Kidnapped for Christ (2014) Reviews

• Deeply unsettling, and makes Jesus Camp look positively cheery

  Lowbacca19772014-04-23

  Several years ago, Jesus Camp circulated around as that film that horrified people, especially the nonreligious, when it came to how religion was pushing views on children. With Kidnapped for Christ, Jesus Camp seems like a welcome change. It's first noteworthy to mention the filmmaker. Kate Logan, a conservative Christian college student in the Dominican Republic for mission work, decided to do a documentary about a school there where American teenagers in crisis were sent. What she found there was teenagers that were woken up in the middle of the night by strangers and removed from the US, sometimes with no one outside their family knowing what happened to them, to be sent off to the Caribbean to have their behaviors corrected. Far from the extremes that one would expect to lead to this, some of them were fairly normal teenagers, all in all, before this happened. The film goes through the processes of the school by following a few of the 'students' there over the course of the several weeks that Logan was at the school. The reason her background is relevant is because as she continues, she starts to find her own faith challenged, as well as her approach to the film challenged, as she is repelled more and more by what's going on in the name of Christianity. And that's what gives this film so much power.... it tries to take a relatively fair stance, but the sheer weight of evidence is heavy enough that it has a clear conclusion, and it even runs counter and challenges her preconceived notions when she was coming into this situation in the first place. (Indeed, this might have never come to light if not for her background. So much of the power comes through what the three students she follows through go through, the way they talk about being treated, the fact that they've been sent to a foreign country without a say, and this is a film that I think very few people could watch and not find this upsetting, frustrating, angering, and disgusting. Logan shines a light on something that I would think most people in America don't even realize goes on, and something that even some of these parents don't realize, to the full extent, what these children are being subjected to.

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• Well Made Film

  IncaCaptive2014-08-06

  Enlightening film and very well made. It's most surprising to me how much the "school" let the cameras in. Clearly the folks running these types of facilities are not too aware of the effects of their actions, or worse, maybe they do. So sad this happens. I wish I could find out what happened to David and some of the other kinds in the program. I'm glad to see the former alumni are uniting to expose this type of cruelty. Sorry to the one reviewer who was offended by the title of the film, but too bad. I know good Christians. But so much harm has come to humans in the name of "god," even from those who follow the King James bible. The film's title is absolutely fair.

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• Unanswered Prayers as usual: Careless Parents and their "troubled" Teenagers.

  SBlues2014-07-29

  I just watched this Documentary, Kidnapped For Christ. It's a simple but good and necessary film that glances at what it's like for teens raised in Religious families that are forcibly moved to a foreign Country (Dominican Republic) to live in a Christian Camp-like Rehabilitation center for "troubled" teens that get into lots of trouble and/or disobey parents that feel they can longer control or influence their child's thoughts, behavior & life choices. Once there, the teens are force fed the usual judgmental/guilt-ridden melancholy BS found in all Bibles. They're forced to do various chores and a list of other strict things as well. They have to ask for permission to do everything and they have to be careful what they say and do; who they reveal anything to because they will be punished physically with a paddle, solitary confinement, verbal abuse and more. The film states that this type of organization is a Billion dollar business no doubt because the parents have to pay regular fees over a period of many months; likely until the parents and the organization feels it's time to return home. Many of the teens that are eventually released from these organizations are scarred for life because an imprint of all they endured is sealed in their minds forever, the few constructive methods as well as all the abusive methods. Anyone that has ever been abused (repeatedly) can tell you that those unpleasant/abusive moments experienced in life tend to stick with you and those memories can resurface when you least expect them to. They also have to face their parents again, the people that paid lots of money to make all this happen in the first place. Very extreme and expensive measures were taken by the parents in having their child "kidnapped" and shipped off to a foreign country to be cared for by unpredictable strangers that often appear emotionless & cold. I was definitely entertained and left with a lot of unanswered questions but I have a feeling much of the information left out was done so for legal reasons; yet the parents must have consented to allow their children to take part in this documentary because only a few random faces were blurred out.

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• Production vs. message

  waywaytoofast2015-10-30

  Mr. "The Gryphon" This was a scream for help by a student who found a way to get the matter heard, not a Ron Howard production. I was a student there before they moved into the new facility. Things were worse in the old place. I was abused in ways that would shock you. Criticizing the production while leaving the abuse to continue is disgusting. How classically "preppy" can you be? Kids are suffering and you want to sit in your comfortable world and pretend to be a film critic? The things that happened to me there are never far from my mind though that was almost 35 years ago now. Your concentration on the production over the message offends me. Why do you think the school is in the DR and not somewhere in the US? It is ONLY because they can escape US laws in how they treat folks. I slipped an unread and un-filtered letter to my parents during the hurricane David situation and they got me out of there - narrowly avoiding a serious confrontation with a young "officer" bent on being a Richard. Solitary confinement, physical abuse, perpetual mental abuse - it all happened and is surely still occurring. Those that lived through this could tell you stories that would make you weep.

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• Shook faith to the foundation

  bkoganbing2015-04-11

  It is fortunate that producer Kate Logan found in Lance Bass a producer to tell this story and in him the celebrity to make sure the film got made and seen. It's a story that we should all see. Meet Kate Logan Christian worker and missionary and documentary film maker who decided to tell the story in film of Escuela Caribe, a tough love program with Christian overtones for troubled youth. Ms. Logan thought she would be doing a puff piece that the school could use. What she saw down there shook her faith right to the foundation. All kinds of kids with all kinds of Christian parents were sent there for a variety of issues. Those that could afford the big bucks to pay the school to abduct their own children had them whisked to the Dominican Republic where the rebelliousness was to be driven from them. Whatever formed that rebelliousness took be it simple disobedience, drugs, sex, general all around hell raising. The main focus is on David a kid from Greeley, Colorado whose parents learned he was gay and did not want a gay child embarrassing them. So off he was whisked to Escuela Caribe where he was abused and degraded and wonder of wonders it did not take. The young man was in understandable despair, but as it turned out had more intestinal fortitude than he even thought he had and survived the ordeal. This is a timely documentary where our various states are now dealing with banning conversion therapy for children. The secular world of mental health professionals agree that these conversion efforts at changing orientation was and are still bogus. Hopefully it will be banned across the nation. It would have a limited effect on a school in a foreign country as this one was located in the Dominican Republic. But wonder of wonders this American funded 'school' is now shut down. Somebody's prayers may have gotten answered. Kidnapped For Christ is a fine documentary and big thanks go to Lance Bass for using his celebrity status to promote and produce the film and the issue it deals with.

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