I can’t reproduce my original non-review. My server went down and apparently lost all my posts from last week. However, I am still concerned about the allegations that Ms. Scheeres makes in her book, Jesus Land: A Memoir.
I didn’t want to believe the story that Ms. Scheeres tells. Stereotypes and caricatures abound in her memoir. All the Christians, and most everybody else in rural Indiana where Julia Scheeres grew up, are hypocrites, child abusers, racists or simpletons. About half of her book is about her life growing up in a Calvinist Christian home with parents who were negligent and emotionally abusive when they weren’t being physically abusive. Ms. Scheeres has three older siblings who seem to have escaped the abuse she chronicles, and she has two adopted brothers who, according to the author, bore the brunt of the physical abuse that took place in the home. (I know I keep qualifying my statements, but I can’t help it. I do not know whether to believe the story that Ms. Scheeres tells or not.) The two boys, who are black, are repeatedly beaten by their doctor father, and one time David, the brother Julia loves and is close to, has his arm broken when Dad hits him with a 2×4. Her other brother, Jerome, is abused also and becomes an abuser in respones, sexually molesting his younger sister, Julia. As the situation at home gets worse, David is sent to a Christian school for troubled teenagers, Escuela Caribe in the Dominican Republic. Julia becomes the focus of her parents’ abusive behavior, and she rebels, sleeping with her boyfriend, running away from home, and finally getting arrested for being out after curfew. Of course, none of the trouble she finds herself in is her fault. At seventeen years of age, she tells the court that she would prefer to join her brother David at the Christian school in the Dominican Republic rather than go home or declare herself an “emancipated adult.”
The school, a sort of Christian reform school, is filled with more racism, abuse, and spiritual hypocrisy. One of the junior staffers is a college-aged girl who is obsessed with abortion. She spouts anti-abortion platitudes constantly even when unborn babies and abortions are clearly not the issue at hand. The male staffers are all racists, male chauvinists, and abusers. Teenaged students at Escuela Caribe are punched, slammed against walls, and forced to participate in midnight calisthenics, all in the name of Jesus and in the hope of teaching them to respect authority and love the Lord.
The most disturbing abuse that Ms. Scheeres documents in her book is spiritual abuse. Counselors and house parents force teens to mouth words of repentance and faith in Christ in order to earn points toward release from the school. Even though the James Frey debacle has placed a pall of suspicion over the memoir genre, and even though I have grown up immersed in evangelical, fundamentalist, and Calvinist Christian culture and have never witnessed anything like the kind of abuse that Ms. Scheeres tells about in her book, I am forced to believe that New Horizons Youth Ministries may have been guilty of a serious betrayal of the trust placed in its program by parents and their children.
Then again, maybe not. See the post below, reposted from a few days ago because of my server issues. I emailed New Horizons Youth Ministries after reading Jesusland because I was disturbed by the story that Ms. Scheeres tells in her book. The email below is the response I received.
I continue to hope that someone with more financial and journalistic resources than I have will investigate Escuela Caribe and New Horizons Youth Ministries. If Julia Scheeres is telling the truth, young people and families who are already vulnerable and hurting are being further abused in the name of Christ. Such a travesty is unacceptable. If, on the other hand, Ms. Scheeres is lying in order to make a buck or get revenge against her parents or for some other reason, New Horizons Youth Ministries deserves to be exonerated.
New Horizons Youth Ministries, the ministry that runs Escuela Caribe and two other schools in Indiana and in Canada.
The Truth about New Horizons Youth Ministries, a website that posts the stories of former New Horizons students, many of whom say that they also were abused and mistreated at Escuela Caribe or one of New Horizons’ other schools.
Julia Scheeres’ blog.
International Survivors Action Committee, a volunteer group that is dedicated to monitoring reports of abuse at youth treatment facilities.
What Julia has explained about the things that happened to her and her brother are “true” and the humiliation, abuse, demoralization ,etc. are still happpening to this very day.
Having been a former student I ached to see what the formers have written on this website on their Q&A and it was my curiousity to click onto Escuela Caribe and find what has been disclosed- a place that has been on my mind for 21 years-being 2006 now.
I am now a member of this Alumni and am helping to do what I can in trying to put an end to this in hopes/prayers that somone else will take over this “program” and run it accorrdingly and not produce any more future stories on the Q&A.
I have even written a Declaration and sent it to International Survivors Action Committee, 1 of a few places now explaining some of the things I contended with from mid 1979 -mid 1983.
Shortly before turning 36 and being delivered from something that “professionals” are still ignorant of to this day, and that being oppression, this is a perfect example of what an oppressor is like.
I could continue in writing this but maybe others will see and have to add until this situation is “finally” resolved and NHYM is not a place to be exonerated.
Having written this a while ago and looking at what was written, another factor that contributes to the controversy is “deception” which I felt needs to be imparted.
Having had a past that twarted my true desires and being able to obtain an education sooner than “later” being one- long story short-I was deceived by the Founder by pictures of unity, happiness, etc and thinking my being now educated in the Caribbean of all places,would be as anybody else would fathom. There are other examples of deceptions, one being a success story, but Brian Fey in his Q&A fell victim to something he thought he was going to be rewarding for getting good grades.
