Online survivors of boot camps for troubled teens play significant role in shutting down degrading abusive programs

TIME Magazine - April 5, 2011

Increasingly, Internet Activism Helps Shutter Abusive 'Troubled Teen' Boot Camps

By Maia Szalavitz

For the last 40 years, teens with drug problems, learning disabilities and other behavioral issues have been sent to residential facilities to endure "tough love" techniques that are widely known to include methods of outright physical and psychological abuse.

Whether labeled as boot camps, emotional-growth schools, behavior modification programs or wilderness programs, these organizations have operated without federal oversight, and state regulation of the schools ranges from lax to nonexistent. Now, however, individual critics of the programs are using the Internet to find each other and mobilize, and are bringing change.

Consider the Elan School, in Poland, Maine, which has long been known for its extreme practices. On April 1, Elan shut its doors after four decades in operation, blaming negative publicity online for recent declines in enrollment. "The school has been the target of harsh and false attacks spread over the Internet with the avowed purpose of forcing the school to close," Sharon Terry, Elan's executive director, told the Lewiston Maine Sun Journal. The paper reported:

Despite several recent investigations conducted by the Maine Department of Education that Terry said have vindicated the school, "the school has, unfortunately, been unable to survive the damage."

Elan is just the most recent in a growing list of victories for opponents of tough residential programs for troubled teens. In the last three years, some 40 other private institutions like Elan have closed, and others have been condemned by state investigations, as activism online — mostly led by survivors of such programs and their parents — has increased.

Last month, the Oregon Department of Human Services released its report on the August 2009 death of Sergey Blashchishena, a 16-year-old student at the Sagewalk wilderness program in Bend, Ore., which was run by Aspen Education, the largest chain of behavioral health centers for teenagers in the U.S. Blashchishena died of heatstroke on his first day at the program after being made to hike in 89-degree weather, carrying a backpack that exceeded the weight standard for adult infantrymen. He was not given medical aid when he began to show signs of heat exhaustion.

Online activists widely posted stories about Blashchisena's death and encouraged former program participants to send information to investigators. The state's final report substantiates findings of neglect against the program and two of its staff members.

Also in 2009, an investigation by TIME found that girls at another Aspen program in Oregon, Mount Bachelor Academy, were being forced to do lap dances and other inappropriate sexual acts as part of "therapy." A state investigation of the school would later confirm that "sexualized role play in front of staff and peers, requiring students to say derogatory phrases about themselves in front of staff and peers" and "requiring students to reenact past physical abuse in front of staff and peers" did occur, and that the practices were "punitive, humiliating, degrading and traumatizing."

In this case, again, Facebook groups, websites and email lists allowed program survivors and their parents to find one other; they uncovered information about earlier state investigations into Mount Bachelor that had been stymied by lack of access to victims, and they were able to pool new information to help current investigators see the pattern of abuse.

Both Aspen programs are now closed, and just last month the group announced the closure of five more programs as well as the consolidation of another three around the country. In a press release, Aspen blamed the economy, saying, "This transition reflects the reduced demand for therapeutic schools and programs in today's economy."

While it's certain that the economic downturn has contributed to the programs' financial troubles — tuition can cost $6,000 a month or more, over several months to years — activism online has also clearly played a significant role. The Elan School was simply the first to cite Internet activity as a direct cause of its closure.

"This movement couldn't have happened without the Internet," says Kathryn Whitehead, founder of CAFETY, the Community Alliance For the Safe and Ethical Treatment of Youth, and a former student at another abusive program that recently closed. "The Internet has been absolutely critical because survivors are spread out across the U.S. They get sent to a program and then they have to go home. When you connect to other program survivors, you recognize that this is a large-scale problem, not an individual program's problem. That has been critical in bringing people together. It's an incredibly effective organizing tool."

What's more, unlike in the heyday of troubled-teen programs, the Internet now allows the instantaneous sharing of information about the current and past goings-on at the schools; in previous eras, those details were scattered in the archives of local newspapers or government files.

When activists looked up local newspaper accounts of the Elan School from 1975, for instance, they found that psychologists who visited Elan had been quoted as saying it was "bizarre and degrading" and that "the whole concept of the program seems to be a brain-washing technique."

