"Most students were very wary of us, since they could get in a lot of trouble for saying anything negative about the program. We have several interviews where it was painfully obvious that the student was just reciting lines about how great the school was. Later, I found out that many students thought we had actually been hired by the school to catch them saying bad things about the program—that was the level of paranoia they had. Conveying to the students that we were on their side without getting kicked off campus by the staff was a constant struggle. In the end, it was really the bravery of a handful of students who dared to speak honestly with us that made the film possible."
Initially, unaware that the school was considered by many to be dangerous and abusive (alleged offenses range from mental, emotional, and spiritual manipulations to sexual and physical abuses), the up-and-coming director says she had no intentions of filming an exposé. But soon, upon meeting and interviewing David and some of the other students, and witnessing the harsh tactics used by the counselors to control teenagers and maintain a fear-driven environment—some tactics that Logan believed were abusive—her filmmaking intentions began to change. In the beginning, the staff at Escuela Caribe trusted Logan, openly answering her inquiries about the ministry’s practices and goals and allowing her to film most on-campus activities; however, a week or two into her stay, when Logan’s camera started showing up at inopportune times—for instance, once her camera appeared while a staff member disciplined a student—her access on campus was limited, her interviews with students monitored, and her personal housing moved to an off-campus facility.
However, despite those limitations, Logan’s firsthand account of offshore American fundamentalism—a kind of Christian fundamentalism that gleefully paddled teenagers, engaged in military-like activities and disciplinary actions, brainwashed students with false “what ifs,” public humiliation, and reprogramming classes, and forced conversion therapy onto teens who identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual—is a fascinating, heartbreaking, and at times, surprisingly fast-paced adventure that keeps you guessing as to how David’s, Beth’s, and Tai’s stories end. Once Logan’s six weeks at Escuela Caribe are up and she’s back in the States, Kidnapped for Christ becomes a thrilling and frustrating tale, a plot that surprises you with several unexpected turns, including some pretty shocking confessions showcasing all too well the varied and long-lasting effects that faith-based behavioral modification programs have on people.
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All three New Horizons Youth Ministries campuses [NHYM is the ministry that ran Escuela Caribe] were donated to another private therapeutic Christian residential program called “Lifeline Youth and Family Services.” Lifeline re-opened a program for teens on the same campus in the Dominican Republic and retained several of Escuela Caribe’s staff members. The new program is called “Crosswinds.” They are also running a reform camp in Canada on the same property that NHYM owned. They are currently enrolling students in both programs.
In December 2013 article by Raw Story, they focused on Deirdre Sugiuchi whose interview did not make the final cut of the documentary:
“My parents were fundamentalist Christians,” she said, “and they didn’t like the way I was turning out.”‘Kidnapped for Christ’ Review: Come Because You’re Gay, Stay For Jesus - The Daily Beast
So, at 15, Sugiuchi was sent to school in the Dominican Republic at Escuela Caribe. There were only about 40 students at the school at any given time, she said, and from the moment students arrive they are placed on a stringent system of punishments and rewards.
Students were broken down into levels, with lower level students forbidden from speaking or even looking at higher level students.
“When you start at zero level, you then had rules about who you could look at,” she explained. “You couldn’t talk to members of the opposite sex until you were on second level and you had to fulfill a wide variety of requirements to move up.”
“At zero level, you’d have to be three feet away from a staff member or a supervisor at all times. You had to ask to go from room to room. It was insane,” she said. “Prisoners actually have more freedom than we had.”
Sleep deprived and worked to exhaustion, the students are fed on a diet of “sugar and fat,” Sugiuchi said. “It was in no way adequate to the amount of manual labor we were doing. We weren’t getting the nutrients we needed.”
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Sugiuchi is currently working on a book, Unreformed, about her experience at Escuela Caribe. The film “Kidnapped for Christ” is premiering at the next Slamdance Film Festival, the rebel indie festival that now runs alongside the Sundance Film Festival in January. She hopes to raise awareness of these programs, which have deep ties to groups like Focus on the Family — who referred her parents to New Horizons Youth Ministries — and the Republican Party.
“If you follow the money, you’ll see that the Republicans are so, so in bed with these people,” she said. The Romney family contributes heavily to the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), an umbrella organization for evangelical reform schools like Escuela Caribe — which was briefly closed down, then reopened under the name Crosswinds — and their Mormon equivalents.
Someday, she said, she hopes to see legislation against people sending their children to these types of schools, “but the legislation always gets stalled,” she said.
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