Tranquility Bay was a residential treatment facility affiliated with World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools

World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools

The World Wide Association Of Specialty Programs and Schools is an organization based in Utah, in the United States. WWASPS was founded by Robert Lichfield and was incorporated in 1998...

 (WWASP), that operated from 1997 to early 2009. It was located in Calabash Bay, Saint Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

.

The director was Jay Kay, a college dropout with no training in child development, and who is son of WWASP president Ken Kay. The cost for one child ranged from $25,000 to $40,000 a year. Tranquility Bay was generally acknowledged as the toughest of the WWASP schools. As with other WWASP facilities, Tranquility Bay has been the subject of much controversy, including allegations of torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

, unsanitary living conditions, unqualified employees, and denial of medical care; these claims have been the subject of multiple lawsuit

Lawsuit

A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...

s from former Tranquility Bay residents.

Tranquility Bay stated that it was dedicated to helping parents who are having difficulty with their children, whether they are doing drugs, breaking the law, or being disobedient or disrespectful. In 2003, Kay said "if I have kids, and they start giving me a problem, well, they are going straight in the program. If I had to, I'd pull the trigger without hesitation"; however, in 1999, Kay (who at that time was not working for WWASP) said that the Tranquility Bay staff were "untrained", without "credentials of any kind", and that Tranquility Bay "could be leading these kids to long-term problems that we don't have a clue about because we're not going about it in the proper way".

Children as young as 12 were admitted to Tranquility Bay, for reasons ranging from drug use to conflicts with a new stepmother. From 2002 to 2005 the Government of the Cayman Islands sent some delinquent youth to Tranquility Bay; the government funded the students as they were located in Tranquility Bay.

The "Cassie" episode of the A&E

A&E Network

The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...

 program Intervention

Intervention (TV series)

Intervention is an American television program about the realities facing addicts of many kinds.Each program follows one or two participants, each of whom has an addiction or other mentally and/or physically damaging problem and believes that they are being filmed for a documentary on their problem...

, first shown in January 2011, features a young woman addicted to prescription painkillers who had been sent to Tranquility Bay as a child and blamed her father for not rescuing her.

External links

• Tranquility Bay website,