Yeah, Romney's out of the race. But Robert Lichfield, a Republican bigshot from Utah who was his most controversial fundraiser, remains in serious need of scrutiny for what he's doing to American kids, even if this particular Red State horror is no longer part of the 2008 election.
Lichfield runs an extremely profitable network of "tough love" private schools for American teenagers. He's based in Utah, but his dungeon-like punishment center, Tranquility Bay, is run in Jamaica, beyond the reach of U.S. law. He had to leave the Romney campaign after it emerged that he was facing hundreds of child abuse complaints, including stories of children locked in dog cages.
The latest: An Orthodox Jewish family whose teen was sent to Tranquility Bay is now, aptly, accusing him of running a "modern-day concentration camp" for profit.
Children have been beaten, forced to eat their vomit and made to stand in painful contortions for hours, according to a separate suit filed in Utah by former students against private boot camps, including Tranquility Bay.
The case has so riled up members of the normally insular Orthodox community that several are taking the rare step of publicizing Isaac's situation.
[...] They claim he was lured to Brooklyn with the promise of a job, handcuffed and thrown into a van that took him to the boot camp as he cried and begged to be released, the suit says.
There've been hundreds of other stories like this about Lichfield's company, so it's not very far-fetched.
When I was writing about Mike Huckabee for AlterNet, I discovered he had his own teenage tough love scandal involving a private plane and a questionable facility known as "Lord's Ranch." Haven't seen any ties between the "troubled teen" industry and the present candidates, but thought I'd throw this out there, as it would be a shame for this issue to sink out of sight just because it's an election year...
Rep. George Miller, from my part of the world in California, has been trying forever to regulate this destructive industry, which has claimed a number of lives--not long ago, that of a Florida teen, Martin Lee Anderson. (His alleged killers, guards at one of these schools, were last year found not guilty.)
I missed this one, but a long-awaited GAO report (requested by Miller) finally came out in October, claiming "thousands of allegations of child abuse and neglect" at these private discipline schools. Hope something comes of it.