Close Thayer Learning Center

[Anonymous]

http://www.closethayerlearningcenter.com

[Anonymous]

Man, that is some small town.  Anybody have it's location on satellite map?

[Anonymous]

I'd like GPS Coordinates.

I'll see if I can drop a cruise missile or a small space-borne rock onto it...

[Anonymous]

It's on Google Maps. I'm no good at triangulation from coordinates of larger cities and I can't find the specific coordinates for Kidder. Sorry. Best to just toss the biggest asteroid you can about 50 miles northeast of Kansas City and hope for the best.

[Anonymous]

Close Thayer Learning Center

Thayer Learning Center is located in Kidder, Missouri - population 271.

It is an isolated, unlicensed, unregulated facility which functions as a private jail.

For most of its existence, Thayer Learning Center has employed no teachers, no therapists, and no licensed or credentialed staff members.

In the most practical terms children are sent to Thayer and exposed to conditions that, if imposed by their parents, would likely lead to an investigation and the filing of criminal charges.

There are no such investigations of Thayer because the owners have decided - and been allowed to - not cooperate with them.

Although children throughout the United States have a right and an obligation to go to school, the children of Thayer lose that right.

The "privilege" of going to school is earned by telling Thayer's owners what they want to hear and by complying with Thayer's rules as imposed by its non-professional staff.

Children don't have to be referred to Thayer by any school or juvenile justice system or to have been convicted of anything.

Admission to Thayer Learning Center simply requires the agreement of parents or guardians who have been convinced by Thayer's promotional material that their children need the program's unique form of "tough love."

The treatment at Thayer Learning Center consists primarily of physical exercise - exercise that children are required to do throughout the day and sometimes into the night.

However, there is no doctor to examine Thayer's children to determine if they are fit to do the exercise required.

Although there are no statistics or studies to show that Thayer ever benefited any child who was sent there, there is substantial information available to demonstrate that Thayer Learning Center has harmed some of the children who were placed in their care.

One of those children was Roberto Reyes.

Roberto died at Thayer Learning Center in 2004 after his deteriorating medical condition was ignored for days.

Despite findings by a Missouri State Agency that he was neglected and abused and that medical treatment might have saved his life, no one has been punished in connection with his death.

Despite Thayer's failure to cooperate with the state's investigation of Roberto's death and even a recommendation by the investigating agency that the laws be changed to require such cooperation, nothing has changed at all.

Thayer has gotten away with this by using the courts and their influence to silence their critics.

Employees are required to sign agreements stating that they will not tell anyone what they observed at Thayer Learning Center.

Employees who were so upset by what they saw that they talked to child welfare agencies, parents, or child welfare advocacy groups were promptly sued and face the choice of hiring lawyers to defend themselves or trying to forget what they have seen.

Thayer Learning Center is a national disgrace and nobody seems to care. We believe that if people knew what children really experience there in the name of treatment, the government and its employees would care and would not tolerate it.

We believe that Thayer is the poster child for so much of what is wrong with our country's expanding tough love industry.

This website has been created to influence the government to investigate the death of Roberto Reyes and to close Thayer Learning Center. We intend to use it to publish stories of Thayer's acts of child abuse, negligence, and lack of concern for basic human rights.

We encourage employees, former employees, victims and their parents to let us know more about what happens behind Thayer's walls.

It tells the story of Thayer Learning Center as we have learned it and makes the public portion of the file associated with Roberto Reyes's death available to everyone.

This site also documents Thayer's attempts to use the courts to silence its critics and keep its true nature a secret.

And it encourages the children of Thayer Learning Center, its employees, and anyone else with information or concerns, to contact us so that we can continue to document the truth.

This website will remain up until Thayer Learning Center is closed down.

[Anonymous]

Program Information
Thayer Learning Center

Thayer Learning Center is a strict boot camp that focuses on teaching teens the importance of family, respect for self and others, healthy living, and the value of hard work. Throughout the course of our one year program, teens are given the opportunity to serve in the community, catch up on, or graduate from school, and actively repair and build their relationship with their parents and family members.

