Trapped in Christian Boarding School: You Think Your School Days Were Rotten? Allison Tobey Has it Worse
September 13, 2000
by Nigel Jaquiss
On the evening of Aug. 8, Dan Skerritt's home phone rang. Skerritt, a founding partner of a downtown law firm, couldn't understand the hysterical teenage girl on the line and handed the phone to his wife, Irina. She recognized the caller as Allison Tobey, her daughter Katrina's best friend. "She was crying," Irina recalls. "It was hard to get her to talk or to find out what was wrong."
Allison, 16, finally settled down and told them she was in Boston with her parents and had just been told that she was being shipped off to a Florida boarding school for troubled girls.
"I asked her if she could talk freely," recalls Skerritt, whose daughter was not home at the time. "She said 'no.' I asked her if she knew the name or the location of the school. She said 'no.'"
Allison was all set to begin her junior year at St. Mary's Academy, the downtown Portland girls prep school. An honor-roll student whose chief vices are reportedly streaking her short brown hair with splashes of red dye and smoking an occasional cigarette, Allison appeared to be thriving, classmates say. "She was on the right track and doing better than ever," says Katrina Skerritt, who described Allison as a girl of infectious good humor who always carried a sketch pad, enjoyed theater and Tae Kwan Do and was never in trouble.
Today, however, Allison is a student at Victory Christian Academy in Jay, Fla., a so-called "tough-love" boarding school. In 1998, the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal called Victory a "private reform school."
Located in cotton and peanut farming country near the Alabama border, Jay is a village of less than 1,000 people. The school's 75 girls leave campus only with escorts and are rarely seen outside. "When you look at the back of the school it's beautiful," says a local government official who requested anonymity. "But it's got a fence around it, real high in back."
Although Victory Christian caters to troubled girls, the school has encountered some troubles of its own.
In 1992, Dr. Michael Palmer, Victory Christian's founder, moved his operation to Florida from San Diego after a licensing dispute with California officials. In most states, boarding schools are licensed; Florida, however, exempts faith-based boarding schools from most state oversight.
In an interview with WW, Palmer, 61, attributed his departure from California to "harassment," noting that in Florida his school is certified by a state-recognized religious organization.
Nonetheless, Palmer is no stranger to local Florida authorities. In 1994, according to Santa Rosa County sheriff's records, officers investigated sexual-battery allegations a student leveled against Palmer. In 1997, records show, four students complained to law enforcement officials of child abuse.
Palmer blames the allegations, none of which resulted in charges being brought, on vindictive students. "They were girls who were angry with me," he says. "Kids today have no fear and no respect for authority." Palmer declined to let WW speak to Allison.
Meanwhile, Allison's friends and their families are waging a campaign on her behalf. On Aug. 23, Irina Skerritt and Linda Wiener, a former Clark County prosecutor and court-appointed child advocate, drove to the Tobeys' Tigard home. Their daughters, both classmates of Allison's at St. Mary's, accompanied them. Allison's parents weren't home, Wiener says, but Allison's sister Amanda answered the door and invited the group inside. During the course of conversation, Amanda produced letters that Allison had written from Florida.
The letters brought the visitors no comfort. "They said she's surrounded by the worst people she's ever met and she's followed every minute of every day," Wiener recalls.
Amanda herself had been sent to Victory Christian the previous year and, according to Wiener and Skerritt, described instructional tactics that included isolation, constant monitoring, "bellying down" (in which girls who seem to be resisting Jesus are wrestled to the ground and held there), and such punishments as being made to write thousands of times phrases such as "I will open my heart to Jesus."
Wiener and Skerritt left the Tobey house determined to meet Allison's parents face-to-face.
In a short telephone conversation on Sept. 2, however, Kathleen Tobey reportedly told Skerritt to mind her own business. (The Tobeys also have not returned WW's calls.)
"I see their point," Skerritt says, "but my concern is that this school is designed to break a child's spirit through intimidation and mind control."
When school started at St. Mary's last week, the big question in junior class was "Where's Allie." Two girls started "Project Allie Save" and are organizing a letter-writing campaign. Others are calling the Tobeys, seeking information. Wiener will visit Victory Christian this month during a Florida vacation. "We just want to know that she's alright," Wiener says.
RELATED NEWS STORY
October 10, 2000
STILL TRAPPED IN A CHRISTIAN BOARDING SCHOOL
by Nigel Jaquiss
After spending two days in the Bible Belt village of Jay, Fla., Linda Wiener is no closer than before to understanding why a 16-year-old Portland girl is locked up in a Christian boarding school there.
Wiener, a former prosecutor and child advocate, flew to Florida late last month for vacation and spent a couple of days trying to visit Allison Tobey, a former classmate of Wiener's daughter at St. Mary's Academy.
Accompanied by Inga Zvejnieks, the aunt of another St. Mary's student, Wiener drove to Victory Christian Academy, the remote "tough-love" institution that Tobey's parents sent her to in August (see "Trapped in Christian Boarding School!!!," W, Sept. 13, 2000).
At Victory Christian, Wiener says, the women spent an hour speaking to Dr. Michael Palmer, the school's founder. They asked to see Tobey and to present her with 50 cards and letters from students at St. Mary's. After consulting with Tobey's parents, George and Kathleen Tobey of Tigard, Palmer declined to allow the visitors to see the girl. (The Tobeys have not returned WW's phone calls, nor are they speaking to Allie's classmates' parents.)
After Palmer invited the two women to leave, they staged a mini-protest outside the school's gate.
While Wiener acknowledges the awkwardness of inserting herself into another family's business, she returned to the Northwest more concerned than ever about Tobey's well-being. She says the recent death of a boy in a Bend tough-love school underlines her fears. "I see major parallels in the two stories," she says. "We regulate public schools and just about every other type of institution. But it seems in these schools, we're imprisoning near-adults without due process."
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