School type private Director Jay Kay | Established 1997 | |
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Motto "Working for the future of the world" Accreditation Northwest Association of Accredited Schools Affiliation World Wide Association of Specialty Programs | ||
Tranquility Bay was a residential treatment facility affiliated with World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP), that operated from 1997 to early 2009. It was located in Calabash Bay, Saint Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica.
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History
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, unsanitary living conditions, unqualified employees, and denial of medical care; these claims have been the subject of multiple lawsuits 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". Although stated above that Jay Kay was not working for WWASP in 1999, I personally witnessed him actively running the facility and stood in his office at the TB facility in 1999 as he belittled me for actively pursuing any form of rescue that I could possibly obtain.
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.
Tranquility Bay was shut down in January 2009, after the case of Isaac Hersh gained national media and political attention and years of alleged abuse and torture came to light. Many politicians, including Hillary Clinton, were involved in Isaac's release.
In popular culture
The "Cassie" episode of the A&E program Intervention, 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. In the episode, Cassie alleged that her fellow residents consumed "chemicals" so they would be sent to the hospital and would be able to talk to their parents regarding the abuse they were enduring. However, she alleged that when they vomited in response to the poison, rather than being sent to a hospital, they were restrained by staff face down in their own vomit.