Kidnapped For Christ is a documentary that tells the shocking stories of American teenagers who were shipped to an American-run Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. They are raising funds on Kickstarter to fund their movie and with 18 days to go, they’re almost halfway to their $25,000 goal. They even have A-gay Lance Bass, who is an executive producer, doing a promo video for them.
Director Kate S. Logan spoke with The Huffington Post about the atrocities that go on in these schools:
The “treatment” was called “Culture Shock Therapy” by the administrators. So their actual methods involved jarring kids enough that they were more malleable emotionally and mentally. That was Step One, and it involved strenuous and intense physical labor and exercise, constant repetition of religious and program-written texts, and severe punishments for students who “acted out.” Those punishments could be hours of manual labor, exercising, or actual physical beatings, which they called “swats.”
That was the program. All of that stuff is in their handbook. Then there was so much physical and emotional abuse that went on besides that, combined with a generally oppressive atmosphere of conformity and helplessness. These kids were afraid to speak out, afraid to tell their parents about was was going on, and as a result a lot of them just felt helpless and alone, like they were stuck in this horrible place with no one to talk to and no one to help them.
Go ahead and check out the rest of their project and donate to help spread the word.
Ron Jackson
Those creepy christians are at it again.
Cam
Wow, this stuff is incredibly disgusting. And the scary thing is…
A U.S. Senator from Utah (Where Else) just introduced a bill to make it legal to discriminate against LGBT’s
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/breaking-gop-senator-introduces-religious-license-to-discriminate-against-gays-bill/politics/2013/12/12/80143#.UqsrQOJ5E6B
Tommysole
Trying to beat the fag out of the fag, my dad did that to me and it never worked. All his beatings to me ever did was force me to have sex with a wider range of men.
IzzyLuna
Why doesn’t Lance just fund the project? Isn’t that what an executive producer is?
tom-ba
“Culture Shock Therapy”
Let’s call it what it is: brainwashing.
jwtraveler
@tom-ba: No. Torture.
Manchester
Cheap bastard, just fund it Lance.
tom-ba
@jwtraveler: Brainwashing is a kind of torture.
The physical and mental pressure puts the victim into a defenseless state, where they can be manipulated like putty.
But the putty can only be molded so far. Brainwashing can work to break the will of a person, to crack their resolve. It can alter their thinking habits, and change how they perceive and react to particular facts and situations. It upsets the stability and normal workings of the conscious personality; indeed induced unbalance is key to its technique.
But brainwashing cannot remake the core of a person. That remains immutable. Facets of the personality like sexuality will be unchanged. But it can seriously and permanently damage a person’s psychological health.
These techniques were applied in the 20th century by many groups, apparently starting with the Maoists.* And a long and ugly history follows them, as we see, to the present.
Subjecting prisoners of war to these techniques is reprehensible, and is considered a war crime.
Subjecting gay teenagers to it should be considered a crime against humanity, and ought to be punished as such.
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* The Wikipedia article on mind control is actually rather good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_control
Also see “Brainwashing in Red China” by Edward Hunter.
Caliban
The parents should be prosecuted for what they did. Seriously.
Pix
This has been going on for decades. I was locked in a non religious version (not for sexuality) and only luck (plus my dad’s insurance running out) got me out before I broke under torture, drugs, starvation, and epic gaslighting. A friend was disappeared for 6 months into a “Christian home for girls” for her interest in Wicca (intense reporting to the law and social services accomplished nothing of significance) and came back brainwashed into believing we were all Satanists. If you want an idea of what they do then look up “An American Gulag” at teenliberty dot org.
Thing is if a person hires someone to beat or kill someone then the person who paid for it is prosecuted right along with the hired thug(s), but apparently what would be felony child abuse done by a parent is okay if “professionals” are paid to do it…and the reason so many of these gulags now operate outside the US (while catering to evil US parents with money) is because they tend to result in a fatality or two every year. (When I was locked up I got strapped to a bed too tight to even move my head and the drugs I was injected with nearly made me throw up and I read later that plenty of kids HAVE died that way choking to death on their own puke.)
rickhfx
@Ron Jackson: Those creepy str8 people still at it.