While Wilderness Camps harm youth today at an alarming rate. Over twenty years ago, in May 1990 news of Wilderness Camp abuse painfully came to light as a group of teenagers began hiking up Mt. Dellenbaugh in Arizona.
It is a extremely hot day. Some seven thousand feet of windy, dry Arizona desert lies ahead of them. Just days into their journey a young 15 year old says she can’t continue. She starts throwing up her water, falling down and complaining of blurred vision. The group didn’t have radios that could reach as far down the mountain as help was so the other young people lit fires around the collapsed girl to signal for help. 18 hours later a plane passing overhead saw the fires and the body of Michelle Sutton was finally taken down the mountain. If you think this is the story of some lost teenagers who didn’t pay attention to park ranger safely warnings you’d be wrong. Instead this is the story of an industry gone mad. This is the story of a multi-million dollar industry that preys on traumatized teenagers and their desperate parents. It continues to this day.
Michelle’s parents had paid over $13,000 for a 63 day program called Summit Quest. A program Michelle herself had willingly gone to after a series of events culminating in a date rape. She wanted to get away from the boy that had raped her, to get her head on straight. She was looking forward to coming back healthier and with the school credits the course said it would give. Instead, Michelle got minimum wage counselors who ignored her pleas for help and watched her die. You’d think after twenty years and lost licenses this terrible tragedy would have taught somebody something, at least the government, if not the therapists running such programs. This is not the case. The teen abuse industry is big and profitable and going strong with more teens being forced to enter these programs every year.
In 2012 the industry uses different names for these places, behavior modification centers, wilderness programs, boot camps, treatment centers and emotional growth boarding schools to name a few euphemisms. They all have similar tactics, though, with very little oversight. Many of the people in charge have no real training and no special qualifications. It’s an industry dominated by the unproven idea that these often already traumatized teens need harsh discipline and brutal confrontation. Tactics include sleep deprivation, use of “stress positions,” hard labor, physical punishment, emotional abuse and public humiliation. “Breaking” the children is usually followed by indoctrination. There is often limited parental contact and limited contact with the outside world so these places avoid the kind of scrutiny that could save teen lives. These programs are allowed to hold a child until they are 18 with no diagnosis and very little contact with the outside world.
- Cell phone video from Corpus Christi showed state employees forcing residents to fight, no criminal charges were filed.
-children being forced to scrub pots with undiluted bleach
-17 year old strangled to death
-13 year old boy killed in a restraint at a Georgia wilderness camp
There’s an entire web page of children who have died from beatings, restraint, hyperthermia, and head trauma by these facilities. If you’re interested in the extent of this problem they can be found at http://www.teenadvocatesusa.org/INMEMORIAM.html
The “tough love” movement has its beginnings in the 70’s and 80’s with programs like “Straight, Inc.” Parents paid huge sums, as much as $5,000 a month, and very little medical supervision or even a diagnosis was needed to place a child in a program. As the 90’s rolled around it became common for courts to order young delinquents to these programs. The problem with the “tough love” movement is it lends itself to abuse and never really addresses the real issues the teen may have. Behavior is micromanaged, often dictating things such as the number of toilet paper squares used, at a time when psychologists agree young people need to learn critical thinking and how to interact socially. Some of these young people have no issues at all. They are enrolled because they are in the midst of divorce or for things like being gay in a family who disagrees with that. Other times the teen actually belongs under the care of a real psychiatrist for serious things like depression or mental illness. Some of them have been abused, and for those children especially, the last thing they need is more dehumanization, confrontation, and humiliation. It’s well known that the “tough love” approach doesn’t work. In ’04 the NIH released a consensus statement saying the approach does not work and even admitting that it may make matters worse, some young people leaves these programs with PTSD. Unfortunately, these programs can appear to work. Being emotionally terrorized can produce a compliance that looks like success. Also most young people do eventually grow out of bad behavior. There is no agency the equivalent of the FDA to prove that these programs are safe or effective leaving often desperate parents to rely on slick sales pitches. And anyone can claim to be an expert.
All this continues today. Right now judges and parents are sending young people to these programs to be abused. Programs with employees like the one who said, “If I can’t make a kid puke or piss in his pants the first day, I’m not doing my job.” My state’s own “training school” had over 13,000 reports of abuse since 2004 alone. They’ve been sued twice, once by the Justice Department in a suit that stated how the youngsters were thrown into cells naked and forced to eat their own vomit. The Justice Department has filed suits in 11 other states and yet, right now, laws that could prevent this sit and wait for action that isn’t coming. Bills such as HR 911 which has sat in the House for two years waiting to be rewritten. As Congressman George Miller stated, “This nightmare has remained an open secret for years.” When punishments are handed out they are mere wrist slaps. In ’05 a man was convicted because he squeezed some boys’ testicles so hard they had to seek medical attention. He got five years probation and a 90 day sentence he got to serve on the weekends. That’s actually viewed as a good outcome because so many of these young people never see justice. It’s a guard’s word against theirs, or records are altered to protect the guilty. Faith-based centers are even harder to regulate. Missouri and Montana to name a couple are very quick to vote down any bill that might regulate a faith- based residential treatment facilities. Republicans frequently scuttle bills that might prevent some of the abuse and torture these young people go through. Representative Christie Clark, herself a mother, cast the victims of these places as “unreliable witnesses who struggle with truthfulness.” The operators of these torturous places have a special knack for avoiding prosecution. They will go from state to state opening centers under different names. You ban one of them from working with children in one state they will go to another and start all over again. Authorities raided one center and found a boy in his underwear on the floor of a dark isolation cell. Those in charge received suspended sentences and probation and the “school” reopened again elsewhere. Another raid uncovered handcuffs, leg irons, rifles and handguns, this time, Jack Patterson, the perpetrator of many a beating got away with a 500$ fine and is now happily opening schools in three other states.
The bottom line? At both state and federal levels this sick industry has key political support. Mitt Romney’s campaign is close to the Utah teen homes, they are helping fund his 2012 run as they did his 2008 run. Courts promote them as an alternative and they receive numerous grants. A number of deaths prompted a GAO report and congressional hearings out of which came the HR911 but even this has been fought against by the likes of Hephzibah House's Ron Williams, Reclamation Ranch's Jack Patterson, and the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs. In ‘10, a Keeping All Students Safe Act, that would have banned the use of seclusion and physical or chemical restraints by any school that benefits from federal education money died in the Senate mostly due to GOP members whose districts host tough-love schools. Right now at least one spin-off of Straight, Inc remains open.
The best option for teens seeking recovery are youth focused, teen recovery centers that primarily seek to gently uncover the roots to addiction and by creating a supportive and caring environment, help to lead young people through the path of recovery. Luckily parents are beginning to utilize these facilities. Still, others continue to send their children to abusive and debilitating Wilderness Programs.
Paradigm Malibu is devoted to the provision of state of the art Teen Drug Treatment, Adolescent Behavioral Health, Mental Health and Emotional Health Treatment. To learn more about our services, please visit our web site at: www.paradigmmalibu.com
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