Close Thayer Learning Center
Thayer Learning Center is located in Kidder, Missouri - population 271.
It is an isolated, unlicensed, unregulated facility which functions as a private jail.
For most of its existence, Thayer Learning Center has employed no teachers, no therapists, and no licensed or credentialed staff members.
In the most practical terms children are sent to Thayer and exposed to conditions that, if imposed by their parents, would likely lead to an investigation and the filing of criminal charges.
There are no such investigations of Thayer because the owners have decided - and been allowed to - not cooperate with them.
Although children throughout the United States have a right and an obligation to go to school, the children of Thayer lose that right.
The "privilege" of going to school is earned by telling Thayer's owners what they want to hear and by complying with Thayer's rules as imposed by its non-professional staff.
Children don't have to be referred to Thayer by any school or juvenile justice system or to have been convicted of anything.
Admission to Thayer Learning Center simply requires the agreement of parents or guardians who have been convinced by Thayer's promotional material that their children need the program's unique form of "tough love."
The treatment at Thayer Learning Center consists primarily of physical exercise - exercise that children are required to do throughout the day and sometimes into the night.
However, there is no doctor to examine Thayer's children to determine if they are fit to do the exercise required.
Although there are no statistics or studies to show that Thayer ever benefited any child who was sent there, there is substantial information available to demonstrate that Thayer Learning Center has harmed some of the children who were placed in their care.
One of those children was Roberto Reyes.
Roberto died at Thayer Learning Center in 2004 after his deteriorating medical condition was ignored for days.
Despite findings by a Missouri State Agency that he was neglected and abused and that medical treatment might have saved his life, no one has been punished in connection with his death.
Despite Thayer's failure to cooperate with the state's investigation of Roberto's death and even a recommendation by the investigating agency that the laws be changed to require such cooperation, nothing has changed at all.
Thayer has gotten away with this by using the courts and their influence to silence their critics.
Employees are required to sign agreements stating that they will not tell anyone what they observed at Thayer Learning Center.
Employees who were so upset by what they saw that they talked to child welfare agencies, parents, or child welfare advocacy groups were promptly sued and face the choice of hiring lawyers to defend themselves or trying to forget what they have seen.
Thayer Learning Center is a national disgrace and nobody seems to care. We believe that if people knew what children really experience there in the name of treatment, the government and its employees would care and would not tolerate it.
We believe that Thayer is the poster child for so much of what is wrong with our country's expanding tough love industry.
This website has been created to influence the government to investigate the death of Roberto Reyes and to close Thayer Learning Center. We intend to use it to publish stories of Thayer's acts of child abuse, negligence, and lack of concern for basic human rights.
We encourage employees, former employees, victims and their parents to let us know more about what happens behind Thayer's walls.
It tells the story of Thayer Learning Center as we have learned it and makes the public portion of the file associated with Roberto Reyes's death available to everyone.
This site also documents Thayer's attempts to use the courts to silence its critics and keep its true nature a secret.
And it encourages the children of Thayer Learning Center, its employees, and anyone else with information or concerns, to contact us so that we can continue to document the truth.
This website will remain up until Thayer Learning Center is closed down.