Phillip Garrido Created His Own Elementary School in 2006

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 Institute Aug

‘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.

COMMENTS

Keith

Rove. pushed for his sex offender law and “O” the Bam Bam Obama just gave him sex czars.

Putting money in the human meat grinder we call Society.Should churches or our federal government be held libel for the murder of sex offenders?

Sex laws have been built on misconceptions and myth.

The Supreme Court just ruled on sex offender laws where some factions of our government think by some inert reasoning that sex offender should be quarantined or executed. Video taken in another country shows where sex offenders were placed on a pole much like the Catholics use to use a pyramid shaped object and have them sit on it and spin, the pole travels through the body looking for the throat but if not found its ok because the sharpened end of the pole will come out somewhere to the delight of these very strange people who think such thoughts are a bit barbaric.

The heritage of the act is in its self a brutal throwback to violent uneducated people who are so obsessed with any sex & the only way to deal with this kind of “hierarchy” of historic hysteria. A word taken from hysterectomy, hysteria is tied to castration, we are supposed to be the most advanced nation and we still have a death penalty when the rest of the world except for some nations we are still warring with/selling weapons too, while other nations went home our weapons dealers and torture lovers delighting in support for the death of people they don’t know or want to simply because they don’t know how to get money with out taking it from someone by force.

Is that supposed to include mutilations? In my humble opinion this alone “is” terrorist activities as much as severed hands, ears, heads, or making a case with nothing more than an obsession justified by lies.

The registry’s origin in the Jim Crow hang~um laws that brought disgrace to our nation allowing thieves and murderous societal bigots who have trashed any shot at making good of a program in its design to make money destroying our nation and its people. We can not survive using this behavior model because we are compounding the problem since the numbers are increasing to include the children they purport to protect.

The doctoring, castration/hysterectomy/health care/physic care of people through sex laws that have damaged everyone it has touched. What about the people who are being used by the Medicare programs that requires these mutilations for both men and woman after they take their means of support? Digging around in someone’s genitalia because you want what a weaker nation? Can’t you see? You have created the model and it is worthless! Why don’t we just indiscriminately kill people we don’t know? That is statically the next sex offender, because over 90% of all new offences are committed by someone “not” on the sex offender registry and the numbers are increasing not decreasing so as a behavior model this is really worthless.

So what is the use of such laws as the sex offender registry other than to terrorize people? With the murder of so many sex offenders and the continued disregard for life by the use of the registry it will be no time at all before the federal government will be held liable for their deaths through federal court.

There are ridiculous laws built for people unaware of what they do because of these misconceptions and fear creating an environment of mistrust where life has no meaning for both side of an issue that is made important by the same people who enjoy watching/participating in the torture/suffering of both sides for what touching someone?

Simon King

With the lack of State regulation power enforcing supervision of these ‘private small homeschooling groups’ is spotty at best. The problem still remains, what’s to prevent an abusive parent from keeping kids in a bad homeschooling situation? If they really are required to submit an ‘R4′, who is the one that is actually doing the submitting? It’s certainly not the kid (although, it probably should be!). What about truancy laws? These laws are so hard to enforce that many groups just ‘live off the grid’. Who really cares about the R4 anyhow, Garrido had so many strings attached to his mother that he could make her dance anyway he wanted…”R4 regulations? no problem I’m sure good o’ Mom will sign…”

It’s all a very gray area. What exactly, does ‘less than six students’ really mean? When I grew up my parents home schooled me, but we met regularly with other parents that independently home schooled their own kids. Often times we would go on trips to places like a science museum. Instead of all the parents going sometimes they took turns watching the kids. Is this against State law? What if we went on a Saturday during non-school hours? What’s to prevent a rotating supervising group like this from forming? It’s all fine and dandy until some boogyman parent, like Garrido, starts supervising the group and eventually totally destroys a child’s life…

Sheryl

Apparently the author of this article did not bother to do any research on home schooling children in California.
Is this supposed to be an opinion piece or a straight news article?

Julia @ The Frugal Find

The misinformation here is that the state of CA DID NOT know he was home schooling and the state DID NOT know there were children in that home. Yes he got a business license, but that was not state issued. The fact is that when you home school your children you are required each year to register with the state by filing an R4 Affidavit. You are required to let the state know how many children are in the home and what ages. You’re also required to keep health records, attendance, etc. Had he done that I am convinced that this situation would have been discovered much sooner. This isn’t the typical home schooling family. You can’t compare apples to oranges.

Pam Scott

California state law already prevents convicted sex offenders from owning, operating, or being employed by private schools. When a private school files the annual private school statement, the school acknowledges that it is in compliance with Ed Code 44237, which requires background checks on all private school staff (except parents working with their own children) and specifically prohibits anyone with a sex offender history having any position at all at the private school. Business licenses, like the one shown in the article, are neither required nor have any legal effect on whether a private school is legitimate. The reason Mr. Garrido’s school wouldn’t have shown up on a CDE list for the school year in question is probably due to the fact that his school would have had less than six students. The CDE is not required to include small private schools (those with five or fewer students) on the database that is available to the public.

