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IN LOVING
MEMORY OF KERRY LAYNE BROWN
A life cut short
RANDALL HINTON
admits to pepper-spraying Layne on
You Tube
November 21, 1981 to June 6, 2006
by Isabelle Zehnder
NEWS ARTICLES &
 FOX
NEWS REPORT (click
here)
Sign the petition, and
help put a stop to the abuse, the neglect, the dying
June 28, 2006
During interviews with Terry Cameron, Layne's mother, I learned Layne was a normal,
happy, healthy, active boy, a 4.0 student, and a star athlete. He
was devastated when his parents divorced and turned to drugs. Terry
was frightened and turned to WWASP for help. Randall Hinton was a
neighbor, someone they had known for years. He had taken a position
at a new facility for troubled youth, Tranquility Bay in Jamaica.
When it was decided Layne would go there, he told Terry he would
watch over her son. Instead, in my
opinion, he brutalized and tortured her son.
In her declaration,
Terry said that Layne was evaluated at the Brightway Adolescent
Hospital in Utah where it was recommended he attend Tranquility Bay,
a program in Jamaica. The program was new at the time and she was
promised her son would receive an education, would be able to
recover from a substance abuse problem, and would receive a great
deal of loving attention.
She was told the
staff at Tranquility Bay were properly trained, educated, and
qualified, but later learned this was false. During his enrollment
there she was repeatedly told and promised he was safe and to "trust
the program." She feels she was deceptively led to believe WWASP had
a "high rate of success" with children. She was completely
discouraged from talking with her child and was only allowed one
very brief conversation with him during the entire nine months he
was there, at which time he broke down and sobbed.
She had to argue to
get this single conversation with her son, after being told by staff
he had been sprayed in the face with pepper spray on one occasion,
which was a lie. Upon learning of this supposed single incident, she
made immediate arrangements to remove her child. They argued and
tried to pressure her into leaving him at Tranquility Bay, but she
was persistent and had him home in a few days.
To her horror she
later learned her son had been the subject of repeated and daily
torture by WWASP employees acting under the direction and control of
Jay Kay. Layne was forced into "observation placement" for almost
the entire nine months he was at Tranquility Bay.
Randall Hinton
admitted on video tape to pepper spraying Layne multiple times a day
for months. When asked if he thought it was abusive, he admitted he
thought it was. When Layne returned from Tranquility he had a deep
scar on his shoulder and a permanent scar on his chin from being
dragged on concrete. He had chemical burns all over his body, and
one of his teeth was knocked out.
He endured many
forms of abuse the entire nine months he was there. Examples of some
of the “rule infractions” that resulted in Layne being
pepper-sprayed included any movement after he was forced to lie on
his stomach for 14 hours a day in isolation and seething subtropical
heat, excessive exercising, food deprivation, calorie restriction,
being forced to sleep in the halls under bright lights with Randall
Hinton as his “keeper,” and other depraved acts by staff who acted
under the direction and control of Jay Kay.
Her son's letters
to his mom were intercepted and changed by the staff at Tranquility
Bay. She was repeatedly assured that her son was "manipulating" her
and that she must ignore his statements and pleas for help. Because
of this she did not believe her son. WWASP's mantra was "trust the
program" and "your child is just manipulating you." After he
returned home, she learned he and other children were not allowed to
report abuse and neglect to any outside government authorities.
In August 2003
Terry said in her declaration that up to that time, five long years
after this cruelty and neglect occurred, she heard her son literally
screaming in the middle of the night from nightmares directly
relating to the tortures he endured at Tranquility Bay. The
individualized, highly progressive education services she was
promised never happened. She was deceived and defrauded, and her son
was deprived of anything even resembling a meaningful education at
Tranquility Bay.
When she tried to
obtain records from Brightway Adolescent Hospital and Tranquility
Bay, including photos of her son bleeding from abuse, she was
repeatedly told there "were no records" or "the records have been
destroyed."
In April 2005,
nearly two years later, Terry supplemented her declaration. She said
her child was never violent, he never hurt anyone, he never
physically threatened anyone, and he was not a fighter. The drugs
had taken over his life and she feared he would die. In her
desperation she found Tranquility Bay. She said her son did not earn
even one school credit during his nine months there.
