About This Site
I'm Shelby Earnshaw, the Director of the International Survivors Action Committee, commonly called ISAC. ISAC is a watchdog group and its mission is to educate the public about the dangers of privately owned behavior modification programs for teens.
ISAC's mission stems from my own experience at Straight, Inc., a very abusive treatment program that closed in disgrace following years of confirmed child abuse.
As part of its public education mission, the ISAC web site contains news articles, public records obtained from various state agencies, and abuse complaints from persons with direct experience with the facilities.
In late 2003/early 2004, I received a complaint against Thayer Learning Center and decided there was sufficient reason to place the facility on ISAC's watch list.
In late 2004, I appeared on an internet radio show with Tim Rocha, a former employee of Thayer Learning Center. We discussed the death of Roberto Reyes and Tim talked about the abuses he witnessed at the facility.
In November 2005, Thayer Learning Center filed a lawsuit against Tim Rocha. They claimed he violated his employment contract by talking about the facility. Tim had also filed reports with the Caldwell County Sheriff and the Department of Social Services.
In April 2006, my husband and I were both served with subpoenas demanding every "document" in my possession containing over 90 different terms, many of which were email addresses and names of former cadets. In general the subpoena wanted to know the names of everyone who had spoken to me about Thayer and even the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs.
One of the names on the subpoena was Roberto Reyes.
The subpoena was attached to a lawsuit Thayer Learning Center filed against five staff members in 2003 - before I had ever heard of Thayer Learning Center and before the death of Roberto Reyes.
Those staff members sued in 2003 had apparently contacted authorities about abuse at the facility they observed and the lawsuit appeared to be filed as part of Thayer's policy of using their money and ability to fund lawsuits as a way of scaring their critics into silence.
Included with the subpoena was a definition of the word "document."
It states, "The term document shall include, but is not limited to: printed information, websites, emails, portable digital storage, discs, and hardrives."
As a practical matter John and Willa Bundy, the owners of Thayer, by way of this subpoena, demanded a copy of my ENTIRE computer hard drive.
They even went so far as to set a date and time for their computer expert to come into my home and obtain it.
I refused this demand and the Bundys eventually asked the State of Virginia to enforce the subpoena. I initially tried to fight them alone and then with the help of a young Virginia lawyer who volunteered her help. Unfortunately, the Virginia judge initially ordered me to turn my hard drive over to a computer expert chosen by the Bundys.
When I did not immediately comply, the Bundy's filed a motion in the Virginia Court seeking to hold me, my husband, and Phil Elberg, who by then had volunteered to help out, with criminal contempt of court.
With no alternative, Phil retained lawyers in Virginia and Missouri to fight Thayer and after making two trips to Kidder, Missouri and actually seeing Thayer (at least from the outside), we accomplished several things.
First, it became clear that the 2003 lawsuit against those former staff members in Missouri was being pursued by Thayer for the purpose of harassing me and ISAC.
Second, we obtained the Missouri Department of Social Services file with respect to the investigation into the death of Roberto Reyes and were shocked by what we saw and read. Specifically, nobody seemed to have followed up on what the initial investigation revealed. Nobody was charged criminally and at least some of the people that DSS determined were involved in failing to help Roberto Reyes continued to work for Thayer. Nobody seemed to care.
Third, after two trips to Caldwell County, Missouri we succeeded on June 12, 2007 in having the Caldwell County Judge rule that the Bundy's had no right to most of what they demanded from ISAC. Instead of getting a copy of my entire hard drive to sift through at will, the forensic expert was instructed to ONLY search for the names of the five staff members named in the 2003 lawsuit.
Not surprisingly, even though the original subpoena had been modified by the judge in Missouri and we immediately turned over the computer for that limited search, the Bundys are still not satisfied and still want me charged with contempt of court in Virginia and want to have additional information obtained from my computer.
Two days after the Missouri decision, on June 14, 2007, my husband and I had to appear in court again, and yet again on August 9, 2007. The Bundys appear to be unrelenting in their efforts to keep the truth about Thayer a secret. We have decided to be unrelenting in our effort to close Thayer Learning Center.
As of this writing, the matter is still not resolved.
All things considered, my husband and I are confident that all of these events had two purposes.
John and Willa Bundy want to know who has been talking about Thayer Learning Center, so perhaps they can sue them into silence as well.
And they want to harass me to the point that I give up on ISAC and take down the web site.
We will not be intimidated.
No one should be abused in the name of treatment!
Update
On January 31, 2008, a judge in Caldwell County, Missouri agreed that the Bundy's demands were ridiculous and quashed the subpoena. They will NOT be getting my computer hard drive.