Ever come across a story that affects you so deeply and so viscerally that you know instantly in your mind and your heart that you must write about it; even if for no other reason than to help you to better understand its significance?
Although, it's true, that in scale, stories like this one pale in comparison to the tragic ongoing chronicle of mass death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan... this is one of those stories described above, because it involves the safety of innocent children.
This type of story has also ultimately come to define the general absence of morality and ethics in the political party in charge of our federal government right now. Crime, corruption, apathy and immorality are all endemic in the GOP. So, it's not only the political party we must defeat at the polls next year; but we also must defeat the culture responsible for the many problems America faces right now.
In short, these Republicans are dangerous. They're dangerous not only to our democracy... but, apparently, to our children and our social structure as well.
Following what seems like a long line of closeted, sexually perverse Republican politicos lately, wealthy GOP financier Robert Browning Lichfield has been named in a federal lawsuit alleging students who attended, "behavior modification" schools with ties to Worldwide Association of Specialty Schools (WWASPS), founded by Lichfield] were subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Filed in the U.S. District Court in Utah, the lawsuit alleges brazen acts of child abuse, including charges of forcing students to eat their own vomit - clean toilets with a toothbrush and brush their teeth afterward – and were chained or locked in dog cages, kicked, beaten, thrown and slammed to the ground and forced into sexual acts.
This didn't just happen one time, mind you. A total of 140 students and their parents are alleging the abuse. In answering a reporter’s question as to what the key to his school’s success was, Lichfield simply replied, "... it’s God."
In Republican circles, Lichfield’s been known for years as an extraordinary fundraiser and up until September 6, a member of the Mitt Romney campaign. He's donated thousands of dollars to his former boss and other prominent right-wing candidates and groups, including $300,000 to the Utah state party. Apparently, Lichfield and his wife Patricia donated well over the legal limit to Utah Senators Robert Bennett and Orrin Hatch, and North Carolina Senator Richard Burr.
This disgusting story comes from the LA Times.com courtesy of the Coalition Against Institutionalized Child Abuse:
ST. GEORGE, Utah -- Robert Browning Lichfield opened his first "tough-love" academy at a time when he was so financially strapped that he, his wife and four children lived crowded together in a one-room apartment.
In the ensuing 16 years, Lichfield had three more children, added 10 schools to his investment portfolio and founded a business empire whose holdings include everything from restaurants to radio stations. At 49, Lichfield cuts an unmistakable swath through this fast-growing southwestern Utah city. In achieving material success, he has also become something of a civic and political figure — and a major contributor to the state's Republican Party. When asked about his success, and about the criticism surrounding the school network that he created, he makes reference to his fervent Mormon faith. God is the key to his accomplishments, he says, and Satan is stirring up his foes.
"We're here getting kids off drugs and other evils," Lichfield said during a rare interview at the headquarters of the World Wide Assn. of Specialty Programs and Schools. "We're here connecting kids with their families. We're here getting kids in touch with their higher source.
"Do I believe, being a God-believing person, that the adversary to all good is going to sit back and let that happen without a major unleashing of dark forces? No, I don't."
After months of negotiation, Lichfield finally agreed to the interview with the Los Angeles Times. He requested that his photograph not be published in the Times because, he said, "... some kids are a little deranged.... You never know what they might do."
Lichfield says his role in the for-profit schools is that of an investor and advisor but his adversaries say he plays a key role in managing them as well. Regardless, he said he usually leaves the association’s white-haired president, Ken Kay, to answer questions about school policy.
Lichfield's role in politics is easier to pin down. According to Federal Elections Commission records, Lichfield and his wife gave the Republican Party $175,000 in a recent 12-month period, and he was named Republican of the Year this year by the Washington County GOP.
"As a person, he is great," said county GOP Chairman Naghi Zeenati. "He is community-minded and always available to help."
Lichfield got his first job with problem teens in 1977 when he was a "dorm parent" at a private boys' school on a wooded lot north of Provo. At the fenced-in compound known as Provo Canyon School for Boys, students were subjected to tough treatment, including long periods of solitary confinement and forced lie-detector tests.
