education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,987933,00.html
In America, parents send their troubled offspring to Jamaica's Tranquility Bay - a 'behaviour-modification centre' which charges $40,000 a year to 'cure' them. Decca Aitkenhead, the first journalist to gain access to the centre in five years, wonders if there isn't too high a price to pay Sunday June 29, 2003 34 The Observer Jim Mozingo got the result he wanted. Twenty months after sending his son Josh away, he arrived from North Carolina to collect him. Mozingo has four sons, an insurance company, and is a good example of a typical Tranquility parent. Divorced from Josh's mother, busy, wealthy, he found Tranquility by typing 'defiant teen' into the internet. What it was is, he was going through this identity crisis. Running away from home, sleeping around, or being expelled from school are also typical. Others had been in court, where their parents persuaded the judge to let them send their child to Tranquility, rather than issue his own punishment. Other students were sent here for wearing inappropriate clothes, using bad language, or hanging around with the wrong sort of friends. I would do anything for him, that's why I sent him here. But I come from a class where if you've got a problem, well hell, you just work it out. 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. For example, Mozingo believes his son had a serious drug problem before coming to Jamaica and Josh agrees. Their expectations of loyalty from their children, though, suggest a gilt-edged ideal of American family life so brittle any rebellion or defiance is literally terrifying. This culture then creates its own logic - for once adolescence is criminalised, Tranquility becomes the obvious solution. A clearer picture of this family culture emerges from conversation with a group of levels 5 and 6. I mean, I look at this as a punishment, obviously, but I deserved it. The problem was, me and my mom, we just didn't have a relationship. And I think one of the biggest things I've learnt here is that everything happens for a reason. You see, I just wasn't meant to be living the life I was living. But if they hadn't been dead, they would have been poor, a destiny they have been taught to consider more or less the same thing. 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. The day she turned 18, Tranquility would be obliged to hand over $50 and the return half of her air ticket if she wanted to leave. What I'm accustomed to isn't anything of the sort you can buy for $50. And my parents promised to support me through law school if I stayed. Their delivery, too, is disturbingly similar, for the words come out like empty envelopes, emotionally vacant. Challenger family's meeting is the first I attend, and has the appearance of group therapy. The girls sit in a circle on the floor, with an hour to stand up and 'share', or offer 'feedback'. The first to her feet is frightened that her old problem of anorexia is returning. But there is something odd about the atmosphere - hot grief has met ice-cool air. The purpose of being here, and getting consequences, is to teach you how to pick yourself up. As they rattle out their spiteful attacks some sound bored, like waitresses running through a menu, but others are imaginatively vicious. After the next has shared, a girl stands up and points at her victim's acne. The rep for Renaissance takes a more pro-active role in her meeting. Her senior boys need no help on the feedback front - 'You've got a really bad attitude. That's all you are, man' - and so on, but she pulls a coup de grce towards the end. 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. Scott Burkett, a student who left two years ago, explains: '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. Because you tell her secrets and then she uses them against you later. If you don't tell on someone for breaking a rule and get found out, you lose points. 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. Parents cannot visit their child at Tranquility until they, too, have attended a seminar in the States. They attend further seminars together with their child and many consider this to be the programme's most valuable attribute. And parents have a financial incentive to believe and proselytise. For every new customer they can recruit, a month's fees for their own child are waived. 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. A licensed psychologist must perform an evaluation of every arrival. He also offers students optional one-on-one and group therapy, and is paid directly by parents. He is not employed by Tranquility because, as he stresses, 'I need to be independent. His manner, however, is more man-in-pub than medical, suggestive of both impatience and amusement at the teenagers' problems. He looks like Tom Selleck, and on his desk is one book, 'a national bestseller' called Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway. You know, a lot of these girls dress and act provocative. They place themselves at risk and then they get taken advantage of. But then we say, you know, you've got to look at how you market yourself. Without irony, he tells me that adopted kids 'have more issues with trust. If parents want therapy for their child, they have no choice but to employ him, ensuring that the lone chance of an outside voice has successfully been eliminated. How Dr Chappuis can be described as independent is thus something of a mystery. His good cheer only falters on the subject of criticism, at which point his great height and moustache become distinctly aggressive. If you criticise it you don't know what the hell you are talking about. And if you think you have had experience, then I challenge the success of your experience. I've got experience, and I will go nose to nose to you if you want to talk about it. I have no idea what it is like to be the parent of a teenager taking drugs, running away, sleeping around, breaking the law. I cannot imagine what it feels like to fear for my child's life. They believe the programme is necessary and are usually very happy with the results, and who else is in a position to judge? The US legal system has more or less agreed that they are right. In a crucial 1998 test case, a Californian court ruled that a parent had the legal right to send a child to Tranquility. What happens inside Tranquility would be illegal on British soil, but the facility falls under Jamaican jurisdiction and parents here are as free as Americans to send their children where they like. A spokesman for the Children's Legal Centre in the UK confirmed, 'I can't see anything in the law that would stop a British parent from sending their child there. National attitudes to child care are not famously progressive, Jamaican children aren't involved and Tranquility is a major employer generating tax revenue. It's easy to see why Wwasp locates facilities abr...
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