institutions. In 2005 Robert Lichfield and the Utah-based holding company, Golden Pond Investments Ltd., made an offer to buy the campus of the Kemper Military School in Boonville, Missouri, to open a new school for adolescents needing help with discipline, responsibility and leadership skills. It was announced that the school would be directed by former WWASP staff member Randall Hinton and his brother Russell Hinton. The Hintons told Boonville officials that the proposed school would not be a part of WWASP. The Boonville City Council rejected the proposal. Randall Hinton later tried to resurrect the WWASP format with a similar "chain" of schools called Right Directions, but the effort never got past the planning stages. Most likely, this was meant to allow WWASP to retain many of its former properties under a new name with a clean slate, but ostensibly it would have been an entirely new entity. Ken Kay is now superintendent of Browning Distance Learning Academy, a provider of homeschooling curriculum. Its materials were used by Mentor School in Costa Rica. As of 2022 no other school or homeschooling group has used Browning Distance Learning Academy, and it's assumed the company went bankrupt after Mentor's closure. Controversy WWASPS and its associated institutions have been the target of criticism over their treatment methods, including allegations of severe abuse and torture by staff at programs supported by WWASPS. The programs have been the subject of legal investigations by several U.S. states. In 2003, a reporter for The New York Times interviewed 60 current and former program participants and parents; some gave positive reports of their experiences, while other participants and parents said that WWASPS programs were abusive. A WebWire report on October 16, 2006 stated that children housed in WWASP programs had to drink their own vomit, chain themselves to dog cages, starve, encounter emotional abuse and rape, consume rotten/spoiled food, and were denied the right to use a bathroom. Numerous former students or their parents have filed lawsuits against WWASPS, its personnel, or individual schools. Most have been settled out of court or dismissed for procedural reasons. For example, a 2005 lawsuit filed in California on behalf of more than 20 plaintiffs was dismissed because the judge found that California lacked jurisdiction. In June 2007, Utah attorney Thomas M. Burton told a reporter that six suits he had filed against WWASPS on behalf of his clients had been dismissed