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How do these cases not result in mass prosecutions? It shouldn't be too hard to tie a few people to the abuse at these schools, then police say, "give us names

How do these cases not result in mass prosecutions? It shouldn't be too hard to tie a few people to the abuse at these schools, then police say, "give us names and help us understand who was responsible at the top, or you're looking at many, many years in prison for child abuse and we'll just find someone else who'll talk" You know, the same way prosecutors go after mobsters and drug rings

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ummonk 5y ago
I mean a German professor, Helmut Kentler, openly placed foster children with pedophiles for 30 years with the thinking that they would love them more. He was never prosecuted.
erdos4d 5y ago
Do you really believe that the judges and prosecutors who send kids to these abuse factories don't now they are going to harm the child? That's why they do this, they like to hurt/intimidate/damage people, that's literally all their jobs do all day long. Why would they go along with prosecuting people who were performing the abuse they wanted done? I'm sorry but these places have been out in the open since they first started, kids have been telling similar stories to this from the beginning. No way the people doing this don't know exactly what's going on and actively want it to happen to the kids they send there.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  We can think of other populations that consistently tell stories of abuse, over generations, and are downplayed and denied - today, yesterday, even here on HN.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
    Not really following, unless you mean in a general sense that this happens all the time, all over the world.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      I mean, you can look at vulnerable populations that report abuse (not the same abuse as kids in these programs, but abuse), and you can see it denied, including here on HN regularly. Women and black Americans are two prominent examples.
bell-cot 5y ago
Whatever nice-sounding things the little kids are told, the police, "justice" system, etc. are actually more interested in enforcing the existing social order than they are in being the good guys, or the letter or spirit of the law. And such "schools" are certainly all about enforcing the existing social order, upon "residents" who the Cops & Co. are not favorably inclined toward.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > the police, "justice" system, etc. are actually more interested in enforcing the existing social order than they are in being the good guys, or the letter or spirit of the law. What are you interested in? I know it's a provocative question, but blaming some 'system' is 90% of the problem. What am I interested in? My actions speak.
  - lubujackson 5y ago
    The "system" isn't a vague boogeyman but the product of individual decisions that funnel things in aggregate to a certain conclusion. Think of how birds fly in a "V" formation, something emergent from each bird following the same simple rules. A teen not abiding by the boundaries of society may be dealt with in a way that seems viciously over-reactive because maintaining order is the entire focus of each element of the legal/judicial system. The degree of infraction is less important than respecting the authority of the system itself. Like be an asshole to a judge or cop and see what happens - it shouldn't matter as much as it does, but everyone instantly feels the raw danger of doing such a thing because of this dynamic. The problem is that "testing boundaries" is a natural phase of growing up and is really about coming to grips with your own identity and values. There is a huge disconnect between how "the system" (or people serving roles within the system) approach these situation vs. any actual threat to the system itself.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      We're not birds or beasts acting on instinct; they don't invent democracy and form judicial systems. The system is not somewhere else, it's not something else, it's not someone else, it's sitting in front of your computer right now.
klyrs 5y ago
Others have mentioned https://elan.school https://elan.school -- it's a horrific eye-opener. I'd recommend against binging the story; it's heartwrenching. There's a few methods they use: (a) they do shit so horrific that folks don't believe their own children (b) they brainwash, gaslight the kids so they're conditioned to not talk about it, even teach them lies to tell their parents with dire consequences (c) police and politicians are actually in on it. Shorter answer, lots of americans are hard-core authoritarians and this is what "law & order" actually means.
wolverine876 5y ago
> How do these cases not result in mass prosecutions? In Luzerne County, PA, judges were paid off by local juvenile detention centers to sentence kids there. Over years, they sentenced many, many kids, in court, for absurdities (e.g., I think one kid was sentenced for throwing a sandwich at their teacher). Much of the court system and local legal community had to know; nobody put a stop to it. Judicial conduct boards and the PA Supreme Court were appealed to; they didn't act. I forget how it finally came to light, but it got into the hands of federal rather than local state prosecutors. That's often how local corruption is stopped: the feds aren't tied to the local political system. The defendants, the Luzerne County judges, were clearly guilty of heinus crimes, ruining the lives of all these kids who spent high school in juvinile jail (imagine how your life would turn out). The federal prosecutors gave the defendants a sweetheart plea deal. Thankfully, the federal judge rejected the settlement and they were convicted and given long sentences. (The Kids For Cash documentary tells the story.) How does it not result in mass prosecutions? Look in the mirror. Me too. What corruption is going on in our communities? How about the IT community?
- pc86 5y ago
  I don't think "the IT community" (is there even such a thing) has any sort of power where corruption in the traditional sense can even exist. Something like Kids for Cash is an institutional failing and requires the concerted effort and coordination of multiple, theoretically unrelated - or even opposed - parties that all have a lot of institutional power rarely found outside of government. Even huge multinational corporations worth hundreds of billions don't have the kind of power needed to literally sell kids into slavery with the blessing of the judiciary.
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    Look at Lapsus$. They were enabled by corruption in the IT community. Due to effects of scale, corruption in IT doesn’t have to be widespread to have major effects worldwide.
  - scythe 5y ago
    I think the closest analogy is the circulation of insecure software with aggressive marketing and its adoption in the sphere of direct and de facto coercion. The Equifax situation did not receive a great public post-mortem that went deeper into generally applied business practices than "credit processors bad".
Wojtkie 5y ago
A lot of these places are located in counties or states with lax regulations and rules around this. The one I went to "lost" a few of my classmates' patient notes and histories. Also, a lot of the stuff they do isn't illegal. It's just emotionally abusive at times, but because you have all this "support" and attention around its not really seen as neglect. All the kids look healthy, they're exercising, eating three times a day, and their grades are usually better than ever. I do not know a single person from my few years in the troubled teen industry who actually feels better. I've lost 3 of my classmates to suicide in the 3-4 years following treatment. These programs take advantage of families in very vulnerable times. Unfortunately, you only ever hear about anecdotes because there isn't a lot of genuine research done about efficacy, and since its teens, its all very restricted.
- candiodari 5y ago
  > These programs take advantage of families in very vulnerable times. And yet, the majority of the kids there are placed there by CPS, not by parents.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ummonk 5y ago

