New Beginnings Girls academy |
| United States, Missouri |
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Consumer reviews about New Beginnings Girls academy |
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Dinah M.
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
I don't know what it was like when you all were there, but I experienced nothing like that. Tough yes, but it is a place for troubled youth. I believe it has changed because of closer government scrutiny, so you may be railing about old ghosts. After six months of stay at New Beginnings, the detained girl is granted a 3 day, 2 night visit with her family and if any thing is wrong they can tell their parents or the police then or in phone calls and e mails. The current program is great so I don't know who you're tryong to save? Seek counselling to help you move on if you haven't already and let God work His healing in your broken minds.
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Carol heather's mom
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
I thank God for New Beginnings.If not for them, my daughter may very well have been dead by now.
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BrittanyCampbell
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
If I had a nickel for how many times I heard "or my daughter would be DEAD by now" I'd be filthy rich. You'd think all these moms had their kids posted up on some demarcation line or something. Most of those girls would not be "DEAD by now." But most parents who buy into these people's crap end up saying that or something close. This is in no way directed specifically toward you, "Carol heather's mom." Just a thought. Maybe your daughter would be, for all I know. But it's grotesque how often that's said. It's melodramatic, at best. At worst... well, maybe it should tell parents something about their parenting, not their kid. If you can't even keep 'em alive, maybe the parents are the ones who need specialized programs of some kind. Just a thought.
Suggested reading, more on all that: Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids by Maia Szalavitz.
As far as "old ghosts" go... I've been networking with old Rebekah Home (that's where NBGA started and was once called, then New Beginnings Rebekah Academy, then finally New Beginnings Girls Academy and New Beginnings Ministries) alumni and NBGA alumni for years now. All the way from back in the day when they were in Corpus Christi, TX in the 70s and 80s to the reopening of Rebekah '99-'01 to right now. The amount of people who claim to have had traumatic experiences, TO DATE, outnumbers those who say it was just some kind of "tough love" by faaaarrr.
120 people in the NBGA Survivor Group on Facebook. 120 people are... just bored? After growing up, becoming parents themselves, having careers, families, productive lives, they're just... wasting their time for no reason?
I myself was in Rebekah/NBGA through the transition. The home was investigated, cases of abuse WERE substantiated in court. Then, in 2001 it WAS CLOSED DOWN by the state... while I was in it. But we didn't get to go home. We just got shoved into a bus with all our belongings and were carted off to another state (Missouri) and housed in a trailer in the woods until they could buy a new property. They found another place in Florida, so they carted us off to Florida. When I finally got out of there, I did call CPS. They were investigated. They closed and moved back to Missouri.
Like I said, read up on it. If you actually care, you will. It'll take you quite some time before you get a solid grip on the entire situation. It's a hell of a web.
The biggest problem with these types of homes is that they aren't supervised or regulated. Loopholes. It's not like calling CPS on your neighbor or something. Totally different deal. But I guess you wouldn't know until you have to do it yourself.
When reports are made, officials have to jump through all kinds of crazy hoops. (Check out the Mother Jones article that the original poster of this complaint was featured in. The link is in one of these comments. It'll tell you all about it.) Even then, half the girls are too scared to talk and generally don't until a few years after they've been out and have had time to process it. (If you aren't fully familiar, look up details on PTSD.) The rest are have just given up... they're told they're terrible people from the day they go in until the day that they leave and that New Beginnings is all that can save their lives. Thought reform will work on practically anyone who is frightened enough, isolated enough, separated enough from their own identity and anyone who could help them remember it.
I talk to girls all the time who got out not long ago at all who say the same things girls have been saying for years. I wish I could, but I don't believe it has gotten better. Maybe sneakier. Maybe slicker on the exterior. But suddenly miraculously therapeutic? ...I don't think so.
All that said, I don't discredit anyone's opinion. Everyone is entitled to their own. If you felt helped, I would never want you to feel the opposite way. But remember how much goes on behind closed doors. Remember how compartmentalized it is. And don't be naive enough to think that you knew everything about everything that's ever gone on there.
