“You kill a dog, you go to jail - you kill a little black boy and nothing happens.”
So said the lawyer for the family of Martin Lee Anderson, the 14 year old who died at the hands - and boots - of the Florida boot camp instructors who were acquitted yesterday on charges related to the beating-death incident. Oh, and yes, the jury was all white. This will not be the last we hear of this.
“No government agency is able to say how many children have died at boot camps or wilderness programs.”
The GAO has completed an investigation into these teen “boot camps” for troubled teens. Here’s a few incidents they uncovered as per USA Today…
•A 15-year-old date-rape victim from California enrolled in a 9-week wilderness program in Utah in 1990 to build her self-confidence, her parents said.
•A month later in Utah, a 16-year-old Florida girl struggling with drug abuse died of heat stroke while hiking during a 9-week wilderness program. The program brochure described “days and nights of physical and mental stress with forced march, night hikes and limited food and water.” …
•In March 1994, two former employees of that camp opened a new program in Utah. That’s where Aaron Bacon died from an acute infection that went untreated for nearly three weeks. He had been sent to the camp because of minor drug use and poor grades. …
•A 15-year-old Oregon boy died at an Oregon wilderness program in September 2000 of a severed neck artery. The boy had refused to return to the camp site after a group hike. Two staffers held him face down for almost 45 minutes in an attempt to bring him under control. The death was ruled a homicide, but a grand jury did not issue an indictment.
Thousands of abuse allegations have been leveled. Yet of the ten mortality cases investigated by the GAO, only one led to criminal liability. The study showed that staff were poorly trained and vetted, if relevantly trained and vetted at all. Allegations range from torture, to starvation, exposure, incarceration, and torture. Over 1,600 abuse instances were identified, and those just from the only 33 states that report such statistics. These “camps” are privately owned and thus receive little attention from the state governments. Since the Anderson case, Florida has tightened it’s regulations on the camps, and sure enough Florida is down to only one now, and that is soon to close as well. It seems these camps are not up to oversight snuff.
“Tough Love” is an Oxymoron
I have often said that there is no such a thing as “tough love.” Love is not tough. At least, it shouldn’t be. When a woman is in an abusive relationship, her friends will tell her, “Get out! Run away!,” and she will often say, “But he loves me!,” and they will say, “If he loves you, he wouldn’t beat you.” For some reason, we think it’s okay to abuse children, try them adults, put them out on the streets, when we feel they are misbehaving, yet if a husband did that to his wife, she’d have grounds for divorce, if not his arrest. Firstly, privately run detention facilities of any kind should be outright banned, boot camps for youth should be very carefully monitored, and parents should think twice about sending their kids to these places. Secondly, any direction or legal mitigation given by the courts allowing parents to use the boot camp route should also be outright banned. It is a conflict of interest, as it is outside the scope of the government. Finally, it’s time parents learn that there is no such thing as “Tough Love.” Love is never tough.
JMJ
October 13th, 2007 at 11:53 am
That’s it blame the camps… Not the parents! Oh, no! God forbid we ever have to be good parents!!!
October 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Steve said,
This isn’t about parental culpability. The parents might have been less than optimal parents. Heck, they might have been crappy parents but it wasn’t the parents that hit, kneed, kicked and dragged Martin Lee Anderson, it was the guards that did that…that and held his mouth shut while forcing him to inhale ammonia rather than oxygen. Last I heard, the human respiratory system isn’t set up to utilize ammonia. A nurse stood by and watched. Whatever blame the parents might have for the upbringing their children received, Martin’s parents didn’t kill him.
Yes, I understand that the boy had “an undiagnosed sickle-cell trait” that made it difficult for red blood cells to carry oxygen but even normal cells require oxygen to carry. Ammonia is not an acceptable substitute for O2. At the very least, this was negligence leading to death. This sort of behavior is not acceptable as behavior toward an adult, let alone a child.
An instance of the state farming out its responsibility to deal with delinquent juveniles to an inadequately regulated private-sector agent without holding said agents responsible for their actions.
Me? I’m for removing peremptory dismissals of jurists during the selection process. Prosecutors should not be allowed to “bleach” the jury to pearly-white by removing, without any stated cause whatsoever, all non-whites…not if the phrase “jury of one’s peers” is to retain any meaning at all.
All I can say is, Steve, place yourself in this boy’s parents’ place and tell me that, if this had been your child, you wouldn’t blame these guards and nurse for your child’s death rather than yourself.
October 13th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Me, I couldn’t have said it better myself. (Now THAT’S an interesting sentence!)
JMJ
October 13th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Jersey,
Thanks.