Kidnapped for Christ
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| Directed by | Kate S. Logan |
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| Music by | Joseph DeBeasi |
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85 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Kidnapped for Christ is a documentary film that details the experiences of several teenagers who were removed from their homes and sent to a behavior modification and ex-gay school in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic. The film was directed by Kate Logan. Tom DeSanto, Lance Bass and Mike Manning are the executive producers.
The film premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January 2014.
Escuela Caribe, also known as Caribe Vista, was a boarding school for "troubled" teens near the mountain community of Jarabacoa in the Dominican Republic owned by Marion, Indiana-based New Horizons Youth Ministries, an evangelical organization originally headquartered in Grand Rapids, MI. The school was originally located in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, founded by Pastor Gordon Blossom in 1971 and known as Caribe Vista Youth Safari. The ministry moved temporarily to La Vega, Dominican Republic. Eventually the school would change names to Caribe Vista/ Escuela Caribe, settling in Jarabacoa on a remote 30-acre fenced campus that typically housed around 45 students at one time. Blossom developed the school's program, calling it "Culture Shock Therapy" or "Christian Milieu Therapy". According to former students of Escuela Caribe, they were subjected to a range of abuses including intense forced labor and repetitive exercise, physical beatings (called "swats"), extreme isolation, and various forms of emotional abuse.
In 2011, Escuela Caribe and New Horizons closed, transferring the property to another Christian ministry called Crosswinds, which reopened the school under the name Caribbean Mountain Academy. Although their website states their program is not affiliated with New Horizons Youth Ministries, as of 2014 (the year of the film's release) at least five staff members from Escuela Caribe remained employed at the school after the transition.
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