Former students share harrowing stories of life inside Alabama's worst religious private school

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Thu Jun 30, 2016, 03:12 PM - Edit history (2)

Former students share harrowing stories of life inside Alabama's worst religious private school

By Anna Claire Vollers
[e-mail]
http://twitter.com/acvollers
on June 30, 2016 at 8:11 AM, updated June 30, 2016 at 10:16 AM

....
Restoration Youth Academy was a Christian bootcamp-style residential school for troubled youth, squatting in one of the grittiest neighborhoods in Prichard, the worn-down working-class city on Mobile's north side. Owner and Pastor John David Young and instructor William Knott tightly controlled how the "cadets" – boys and girls ages 10-17 – ate, slept, learned and exercised.

Despite multiple investigations by the Mobile County district attorney's office and the Alabama Department of Human Resources, and despite complaints of abuse from some students – vehemently denied by Knott and Young – it took officials five years to close down the school.
....

Young shuttered the Prichard school in 2012, after being ordered to pay $27,000 in back rent to the city. ... Within weeks he reopened in Mobile, renaming the school Saving Youth Foundation and Solid Rock Ministries.

Police raided that school in March 2015, and the Alabama Department of Human Resources removed 36 children following allegations of child abuse and deplorable living conditions. ... Five months later, Knott and Young, along with school counselor Aleshia Moffett, were arrested on multiple counts of aggravated child abuse. They'll be tried together beginning Oct. 17, 2016.

ETA: I fixed the link. Thanks to all for pointing that out.

[Initech]

1. Your link doesn't match the article.

But OMG wow, lock those assholes up and throw away the key!

[gordianot]

4. I had to google the title.

There is not media coverage of this depravity. They are too busy covering the orange haired creep who advocates torture and murder of families.

[Initech]

5. This is seriously horrifying on every level.

This part says it all though on how the scumbags were able to get away with it:

"The case has become a glaring example of how it's possible to exploit the loophole in Alabama law that allows church schools to operate without regulation or oversight. As the trial looms, several former students of Restoration Youth Academy and Saving Youth Foundation have given AL.com extensive accounts of abuse they say was rampant."

That loophole needs to be closed. These religious assholes cannot continue to get away with the shit they get away with, and especially get tax exempt status at that. It's truly fucked up.

[Ptah]

2. link:

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/06/former_students_share_harrowin.html

[gordianot]

3. Horrible sadistic torture by so called Christians.

To call them animals is an insult to animals. Only humans are capable of such abuse. Another example of home grown depravity.

[Solly Mack]

6. K&R

[Aerows]

7. There's a special place in Hell

for people that abuse children that already have problems. Talk about adding insult to injury

[Initech]

9. It's even worse when they play the religious card.

Fuck them and all the people who do that to kids in the name of Jesus.

[Aerows]

10. One of the instructors handed a kid a gun

and suggested he kill himself.

That's just pure, low-down evil.

[Initech]

16. That is truly, truly beyond fucked up.

I hope these fuckers get locked up and have the key thrown away.

[NaturalHigh]

8. They need to throw the book at these turds.

[raven mad]

11. Anyone who would send a child to something like this?

The child doesn't have parents. He/she has abusers.

[LeftyMom]

12. There are A LOT of these religious reform schools.

This one is STILL open after decades of abuse allegations. But the victims are all teenage girls so nobody appears to give a shit.

[Liberal_in_LA]

13. k&r

[Ligyron]

14. Religion and magical thinking need to disappear

especially in this country where we actually have a chance to do so with the Christian mythology.

and I don't want to hear how it comforts folks, it's a false comfort and the harm it does far outweighs its usefulness in that respect.

We can start by taking away the tax exemptions we give to so-called religious groups.

Unfortunately, freedom to believe and to a large extent act on any ignorant thing put forward is enshrined in our constitution as long as it is called "religion".

It needs to stop.

[Initech]

17. The Southern Strategy ruined everything.

That whole thing about how "god, guns and gays" fearmongering would drive voters to the polls back in the 70s is in some major need of undoing. It has thoroughly destroyed this country. Thanks to the SS, we have gun nuts with unchecked power, for profit prisons that lock up people for insane amounts of time for petty theft, the rights of LGBT (especially the T) people getting rolled back to the 1600's, and religious groups with tax exempt status and unchecked power. That's how religious institutions like the ones run by these fuckers get away with what they're able to get away with. The Southern Strategy is in some major need of undoing and it's going to take a lot to undo it.

[Ligyron]

18. Agreed and the Southern Baptist cult is one of the worst. n/t

[eppur_se_muova]

15. "Alabama's worst religious private school" ... THAT WE KNOW OF, SO FAR.

Try not to be shocked when the title passes to another.

[Odin2005]

19. These kinds of stories make the movie "Holes" seem like a documentary.