Iam just hurt -not so much “angry” that this procedure still exists . My question is now- from the decept that has been proven , what is it really like in the interior?
Interesting! Just wondering about certain people, using Google, I enquired about my name, and aside of my brother and I being a lost Aumni at a camp we attended , I also noticed that I was at one time listed under Semicolon. Checking it again, noticed I was off. I have no idea as to whom took it off and because of my enrollment and where I stand now with my impressions etc, wonder if someone from their end had me taken off. There is proof that a former student, now some sort of staff, used different alias’ while being on the Alumni chat forum and got found out . If this isn’t another form of deceit, then I don’t know what the definition is. I know that I am to be a prime concern/example because of what happened to me as was stated in the earlier inscription. I do apologize. Because of where my heart has been at when writing these past comments, noticed a couple of minor grammatical errors, and have learned to read over my things before posting. Anyways, I believe the message still stands out.
A quote that has been running through my mind constantly now, and am sure it has been used by someone prior, but to reinstate:
“DECEPTION BREEDS CORRUPTION!”
I wonder as we are about to embark on a major campaign,
what is being done again at their end in trying to hide from the truth that is about to be confronted. This , as well as a journal that has been made, depicts things that are happening at this point, and leave it to the readers who are reading things regarding NHYM (Escuela Caribe) ,to reconsider again about sending a loved one to this sort of “Troubled Youth Industry.”
I do not wish to compound on this site, but am stating things that are happening to this very day, and hope to see resolution , soon!
Sherry,
I wish Julia’s book was also not true as organizations such as New Horizon’s Youth Ministries distort the example Christ set for his believers. I was a student at Escuela Caribe when my housefather, who is now director of the program based in Marion, IN was there. I observed my housefather repeatedly slam numerous students against walls and the ground, with disregard to the amount of force and trauma to the head. I also was witness to the forced stripping and scrubbing of a student with harsh laundry brushes. I watched students repetitively chased by staff members on motorcycles up very steep and slippery mountain paths for minor offenses such as forgetting a pen or notebook out for an hour. I also observed a girl with a bladder control problem forced to piss her parents in front of everyone and ridiculed for having an authority problem because of this, the same girl that was stripped in front of the girls in the house. At first staff denied these things happened and called any acusers liars. Now, they admit they were too harsh and have changed their ways. You do not know how heart wrenching it is too have healed from this ungodly, twisted institution and see them get off with not even a hand slap. Shame on the director for even the slightest belief he has or is following Christ. Jesus weeps for not only the children of NHYM but the distorted and twisted staff members who believe in a so called “violent love” & even dare claim they follow Christ.
Sherry,
Just a quick comment as a former staff. I noticed you linked to the ISAC site’s report regarding EC. There are two pictures on that site of students scrubbing the floor with their heads and a brush. Those pictures were taken from another staff member’s blog, and have been floating around the internet ever since as examples of the abuse that occurs there. I was present that day, and the pictures were taken voluntarily by the students, purely as a joke. No student has ever been forced to scrub a floor with a brush using their head (to my knowledge). But I can speak specifically for those pictures, as I was an eye-witness. I tried to e-mail ISAC to submit an affidavit to this effect, but received no response from them. It appears they’re not interested in the truth, but only the information that adds to their “case”.
I’m not saying EC is perfect, many mistakes have been made on those grounds by those with good intentions and others with bad intentions. I was not a staff member during the time of Julia’s book, so I can’t speak to the times she writes about, only the time I was there.
We rejoice with the students whose lives were changed for the better by “the program”, and we weep for those who have been hurt by it. I’m hesitant to say much more on this medium because words and intent can be twisted and misinterpreted. Contact me if you have any questions.
Having read the last paragragh from the Former EC Staff that has written above this – funny, I didn’t see any staff weep for us (unless they were crocodile tears). As a matter of fact, there have been a few situations where quite the opposite has taken place and there were staff who you could say were somewhat sadistic, or on a sort of power trip, while thinking maybe their jobs were relatively easy and enjoying the benefits of being in a Caribbean country( although their pay was nothing to brag about).
I feel what was said about the weeping thing was a sort of Christainese way of trying to advocate the program, or using a down douvet to soften the blows.
While I was there, there was one category (out of many) on this point sheet that I had difficulty in trying to obtain or maitain points in, and that was “Being Totally Truthful And Honest Facing Reality.”
Now that times have changed, there has been nothing that I’ve said that has been a lie or unrealistric, whereas I’m seeing the program having difficulties now with this area.
There is another section on this website where I have written my feelings/thoughts and am not in the mood to writte them down again, but there was an e-mail sent to Sherry from Phil, and he saying that they send the worse kids to the DR, and at one time hearing him say that I didn’t need to be down there. In the meantime, all this money was spent on nothing but having me look like a fool and actually prolonging my true desire and wanting to get my education.
I could keep writing about this, but I do not want to appear as “negative”, whereas the facts and truth are being revealed. Yet, this operation is “still” existent today, and costs the “distressed” parent maybe 3 times as much now as to when I was there.