Elan was among the most notorious of the country's emotional-growth schools. It was there, in the late 1970s, that Michael Skakel, cousin to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., allegedly confessed to the 1975 murder of his 15-year-old neighbor in Greenwich, Conn., Martha Moxley — a crime for which Skakel remains incarcerated. Skakel's parents had enrolled the boy at Elan to treat an alcohol problem after he was arrested for drunk driving in 1978, several years after the murder.

But what is less known are the techniques commonly used to prompt such confessions at Elan — tactics that were employed at the school for decades, according to former students, often with knowledge of state authorities.

Take "the ring," for instance. In this disciplinary tactic, two students are encircled by a ring of their peers, their arms tightly meshed to prevent escape. Dozens of students and staff members congregate around the ring to spectate, packed into a bare room not much bigger than a studio apartment. At the only exit to the outdoors, which opens directly to the Maine woods, a teenage sentry is stationed. Sentries guard interior doors as well.

One of the student "boxers" inside the ring has been designated to "fight on the side of good." He's there as a representative of the school. The other has been labeled as the bad guy: he is there to accept punishment for breaking one of the school's many strict rules.

As the match gets underway, the ring of teens, typically aged 13 to 18, participates by hitting, pinching or trying to trip the bad guy; maltreating him is not only not encouraged, it's the point. Refusing to participate in jeering or bullying is suspect, and teens who stay quiet risk becoming victims themselves.

Between one-minute rounds, the victim is taunted by spectators and denied water and crowd support. Until he surrenders and accepts whatever label or rule he had rebelled against, fresh opponents are brought in to break him. When he does finally break, the damage is both physical — he's typically bruised and bloodied — and mental. Similar "rings" were also held for girls.

And that's only one example tough love, Elan style. Such accounts of torture and neglect date back to the 1970s, and many came to light as part of the sensational Skakel murder trial in 2002. Witnesses describe kids being systematically slammed against every wall of an entire dormitory. They detail grueling days of sleep deprivation, beatings and psychological humiliation. Students were consistently left in charge of other teens, and instructed to beat them if they did not comply with orders.

Based primarily on testimony from Elan classmates, who said they heard Skakel confess to killing Moxley, the Kennedy cousin was convicted. At Elan, Skakel was made to wear a sign for weeks saying "Confront Me About Why I Killed My Friend," and he is said to have confessed to the murder only after a session in the ring. Confessions gained by the police through methods similar to those used at Elan are illegal. "Basically, they tried to erase you," said one woman who attended Elan from 2002 to 2004.

Jeff Wimbelton led the online charge to close Elan. (The name is a pseudonym; for professional reasons, Wimbelton does not wish to be identified.) Now in his 20s, he attended the school in the early 2000s, having been sent there following an arrest for running away from home.

Wimbelton says he witnessed the brutality of the ring at least 20 times during the two years he was enrolled at Elan, and was himself made to fight "on the side of good."

Although the state of Maine was aware that this violent ritual was being conducted at the school, it did little more than encourage Elan to stop voluntarily. Yellow Light Breen, a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Education, told the Sun Journal in 2002 that:

...his department was aware of the "ring" treatment at Elan and that it was a "real issue" 10 to 12 years ago. "We pressed them pretty hard and they agreed not to do it," he says. "We were certainly led to believe it ceased several years" ago.

Also, he added, in the last year, the DOE has banned the use of restraints and so-called "adverses," like being hit, pinched or being subject to loud noises.

Wimbelton says that despite Elan's claims that the ring was stopped in 2000, he saw a ring session as late as 2001. Other former students corroborate his story.

In 2007, the continued use of so-called aversive therapies despite a lack of evidence of their effectiveness — and despite significant evidence of their harms — spurred me to write an op-ed piece about Elan for the New York Times. At the time, Elan was one of two out-of-state programs using punitive treatment at which New York State youth with conditions like autism, learning disabilities or behavior problems were eligible to receive state-funded treatment.

My piece prompted a state investigation. As the Sun Journal reported:

David Connerty-Marin, spokesman for the Maine Department of Education, said the agency has "investigated Elan a number of times based on reports of abuse and other deficiencies, and never found any evidence." He said that New York officials also have investigated, and never found evidence of abuse at the Poland school.

