Reply #8: GAO report: 1,619 incidents of child abuse in 33 states in 2005.

[madfloridian]

A shocking look at our country from the Times Online UK

Torture, starvation and death: how American boot camps abuse boys

The Government Accountability Office, the US Congress investigative arm, identified 1,619 incidents of child abuse in 33 states in 2005. It selected ten deaths since 1990 for special investigation in boot camps and “wilderness programmes”.

Parents send their children to the privately run camps in the hope that their strict regimes and outdoor pursuits will instil discipline. But the findings suggest that instructors often go too far in trying to teach them good behaviour.

“Examples of abuse include youths being forced to eat their own vomit, denied adequate food, being forced to lie in urine or faeces, being kicked, beaten and thrown to the ground,” Gregory Kutz, a GAO investigator, told a congressional committee.

One teenager, Mr Kutz said, was “forced to use a toothbrush to clean a toilet, then forced to use that toothbrush on their own teeth”. The abuse that preceded the deaths of the ten teenagers was particularly shocking. “If you walked in partway through my presentation you might have assumed I was talking about human rights violations in a Third World country,” Mr Kutz said.

Speaking in front of photographs of his emaciated son an hour before his death, Bob Bacon — the father of Aaron — described how his son had been starved, with his weight falling from 9st 4lb (59kg) to 7st 10lb in three weeks. He said that he and his wife had sent Aaron to the Northstar Expeditions in Escalante, Utah, in the hope that it would get him away from the drugs that he had started dabbling in at school.

Sickening.

Bay County, Florida, is only the tip of the iceberg.