So...I have been looking into Hephzibah House...
I am so sorry, Disgruntled, that your adolescence was interrupted and warped by these sadistic religious zealots.
What a nightmare this place is! For the life of me, I do not understand how a parent could send their child to a place that would only allow intermittent censored contact. Does that, right there, not raise a red flag?
"We don't want you to know how your child is really doing, but we will allow you to have a highly censored periodic glimpse into the propaganda that we want you believe"?
Williams...This is a "man" who believes in beating infants until they no longer cry or move. This guy should have gone to prison decades ago!
Twelve year olds sexually violated to "prove" they haven't been violated?! I can not even express in words how angry and depressed it makes me to know that this is "a thing." !!
Thinking about how to go about fighting HH...I went to take a look at the entire industry, to see what we are up against. I did come across an article that does a good outlining the Herculean task of trying to prosecute these abusers, close these places down, or even just regulating these abusive religious programs...
As the article succinctly stated, it's like Whack-a-Mole, these places often close temporarily, and re-open somewhere else, often under a new name. Particularly problematic was legislation passed by then Gov. G.Bush in 1999, giving religious exemptions for youth residential home regulations...
“The state passes the law for the regulation of residential facilities, and then they put, within that statute, a religious exemption,” Liz Sepper, a religious liberty expert and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told me. “You don’t need to apply, go into court for the exemption. The law never applied." Thus, many states allow religiously affiliated boarding schools to operate without registration, educational standards, background checks, or instructional certifications—even when institutions have long histories of abuse reports alleging Roloff-esque whippings, isolation rooms, and Bible memorization."
I did find, in the same article, a retired police captain, who is currently working on this, and I wonder if contacting him would be helpful? I found his work in this area very, very encouraging.
"As Newsweek reported, Restoration Youth Academy in Prichard, Alabama, was yet another home operating under a modern incarnation of the Lester Roloff approach until 2012. The facility remained free from oversight until
Charles Kennedy,
the now retired captain of the Prichard Police Department, received a phone call from the mother of a boy who said he’d been abused at the facility. When I spoke with Kennedy, he recalled what he found at the home: a naked boy locked in a closet, widespread allegations of physical abuse, severe exercise, and sadistic mind games. Staff had even encouraged a suicidal student to shoot himself with a gun he didn’t know wasn’t loaded, Kennedy said."
"Once the cop uncovered the dark history behind Restoration Youth Academy’s instructor William Knott—that his Bethel Boys Academy in Mississippi had been closed after a federal lawsuit alleging abuse—and obtained written statements from the boys, it took four years and reports to multiple local and statewide agencies for anything to be done. By then, Knott and Pastor David Young had closed Restoration Youth Academy and opened another facility in nearby Mobile County, Solid Rock Ministries. It’s a common move by religious leaders who know law enforcement have no way of monitoring the facilities, tracking their leaders, and compiling abuse allegations across jurisdictions, according to Marc Stern, general counsel at the American Jewish Committee and a leading expert on religious legal advocacy. “There’s a strong political tradition in the United States, for better or for worse, that education is a local matter controlled by local officials, and only extraordinary circumstances justify federal control.”
"After Solid Rock Ministries was subject to its own allegation of abuse, a 2015 police raid found isolation rooms, deplorable conditions, and signs of corporal punishment at the Mobile, Alabama, facility. Earlier this year, Knott, Young, and counselor Aleshia Moffet were convicted and sentenced to 20 years each on aggravated child abuse charges.
It was the only instance I could find where operators of religiously affiliated residential schools wrapped up in abuse allegations actually went to prison."
"Kennedy has since dedicated his career to using that case as a precedent for nationwide reform;
in the years following the prosecution of Knott and his accomplices, Kennedy partnered with Alabama state representative Steve McMillan on HB-440. The bill passed this past May and was signed into law by Governor Kay Ivey, a Republican, on July 29. It’s a rare example of increased government regulation of religion in the Trump era—the new law imposes regulations on residential facilities and does not exclude religious institutions."
"
As Kennedy described it, the war he’s waging here is not against religious freedom, but for basic standards of human rights. “[The facilities] can operate here, and we’re not going to charge [them] a nickel,” he said. The new law requires facilities to alert the county Department of Human Resources upon admittance of new students, conduct background checks on employees, accurately describe programming to parents, avoid restraints or abusive punishments, provide medical care, feed the children sanitary and nutritious meals three times daily, allow residents to practice their own religious beliefs, and more. “We’re just saying that if you take children into your care and custody for more than 24 hours, we should know that they are in a safe place,” Kennedy told me."
"
Kennedy, who views this saga as a “national disgrace,” has set his sights on changing laws in Missouri next, and plans to battle for regulation across the country. Though he faces opposition from those eager to exploit the religious freedom loophole, the pattern of abuse begs the question: How does hiding behind the law to abuse children represent Christian ideals?"
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...form-schools-get-away-with-brutal-child-abuse
