Romney: Good Help Is Hard to Find

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First Craig, now this. From the Salt Lake Tribune

A top Utah fund-raiser for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign – who has links to an organization facing a civil lawsuit alleging child abuse – is no longer part of Romney’s state finance team.

Robert Lichfield of La Verkin, who founded the umbrella group called the Worldwide Association of Specialty Schools, brought in some $300,000 earlier this year for Romney during a single Utah event and has donated tens of thousands to the former Massachusetts governor and other Republicans in recent years.

Lichfield is named in a federal lawsuit charging that students of the “behavior modification” schools with ties to WWASPS were subjected to “physical abuse, emotional abuse and sexual abuse.” The suit had 140 defendants at last count.

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.

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