And, like I said, you're all entitled to your own opinions, but it literally made me ill to see anyone "thank God" for New Beginnings but a few posts after - on the very same page - as a girl who claims she was sexually abused there. I was there at the same time as that girl. She said the same thing ever since. Not a line of her story has changed.
Even if they snapped their fingers and tomorrow New Beginnings was perfect, would you really feel comfortable letting them take total control of your child with these very same incessant complaints pouring out of that place for years upon years? If so... I, too, am entitled to my opinion. And my opinion is that you'd have to be really stupid or just... s i c k.
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Ramelle
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
You bring up a good point about parenting Brittany - which calls into questioning the parenting of the parents of many who have posted here. The thing about complaints outweighing compliments is a natural phenomenom. People who are satisfied with a business or what have you are much less likely to post as people who are dissatisfied with the business or what have you. Also, when someone does post negatively and a subsequent satisfactory resolution has been reached, they rarely come back and update on that. I hope you counsel the girls who recently got out to exercise their right to file reports with their ;ocal law enforcement and CPS agencies.
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NBGAsurvivor
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
I have way too many friends from this place that are suffering, myself included. Anxiety, PTSD, & physical health issues. I have a major problem with the fact that they lied to my parents the whole time I was there and I wasn't allowed to tell them what was really going on because everything was extremely monitored, you couldn't cough without someone knowing. One more thing I would like to mention is that they are a FRAUD. They charged my parents $500 a month for tuition(some parents more). &50-60 a month for some BS medical account that was never used because they wouldn't take you to the doctor, you had to be almost dying or complain about it enough to get on their nerves. And also a fee for our personal hygiene items that were always the cheapest brand, some parents would send their child their own stuff because their stuff was crap. Anyways, on top of that there was another general account so around $700 a month to feed me food that they would most often get for free or very cheap from a food bank and give us only the bare essentials. What a load of crap. If you do the math, $700 a month x 12 months= $8, 400 per year per girl, $8, 400 x 30-35 girls = roughly $252, 000 (and that is the tuition alone) they are very wealthy and only giving the girls the bare minimum, if that. They are more than likely millionaires, and they would shuffle us all around the country for weeks on end, have us sleeping in church pews or on hard floors, to sing at church services to earn more donations. Not to mention the monthly donations they receive. (And this was over 5 years ago when I was there, I heard they charge more now) Its a horrible, horrible place and my wish is to see them shut down. These girls have been suffering for way too long and it has got to stop.
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NBGAsurvivor
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
I hate to hear that too, Brittany. More than likely none of the girls would be dead by now and with some parenting classes and maybe some counseling and restrictions the parents wouldn't even have to send their child somewhere where they have no idea what is happening to them, only hoping and trusting Bill McNamara's word that they are alright. I don't blame my parents for sending me there, they did what they felt was best for me at the time and they were lied to. I, myself would never resort to something of the such and would not recommend that any parent do so but thats what they did and I can't blame them for what happened to me while I was there or for trying to help the way they thought was best. It still doesn't change the fact that this place is nothing but a big FRAUD that is causing more hurt then help to innocent teenagers who just need some real guidance.
They don't teach you how to live in the real world and you are told that everyone out in normal society is wicked and of the devil. A lot of the time when girls get out, they actually end up worse then they were before they got sent there because they have no idea how to readjust to a normal world. You are so separated the only people you really get to see are the people at the facility and people from churches. This place is a terrible, terrible place and I urge any parents reading these comments not to send their child to this abusive facility.
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BrittanyCampbell
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
@Ramelle and in general:
I agree. Indeed, 'cept for the bit about any satisfactory resolution (doesn't really apply here, most unfortunately.) Were that to ever happen for anyone who has had "grievances" with this place, some people would have to face the (really apparent now) fact that most of the children they've taken in to "put on the right track" (if that's even remotely anywhere in their mindset) consider their experiences there to have been extremely damaging in a myriad of ways. You'd think, if they really, truly cared about the struggling kids of America they'd eventually catch on to the notion that they're just not working out for the job. Their business model is not panning out. Products are not quality. Customers are not satisfied. My opinion again: I don't think they actually care. I think they know that society will not tolerate them and their actions for much longer and they want to milk the cash cow for all it's worth.
