I was five the year that Escuela Caribe, then known as Caribe Vista, was cited in U.S Senate Hearing on the Abuse and Neglect of Children in Institutions (1979). Children’s advocate Kenneth Wooden, wanted to know why the State Department had done nothing to shut down Gordon Blossom’s “boarding school,” which he’d visited in 1974, noting abuses that included beating children with sticks, shaving them bald, and forced solitary confinement.

Nothing changed except the school’s name. Caribe Vista became Escuela Caribe.

In 2011, after the publication of Julia Scheeres’ New York Times best-selling memoir Jesus Land, and dozens of testimonials documenting abuse over the forty years of the facility’s existence (beatings, forced exercise, solitary confinement, physical, sexual, spiritual and emotional abuse, rapes, etc.), New Horizons Youth Ministries and its D.R. branch Escuela Caribe closed shop. They were taken over by Lifeline Youth and Family Services. We alumni rejoiced. “Ding dong the witch is dead!” I emailed my peers.

We celebrated too soon. Because nothing changed. Many of the same staff remained employed. Escuela Caribe became Caribbean Mountain Academy.

Understand, I do not write this flippantly. I want to believe that people are good. That when people make promises they will fulfill them. That when an organization says they have changed they aren’t lying. Maybe that desire to believe in people’s best nature helped me survive Escuela Caribe– I’m not sure.

However, I can no longer ignore Caribbean Mountain Academy’s warning signs (this links to a comprehensive list of warning signs of potentially abusive programs). It’s a suspicion that has been building, but I’d planned to hold off publicizing until I visited myself. In October, Crosswinds sent personal letters inviting Jesus Land author Julia Scheeres, Kidnapped for Christ director Kate Logan, and me.

But then my favorite aunt died and I realized life is too short for me to waste it visiting Caribbean Mountain Academy on my own dime. Because it will end in the same place as it did in 2006 when I visited Escuela Caribe, me sitting in my hotel room writing “I want to believe” in my notebook but being unable to discount the facts- that at its inception, Caribbean Mountain Academy retained at least six Escuela Caribe staff members,* ensuring that the old methods of abusing kids would be remembered. Besides that- it bears too many hallmarks of an abusive program– it’s located outside the jurisdiction of the United States, it restricts communication between its students and the rest of the world, it staffs its facility with former students, its staff is not required to have much experience working with children**, it has a level system, it does not allow students to follow a religion of their own choice, it is anti-gay. And all this is just me observing from the outside- I can’t imagine what I would see if I went into the hive. And now I guess I will never know.

Instead, I’d rather encourage any parent who has their kid at Caribbean Mountain Academy or any long-term residential treatment program to withdraw, because you don’t know what is happening, you can’t, no matter what the staff tells you, and if you don’t listen me now, years later most likely you end up like my father, thirty-five years after Wooden’s warning, regretting ever sending your child away in the first place.

*These individuals were employed by an organization that professed that children must be broken in order to be fixed. They worked during a time when students, teenagers, were given swats and being sent to the Quiet Room (often for days) for minor violations, when students were being “slammed” against the wall for minor infractions. (Sugiuchi, Unreformed blog, 8/24/12).

**New hires are required to have a strong personal relationship with Christ, but only need a high school diploma or GED. The annual pay is only $12,500, which leads one to assume that CMA’s $5000 monthly tuition is not being used to provide high quality staff. Unfortunately underpaid and untrained staff in an isolated environment will guarantee abuse…see the Stanford Prison Experiment if you need a case study. (Sugiuchi, Unreformed blog, 11/25/12).

***Doug Martin has extensively researched New Horizons Youth Ministries, Lifeline, and their political connections. You can read his latest report here.