If Mr. Garrido was “homeschooling” the children through having established his own private school, it would be an illegal school, solely because of his background. Anyone investigating the children for truancy would discover this, and the children would not be considered exempt from public school attendance. Whether other children were enrolled in his school depended solely on the parents of those prospective students. It’s the parent’s responsibility to verify the qualifications of any person who runs a private school that the parent is considering for his/her child. If a parent is suspicious, then the local school district can be contacted, who would, in turn, investigate the private school and discover (in this case) that the person operating the private school is a convicted sex offender.

As anyone can see from a quick study of the law, California already has all the necessary legal safeguards, while at the same time protecting each parent’s right to freely choose his child’s educational environment.

JP

I’m not trying to condemn all home schools. I was home schooled until sixth grade! I just think that there is something wrong with a convicted child molester who can “home school” his/her children. In that small of an environment what’s to stop an abusive relationship to form? At least in most public and private schools there is accountability for actions because of all the peer witnesses. I think the Jaycee case presents a perfect example of how in some instances an authority figure can completely control/brainwash a subordinate.

I wonder how many home school kids are afraid to speak out about an abusive situation because they fear repercussions from a parent/authority figure. It has already been reported that horrible things were done to Jaycee, but still she stayed for over 18 years…

LI_Mom

I fully agree with the author here. Nobody’s “rights” are being jeopardized if society takes precautions to insure that ABUSIVE PARENTS are not allowed to keep their children from having contact with the outside world.

What more could a pedophile or abuser wish for than to never have to worry that a doctor, a neighbor or a teacher notice signs of abuse in their victim?

It’s not at all intrusive to insure that children who are homeschooled are indeed SAFE and that they are actually getting an adequate education. The mere fact that some parents are unhappy with the public school system does NOT automatically mean they are qualified to TEACH.

Lets get real

From Darkness 2 Light’s web site:

* 1 in 4 girls is sexually abused before the age of 18.
* 1 in 6 boys is sexually abused before the age of 18.
* The median age for reported abuse is 9 years old.
* More than 20% of children are sexually abused before the age of 8.
* Nearly 50% of all victims of forcible sodomy, sexual assault with a object, and forcible fondling are children under 12.
* An average serial child molester may have as many as 400 victims in his lifetime.

These statistics show an epidemic.

Every year in America an estimated 800,000 children are reported missing, more than 2,000 children each day. Of that number, 200,000 are abducted by family members, and 58,000 are abducted by non-family members. The primary motive for non-family abductions is sexual. Each year 115 children are the victims of the most serious abductions, taken by non-family members and either murdered, held for ransom, or taken with the intent to keep.

Lois

Everything that human beings do can be undermined.
Public school teachers have occasionally been known to molest their students.
Occasionally, we will find that private or home schooled children will be the victims of sexual abuse from those who should protect them. This is not a reason to blindly state that (for instance) a person who was half of a Romeo/Juliet case should not be able to home school their children.
Indeed, the number of things that can now cause you to be placed on the sex offender registry is growing. Sexting is causing teens across the country to be placed on the sex offender registries with truly violent offenders.
False accusations are occasionally uncovered before the damage is done, as was the case in the Duke University accusations and the more recent ones in NY state. However, surely there are others out there who have been falsely accused, yet can not prove it. Why would you want to subject the children of these people to the bullying and other horrors that go on in the public schools to children whose parents are on the sex offender registry?
And it won’t stop with this group, either. As there are now more registries, soon there will be rules saying that those convicted of other crimes can’t home school.
DUI parents, for instance, should not be allowed to home school. After all, if they had to get their kids to the hospital, they could be a danger to the kids and other drivers…
Just a sample folks. Remember, the rules you set for one group of folks will sooner or later be imposed on other groups.

ohmygod

The writer of this article definitely needs to wake up and smell the roses.
Why on earth would you want to punish the rest of the world for what ONE PERSON DOES.

This guy is one person, just one! How on earth can you write such an inflamitory article like this trying to get a knee-jerk response?

People like you are the exact reason we have so many ineffective and abusive laws in this nation.

I would strongly advise you, the writer of this article to GET A GRIP.

Do you even know what effect on millions of lives implementing what you are saying should be done would have???

Why on earth would you want to force parents to have to let their children be brain washed by the public schools? Then, the parents, under current laws, would not even be allowed to go to their children’s own school activities as once a person is labeled a sex offender for what ever reason, they are not allowed to attend sporting events with their children.
Also, those families who have a person who is labeled sex offender in the family, are most likely homeless and jobless any ways.

Yeah, that is what we need, more laws… more government, more laws…
I am sure you voted for and support Obama.

You now have a guy, Mark Foley, do you know the name. Mark foley, State Representative for Florida… got caught in sexual situations with little boys, aides under him in office… he now lives in California and has his own radio station! What you going to do, get a new law all Politicians who molest little boys who work for them cannot have a radio station?

Taking this ONE case, and sensationalizing it and making laws which punish millions for the crime of one is, ? OMG, So ignorant I cannot even hardly speak.

All this said with due respect… just, please get a grip.. before you go off spouting, MORE LAWS, MORE LAWS, Take away more freedoms fom Americans. Please.

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