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2009-07-31 10:54:23
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press Writer Michael Rubinkam, Associated Press
Writer Thu Jul 30, 1:46 pm ET
SCRANTON, Pa. In a few weeks, thousands of foreign exchange students will
arrive in the United States for what they hope will be a rewarding time of
study and cultural enrichment. Shortly after that, Danielle Grijalva's phone
will start ringing, and her e-mail inbox will begin filling up. It happens
every year.
While most of the 30,000 exchange students who come to the U.S. each year have
positive experiences, some find themselves stuck in bad homes with little
prospect of getting out especially if the agency that placed them doesn't
take their concerns seriously or even blames them for the problems.
These are Grijalva's kids.
From her base in Oceanside, Calif., the 43-year-old stay-at-home mom has almost
single-handedly taken on the foreign exchange industry, intervening in abuse
cases, questioning placement agencies' marketing practices, and bashing the
U.S. State Department for what she says is lax regulation.
The industry says she exaggerates problems and makes reckless allegations. Two
defamation lawsuits have been filed against her.
But the watchdog's complaints about the dozens of programs that import
foreigners were recently borne out in northeastern Pennsylvania, where a
Scranton woman was charged last week with child endangerment for allegedly
placing exchange students in filthy homes with ex-convicts and not enough food.
Grijalva helped one of the teens file a complaint with the State Department and
offered advice to local child welfare investigators on how to proceed.
Her involvement was to be expected. Since launching her tiny nonprofit five
years ago the Committee for Safety of Foreign Exchange Students Grijalva
(gree-HAHL'-vah) has answered thousands of e-mails and phone calls from
aggrieved students and their worried parents back home.
"By the time they reach CFCES, they are so exhausted and so emotional, but so
elated to find someone who will say, 'We will help you as much as we can,'"
Grijalva said.
She has racked up some notable successes. Besides getting students out of bad
situations, her organization successfully pushed for regulatory reform in 2006
and investigated an Allentown-based placement agency that Pennsylvania
authorities shut down earlier this year.
She's also made enemies. On a recent Sunday morning, Grijalva was served with a
state lawsuit that claims she defamed one of the largest exchange programs,
California-based Council for Educational Travel, USA, by making "false
statements" about it while intervening in the case of a Norwegian student in
Minnesota.
A French agency, Programmes Internationaux d'Echanges, and two of its U.S.
affiliates sued her for defamation in North Carolina two years ago, and won a
preliminary injunction against her while the case proceeds.
Grijalva, who has countersued P.I.E., says the lawsuits are intended to shut
her up.
But critics complain that she paints with an overly broad brush, resulting in a
distorted picture of the U.S. exchange program. Since the majority of students
go home happy, they say it's unfair and inaccurate to malign an entire industry
based on scattered cases of abuse and neglect.
"She tends to speak in fairly broad generalizations that are probably pretty
hard to prove," said John Hishmeh, executive director of the industry's
accrediting body, the Council on Standards for International Educational
Travel. "When you look at (the recent Pennsylvania scandal) and somebody says,
'That's how they all are,' that's reckless."
Grijalva makes no apologies for her activism or her tactics.
"Some people are trying to say I have an agenda, a vendetta. We're talking
about the health, safety and welfare of children that are treated like cars
being moved off the lot," she said. "This is not about me. This is about the
efforts of CSFES to protect these kids."
In that regard, she has a lot of satisfied customers.
Danish student Emily Larsen says her host family in Denver belonged to a
fundamentalist church that denounced Jews, Muslims, homosexuals and others.
Larsen, who was raised secular, says she was made to go to the church 10 hours
a week, and that it "brainwashed" her and pressured her to join. When her
placement counselor ignored her pleas for help, she turned to CSFES.
"I felt like my whole life was totally falling apart," said Larsen, of
Copenhagen, whose experience left her so traumatized that she has been seeing a
psychologist. "In two days, Danielle got me out."
Nemesia Lago, a Colombian whose teenage son was one of five exchange students
found to be living in deplorable conditions in Scranton, says Grijalva
responded immediately to her request for help and was dogged in her advocacy.
"She became like an angel," Lago, of La Guajira, wrote in an e-mail.
Grijalva says exchange agencies often bring students to the U.S. without first
securing host families for them, leading to hasty, ill-advised placements like
the ones in northeastern Pennsylvania. And many agencies require students to
first approach their local coordinators with problems, threatening them with
repatriation if they seek outside help.
She used to be part of the industry, working as a placement counselor between
2002 and 2004 and taking pride in matching exchange students with caring,
qualified host families. But she was disturbed by her company's marketing
practices, and quit the business altogether in the wake of a case of sexual
abuse involving a placement by another representative that she says the
company tried to cover up.
Shortly thereafter, Grijalva began CSFES, which she operates on a shoestring,
relying on a network of more than 1,000 volunteers around the country. A former
legal secretary who left the work force 13 years ago to raise her three
children, she is close to finishing her college degree and plans to go to law
school.
Lana Simovic of Podgorica, Montenegro says her son was sent home by his
exchange agency after only two months for what she described as relatively
minor rules violations, prompting a State Department inquiry into the program's
actions. She called Grijalva a godsend.
"Danielle Grijalva is (the) only person that gave me hope that in America there
are reasonable people," she wrote in an e-mail.