But that's not what New York State officials told me. In a letter to Elan following the investigation prompted by my Times op-ed, regulators said that Elan used "sleep deprivation," excessive isolation and restraint, and "coercive and confrontational" counseling that was conducted by untrained students, who often used foul language. They asked that these "health and safety" issues be resolved within seven days.

It's not clear why Maine's investigators failed for decades to find abuse at the school, while New York's officials saw disturbing treatment during their first visit. It could be because Maine announces its inspections in advance, while New York sends investigators to programs unannounced.

Wimbelton was inspired to act after reading media reports about the 2007 investigation of Elan and the later comments of recent graduates. One woman wrote in the comments section below my Huffington Post article about the investigation that her nephew had committed suicide after being enrolled at Elan. Another woman who had attended the school from 2005 to 2008 commented there that she was "traumatized."

"Reading that comment, it was like a fuse went off in my brain," says Wimbelton, who had assumed that Elan had reformed its ways since he had attended. "I thought, I can't believe this is still going on. I have to do something to stop it."

He waged an online war using every weapon he could think of: Facebook pages, tumblr blogs, websites and other social media. When Wimbelton posted about Elan on Reddit, the post received thousands of votes and generated enormous traffic. He encouraged others to post their stories too. People responded, posting and cross-linked their missives enough so that anti-Elan sites soon began to rise to the top of Google's search results, offering parents a very different view of the program than that on the school's own website.

Wimbelton even looked up the local media's coverage of school sports, which listed the names of Elan athletes. With a little online sleuthing, Wimbleton was able to find the names of the parents of the kids; he called them to try to warn them about what went on at the school. Upon hearing Wimbelton's story and reading the links he sent, the parents of four such children decided to withdraw their enrollment, he says.

"The fantastic thing about the Internet has been that individuals can post their own personal experiences — it's not a one-sided marketing tool," says Whitehead.

Elan insists that it has done nothing wrong, and that the 40 years worth of stories from dozens of teens has misrepresented its curriculum. Indeed, there are some former students who thank the school for its tough tactics, crediting them for saving their lives. But since there has never been a controlled study of the program's methods, it's impossible to know whether they could possibly be broadly effective.

"It's surreal," Wimbleton says of the school's closure. "There were times I thought it was a lost cause. How in God's name was that allowed to go on for so long?"

"It's fantastic news," says Whitehead. But she notes that about 400 private, unregulated programs still operate, locking down teens and using harsh, humiliating and confrontational approaches as therapy. Legislation to regulate these programs passed the House following GAO investigations and Congressional hearings in 2007 and 2008, but the bill is still awaiting introduction into the Senate and passage of new regulations appears unlikely.


This article was found at:

http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/05/increasingly-internet-activism-helps-shutter-abusive-troubled-teen-boot-camps/

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Economy Killing Abusive Teen Programs

Mother Jones Blog - January 30, 2009

by Maia Szalavitz


There is a silver lining to this bleak economy: Abusive and ineffective "tough love" programs for teens are failing right and left.

In just the last few weeks, the notorious Tranquility Bay program in Jamaica, Spring Creek Lodge in Montana, and Pathway Family Center in Detroit and Ohio have all been shuttered.

Tranquility Bay was known for making kids kneel on concrete for days, using "restraint" so harsh that it broke bones. Both Tranquility Bay and Spring Creek Lodge were part of a network called the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP or WWASPS)—and the group’s philosophy involves constant use of emotional attacks and humiliation in a rigid, structured day in order to break teens' spirits.

Spring Creek was notorious for a frigid, small isolation room called "the Hobbit"—sometimes teens were left there for months.

From Pathway—which was descended from the infamously abusive Straight Inc.—I received two separate accounts of suicide attempts by girls which were not reported to their parents, and many stories of the usual attack therapy and humiliation. Unfortunately, neither WWASP nor Pathway is completely dead yet: WWASP still has centers operating in the US and abroad, and Pathway has sites in Indiana: Porter and Indianapolis.

The media tends to present these closures as sad examples of needed services being cut—but in fact, teens are better off with no treatment than with treatment that often divides families and has characteristics known to produce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Family support tends to be crucial to long term recovery—and PTSD doubles the odds that a drug problem will become a lasting addiction.

Troubled teen programs were yet another sign of the bubble economy. Many were financed by mortgage and home equity loans because they cost thousands of dollars a month and because insurers, quite correctly, don't usually pay for programs that aren't proven to help.

