Paradise Cove

Location: Western Samoa

Administrators: Brian Viafanua.

Current Status: Closed.

History:

Paradise Cove Academy closed following allegations of abuse, neglect, and the holding of legal adults against their will.

Paradise Cove was a behavior modification facility in Samoa.

It was connected to World Wide Association Of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP).

It was closed in 1998 after an investigation into abuse [1].

It was one of the first overseas programs in the organization.

It was the first facility to use the Exit plan, which is now used wide-spread at behavior modification facilities across the states.

Noteworthy:

WWASPS still claims to have nothing to do with Paradise Cove, although the facility was reportedly financed by Robert Lichfield, founder of WWASPS, and marketed on Teen Help/WWASPS web sites.

Director Brian Viafanua is now running Midwest Academy.

Education Coordinator Dace Goulding was later the director of Casa by the Sea.

Goulding is now an administrator at Darrington Academy and the President of the Ellijay, Georgia Mormon Church.

Living conditions:

When detainees arrive they are placed on level 1 - the lowest level. Even in this early version of the WWASP concept there were strict rules. Some of them was:

• Being watched at all times by a upper level detainee - even in the bathroom, and when they are sleeping other upper detainees watched them in order to secure lack of personal space.
• Level 1 must ask for permission in order to do anything - speak, move, go to bathroom etc.
• Special uniform for the lowest level - yellow shorts.
• Poor sleeping accommodation - sleeping on a mat in a thatched-roof hut without walls.
• Primitive food: boiled chicken, tiny bananas, spaghetti with mystery sauce.
• No eye contact with other detainees. Eye contact was discouraged because it was considered unauthorized nonverbal communication.
• Detainees, who did break rules, where taken into solitary confinement. It was described as "little box-type thing" where the detainees had to lie on their stomach. Used of handcuffs, shackles, even duct tape were reported [2].

They advanced through the program by passing some seminars, which were marathon group therapy often for more than 10 hours. Each level gives more privileges to the detainee. At level three they could phone their parents one time per month, while they only had to possibility to write home on the lower levels. There were 6 levels to pass in order to graduate.