I mean a German professor, Helmut Kentler, openly placed foster children with pedophiles for 30 years with the thinking that they would love them more. He was never prosecuted.

erdos4d 5y ago

Do you really believe that the judges and prosecutors who send kids to these abuse factories don't now they are going to harm the child? That's why they do this, they like to hurt/intimidate/damage people, that's literally all their jobs do all day long. Why would they go along with prosecuting people who were performing the abuse they wanted done? I'm sorry but these places have been out in the open since they first started, kids have been telling similar stories to this from the beginning. No way the people doing this don't know exactly what's going on and actively want it to happen to the kids they send there.

wolverine876 5y ago
We can think of other populations that consistently tell stories of abuse, over generations, and are downplayed and denied - today, yesterday, even here on HN.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  Not really following, unless you mean in a general sense that this happens all the time, all over the world.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    I mean, you can look at vulnerable populations that report abuse (not the same abuse as kids in these programs, but abuse), and you can see it denied, including here on HN regularly. Women and black Americans are two prominent examples.

bell-cot 5y ago

Whatever nice-sounding things the little kids are told, the police, "justice" system, etc. are actually more interested in enforcing the existing social order than they are in being the good guys, or the letter or spirit of the law. And such "schools" are certainly all about enforcing the existing social order, upon "residents" who the Cops & Co. are not favorably inclined toward.