Since there are proven alternatives for teens with drug and other problems that do not carry the risks of "tough love," we should greet the closings of these centers with glee.
And those who care about this issue should keep the pressure on so that the wounded programs finally die. After all, there are still teens suffering inside, being "treated" without dignity or respect—some of whom were just transferred from closed programs to other similar, sites.

Legislation to ban the most egregious practices is coming—and may well be strengthened now that the Democrats control Congress and the White House. But an even better outcome would be for the "troubled teen" industry to wither and be replaced by what the evidence shows works: community-based, family-centered, minimally restrictive, and youth-driven care.

Maia Szalavitz is the author of "Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids," and Senior Fellow at stats.org.

This article was found at:

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2009/01/12087_economy-teen.html

When Is "Tough Love" Torture?

Mother Jones - May 4, 2008

by Maia Szalavitz

"Last time this country witnessed somebody with a bag over his head and a noose around his neck, the world was horrified and the nation was embarrassed," thundered Rep. George Miller, on hearing testimony this April regarding abusive treatment of troubled teens in unregulated residential programs. "To be told [by these witnesses] that this is considered a valid therapy by someone in the care of someone else's child…It's hard to believe."

Miller—who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee—had called for the congressional hearings to introduce legislation to regulate the programs, which use such "tough love" methods in an attempt to discipline difficult adolescents. He'd also requested a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation. At the first round of hearings last October, the GAO had released its initial report, finding "thousands" of allegations of child abuse, medical neglect and "reckless and negligent operating practices," in "boot camps, "wilderness programs" and "academies," which currently hold tens of thousands of American youth. Two additional GAO reports were introduced at the April hearings—with investigators describing the treatment of some of the youth as "torture." One youth was beaten for weeks and denied medical attention after a suicide attempt left him with an exposed bone from a broken arm; others were taunted, then ignored as they lay dying; some were even hooded and had nooses placed around their necks.

Sitting in the audience—and well aware of how difficult it can be to get people to comprehend the extent and severity of the abuse taking place in these programs—was Phil Elberg, a New Jersey medical malpractice attorney. His cases against the industry helped bring the issue to congressional attention and his work, mentioned in two of the three GAO reports, helped guide investigators in understanding the issues and key players. Elberg has probably done more than anyone else to hold the billion-dollar teen treatment business accountable. If the legislation passes, he may soon have many more cases—and perhaps, finally, some competition from other lawyers for them.

So far, however, he's the only attorney to repeatedly take on the industry successfully, racking up $16 million in judgments for five clients who had been subjected to "treatment," including beatings, food and sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, and stress positions. Though even-tempered, the 61-year-old—who resembles a weathered Richard Gere— is a man obsessed. When he told his wife he might not attend the hearings, she replied, "What train will you be taking back?" knowing full well that he couldn't stay away.

Elberg, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, had wanted to be an attorney since childhood. After law school, however, he became less sure—nearly detouring into psychology before he realized that practicing law, going to graduate school, and having time for his wife and young child was too much to take on at one time. He's raised three sons—two of whom are graduates of Ivy League law schools, one still in his teens. So he knows both personally and professionally how difficult it can be to parent adolescents.

In the mid-1990's, he took over the case of a teen with bipolar disorder who had been wrongly diagnosed with a drug problem and held by the New Jersey branch of a now defunct national program called KIDS for seven years. Elberg had expected a typical malpractice case; instead, he found himself challenging a bizarre, cult-like organization run not by mental health experts but by amateurs. KIDS was operated by Miller Newton, a charismatic man who entered the addictions field when his own child had a drug problem. He'd previously served as clinical director for a national program called Straight Inc, which claims to have treated some 50,000 teens in the 80's and 90's—but despite the endorsement of Nancy Reagan, it turned out that his psychology credentials were bogus.

Newton told parents that his way was the only way to save their children—and that if they didn't do exactly as advised, the teens would die. "I came to understand how con artists have stolen the language of the mental health system and redefined child abuse as therapy," Elberg says. "And I understood the extraordinary vulnerability of families and adolescents to charlatans offering simple solutions to the hard work of raising kids."