Thayer Learning Center is a multi-phase program. Throughout the phases, students are given more responsibilities and trust, teaching teens the value of integrity, honesty, and how to earn what they are given. If you think Thayer Learning Center could help your teenager call now at 1-800-435-0688 or request more information now.
Academics at Thayer Learning Center

Teens who are doing poorly in school do not appreciate the value of an education. At Thayer Learning Center, we teach our students that an education is a privilege. During the first phase of the program, cadets are not permitted to work on their schooling. School is earned during the second phase of the program where time is alloted for them to study at an individual pace with trained tutors and professional teachers. The students at Thayer Learning Center are able to focus on their course work without distraction, while getting the individual attention they need which is not present in public schools.
Thayer Learning Center Gives Teens a Brighter Future

Students and parents at Thayer Learning Center graduation Thayer Learning Center focuses on choice and accountability. Each cadet is responsible for their words, choices, health, education, and family. Positive attitudes and behaviors are rewarded. Poor attitudes and behaviors are immediately confronted and redirected. With constant supervision from our trained staff, each cadet is held responsible for their actions every minute of every day.

Essential to the success of each cadet at Thayer Learning Center, is the cooperation of their parents and family as a team. Communication is key to each families success during this educational experience. Together, we address important issues, help create understanding and forgiveness, set goals, and clear clouded vision. When teens leave Thayer Learning Center they are respectful, focused, confident and ready to take on a bright new future. If Thayer Learning Center sounds like a program that could help your teen contact our admissions office today at 1-800-435-0688, or request more information about our school now.

[Anonymous]

Former students, parents of former students, and employees have made the following allegations against Thayer Learning Center and its staff:

    * A Hindu child was forced to eat meat, then vomited. She was then forced to eat her own vomit.

    * One child currently in Thayer is suffering from some type of kidney disorder, and the "nurse" at Thayer is in fact a high-school dropout who also runs the kitchen.

    * Boys are forced to share razors instead of being given the ones purchased by parents.

    * Some children spend 30 days or more in solitary confinement.

    * An emergency room physician prescribed bedrest and antibiotics for a child with an ear infection.

    * Back at Thayer Learning Center, the child was forced to exercise and sleep on the concrete floor.

    * Thayer staff members told the parents that there was "a little bit of drainage" coming from the child's ear, when in fact, the child's ear was bleeding.

    * Two children were reportedly "restrained" with zip-ties around their ankles and wrists.

    * One child was attached to a file cabinet.

    * Male children have been stripped to their underwear, "hog-tied," and sprayed with a hose.

    * Children are forced to "re-write" letters to parents, until the letters contain nothing negative about the program.

    * Athlete's foot and other fungal infections are widespread and go untreated.

    * Willa Bundy reportedly denied medical care for a child who had the flu and was constantly vomiting.

    * According to former staff members, Willa Bundy diagnosed the vomiting as "a ploy to go home."

    * When asbestos was found in an old building on the Thayer compound, the Bundys refused to hire trained asbestos removal contractors.

    * Instead, students were forced to remove the hazardous removal and instructed to put the asbestos in a pile outside.

    * Thayer was fined by the Department of Natural Resources for the improper disposal.

    * A child reportedly arrived at Thayer in a nearly comatose condition. The teen transport personnel stated that they had administered prescription muscle relaxants to the child to prevent "problems" during transport.

    * Willa Bundy was informed of the child's condition and denied requests for medical attention. She reportedly instructed staff members to put the child in bed until the medication wore off.

    * After several children collapsed from heat exhaustion and dehydration, the "drill sergeants" at Thayer began forcing children to drink large quantities of water.

    * Requests to use the bathroom are subsequently denied leaving teens with no option except to urinate on themselves.

    * During a one year period, group therapy occurred just once - at 10 PM and was led by Willa Bundy.

    * One child refused to exercise and was allegedly pulled around by the hair, arm and clothing by John Bundy.

    * All calls from children to parents are monitored and children are punished for saying anything against the program.

    * John Bundy allegedly forced female students to exercise outside in the snow without shoes.

    * One child was allegedly roped to a 4 wheel all terrain vehicle (ATV) and instructed to "keep up."

    * When the child could not keep pace with the vehicle and fell to the ground, he was dragged behind it.

    * Willa and John Bundy are reportedly gone for extended periods of time and leave their 17 year old daughter in charge of the facility.

    * A male staff member supplied illegal drugs to at least one female student.

    * As punishment, two children were reportedly bound together with duct-tape and left that way overnight.

    * Before announced visits by the Department of Social Services, Willa Bundy allegedly takes "problem" students out for ice cream or to Wal-Mart.

    * In one building on the property, 26 female children share 1 bathroom and are given just 30 seconds to get ready for bed at night.

    * There are frequent outbreaks of head lice.