Complaints... natural phenomenon... yes. But this isn't your average, run of the mill consumer complaint. While it is, totally, false advertisement: It's not a school. There's no one I've known of there with a legitimate certification or degree in anything, who's actually qualified to teach anyone's kids anything. Oh, and they aren't a recognized school - all nontransferable and unaccredited. And it's not therapeutic. Again, (Simone mentioned it) these people were "converted" to religious fundamentalists and six months later were running teen homes and collecting tuition. They're maybe qualified to tie their shoe laces. But they're in charge of guiding these kids' "spiritual" lives (to quote them, ) their education, their health and welfare, their upbringing.
Like, if the same news story kept resurfacing, and you could track down the "witnesses" and roughly 120 of them said the same thing happened, you'd probably have a good idea of how things happened. Well, it is in the news. And has been, repeatedly. In each state in which this place has operated.
I guess, as "survivors, " we'll always have a disadvantage in the eyes of those who are too indifferent to know what all this is about. We did everything a casual poster here would suggest and everything we knew to do. We called CPS and our reports were ineffective or evaded due to some serious and evident need for organization in how the system works for - or doesn't work for since the state itself has to fight for the right to investigate - this particular type of home, and so we keep going ...choose to go the activism route and work toward bigger solutions, and we're "trying to get attention." But I think - to those same indifferent people - if the reality were not as it unfortunately is and our reporting went swimmingly and we had some big class action lawsuit going, I'm sure we'd just be a bunch of "grown delinquents in it for the money for our 'sustained damages.'"
I do counsel the girls to call authorities. I agree that this is the primary way to go about this. But sadly, the system in regard to these unregulated homes "running amok" as I said before, needs major reform. There's a Bill working on it right now, like I mentioned in my previous post. Theoretically, residential care facilities which have transparency and upstanding practices wouldn't fear some preventative measures to ensure that all kids are safe. Thus far, New Beginnings and places like it have moved to and fro within the United States in effort to retain the power to keep specific practices and avoid oversight. 'What are they evading?' a logical person might ask. The Bill would standardize certain measures to uphold human rights standards for children in facilities and eradicate the facilities that don't uphold those standards. Maybe it's not the ultimate solution, but it is a step in the right direction.
So, whatever... smart people still read.
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M3C Slimjim
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
Sounds like this school would do Zachary some good!
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BrittanyCampbell
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/new-bethany-ifb-teen-homes-abuse
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BrittanyCampbell
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/independent-fundamental-baptist-discipline-call-tough-love-abuse/comments?type=story&id=13310172#.TuaPNuz4I84
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NBGAsurvivor
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
@M3CSlimjim...I don't know if you are joking or not, and its not very funny if so, because this is a very serious matter. That would be very ignorant on your part if you sent your son to this place after finding out all this information and what they have done to people and how they are still suffering years later.
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BrittanyCampbell
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
http://business.highbeam.com/410545/article-1G1-80924216/remember-christian-alamo-evangelist-lester-roloff-drew
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BrittanyCampbell
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/cult-spawned-tough-love-teen-industry
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NBGAsurvivor
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Dec 12, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
http://stopnbga.blogspot.com
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Carol heather's mom
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
Don't *judge* me or my parenting. Any parent's goal should be to do the best they can to ensure their child's physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual safety. NB helped turn my daughter's life around for the better. And yes, she most likely would have wound up dead. 1 acute case of alcohol poisoning, 2 overdoses where she had to have her stomach pumpedand damaged her esophagus, , a suicide attempt, I could go on for hours about the risky destructive behavior. If you are reluctant to point the finger at your own parents, don't point them at anyone else's.
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TJA1989
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
Yes any parents goal SHOULD be the best they can to ensure their child's physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual safety. New Beginnings is NOT the place. Physically they made me gain 30 pounds because they force fed me and if we didn't finish all the huge amounts of food we would get put on discipline and i now have stretch marks all over my body. I am emotionally damaged now and I am now on anti depressants. Psychologically I am no longer here. I dont have as much and I no longer smile as much as I used to. AND SPIRITUALLY I am more anti-religious than I was before I went into the home because everything was forced on us. Nothing was accepting at all. No one was accepting at all. Your daughters acute case of alcohol poisoning, overdoses, and suicide attempts has everything to do with you as a parent. END OF STORY.