wolverine876 5y ago
> the police, "justice" system, etc. are actually more interested in enforcing the existing social order than they are in being the good guys, or the letter or spirit of the law. What are you interested in? I know it's a provocative question, but blaming some 'system' is 90% of the problem. What am I interested in? My actions speak.
- lubujackson 5y ago
  The "system" isn't a vague boogeyman but the product of individual decisions that funnel things in aggregate to a certain conclusion. Think of how birds fly in a "V" formation, something emergent from each bird following the same simple rules. A teen not abiding by the boundaries of society may be dealt with in a way that seems viciously over-reactive because maintaining order is the entire focus of each element of the legal/judicial system. The degree of infraction is less important than respecting the authority of the system itself. Like be an asshole to a judge or cop and see what happens - it shouldn't matter as much as it does, but everyone instantly feels the raw danger of doing such a thing because of this dynamic. The problem is that "testing boundaries" is a natural phase of growing up and is really about coming to grips with your own identity and values. There is a huge disconnect between how "the system" (or people serving roles within the system) approach these situation vs. any actual threat to the system itself.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    We're not birds or beasts acting on instinct; they don't invent democracy and form judicial systems. The system is not somewhere else, it's not something else, it's not someone else, it's sitting in front of your computer right now.

klyrs 5y ago

Others have mentioned https://elan.school https://elan.school -- it's a horrific eye-opener. I'd recommend against binging the story; it's heartwrenching. There's a few methods they use: (a) they do shit so horrific that folks don't believe their own children (b) they brainwash, gaslight the kids so they're conditioned to not talk about it, even teach them lies to tell their parents with dire consequences (c) police and politicians are actually in on it. Shorter answer, lots of americans are hard-core authoritarians and this is what "law & order" actually means.

wolverine876 5y ago

> How do these cases not result in mass prosecutions? In Luzerne County, PA, judges were paid off by local juvenile detention centers to sentence kids there. Over years, they sentenced many, many kids, in court, for absurdities (e.g., I think one kid was sentenced for throwing a sandwich at their teacher). Much of the court system and local legal community had to know; nobody put a stop to it. Judicial conduct boards and the PA Supreme Court were appealed to; they didn't act. I forget how it finally came to light, but it got into the hands of federal rather than local state prosecutors. That's often how local corruption is stopped: the feds aren't tied to the local political system. The defendants, the Luzerne County judges, were clearly guilty of heinus crimes, ruining the lives of all these kids who spent high school in juvinile jail (imagine how your life would turn out). The federal prosecutors gave the defendants a sweetheart plea deal. Thankfully, the federal judge rejected the settlement and they were convicted and given long sentences. (The Kids For Cash documentary tells the story.) How does it not result in mass prosecutions? Look in the mirror. Me too. What corruption is going on in our communities? How about the IT community?

pc86 5y ago
I don't think "the IT community" (is there even such a thing) has any sort of power where corruption in the traditional sense can even exist. Something like Kids for Cash is an institutional failing and requires the concerted effort and coordination of multiple, theoretically unrelated - or even opposed - parties that all have a lot of institutional power rarely found outside of government. Even huge multinational corporations worth hundreds of billions don't have the kind of power needed to literally sell kids into slavery with the blessing of the judiciary.
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  Look at Lapsus$. They were enabled by corruption in the IT community. Due to effects of scale, corruption in IT doesn’t have to be widespread to have major effects worldwide.
- scythe 5y ago
  I think the closest analogy is the circulation of insecure software with aggressive marketing and its adoption in the sphere of direct and de facto coercion. The Equifax situation did not receive a great public post-mortem that went deeper into generally applied business practices than "credit processors bad".

Wojtkie 5y ago

A lot of these places are located in counties or states with lax regulations and rules around this. The one I went to "lost" a few of my classmates' patient notes and histories. Also, a lot of the stuff they do isn't illegal. It's just emotionally abusive at times, but because you have all this "support" and attention around its not really seen as neglect. All the kids look healthy, they're exercising, eating three times a day, and their grades are usually better than ever. I do not know a single person from my few years in the troubled teen industry who actually feels better. I've lost 3 of my classmates to suicide in the 3-4 years following treatment. These programs take advantage of families in very vulnerable times. Unfortunately, you only ever hear about anecdotes because there isn't a lot of genuine research done about efficacy, and since its teens, its all very restricted.

candiodari 5y ago
> These programs take advantage of families in very vulnerable times. And yet, the majority of the kids there are placed there by CPS, not by parents.