CA- Phillip Garrido Created His Own Elementary School in 2006

10-10-2009 California:

Normally Antioch schools are at the top of their class, but one local school has turned out to be every parents worst nightmare. In 2006, a quick background check on the Phillip C. Knight Institute wouldn’t have turned up much information, but it turns out that it was being run by none other than Phillip Garrido.

That’s right folks, the same guy who admitted to visiting local elementary schools just so that he could masturbate was able to get a business license to run his own elementary school just outside of Antioch. While there is no evidence to suggest that Garrido ever enrolled students in the school, the mere existence of the business license raises troubling questions about the safety of California’s private school system.

According to the Contra Costa County recorder’s office, Garrido filed two applications for his school. The first was filed on Jan 31, 2006 and used the name of “The Phillip C Knight” for the business. In August, he filed a second application and used the name Phillip C Knight Institute.

‘Phillip C. Knight’ is an alias that Garrido also used on his website, ‘Voices Revealed‘. The website also lists his e-mail address as ‘phillipcknight@yahoo.com‘. One purpose of using the alias may have been to hide the fact that his private school was being run by a registered sex offender.

At the time of the business filing, Jaycee’s two children would have been 12 and 8 years old. While the exact nature of the “institute” isn’t known, there seems to be two different schools of thought on Garrido’s possible motivations. The first is almost too terrible to imagine, that he intended to run his own elementary school in order to groom future victims.

Given his religious beliefs, it’s not too difficult to imagine a scenario where he could have convinced followers to enroll their kids into an academy where he was head principal. The mere fact that he was able to get this kind of business permit to begin with raises some serious questions about what type of screening takes place, when someone wants to start their own private school in California. If sexual predators are able to get around the criminal background checks by starting their own business, what safeguards are in place to protect our children?

The second school of thought is that the “institute” was created as part of an attempt to legitimatize the home schooling of Jaycee’s two kids. Reports have already confirmed that Jaycee and her children never visited a doctor or attended a public school. Given his desire to keep the kids off the grid, we are a bit puzzled as to why he would take the steps to officially create the “home school” and then fail to register it with the State of California. According to their 2006-07 private school database, there is no record of the Phillip C. Knight Institute ever being listed. The idea of a ‘home school’ would be appealing to Garrido because it would limit the outside attention that a regular public school would bring. Pictures of the Garrido residence confirm that there were many books and instructional tools lying around the compound, so it’s possible that the DBA application was intended to get discounts on textbooks.

If Garrido established the school as a way to legally home school Jaycee’s kids, then it raises the disturbing question of why sexual predators would even be allowed to home school their kids to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, parents should absolutely have the right to teach their kids on their own, but we take away the right to vote and the right to own firearms from felons, so why would it be unreasonable to take away the right to home school from convicted sex offenders? Two years ago, home schooling was almost declared illegal in California after a father who was accused of being abusive to one of his kids was sued to make him put his kids back in school. The California supreme court eventually ruled that the State had the right to make this request, but that families still had the right to educate their own kids.

Why should it take years of litigation in order to prevent children from being locked into an abusive prison? Garrido’s case is clearly not the norm, but if he was able to create a legal home schooling entity, then something is clearly broken with the system. For the sake of parents who want to know that private schools are safe and for the kids who may be stuck in an abusive home schooling environment, there needs to be some ground rules in place for those who do want to engage in alternative education.

There should be rules that require background checks on people trying create private schools. People convicted of sex crimes should be barred from establishing their own private institutions. What about the whole home schooling industry? How is the government suppose to regulate what goes on behind closed doors? It’s obvious by looking at the Garrido case that the State needs to have more control and oversight of the home schooling industry. ..Source.. by Simon King