SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — The director of a youth behavioral management school in western Costa Rica has been released after he was detained on allegations that he held children against their will and abused them, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said Tuesday.
Narvin Lichfield, 41, of Layton, Utah, was stopped on a bus late Thursday 45 miles outside San Jose, the capital, while traveling with some of his students. He was taken into custody but released a day later on the condition that he wouldn't leave the country, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Lichfield directed the Academy at Dundee Ranch, a rehabilitation center where 200 mostly American children and teenagers lived in a former hotel and learned ways to improve their behavior.
Peter Brennan, an embassy spokesman, said U.S. officials began investigating complaints from students shortly after the school opened two years ago. Child welfare officials from the Costa Rican government also began looking into allegations of abuse at the school and arrived at the facility early last week — shortly before Lichfield's arrest — to check on the students.
In a statement released Tuesday, academy officials accused the Costa Rican government of acting "unchecked and without regard to due process." The communique was prepared by The World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, the St. George, Utah-based organization that runs the Costa Rican academy and several similar schools across Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States.
It accused federal prosecutor Fernando Vargas of using "Rambo-like tactics" to take control of the facility, arriving with armed police and telling students they could "do whatever they wanted, without consequences." Several students left the facility or initiated disturbances, and school officials struggled to regain control, the statement said.
One parent, who asked not to be identified, said one child began choking her 16-year-old son before he was rescued by government officials and placed in protective custody. But she blamed the school — not the Costa Rican government — for the disturbance.
Prosecutors said Vargas has been removed from the case, but it was unclear why.
The school has since closed and all of its students have been relocated and either placed in protective custody or returned to their parents, Brennan said. Several were still in Costa Rica waiting to be picked up, he added.
The statement said there has never been a "substantiated case of abuse or mistreatment" in the six years that the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools have been operating.
It added that school officials are "confident that when all is reviewed, Narvin (Lichfield) will be acquitted of all charges."
It was unclear if Lichfield was in Costa Rica, although he is required to check in with Costa Rican authorities. It was also unclear if the school would continue operating.
At least one parent who initially received e-mails from the school promising to place her son in another facility said academy authorities have cut off all contact with her. She is flying to Costa Rica to bring her son home.