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Charleston Post and Courier
May 24, 2003
MEXICO CITY--The owner of an American behavior modification program in Costa Rica housing nearly 200 American youths was jailed Friday on a charge of depriving the children of their civil liberties.
The owner, Narvin Lichfield, was detained temporarily pending a judge's review of allegations brought by a local prosecutor. Those allegations include charges that children were held against their will and physically abused at the Academy at Dundee Ranch, in rural Costa Rica, according to Adilia Caravaca, a Costa Rican lawyer representing the mother of a child at Dundee.
Dundee Ranch and a similar behavior modification program in Jamaica, Tranquility Bay, are affiliated with a Utah organization, the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, known as WWASPS.
The association also operates a program in South Carolina near Abbeville, called Carolina Springs Academy.
A 14-year-old California girl who fled the Dundee Ranch Thursday and returned home with the help of U.S. Embassy officials said by telephone Friday that Dundee staff members had beaten and physically restrained children who tried to leave the academy.
The girl, whose mother insisted that her name be withheld, said staff members "tried to make us sign a contract saying we didn't want anything to change and told us we had to sign the contract or we would be sent to Jamaica."
About 30 children were sent from Costa Rica to Jamaica this week after child welfare officials visited Dundee Ranch on Tuesday and told youths there that they did not have to stay, officials said.
The Costa Rican authorities said punishments at the academy included emotional abuse, isolation and physical restraints.
Narvin Lichfield is a brother of WWASPS' founder, Robert Lichfield. The association operates 11 behavior modification centers that house 2,200 youths, about half of them in Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica, and half in the United States -- in Utah, Montana and New York, as well as South Carolina.
Previous investigations have led to closings of WWASPS-affiliated programs in Mexico and the Czech Republic.
Some parents of children at Dundee Ranch were desperately trying to contact their children to bring them home, but without success.