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Private School Raided by
State, Local Officials
NANCY RAY
February 27, 1991
Investigators from the state
Department of Social Services, along with county child protection
services staff members and deputy sheriffs raided the all-girls
Victory Christian Academy Feb. 14 in the most recent effort to force
the private boarding school to obtain a license as a community care
facility.
Pastor Mike Palmer, operator
of the school, called the raid an outrage and said he and many
parents of past and present students of the school "will fight this
illegal effort by the state to license a private religious boarding
school."
During the raid,
investigators armed with a search warrant took copies of some of the
private records of the teen-age girls who were sent to Victory by
their parents because of behavioral problems, truancy and occasional
drug abuse, Palmer said. The state officials also conducted private
interviews with the most recently enrolled students without allowing
school staff or parents to be present.
"That is an invasion of
privacy and against the rules of our school," Palmer said. "We allow
any state or local authority access to the school and to its
students, but only with a school official or parent in attendance.
As for the girls' personal files, they are private and should not
have been taken."
Rick Peralto, Department of
Social Services investigative analyst who led the search at the
school, could not be reached for comment, but Tom Hersant, head of
the department's San Diego office, confirmed that a search of the
Victory campus had been conducted.
Hersant said information
obtained from the search had been turned over to the department's
legal section to determine what action should be taken.
Kathleen Norris, spokeswoman
for the state agency in Sacramento, said the raid was part of an
attempt by the state Department of Social Services to force Palmer
to license the school as a care home for delinquent girls or to
close it down.
She said a search warrant
was obtained because the school was in a compound surrounded by a
12-foot fence and with a locked gate.
Palmer said the state
Department of Social Services filed a lawsuit against him and his
wife in 1989, charging them with the misdemeanor criminal offense of
operating a community care facility without a state license.
Although the case never went
to trial, it's unclear how it was settled. A file about the case is
apparently missing from the El Cajon court. Tim Rutherford, attorney
for the Palmers and the school in the 1989 case, said an agreement
was reached before the case went to a jury trial.
He said he's not sure how
the case was settled but believes that Palmer pleaded no contest to
a reduced charge. State investigators were not available to confirm
this account.
"There was no fine, no sentence, nothing,"
Rutherford recalled.
"We thought that it was all
over, that we would not be bothered any more," Palmer said about the
1989 court case. He denied that the school provides medications or
counseling to the students one prerequisite for being classified as
a community care facility.
"The Supreme Court ruled
several years ago that the power to license is the power to control,
and we will not subject ourselves to the control of the state,"
Palmer said.
One former student who has
complained to the state about the school is 19-year-old Hollywood
resident Blackbird Willow.
In an interview Tuesday, she
said she spent about 11 months at Victory Christian Academy, placed
there by her parents when she was 15.
Willow said she was placed
in a small room, "in solitary" with a taped recording of "preaching"
playing 12 hours a day for two weeks.
"I couldn't turn the damned
thing off," Willow said, "I wanted to die. I would have committed
suicide if I had been able. . . . I finally gave in to them, and
they let me out of that room."
She also told of being
forced into icy cold showers and of being force-fed baby food when
she was in solitary confinement and refused to eat.
Palmer called Willow's
charges false.
"This is a free country, and
she can say what she pleases," he said. "But I would say we have
about 800 girls who have been here and will refute everything she
says."
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