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BrittanyCampbell
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
I'm not pointing the finger at anyone... except NBGA. They lie to parents, so parents make misinformed, bad decisions based on those lies.
Sincerely, I'm sorry that your child had such a hard time. But if any parent thinks they can send their kid off for some magic fix, pay $500+ per month to let some grimy stranger, ex-criminal-turned-fancy-Jesus-man do their job for them, and go to sleep at night with no worries, they're both wrong and exactly the sucker NBGA preys upon.
I meant no offense specifically to you. I feel for people in your position, because you've been lied to. If you do nothing, just give it a few years, you'll find out what I'm talking about. And you'll wish you listened.
Is she still there? Are you the one who posted a testimonial on their website? Pull her out early.
Every kid "LOVES" New Beginnings when they're still there - talking to you for 15 minutes every few weeks on the phone while Bro. Mac sits across from her or listens in on the call. You know they monitor all mail and calls, right? Why? That's YOUR kid. Try asking to talk to her alone on the phone - see what they say. Every kid is "MAGICALLY CHANGED" when they're there. Why? Because they want OUT in the worst way. Kinda like all criminals in prison are "really innocent" and find God and animals in cages can't get into much trouble.
If you were smart, you wouldn't necessarily just take our words for it, but you'd have a hard time resting easy until you did some digging. And if you did some digging, you wouldn't rest easy until she was back with her family.
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TJA1989
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
From my experiences at New Beginnings Girls Academy, from my Mothers parenting skills, and from everything I have witnessed in life, I can definitely assure everyone that I will never let my children get to the point where they are suicidal and over dosing on drugs.
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Toads Tool
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
You can't guarantee crap when it comes to kids TJA. You're talking out your ass now. So why did your lazy no good negligent parents put your fat psychotic ass in there for?
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BrittanyCampbell
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
TWO major national news articles... one of which painstakingly details New Beginnings' history of trouble with this. How could anyone just up and decide to ignore that? Just me, but if 120 people were saying, "that daycare is abusive." I'd pull my kid the **** out just on principle. Just in case! Even if just to communicate to them how far I would go to ensure their well-being. I was a troubled kid too, and I know now that the biggest thing I needed was for someone to LISTEN. Instead, parents think they can shove 'em in a box for a few years, trust some stranger's word, close their eyes and mind like everything will come out like some picture-perfect dream in the end.
That, in my opinion - on this fine public opinion board - is mental retardation.
No, the reality is that kids come out with nontransferable credits (so the longer one's kid is there, the longer their education is at a dead stop - he or she will likely have to repeat grades, ) stifled communicative skills (from not being allowed to speak, let alone speak honestly about their experience, ) and completely unprepared to face real-world problems like they had to face before the home. Recap: A New Beginnings "program graduate" comes out with no valid education for the time they were at New Beginnings, worse communication skills, and no concept of how to live in the real world. (Bro Mac's idea of a success wouldn't need any of those things anyway. Think about it.)
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TJA1989
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
Oh and you have never been talking out of your ass? I was sent there for doing something any teenager would do. I was NOT into hardcore drugs like most people. And I might have a rather large rump but it is not fat. Its rather nice.
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Toads Tool
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
Prove it. Post a pic.
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TJA1989
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
Your eyes arent worthy. You have now been banned from everyone in this group. NO one cares about your disgusting remarks or your immature posts. Have fun sitting on your FAT ass and doing nothing with your life.
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impudentone
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
Had to chuckle at your naivete TJA1989. I remember before I had kids how I'd say I would never do such and such, and I would do such and such, and my kids would never do such and such. Boy, was I in for a reality check, lol.
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TJA1989
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Dec 13, 2011
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Abusive treatment facility
I agree with everything you say BrittanyCampbell. Parents need a reality check.
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