The Paul Babeu saga continues: We have reports that while Headmaster of the DeSisto School, a notorious behavior modification gulag school that has since been closed as of 2005, Babeu has been accused of aiding and abetting physical abuse towards children.
ABC15.com (Phoenix):
The DeSisto School sits abandoned in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
It was a private boarding school for troubled teens with a long and troubled history of its own.
Pinal County Sheriff and U.S. Congressional candidate Paul Babeu was the school's Headmaster and Executive Director from 1999 to 2001.
While Babeu ran the school, the Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services launched an investigation into repeated allegations of abuse.
The ABC15 Investigators traveled across Massachusetts and tracked down reports that have never been released.
The documents show that during Babeu’s tenure the school was not licensed. Other allegations include detailed instances of physical and sexual abuse.
Holli Nielsen was a student of DeSisto while Babeu was Headmaster.
“It's not unreasonable to say we were cult-like,” said Nielsen.
Fornits Wiki on DeSisto:
Consequences
Sheeted: All clothes except underwear has to be taken off. Sometimes a toga was given instead. Survivors tell how the undressing often took place by fellow detainees with higher level ripping the clothes off forcefully
Sitting meetings: Dorm meetings (group therapy) that lasted 8-10 hours.
Leashed(also called hand-held): Have to stay in arms distance of the dorm member who "has you". Breaking this would increase severity of punishment to "double hand held". Leashing would often include bathroom activities such as urinating, defecating, or showering.
24 Hour Leashed/also called shifting: Watched while sleeping. Doors and windows may be blocked by person(s) watching to prevent running away.
Group Leashed: Entire Dorm is "leashed" together...arms distance, and 3 meetings per day.
Farm: The "farm" was a place but it was also used as a verb. There was a girls and boys farm (separate) that someone could be sent to. Sent to the Farm where you have 6 meetings per day and are not allowed contact (not even eye contact) with the rest of the school. Manual labor and meetings all day with other persons on the farm and staff member there. Possessions are taken away. Work suits provided. An entire dorm can also "be farmed". They would also be as separated and ignored from the rest of the population as possible. Manual labor and meetings all day.
Cornering: Can given given as standing or sitting. A way to obtain a person's turn-in's. No time minimum or maximum.
Doing Hard Time in Shaker Heights' blog has more information on the newest Babeu controversy:
Babeu, a Massachusetts native, was running under the highly imaginative slogan "Send a True Conservative to Congress" is running for one of Arizona's seats in the US House of Representatives. And until Friday, he was doing so from inside the closet, because for gay Conservatives, being the closet is a the safest way to achieve power and keep it.
And it gets better, still! How so you ask?
Well, on his campaign web site, Babeu states that he was "Headmaster & Executive Director of DeSisto Private Boarding School from 1999 to 2001."
What of it?
Well...the DeSisto at Stockbridge School was a private therapeutic boarding school for high school students in Stockbridge, Massachusetts that was set up by a guy named Michael DiSisto for "at risk youth". Evidently, the school had some success, but the founder was a bit of a crackpot. The schools were not accredited in the late 1980s, and they used some controversial methods. From Wikipedia we learn that:
In January 1999, " two workers at The DeSisto at Stockbridge school were arraigned in Berkshire Superior Court on a single count each for abuse or neglect of a disabled person resulting in bodily injury. These charges arose after the staff members allegedly did not make sure a patient taking the drug Lithium remained properly hydrated. This resulted in a Lithium overdose and the student's hospitalization.[15] Investigation resulted in the charges being dropped for these two staff members, and the blame affixed to higher ranking staff, and licensed medical personnel...The Cult Awareness Network, Inc. placed the DeSisto School on its list of cults it kept records on.[28][29]"
Head of a cult. Nice.
And as if the Sheriff wasn't having a bad enough day yesterday (!!!) when all of this blew out, Mitt Romney removed the good Sheriff from his Arizona Election Committee Chairmanship.
Berkshire Eagle:
FLORENCE, Ariz. -- Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu built a reputation as a rising, conservative star by taking a hardline stance against illegal immigration, attacking the Obama administration and appearing alongside Sen. John McCain in a 2010 re-election ad in which McCain urged federal officials to just "complete the danged fence."
But, on Saturday, the Berkshires native’s conservative image took a beating as he was forced to admit publicly that he is gay and was involved in a relationship with a Mexican immigrant who claims the sheriff threatened to have him deported if he revealed their relationship.
A native of North Adams, Babeu was also a Berkshire County commissioner and was the headmaster at the former DeSisto School in Stockbridge from 1998 to 2001.
In 2002, he also stepped forward to say he was a child victim of sexual abuse by a priest and sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield.
UPDATE:
We have more details on the
school's highly dangerous and abusive discipline methods:
“Cornering”
The following is one “cornering” incident found by the OCCS: “DeSisto cornered one student, whose diagnoses included bi-polar disorder, ADHD, and impulse control disorder, for weeks on end. As a result, the student became depressed, his mood-stabilizing medication fell below therapeutic levels, and he began to defecate and urinate on himself. This student was taken from the corner to the hospital for treatment of pneumonia and was then returned from the emergency room to the corner, rather than his bed.”
“Privacy Concerns”
Former DeSisto students also described a punishment called “sheeting.” When students were “sheeted,” they were forced to strip down either naked or to their underwear and wear only a sheet.
“Student Restraint Issues”
According to OCCS reports, students were used to supervise fellow students in an inappropriate and unsafe manner. “The use of students to assist in restraints is an extremely dangerous practice, associated with a high risk of serious injury or death for the student being restrained and high risk of injury for an untrained student administrator,” records state. Using students to restrain other students does not meet state and nationally recognized standards.
According to the OCCS, incident reports at the school revealed:
-A student who had refused to stop leaning against a wall was restrained for several hours.
-A student was kept in a three-person restraint for an entire day.
-A student who had thrown a plate and got into a verbal argument was restrained for more than five hours.
Other Discipline / Human Rights Issues
The OCCS and former students said that food and drink were often withheld as punishment. In many cases, the OCCS found that students were isolated from outside contact. Records show, that students were not given mail or allowed to call and visit with family members.
In documents,
the OCCS wrote: “DeSisto staff monitor all calls for new students, disconnecting calls if the student complains about a DeSisto practice. DeSisto only allows new students one ten-minute phone call a week. If a student complains about a school practice, staff routinely informs parents that their child has fabricated the event is attempting to manipulate the parent into withdrawing the student from school. If a parent complains about a school practice, DeSisto may ‘expel’ the parent, thereby denying contact with their child or may even terminate the student from the program. DeSisto routinely censors and withholds mail from students and restricts family visits. It students frequently do not go home for the holidays or other visits.”