PresidentStudent 'Ambassador' Dies Neglected & Alone

[Bucky]

She then watched her son's 6'2", 215-pound frame disappear down the jetway as he embarked on his "spiritual journey" to Japan.
The next time Sheryl and her husband saw Tyler he was lying unconscious in a stark hospital room at the Japanese Red Cross Medical Center in Tokyo.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/01/p2p_hill.html

[aquamarine]

Those fuckers who were supposed to be his legal guardians while this kid was on this trip should be thrown into a pit of leeches and forgotten about. How dare they not even bring him to a hospital. That's disgusting.

[AssKissinger]

If the facts in that article remain undisputed his parents are going to be enjoying an early retirement.

[2triky]

If the facts in that article remain undisputed his parents are going to be enjoying an early retirement.

Little consolation for losing your son.

[Greji]

If the facts in that article remain undisputed his parents are going to be enjoying an early retirement.

What I read, they aren't asking for a lot of money. My law suit would not have room on the paper for all the zero's I would be demanding!

[james]

If the facts in that article remain undisputed his parents are going to be enjoying an early retirement.

i doubt they'll be enjoying it. in their position, i'd sooner live knowing i have to work till my dying day if it meant not losing a son.

if anything, i'd sue for punitive damages, not with the intent of reaping the financial benefits, but to shut this sham of a program down. the utter neglect, contempt and breach of trust displayed alone should be grounds for suspending their operation.

[succubusqueen]

Talk about the so called morale; the People to People called the mother of the kid because he was holding hands with his girlfriend...WTF!...and didnt called when the kid got sick!!...That's horrible!:mad:

[Kagetsu]

It's certainly a sad thing when this happens... but it happens every so often... neglect.

I'm suprised we hadn't heard anything earlier about this?

[Catoneinutica]

Docleaf Limited certainly comes off as a sinister player in this tragedy. Their homepage is straight out of a dystopian sci-fi future:

http://www.docleaf.com/

"docleaf can help you avoid, manage and recover from the impact of the 21st century's increasing variety of social, economic, political, technological, and environmental crises."

It'd be hard to come up with a more Orwellian mission statement than that. Spooky stuff.

[amdg]

What a dodgy organisation!

• The organization came under fire in 2005 by the Iowa Attorney General's office for sending a letter to a mother, which stated her son was named for a Student Ambassador trip overseas. Her son, however, had died in 1993. He was seven weeks old. Iowa officials did not take legal action against People to People. The organization later donated $5,000 to Iowa's SIDS Foundation and $20,000 to Blank Children's Hospital in Des Moines;

• The organization has twice -- in recent years -- sent recruitment letters for its overseas trips to the parents of a deceased baby girl in Florida. The couple's daughter died from multiple birth defects in 1992. She was 18 days old. People to People said it was "absolutely devastated" this happened and blamed the company that compiled its mailing lists for the errors;

• In 2006, the organization sent a recruitment letter to the parents of an Earl Gray in Arkansas. Earl Gray, however, was the couple's white, one-eyed, cat. He died ten years earlier and is buried in the family's back yard. He was 14-years- old;

• Parents across the country have filed complaints with ConsumerAffairs.com about the misleading marketing tactics People to People uses to recruit students for its trips abroad. Parents say the letters led their children to believe they were "specially chosen" or nominated for these trips. Parents later discovered the travel company obtained their child's name from a mailing list.

I think their damages claim is incredibly low. Unless there's something they're not telling, they really need to file an amendment to add to the claims.

[joshuaism]

Clicking around on the net, all I can figure is that People to People is a great student travel scam. They find naive, young people looking for an exciting new experience, complement them on their non-existent talents, hide the costs until after they have built up the child's hopes and dreams, overcharge them for a mediocre travel tour, and send them home bragging about how wonderful it was to experience a foreign country without parental supervision (not realizing how much money their naive parents wasted to send them there).

But I guess when you are running such a lucrative scam, with so many people happy to have been duped, you are going to end up cutting corners and fuck up royally eventually.

Here's another boo-hoo story about a girl who twisted her knee on a trip with People to People. It didn't end so tragically, but the same cavalier attitude and poor management decisions by the company are present. And at the end of the story you can see all of the dupes rushing to defend the program they enjoyed so much.

edit: forgot an important step in the scam

[AssKissinger]

i doubt they'll be enjoying it. in their position, i'd sooner live knowing i have to work till my dying day if it meant not losing a son.

if anything, i'd sue for punitive damages, not with the intent of reaping the financial benefits, but to shut this sham of a program down. the utter neglect, contempt and breach of trust displayed alone should be grounds for suspending their operation.

I'm sure they would rather lose a son and be rich than lose a son and be poor though.

I think their damages claim is incredibly low.

Strategy. They'll bump it up.

find naive, young people looking for an exciting new experience, hide the costs until after they have built up the child's hopes and dreams

That's what wedding ceremony companies in Japan do. We'll take these great pictures. Suddenly, on the day 'Oh yeah, it's 100,000 yen to help you every time you change your kimono.'

[joshuaism]

I'm sure they would rather lose a son and be rich than lose a son and be poor though.

Well hell yeah, their story says they have another brilliant and talented son. I'll bet he's college material and college is a whole lot more expensive than a meaningless overseas vacation.

find naive, young people looking for an exciting new experience, hide the costs until after they have built up the child's hopes and dreams

That's what wedding ceremony companies in Japan do. We'll take these great pictures. Suddenly, on the day 'Oh yeah, it's 100,000 yen to help you every time you change your kimono.'

That's how a lot of scams work. But this People to People program really sets off warning bells; sending kids to a foreign country with strangers, discouraging them from calling home, not teaching the kids how to handle an emergency on their own. What is going on there? For a really scary comparison, look at human trafficking. Complement the kid on their non-existent talents and skills, offer them the "opportunity of a life-time" to develop those skills overseas, hide the costs until after you have built up their hopes, then take their money and give them one wild ride. Where would these kids be if the company stole their passports?

If you are dumb enough to fall for this overseas vacation marketed as a "personal development opportunity", be glad you don't live in a third world country.

[blackcat]

what a sad story, poor family.

[Kanchou]

I have a friend who went to Australia with them several years ago.

I remember thinking "That's really fsking expensive."

He seemed to have enjoyed himself though...