on someone for breaking a rule and get found out, you lose points. 'There is zero trust,' Scott explains. 'You can't trust anyone. It's not us against them. It's everyone against you.' Scott remembers a new boy being caught with incriminating used tissues; masturbation is strictly forbidden. 'And they got him up in front of everyone right after dinner, and the upper-level kids just ripped into him, this little 13-year-old kid. It was kind of the entertainment for the night. That's what I mean about breaking kids.'

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Students also take part in seminars - phenomenally confrontational three-day sessions which are calculated to induce what approaches mass hysteria. Participants must swear a vow of silence, shrouding what takes place in secrecy. Many credit these emotionally intense encounters with transforming their lives, whereas others describe them as brutal manipulation.

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What Wwasp has created is a perfectly watertight world in which all criticism is, by definition, discredited. From former students, it merely proves they are still dealing in 'manipulations'. If parents are unhappy, the 'poor results' they got only indicate that they failed to support the programme. Staff are bound by a confidentiality clause, and any who leave and speak out are cast as 'disgruntled former employees' with personal axes to grind.

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Dr Chappuis thoroughly enjoys working at Tranquility, and it shows. 'It's a lot of fun! I love it. Just the satisfaction of seeing these kids change.'

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Emotional abuse is a more nebulous matter. Internet message boards are busy with former students chronicling the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. One writes, 'At least once out of every three nights I wake up sweating and almost in tears from nightmares of being returned to Tranquility Bay. To this day, I am afraid that somehow I would have to return.'

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'Show me one kid that they can prove has ever been psychologically damaged in my programme,' demands Kay. 'To have a clinician say yes, it was as a result of this? I would find that highly suspicious.'

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Once a year, Tranquility Bay has a Fun Day. There are sports and special food; girls can braid their hair; staff are smiling. And there is music. Ceaseless, bass-heavy, deafening music. It sends the teenagers out of their minds. They can't stop dancing. Everywhere, students are dancing, demented with fever, as if a switch has been thrown and a surge of energy unleashed through the grounds.

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As she stoops to take a drink of water, I catch her face, and think she looks like the saddest girl in the world.

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Originally posted by PVS
question: do you think such methods would be useful if utilised in the prison system as opposed to kidnapping children of disfuntional and negligent parents?

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Originally posted by FeceMan
http://www.break.com/index/kid_almo...ut_of_ride.html

Speaking of bad parents...