It was "baptism by fire," said Lichfield, who has no formal qualifications in education or child psychology and didn't graduate from college. On the job, he said, "you learn real fast, just as a [physician's assistant] learns doctoring skills by working with doctors." However, not all of his charges from those days recall the fledgling educator with fondness. David Doran, 34, of Tarzana spent time in his youth at Provo Canyon and said he remembers Lichfield as a humorless, dictatorial figure who seemed to delight in taunting students. About the same time, Lichfield founded the Cross Creek school, his first. In 1987, Lichfield signed a contract to run Brightway Adolescent Hospital in St. George, which health officials said quickly became a pipeline for enrolling students in tough-love schools.
State inspectors investigated the private psychiatric institution after receiving complaints of children being admitted without consent from both parents and a failure to report a suspected case of child abuse, Utah Department of Health spokeswoman Debra Wynkoop said. The hospital shut down in 1998 after being informed by state health officials that they were going to order its closure, Wynkoop said.
By the time WWASPS was created in 1998, Lichfield said he had let other people assume ownership and management of the schools. Ken Kay, president of WWASPS, declined a request from The Times to provide a list of the owners. But some affiliates are family members.
Apparently, managing schools is in Lichfield’s lineage. His younger brother, Narvin, owns Carolina Springs Academy near Abbeville, South Carolina and the Academy at Dundee Ranch in Costa Rica. Kay’s son apparently still runs the WWASPS School in Jamaica, called Tranquility Bay.
What Lichfield does own, he said, are many of the buildings and grounds that house the WWASPS schools. Title formally belongs to a legal entity with a name intentionally so long newspapers won't print it, he joked. That entity, the Robert Browning Lichfield Limited Family Partnership, has Lichfield and his wife, Patricia, as sole partners, according to documents filed with the Utah secretary of state's office in 1995. Lichfield said he co-owns other properties with business associates.
As for his role in WWASPS, on paper Lichfield is simply a trustee. Some adversaries contend that the limited designation is the way he protects himself from legal liability.
A thicket of interrelated, for-profit companies has grown up around the nonprofit WWASPS. They include Teen Help, the association's marketing arm; Teen Escort Service, which convoys children to and from member schools; and R&B Billing, which sends the monthly bills to parents and processes their payments.
Thomas Burton, an attorney in Pleasanton, Calif., who has sued WWASPS, its member schools and associated businesses at least seven times — though he has yet to win a case — contends that all of these entities function as a huge, single commercial venture with Lichfield at the heart.
"The corporations keep shifting and being reconstituted with different people in different places," Burton said. "It seems they want to keep this a moving target."
In March, Burton filed suit in federal court in Salt Lake City on behalf of a former student at Tranquility Bay, claiming the WWASPS school in Jamaica was a "steaming squalid jungle camp, infested with flies, mosquitoes, scorpions and vermin."
After listening patiently during his interview with The Times to a recounting of these kinds of parent and student complaints, Lichfield spoke again of religious faith and his conviction that the methods he pioneered have aided many.
"God can't help everybody. I don't know how we're going to," he said. "But it [WWASPS] does provide an opportunity for thousands of kids to improve their lives. Those who choose not to, choose not to."
Hmm, I wonder if Romney, Hatch, Bennett, and the RNC will return the hundreds of thousands of dollars given to them directly by Lichfield. You know, like they insisted Hillary Clinton and other Democrats do after receiving campaign donations from Norman Hsu. Yeah right. Don't hold your breath.
I remember thinking back when Mark Foley was exposed as the pedophile he really is, that he was an anomaly in the Republican Party. But, the long line of closeted homosexuals, pedophiles and diaper-wearing weirdos exposed since Foley, now causes me to think that sexual perversion is a prerequisite for joining.
The Salt Lake Tribune covered the Mitt Romney aspect of this story as well.
Throw da [perverted] bums out!
Peace