That first case resulted in a $4.5 million dollar judgment against Newton and KIDS. In 2003, Elberg's second case yielded $6.5 million for a young woman named Lulu Corter who had also been held in a KIDS program for 13 years, since she was 13. Even though she didn't take drugs or drink, she was accused of exhibiting "druggy behavior" and was diagnosed as a sex addict because she had been sexually abused. But this left her in a bind: In order to graduate the program, she had to admit to addictive behavior. As a virgin, she had none to confess. She spent hours in "restraint," with fellow teen participants pinning her to the floor, sometimes restricting her breathing. Corter eventually escaped, but by then, she'd developed post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression. She found Elberg after reading a newspaper article about his earlier victory.

"He's a fantastic and caring lawyer," says Corter. "He understood that we went through a living hell—he just understood it. He's not like a lawyer who just leeches money off of you." Elberg's most recent case against kids was cited in the latest GAO report. A 14-year-old boy, who had been in trouble at school, was brought to KIDS in 1994 for an evaluation. After a six-hour investigation, he falsely confessed to marijuana and cocaine use just to stop the questioning. But the program then held him for four years to "treat" his "addictions." His parents were never told that all of his drug tests were negative. His records show that he was restrained over 250 times, and prevented from leaving even after he turned 18. When his father refused to participate in program meetings because they interfered with his work, his mother was told to divorce him—and she did so, believing, as Newton told her, that it was the only way to save her son.

Elberg discovered that, although its practices were on the extreme end, KIDS was part of a massive industry including hundreds of poorly-regulated programs still operating nationwide. A young man who testified at the hearings described one such program in upstate New York called the Family Foundation School, with teens restraining fellow teens, forced confessions, and denial of bathroom access—just like at KIDS. Unlike KIDS, however, the Family Foundation is still open, though it told ABC News that it no longer uses such restraint practices. The exact number of "tough love" residential programs remains unknown; the GAO is still trying to determine how many exist and how many teens are in their custody. With no professional or legal oversight—and guided by a fervent belief that their ends justify even the harshest means—they present enormous risks. "If a program is isolated and not accountable and has a model of making people suffer in order to get better—it's a recipe for abuse," says William Miller, emeritus professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of New Mexico and an expert on evaluating addiction treatment.

Elberg was the first to recognize that malpractice law was a potentially powerful weapon against the industry. According to Miller, tough love programs don't meet the accepted standards for treating addiction, depression, and the other serious conditions they claim to cure, in part because confrontation and humiliation are contraindicated for mental illness. Elberg explains, "if they say they're treating a particular medical condition, there's got to be a standard of care. If there's a standard of care, did they meet it?"

Unfortunately, parents don't realize that these programs don't meet standards— in part because they don't know that psychological treatments aren't regulated like other types of medicine. In order to introduce a new medication, a drug company has to meet FDA standards for safety and efficacy—but a new talk or behavioral therapy, even for children, can be introduced and sold by anyone without being vetted by any government agency. And until very recently, legitimate psychologists and psychiatrists have largely been unaware of the private industry's practices.

Christopher Bellonci, MD, a child psychiatrist who is medical director of a children's residential center that does not practice "tough love," testified, "I'm frankly horrified to learn about these kinds of things going on in the name of therapy. Nothing I learned in medical school could ever justify them. There is no place for these techniques in mental health and substance abuse treatment."

Another reason parents remain ignorant of problems with the programs is that they are often deliberately deceptive. In one phone call surreptitiously recorded by the GAO, a program recruiter told an investigator posing as a father to "tell [his wife] that it's a college prep boarding school… if she thinks you want to send her daughter to a place where there are drug addicts and people that are all screwed up, she will look at you and say no way."

In another call, a supposedly independent referral service called Parent Help told investigators that the program it recommended, "feed[s] the child a whole-grain diet" and that as a result, in combination with the exercise and rest provided by the program, "the bipolar, the depression, those kinds of things, they just go away after a while." In addition to this blatantly false medical claim, Parent Help did not disclose that its owner is married to the owner of the school to which it referred the child, the Thayer Learning Center— and other phone calls using different stories of children were all referred to the same place, despite claims of individualized referrals.

Thayer has recently tangled with Elberg as well. He represented the International Survivors' Action Committee (ISAC), a watchdog group that runs a website that investigates teen programs and posts damaging documents about them. ISAC had been sued by Thayer, which is a boot-camp program located in Missouri. Thayer claimed ISAC was helping whistle-blowing former Thayer employees steer parents away from Thayer and demanded to search the group's computer for evidence that Isac was collaborating with them. Those employees had signed non-disclosure agreements, which Thayer claimed prevented them from speaking publicly about anything they'd seen while employed there.

