Top Romney Financier Charged With Child Abuse

Posted by Howie Klein at 1:00 PM on September 7, 2007.

This post, written by Howie Klein, originally appeared on Down With Tyranny!

Norman Hsu donated to Democratic candidates and, believe me, he will be front and center in the media forever. I bet you never heard of Robert Lichfield though, right? He wasn't just a random donor to Republicans. He was a member of the Mitt Romney campaign, charged with bringing in money to the biggest spending campaign. But, besides sucking up cash for Full of Mitt, Lichfield was also involved with child abuse. He quietly slinked away from the campaign but... not much has been heard about this in all the yelling and screaming over Hsu even though he's been bringing in far more money for Flip Flop than Hsu has brought in for Democrats.

Lichfield is named in a federal lawsuit charging that students of the "behavior modification" schools with ties to WWASPS [Worldwide Association of Specialty Schools, founded by Lichfield] were subjected to "physical abuse, emotional abuse and sexual abuse."

...The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Utah, alleges brazen acts of child abuse, including that students of the various programs had been forced to eat their own vomit, clean toilets with a toothbrush and brush their teeth afterward, were chained or locked in dog cages, kicked, beaten, thrown and slammed to the ground and forced into sexual acts.

Lichfield and his wife have donated thousands of dollars to Romney and other right-wing candidates for various offices, as well as to right-wing groups. In fact they seem to have donated well over the legal limit for wingnuts like Utah Senators Robert Bennett and Orrin Hatch, and North Carolina Senator Richard Burr. I know Democrats who were recipients of Hsu's money have donated it to charity. Will Hatch, Bennett, the GOP and Full of Mitt return the hundreds of thousands of dollars given to them directly by Lichfield? Not likely.

More on WWASPS here.

Tagged as: child abuse, election08, romney, lichfield

Howie Klein is the creator of the blog Down With Tyranny!