August 02, 2004

Want your kid to disappear? For $1,800, former Atlanta police officer Rick Strawn will make that problem child someone else's problem. He even makes house calls.

But if Strawn is decent and likable, he will also go to almost any length to get his charges to do what their parents want. He has chased kids down. He has dragged teens to the car in their underwear. He has used a choke hold, learned as a cop, to render a few others unconscious. He has taken suicidal kids from hospital treatment to reform school.

posted by dng 20 years ago
  • via the world of stuart forums
  • Stories like this make me sick to my stomach and they surface frequently enough that I have to wonder why the US has no legal protections for minors from kidnapping, transportation across international borders, imprisonment, and torture. Just because a kid's parent(s) condone this treatment should not make it legal.
  • How is this legal? If a kid is so badly off that they actually need this, then chances are the "re-education" should A, be recommended and carried out by professionals, and B, involve the parents in a little re-education of thier own. These parents sound a little over-zealous. A 9PM curfew? Please, thats asking the kid to break it. I feel pity for everyone involved, but mostly for the kid.
  • This truly sickens me. I understand the that parents believe they're trying to do good, but I think they should honestly be prosecuted. There need to be greater rights for minors.
  • Therapy by abuse? Good lord.
  • Strawn won't board a plane with a kid who puts up too much of a fight—that's why he ended up on that 26-hour drive. But when escorts do fly with protesting kids, airport officials rarely ask questions.
    Wow. Where is Anne Jacobsen when we need her? Unfortunatley, this isn't anything new. The "Tranquility Bay" that is referred to was the subject of a must-read article last year and more can be found by searching for Tranquility Bay Jamaica on Google.
  • Here. is a MeFi link from about a year ago regarding similar schools in Missippi, with an in-post link to Tranquility Bay. Tough love is pretty scary, even though I think at least some of the parent were unable to find ways to deal with their children
  • Question to international monkeys: is this sort of thing legal in other countries as well, or is the US alone in this alarming practice?
  • The whole thing is frightening - but when you get to the part where the reporter discusses the escort's past - it's absolutely sickening. Totally fucked up.
  • I'd be willing to bet that in any country where it's legal to send your kid to a foreign boarding school, it's legal to send them to Tranquility Bay, at least until specific steps or laws are put into place to stop the practice (which would probably be more difficult than it might seem). The escort is a real piece of work. Chokeholds? If your parents put you in a chokehold, they go to jail. Should be the same for this creep.
  • The ethos of Tranquillity Bay, Casa, etc. reminds me of nothing so much as Scientology: we're saving you from yourself, and if you disagree, you're lying.
  • If a kid is so badly off that they actually need this... No kid needs this. No kid deserves this. To me, this seems to be exactly what these kids don't need: further distance between them and their parents and a bunch of arbitrary, unnecessary rules backed by negative reinforcement. Mind you, I'm no psychologist, nor am I an alcoholic ex-police officer accused of molestation.
  • this is what happens when parents start out by letting the tv do the babysitting, and end up blaming the teachers for our kids behavior problems at school. we end up deciding that our kids problems aren't anything we can solve ourselves - after all, we didn't raise them ourselves. the tv and the teachers did. how can we be expected to fix them ourselves? granted, my dad pretty much went 50-50 on my siblings and i. the two older ones (my older brother and i) are married, both have college degrees (both of us have a BS in zoology), and have decent jobs (older brother = computers + army, me = grad school + teaching). my younger brother and sister? well, they didn't do so well. neither went to college, both work sort of shitty jobs (little brother bounces between factory jobs, little sister mostly waitresses or tends bar part-time). they both have money problems, but they also both have a fondness for certain varieties of Cannabis sativa. my brother has spent some time in jail here and there for unpaid tickets and getting caught with paraphenelia. but did my dad decide to send both of them off to some internment boot camp for troubled youth? hell, no. he's not always proud of what they have done, but he is there to help them when they need it, and kick them in the butt when they need it. we all know they have some growing up to do, and we're all waiting for it to happen - but this is something they need to do on their own. you can't beat responsibility into anyone. having someone come into the house at night to abduct the kids is insane. i sure as hell wouldn't start suddenly loving and honoring my parents if they did this to me. more like lasting, lingering resentment and a good chance of adding to the paycheck of some future psychologist.
  • I think part of the problem is the pressure some of these parents place on their kids to not only succeed but be perfect and most importantly not to be a source of embarrassment or shame. Kids pick up these vibes and do one of two things: rebel or conform. Both courses of action have their consequences but the former, at least in the short term, offers a sense of freedom. This is something extremely controlling parents can not abide so they naturally gravitate towards 'services' like those mentioned in the article which offer to ultimately restore their absolute authority. I think places like these are very harmful to kids and can be permanently damaging to family relationships. Family counseling might have worked for the Boussard family if they stuck it out but I have a feeling the parents probably didn't like the democratic approach to child rearing because they may have perceived it as a threat to their control. They would have to take into account Louis jr's point of view and they probably weren't interested.
  • i sure as hell wouldn't start suddenly loving and honoring my parents if they did this to me. I can't imagine that any of these kids develop any real love for their parents in these centers. They may acquiesce to every demand; they may even believe what they've been taught, but I doubt what they feel could be called love, except in the Huxlian sense.
  • One of the most important points to consider as well is that the parents that send their kids off to places like this can AFFORD to. There are probably lots of kids whose parents aren't rich who are much worse than those described in these stories and whose parents can't afford to make them someone else's problem. In this way, it is yet another example of people seeking to use money as a way of fixing things. Funny how 99% of Americans (let alone 99.99999999% of the world) seem to get by without having to send their kids off to some pseudo-jail.