CIA Torture Techniques Used On Youth At 'Cattle Ranch Operation'

Various gruesome CIA-style torture techniques are allegedly being used by staff on troubled chidlren at a 30,000 acre cattle ranch in New Mexico, according to parents who paid big bucks to send their children there and youth subjected to waterboarding, weapon assaults and other severe violations of the rights of the child there.

Torture for Punishment and Control of Children

Marc Fleming says that at Tierra Blanca Ranch, he was strapped to a bench with belts for 30 minutes, while “a wet rag was placed over his nose and mouth and he was ‘waterlogged,’ simulating drowning,” he said, according to Courthouse News. Fleming, a plaintif in the case, was 16 when sent to the ranch in 2010. 

Plaintiff Coulton Quevedo says that at the ranch for troubled children, the staff handcuffs and shackles children, forces them to work without pay, physically abuses them, keeps them on short food rations as punishment and as a method of control. His mother claims she paid $47,800 for this.

Plaintiff Cheryl Morgan claims she paid $61,800 for her 15-year-old grandson to attend the Tierra Blanca program, where he was “neglected and abused” and beaten by a staff member with a metal rod called a kubotan. She claims a ranch supervisor “watched and approved” as her grandson was denied adequate food and nutrition.

Plaintiff Jordan Almanza says he was 17 when sent to the ranch in 2010. He claims he was shackled and forced to perform “extreme exercise,” and that Chandler told him that if he left the ranch he would go to jail.

The plaintiffs claim the ranch employs untrained and unlicensed staff whose abuses include:

“beatings resulting in injury, including beatings with weapons;”

“improper and illegal use of physical restraints, such as shackles and handcuffs;”

Forcing children to run “for hours at a time, running up and down slopes, running while carrying truck tires; and running while wearing shackles or handcuffs; allowing and requiring children to “discipline” other children; withholding food and reducing food rations as collective punishment and other abuses.”

The families seeking punitive damages for physical and emotional abuse, fraud and breach of contract are represented by Michael Siever with McGinn Carpenter Montoya & Love.
     

The list of defendants are: Tierra Blanca Ranch ZX; Tierra Blanca Ranch; JSC Properties LC; Scott & Collette Chandler dba ZX Land and Cattle, Tierra Blanca Ranch High Country Youth Program and Tierra Blanca High Country Outfitters; Clyde Chandler and others.

The director of the ranch “cattle opperation”, Scott Chandler writes on the ranch website that initially, the youth will not like the discipline, rigor… but they will eventually grow to appreciate it.