The director and a counselor at a Christian styled boot camp were arrested Friday morning in Nueces County, Texas on Friday morning on charges of aggravated assault. The crime? Tying a fifteen year old girl to the back of a truck and dragging her down a dirt road when she was unable to keep up with the group during a running exercise.
<Investigators said that a San Antonio preacher has been arrested, after a 15-year-old girl from Floresville, claimed she was abused while at a Christian boot camp in Banquete.
According to an arrest affidavit, the teenage girl was injured, when the camp director and another camp employee, tied her up to the back of a van and then dragged her along a dirt road.
Friday morning, Nueces County authorities arrested both the camp director and one camp employee in San Antonio. His name is Charles Eugene Flowers. According to a Web site for the Christian boot camp, or CBC, he spent 12 years in the Air Force before he started the boot camp up in 1995.>
As disgusting as the charges against Flowers and Bassitt are, however, that isn't what has me blogging this today. What does have me in wide-eyed-WTF-wonder is the following...
<The camp consent form that parents must sign says "I realize that Christian boot camp is a strenuous and highly intense program. I further realize that the possibility of accident, injury or even fatality to my child does exist.>
What the...?
If you were considering sending your child to camp (even if it is to learn to behave) would you sign a consent form that details the risks as "accident, injury or even fatality" as this one does? I know I certainly would not even if my child was anything like I was for a year or two growing up (and believe me that was so far from good I probably couldn't have even pointed you in the direction of a good kid at that point in time).
Why is it that the term “Christian” automatically makes one assume that the experience is not at all harmful? It’s as if when the word Christian is applied to any given situation, even torture, it becomes some beautiful God sent experience that should be embraced with all the love in one’s little heart.
Christ on crutches! Get real people! As much as it may pain some of you to hear it, “Christian” is not synonymous with all that is grand in life any more than “Muslim” is synonymous with suicide bombing nutjob or “Pagan” is with sex crazed lunatic cult member.
It is the mentality that the term “Christian” always equates good that gives people like Flower the power to open camps in which one must sign away the life of his or her child in order to get his or her child enrolled. And it is because one refuses to shed those preconceived notions that the term Christian applied in nearly any context is synonymous with good, that I read news stories such as the one referenced here and must then wonder when people are going to wake up to the fact that far too many in society are brainless idiots.
And I won't apologize for saying that because it's far too true. If one is so wrapped up in the Christian way being the good way mentality that one is willing to ignore that little fatality warning in order to send one’s kids there to learn to “respect their elders”, one automatically qualifies as a brainless idiot in my book. And that one, I should add, is in desperate need of someone to point out their brainless idiot standing to them.
Reference
http://www.kristv.com/global/story.asp?s=6917337
*Text enclosed with < > are direct quotes from the article and are formatted as such because I can't get formatting to cooperate with me and it's pissing me off.
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My family is a victim to those sort of things. I hardly talk to them because they have pressured me into silly Christian things such as that I had to get married to my high school sweet heart because if I lived with him I was living in sin. That would result in going to hell... I mean it is great that people look up to something but when they are so blind by it they do silly unreasonable things!!
I didn't marry my high school sweet heart because I felt pressured and I was only 18 at the time. I loved him but that was a huge responsibility that I truly wasn't ready for... In the end he hates me and my family thinks that I am an atheist. Now I have a child and man am I really going to hell... But I'm trying to say that sometimes they go way to far!! My cousins are all married and they are only 18 and 19 years of age!! They have kids and no education. I think that they would want them to live their lives and not be damned for it because they are young adults...
See that the problem with alot of Christian people...they think that living in sin equates to going to hell. The only thing one need for a pass to heaven is believing that the messiah Christ Jesus died for their sins and accept HIS forgivness. The other problem is that other christians take this as permition to do as they will... either way it has to be a personal choice and I despise those that are so forcefull as to kill the spirit of humans or chase others from what they think is the truth.
I like the idea of christian bootcamp to whip rebellion into place but in this case it was misused and wrong. Any stretuos activity invovles the mentioned risks. When i went through real basic a kid (19 year old i think) died because of the heat, allergy medicine and the excersise requirments. The rest of the thousand or so of us trainees lived. There were some sprains and so forth but no big deal. That is probably what the parents thought...I am pretty sure (or at least am very hopefull) that these desperate parents had no idea that the waiver meant that their children (oh these precious spawn) would be dragged behing motor vehicles (which is neither biblical or logical). If they had a clue of that they would not have submitted thier kids to that. If they did know then they earn the title Moron.
On another note, society and parents need to find away to take responsibility for their own children and that should take care of many behavior problems. I say this because so far pawning kids off to others for the main care and only source of education is not going as well as planned. Spank your kids if they need it for goodness sake and take resposibility for your own and help out others and quit taking the easy route by dropping your kids off at kill me bootcamps.
all truths are easy to understand once discovered; the point is to discover them ~galileo
The death reference can be found in most standard liability release forms, it's not a Christian thing, just a legal thing.
Here are a few examples that i found when poking around:
"...all risk of personal injury, sickness, death"
"...minimal, serious, catastrophic or death"
"...property damage or wrongful death"
"...causing injury or death"
Christians are just people, there are good ones bad ones and everything in-between.
I'm not at all saying that it's just a Christian thing. I'm simply saying that anyone that ignores the implications of such a statement because it's a Christian camp has an issue. The same they would be if it were a Muslim camp, a Buddhist camp, or a Pagan camp. I have been to three or four camps and have never had to sign a warning that fatality was a consideration.
The larger issue here to me is that people tend to see the word Christian in an organization name and automatically assume it's a good thing when it might be the exact opposite of a good thing. They don't consider the implications of anything other than that the word Christian is present.
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"It is never too late to give up your prejudices." Henry David Thoreau
"In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you've heard the other side." Euripides
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Fallon
I was horrified just by reading the first paragraph.
It's funny how religion is such a big factor in people's lives. I think it shouldn't be so, but that seems to be the way people are.
At least I'm not misled by the word "Christian." To me, the word is not synonimous with al lthat is good in the world, but all that is restrictive and oppressing. Like the totalitarian regime featured in V for Vendetta.
Who wouldn't want to live in a world where eveyone's white and has good "Christian" values?
Wow. That's... quite horrible. People do need to take in their own kids, though. If you get as far as boot camp, it is more likely that you have failed at being a good parent than your child just being a bad seed.
Personally, I'm the exact opposite. If I see the word "Christian" in any organization's name, or their affiliates'/sponsors'/supporters' names... I am suspicious and want to further investigate beforehand. And that's if I get past the "Christian" part because, although I don't have children at this time, I don't press my beliefs on anyone and I wouldn't want anyone pressing their beliefs on me OR my future kids.
I knew military parents that would send one of my best friend to boot camp because they believed that they have to be brought up in those conditions. Not only did they whip them into shape but they wanted them to experience other children who go through it. It was weird of them but thats what they saw as right and wanted their children to grow up like that.