DECLARATION UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY PURSUANT TO 28 USCA 1746

I, Patrick Putman declare and state as follows:

Name of Program:

Carolina Springs Academy, Dundee Ranch Academy

Location of Program:

Donalds, South Carolina; Alajuela, Costa Rica

Period of Internment (MM/YY to MM/YY)

02/95 to 06/97

Declarative Statement

I was in two WWASP programs, from the age of 15 for 20 months, until I was 17 years old.

During this time I experienced severe trauma through both mental and physical abuse that I still have flashback today of.

Just to name a few:

I was “restrained” by being held down the floor by a man over 300 lbs laying on me, while he twisted my arm up behind my back until I screamed.  This was an often occurrence.  Sometimes multiple times a day.  I never had any broken bones, but it would be hard to imagine it was far off.  This was the most typical physical punishment.

I had a man slam my head into the floor  (name was Mr. Kenny, from Carolina Springs), and rub my face into the carpet until my entire face was covered in friction burns.

His brother, “Mr Frankie” pushed the bone of my nose so hard into my face I thought he was going to break my nose as I screamed.

This is just some of the physical abuse.

But nothing compares to the mental abuse.  I was not allowed to ever go to the bathroom or talk without permission.  We were seriously underfed, and withholding normal food was used as a means of punishment.  We were constantly told this was our fault, and that if we weren’t there we’d be “dead or in jail”.  We were submitted to psychological brainwashing as part of seminars, and on a daily basis through “group therapy”.

There was an underlying, non spoken about heavy mormon influence.  All the staff were mormon at carolina springs.  Every single one.  If you didn’t accept strong christian values, or claimed to be another religion, no one said anything to you, but until you “converted” or  pretended to convert, you would always be denied advancement in levels.  Somehow once changing faiths publicly, you were allowed to move up.

The entire place was obviously a scam designed to entrap children.  The rules are so severe that you can lose two weeks worth of progress for accidentally stepping on the carpet with sandals on.  This also included having to write a 3000 word worksheet essay, and being denied normal meals as punishment.

The food was disgusting, cheap, barely edible, and not enough of it.  One kid told me when I got there that my best bet was to learn to drink lots of water, because it helped with the hunger pangs.

The school was horrible, a pace school, with no real teachers (a couple of TA types), that couldn’t possibly handle the entire class.  Students were expected to learn on their own and pass a certain number of tests, and could be “tutored” if they had questions (assuming the very few tutors were free).  It was almost impossible to actually learn anything, and because of that I don’t even have a real high school education.

Despite having college level studies on the SAT when in 8th grade on everything, when I applied, I couldn’t even get into a community college without taking remedial math that taught at the high school level.

While in Costa Rica, the situation was better, because the Costa Rican staff were just good people getting jobs, and weren’t religious zealots who justified abusing kids.  However, I did see some of the staff have sexual relationships with female students.

I also had a physical relationship with a female staff member.  I can think of at least four other staff members that were having sexual relations with students (under age).  One of them was fired, until the girl he had a relationship with, left the program, and was immediately rehired.

One of these men, Mr. Kenny, came from the South Carolina Program to be the director of the Dundee Ranch in Costa Rica and train the staff.  Mr Kenny was caught bringing under age students to have orgies with in his room, and when it was reported, and proven, they just transferred him back to the school in south carolina.

Also, we were not allowed to look at the girls, if that makes any sense.  If we happened to cross paths with the female students, we would be told to stop, face the opposite direction, and wait till they were gone.

On more than one occasion at South Carolina we would have “field trips” where we would dismember half the beds in the dorms, hide them, and half the students would go sit in the woods for a few hours.  This was whenever child services came to inspect, because we had double the allowed children for the fire code.  Yes, that’s right, they hid half the bunk beds and half the children from inspectors because we had double the amount legally allowed.

There’s much, much more I can’t think of at the moment, I left there over 10 years ago, but I still have flashbacks of certain incidents, mostly the emotional trauma of being in a place where I couldn’t speak, even look around the room, not being able to see my parents, being underfed, sleep deprivation.  It was the worst psychological torture I could ever imagine.

I give WWASPSurvivors permission to use this statement.  I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct. 

Executed on(date: MM/DD/YY): 09/05/13