She went on to say
her son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a direct
result of the abuse he suffered at Tranquility Bay. And still, in
April 2005, he was having repeated nightmares at least on a weekly
basis if not more. The week before she shared all of this with me,
she said he had screamed out in his sleep "RANDALL, why are you
doing this to me?" She told me that Randall had made recent
statements to a Boonville Daily News reporter that she was
telephoned by Tranquility Bay employees daily. He said during these
daily phone calls her son was the hardest they had ever had to
handle, that he was the worse of the worse. Terry said this was a
complete lie. Not only did they not call on a daily basis, but they
never made those statements to her about her son. Further, reporter
John Sullivan of the Tribune reported on the abuse Layne received at
Tranquility Bay. A recent news article,
Rough Love,
talked, too, of the abuses Layne endured while he was there.
Saddest of all was
when she told me that neither she nor Layne had been able to heal
from the life-long trauma and damages the WWASP organization and its
employees have caused their family, and that she would attest to the
fact her son was far worse when he returned from the emersion of
abuse and neglect at Tranquility Bay than before he entered this
so-called children's program. She agreed there was no need to seal
her Declaration because she felt it was important for the public to
know the truth about the World Wide Association of Specialty
Programs and those behind it.
Randall
Hinton, the man who admitted, on videotape, to abusing Layne for his nine months at
Tranquility Bay, is working at a program in Cañon City, Colorado, Royal
Peak Academy.
Click
here for the CanonCafe.com
article Staff Planning for February 17 Opening Day where
Randall Hinton states:
“We will take one kid to start, then student by student."
It is my hope that parents will read
this story and will think long and hard before sending their child
to a program away from home. However, I believe it is important to
keep things in perspective and to realize there are times children
will be sent to programs. Many children, more today than ever, will
be court-adjudicated where parents have no choice as to whether
their child is sent away or where their child will be sent.
Many have children with mental health
issues who need a structured, therapeutic environment. These parents
should not fear their child will be harmed or killed - they should
not fear their child will be placed in dangerous and deadly
restraints or that "aversives" will be used (aversives are negative
stimuli to induce behavior changes) such as electrical shocks, water
sprays, ammonia inhalants, lemon juice squirts, Tabasco sauce, slaps
and pinches, blindfolds, hair pulls, white noise helmets, isolation,
withholding food, and rubber-band snaps (
Click
here )
I also believe parents should exhaust
all other options before considering this drastic step, and if they
do choose to send their child away, that they take the time to not
only visit the program themselves, but that they be sure they can
have complete access to their child. Further, I believe parents
should ask themselves if they truly have exhausted all of their
options and if what their child is doing is perhaps normal teenage
behavior that will be outgrown. In my opinion phone calls should
never be restricted between a parent and a child. Letters should not
be censored. Parents should not send their children to facilities so
far from home they cannot visit frequently.
Click here for more warning
signs.
The problems of abuse, neglect, and
deaths, is wide-spread - spanning from behavior modification
programs - boot camps - wilderness programs - therapeutic boarding
schools - and mental health facilities. We believe it is crucial
that everyone support Congressman George Miller's proposed
legislation that would afford children their right to be safe. I
know it is not the only answer, but it is a good start. Please visit
our
legislation page
for more details, and please sign our
International Petition to End Institutionalized Child Abuse.
To Terry and her family, I believe
that "Together, We Can Make a Difference." Let us all work towards a
safer tomorrow for our children.
We will all miss you, Layne!
© 2006
Permission for this article to be reproduced for educational
purposes only
NEWS:
Former
Student Alleges Months of Abuse: School Leader Proposes Campus in
Boonville (click
here)
April 15, 2005, by John Sullivan, Tribune Staff
Rough Love: A
heart-wrenching article with a chilling ending
(click
here)
(Not mentioned in the article is Layne Brown was found dead
in his bed June 6, 2006, one day before Carter Lynn was found
hanging from the rafters of his home. Both boys were featured in the
"Rough Love" article written by Joanne Greene)
June 22, 2006, by Joanne Greene, Miami New Times
Watch Fox News Report:
Tough-Love Schools
(click
here
for article and video, 3-part series)
(Scroll down in
the article and you will find a box with the video clips
that look like what you see below, if
the links below do not work)
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