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Family Wins Fight to Remove Teen From Tranquility Bay
TEENAGE WRITER
Tuesday, December 31, 2002
Tranquility Bay in St
Elizabeth
 After a six month battle in
court, Gini Farmer got her 13 year-old cousin 'John' out of
Tranquility Bay in Jamaica and back into the United States under
court order. Farmer's story is posted on
www.helpyourteens.com, with a
warning to parents that such 'behavioural modification facilities'
may in reality be a living hell for teenagers.
WHAT goes on behind the
closed doors of Tranquility Bay, St Elizabeth has remained a well
kept secret for years, even after a 16-year old girl fell to her
death last year.
But in August this year,
operations at Tranquility Bay were brought to the fore in a United
States court, when the family of a 13 year-old boy tried to get him
out of the facility and back to the United States.
Boys doing school
work at Tranquility Bay, St Elizabeth:
 Gini Farmer, the boy's
cousin, told a Virginia court that his father had sent him to
Jamaica, in February, handcuffed and in the middle of the night. The
entire report is posted on
www.helpyourteens.com.
In a letter to TeenAge,
Farmer said that she was alerted to John's disappearance when
relatives went to pick up the boy at his home and was told he was
sent to a "behavioural modification facility' in Jamaica. John was
only 12 at the time, she said. His father had just remarried, his
mother had died when he was two.
Farmer checked the website
for more information on Tranquility Bay, a Worldwide Association of
Speciality Schools/Teen Help/Adolescent Services Inc. Programme.
"The on-line brochure looked
wonderful," she said. The information spoke glowingly of a help
facility that could turn your defiant teen into a compliant teen.
But further checks, turned up stories of unsanitary conditions,
uneducated staff, horrible abuse and "medical, emotional and
psychological damage to the children to whom they were supposed to
be offering help".
What serious offence had
John committed to warrant such treatment? To find out, Farmer and
her family tried to get a character profile of John from his
neighbours, teachers, coaches, family and friends.
Their general description of
John was of a "comic with a quick smile; good athlete, generally
polite and helpful. He was described by some as hard-headed, some
were worried about his droopy pants and boots without laces and
almost everyone agreed that John had no great love for the woman his
father had met only seven months before and decided to marry."
Further, Farmer said, "he
had slipping grades and had been in trouble for kicking a locker,
being disrespectful to a teacher and skipping school once, leaving
early without permission once..."
Nothing indicated that he
was into drugs or significant illegal activity, which is the case
for many of Tranquility Bay's residents.
But since John's father
would not sign the papers to allow Farmer to investigate the
facility, much less bring him home, she decided to take the matter
to court. To win, under Virginia's laws she first had to prove John
was in danger of being abused or neglected, but not being able to
communicate with him made that impossible, she said.
And there were other
obstacles:
1) social services said they
could not protect a child who was not within their jurisdiction.
2) juvenile and domestic
court did not consider children's rights even though the Supreme
Court upheld such rights under the constitution since the 1930'.
3) International social
services and the State Department could not help until they had
legal guardianship of the boy.
4) Parental rights in the
system and in court, seemed to take precedence over children's legal
or even constitutional rights.
5) Lawyers were generally
unwilling to take on the case.
The American consulate in
Jamaica did pay a visit to the facility, on Farmer's behalf but, she
said, "they would not give us any written confirmation they were
sure they had seen our boy."
Farmer lost the case in
juvenile and domestic court, so she appealed to Virginia's Circuit
Court. They had six weeks to find witnesses -- persons who had been
released and this proved difficult.
"I was at my wits end. I had
spoken to kids who were scared to testify, parents who didn't feel
their children were up to helping in this capacity or whose kids
were in summer school trying to catch up and couldn't get away."
Then, within a couple of
weeks three boys who had got out within the last six months, called
and offered to testify, she said.
One of them was 19 year-old
Aaron Kravig who told the circuit court of Tazawell county that he
wrote, in all, 74 5000-word essays and later contracted scabies from
bathing in dirty showers. The scabies remained untreated for eight
months until he returned home in the United States, he said.
" I believe I got scabies
from the showers, by showering in them and yeah, they're unsanitary,
filthy ...showers had dirt, grime, filth on the sides."
Another witness, Lindsey
Wise, 18, sent there for doing drugs, said there was sewage on the
floors and bugs crawling all over. He said once he complained that
there was no exercise, and "the director assigned us to do 5000
jumping jacks and 3000 crunches and 200 push ups three times a day,
and if we did not do it, we were restrained."
Restraining, according to
both boys was a regular occurrence. It was a painful form of
punishment and screams could often be heard up until late at nights.
Boys were restrained, Wise said, when they were forced to lie face
down on the floor, their arms twisted behind their backs, and their
feet held onto the floor while staff kneeled or sat on their back.
Wise confirmed this in his
testimony.
He said he also saw on
August 10, 2001, Valerie Herron jump off the third story building to
kill herself. The girl was wrapped in towels and taken to the
hospital, he said, but one of the towels, Kravig claimed was his. "I
had a spot of blood about the size of a dinner plate on my towel
(and) there was some of her hair on it."
The three testimonials
provided sufficient evidence and the judge ordered John's immediate
return.
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