A testimony about Heartland Christian Academy (From:Topix)

This testimony was found on Topix in 2015. All rights goes to the originally author who wants to remain anonymous:

There is not a year that goes by that I am not haunted by what happened to me in this horrible cult. I was there in 1999-2001. To this day still have nightmares of this place.

I am a veteran of war of the United States Army and have had some horrible things happen to me and my team overseas, I am haunted more by Heartland in my adolescent than massive casualties of war. Facts are facts. People who have the courage to tell about your experiences of this cult I admire you all. It has been years since I have been there and I still fear this place. My heart goes out to the children who have no choice in living there.

The program kids. I was sent in November of 99 every time this time of year I fall in deep depression. This place has left the biggest emotional scar. I just so happen to check heartland out online to see if the cult had fallen. It breaks my heart it hasn't. Nobody should endure the humiliation and torture of this place. The stew, green suits, shaved heads and eyebrows, grubbin, shit pits, over Worked and under paid (slave labor),swats, beatings, the rape, suicide attempts, the clicks, the drugs. These things are real. I have seen it all. A 13 year old boy should not walk in on his friend being raped in a room. Or see a grown man having intercourse with a cow at the dairy farm while working. like I said this place haunts me.

My heart goes out to all the survivors. I know it's difficult around this time of year for a lot of people but I want to wish my peers of heartland and the other survivors happy holidays. Your are all not forgotten or alone.

Sources:

• The originally testimony from Topix
• Factsheet about the facility (Fornits Wiki)

Video: A stay at a religious boarding school in Somaliland

The Danish television channel TV2 made a documentary about religious boarding schools in Somaliland where teenagers from Europe and United States are held against their will in chains because their parents believe that the teenagers have adapted a too western life style.

The teenagers are often lured to Somalia under false pretext.

These schools which operate in a similar way as many therapeutic boarding schools in the United States and the for Indian boarding schools in the United States and boarding schools for in Australia need to be stopped.

Here is a video from the documentary.



The human rights organization based in Denmark - Domestic Prisoners of Conscience also made a press-release:

President Trump - please put Somaliland on your watchlist

When Trump became president, he considered to restrict people from 12 countries from entering the United States.

We believe that he should put all those countries which were formerly a part of Somalia on this list.

In one part now known as Somaliland a new industry has established itself. It is a industry of extreme religious boarding schools where parents who live in the United States and Europe can send their children to if the children become too American or too European in their customs.

That is a problem when we address the security issues in every country in the world because closed school environments can be abused allowing the children to be forced into being taught about violence and that terrorism can be a tool to change the world.

We ordinary citizens in Europe and United States want to live in peace. Allowing children to leave our countries so they are placed in schools abroad where they learn to disgust our way of life and even fight it, is a serious threat against our peaceful lives.

We urge Trump and the American administration to put the area of Somalia on a watch list. We ask their customs to detain and interview every traveller leaving for and coming from the Somali area so it can be determined if they are parents or relatives to a child being detained at one of these boarding schools.

If they have a child at one of these schools they should be detained until the child is safely back in the United States where they then should be put under the protection of the social services.

If the parents then should be allowed to stay in the United States must be up to the court system to decide.

We are aware that many of the parents of Somali origins believe that they are only doing what other American parents do when they hire professionals to put their children in handcuffs and shackles so the children can be taken to Missouri or Utah where they are put into likewise religious boarding schools. The parents have a point.

Why target children with one religion when children are put through similar abuse just inside the United States?

Well. In an ideal world the United States should also put their foot down on all closed boarding schools in the United States. No child should be allowed to be contained under conditions which allows them less rights and more severe conditions compared to what they would experience in local prisons if they had broken the laws and the conditions in local boarding schools in Missouri and Utah are really bad.

But the laws are not there. Federal legislation making it difficult to bring children across state lines into states where legislators and law authorities do not care about children are not in place.

But border control to and from outside United States exist. Here is a chance to put the foot down and prevent abuse and the possibility that the children are introduced into terrorism.

That is why the United States should put the areas of the former Somalia on their watch list and restrict travelling to and from this area.