“The suit alleges that teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.”

Robert Lichfield is the Mormon founder of World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools — “tough love” schools for troubled teens. He’s also a political powerhouse. According to Federal Elections Commission records, Lichfield donated $175,000 over the past year to the Republican Party. In fact, he was named Republican of the Year this year by the Washington County GOP. Lichfield has been supporting Romney since he ran for Governor of Massachusetts, and is currently co-chairman of Romney’s Utah finance committee.

Lichfield is currently being sued by 133 plaintiffs for physical and emotional abuse suffered at these camps for “defiant teens.” This is not Lichfield’s first run in with the law. In 2003, he was director of residential programs at a Utah institution for teenagers that was subsequently closed by the state of Utah on the grounds of cruelty to children.

Romney’s national finance co-chair is Mel Sembler. Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first election of George W. Bush, and a major fund raiser for Bush senior.

Sembler also founded a nationwide network of treatment programs for troubled youth, called “Straight Inc.,” operating nine programs across seven states between 1976 to 1993.

At all of Straight Inc’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses including teens being beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, bound, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon. Here’s a partial list of lawsuits against Sembler and Straight, Inc. and a website dedicated to documenting Straight Inc.. Mel’s website reads: “Sembler is also renowned for his activism in the anti-drug movement. In 1976, Sembler and his wife Betty founded STRAIGHT, an adolescent drug treatment program.”

Both Straight and WWASPS have repeatedly dismissed claims of abuse, saying calling teens participants “liars” and “manipulators.”

Right. All of them. Hundreds. All bad kids who lie lie lie!

Or, maybe not. Both programs admitted teens who did not have “serious problems” like 18 year old Fred Collins, a Virginia Tech student with excellent grades who, back in 1982, visited his brother at a drug program run by Straight, Inc.” in Orlando, Florida.

While there, a Straight counselor determined Collins was high on marijuana because his eyes were red. If fact, Collins had been swimming in a pool with his contacts on. Collins did admit to occasional marijuana use, but insisted he was not high at the time, nor was he an addict.

But Straight counselors submitted Collins to hours of humiliating questions. He was strip-searched, and held against his will for months until he managed to escape. Collins won $220,000 in a lawsuit he filed against Straight, Inc. for false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, and battery.

It wasn’t the first lawsuit. Straight Inc. paid out millions before it officially closed. But similar programs exist all over the world today. When one gets shut down for human rights abuses, they simply move and start business elsewhere.

The Romney campaign is aware that two of their key fundraisers are currently being sued or have been sued for hundreds of incidents of child abuse spanning twenty years.

The fact that they have been active in Romney’s campaigns for years, and are still active in Romney’s campaign should eliminate any chance he has of running for office — any office — ever again.