    * Part of the "fitness training" at Thayer reportedly involves students being forced to run while carrying 5-gallon buckets full of sand.

    * Students are awakened in the middle of the night and forced to exercise.

    * Children who are not physically fit are required to perform strenuous activities, including 6-mile runs.

    * Students have suffered serious injuries and were denied medical attention. Parents were not notified of their child's condition.

    * The facility reportedly has no certified teachers. Classes are "taught" via videotape.

    * Level 1 boot camp students sleep on a concrete floor in a basement.

    * At present, 18 boys are in the basement which has just one bathroom.

    * The facility is reportedly overcrowded and housing some children in trailers, yet hoping to double enrollment for the summer boot camp program.

      Source: ISAC International Survivors Action Committee

[Anonymous]

A child reportedly arrived at Thayer in a nearly comatose condition. The teen transport personnel stated that they had administered prescription muscle relaxants to the child to prevent "problems" during transport.

Sure, dope the kid up, hustle him across state lines, dump him off at Thayer before sunrise and get home in time for dinner with the wife and kids.

Still think it would have been a misake for a survivor to testify to what it's like to be "escorted" by transporters?  This story pales in comparison to the ones I've read about where kids were roughed up, sprayed orange with pepper spray, duck-taped, chained etc.

[Covergaard]

From your own fornits wiki:

http://www.fornits.com/wiki/index.php/T ... ing_Center

There is also a link to a satellite photo, so it is just to go down there and express your opinions with some big signs on the public street.

How are the rule in Missouri about demonstrations? In Denmark we have to report them to the police in advance, so we can get police protection against angry opponents.

[Rachael]

A child reportedly arrived at Thayer in a nearly comatose condition. The teen transport personnel stated that they had administered prescription muscle relaxants to the child to prevent "problems" during transport.

Sure, dope the kid up, hustle him across state lines, dump him off at Thayer before sunrise and get home in time for dinner with the wife and kids.

Still think it would have been a misake for a survivor to testify to what it's like to be "escorted" by transporters?  This story pales in comparison to the ones I've read about where kids were roughed up, sprayed orange with pepper spray, duck-taped, chained etc.

In Canada there is no such thing as an escort service, so parents have to come up with an alternative. One girl's parents hired an older man to pick their daughter up off the street and restrain her in the back of his van. They had her tied up till she got to AARC - a 20 hour drive from where she'd been picked up. Another set of parents were advised to drug their daughter to get her there without issue. This little girl they had knocked out for over 30 hours on some street drugs the parents had picked up - they were told it was ketamine, but were unsure.

[Anonymous]

Does Canada not have escorts because it is illegal or because the industry is still too small?
Were most of the AARC kids then from Calgary or did parents drive in from other provinces alot. Perhaps having to get the kid to a program themselves makes parents think twice.
Oz girl

[Anonymous]

goin out on a limb a little here, but, aarc is like a straight inc spinoff. There are no widely available reports of these types of programs using escorts to bring in clients. Unlike the typical wwasp program, they do the parent brainwashing right there at the facility, usually, meaning the program is more of a family at the facility based operation. I hope this makes sense,  :wink:

[glaceau]

In Canada, kids apparently have rights as of 16, so parents probably have to smuggle the kids out of Canada themselves instead of using escort services.

[Rachael]

As we've ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Children have rights from day 1. They cannot be forcibly incarcerated without due process at any point. (Hence the many pending lawsuits.)

The "troubled teen" industry in Canada is exceedingly small. I can count the number of programs on one hand. So likely, it would not be profitable to run such a company. Also, the legality of such would be highly suspect - and even easier to bring down than a program itself.

Parents do bring kids to AARC from all over Western Canada - not many from out east ever consider the possibility. Kids are usually brought in under false pretenses. We don't usually have any idea about what's in store. At the same time - AARC requires parents to live in the city and have a "host home" so it's not like a parent could just have someone drop their kid off. Parents from outside Calgary have to literally move here to attend two or three weekly meetings and then the inevitable host home.

As far as sending children out of country - I doubt it happens very much, and it would have to be under again some sort of false pretense as Canadian border guards/Customs officials would not ever let an unwilling person be taken across the border. Then again, how hard would it be to convince your kid that you're just going to Jamaica for a vacation - no one knows about the industry up here. It would not even come into your head that this "resort" called Tranquility Bay that your parents are telling you you're going to is secretly a fetid hellhole where you are going to be beaten down till you're good again.

[Anonymous]

bump