Following the first hearings and GAO report, the FBI had been asked to investigate Thayer, in connection with the 2004 death of 15-year-old Roberto Reyes in its boot camp. Reyes' death had been attributed to complications from a spider bite, but the GAO report said that, "staff did not recognize the victim's medical distress or provide adequate treatment." The FBI turned over its findings to the Justice Department at the end of March, pending further action.

Before Reyes died, according to a letter to Thayer from the Missouri Department of Social Services (DSS), Thayer "supervisors denied requests for medical attention." Reyes was suspected of "faking," even though he had been "so sick that he had feces and urine all over him" and had to be "hosed down" in the shower. A 20-pound weight was tied around his waist "because he was too sick to exercise." (The GAO calls the weight a "sandbag.")

Thayer's attorney, Rhonda Smiley, says that the shower incidents never happened, and that the statements cited in the letter were from "ex-employees who had been fired and were not under oath." She says "there are no 20-lb weights at Thayer and there never have been," and that these are "old unsubstantiated and false allegations." Thayer is appealing a DSS report that blamed it for negligence in the boy's death, but has settled a lawsuit brought by Reyes' parents for $1 million. Smiley says Thayer settled because "they wanted the parents to have the insurance money."

Elberg was ultimately able to limit the scope of the search and kept ISAC's computer out of Thayer's hands, keeping its website online. He describes Thayer this way: "What we have here in the center of the U.S. is a private jail for adolescents without oversight by judges, mental health professionals or schools. Children are treated with methods which run afoul of compulsory education laws and accepted treatments for psychiatric conditions and wouldn't be permitted in juvenile prison."

But despite the widespread evidence of abuse, there are only two ongoing major lawsuits against the industry: both class action suits against the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP). WWASP is linked to 12 currently operating programs in eight states and three countries, including the notorious Tranquility Bay in Jamaica.

Few attorneys are willing to take these cases. "The victims don't make attractive plaintiffs," says Elberg, "They are considered damaged goods going in. If they are still in terrible trouble afterwards, they are not the kind of people jurors want to give money. If they are better, the facility takes credit." Victims are also often unable to recognize the nature of their injury until the statute of limitations has passed.

And because the programs are often located in states or even countries with high unemployment that look favorably upon the programs as economic engines, getting favorable judgments is difficult. Suits brought in the state or country where the program operates are often defeated by jurors and judges who support the program because it employs their neighbors and they see the victims as liars with no local ties. Jurisdictional problems also abound. In some cases, it's difficult to determine where to sue—because the victim lives in one state, the program is located in another, and the people who actually profit from it somewhere else entirely.

The new legislation, however, could level the playing field. It contains a private "right of action" which allows attorneys to recover their fees if they sue these programs on behalf of teens and their families. This would make these cases far more attractive than they are now: Attorneys wouldn't need a large judgment to recoup their losses, only one that favors their side. "If this legislation passes, I would have no hesitation in devoting my entire practice to these cases," says Elberg.

Other provisions in the legislation include a federal ban on "disciplinary techniques or other practices that involve the withholding of essential food, water, clothing, shelter, or medical care," and on "acts of physical or mental abuse designed to humiliate, degrade, or undermine a child's self-respect." The new law would also require that teens have access to a new 24-hour national abuse reporting hotline and provides $50 million to fund and enforce the new standards. Miller's spokesman, Tom Kiley, says, "We are confident that the legislation will receive strong support in the House." The picture in the Senate is as of yet unpredictable, in an election year. Whatever happens, Elberg's not about to give up.

This article was found at:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2008/05/
when-is-tough-love-torture.html

Behind the Walls: The Teen Challenge You Won't See

Michael Kincheloe Exposes An Abusive Christian Program

"This way lies madness." -Shakespeare

Teen Challenge is an organization that claims to be "the proven cure for the drug epidemic." They claim to have an 86% student "cure" rate after five years under their tutelage, and have absurdly claimed this very same "cure" rate every single year for over thirty years. This claim stems from a 1975 National Institute on Drug Abuse Report where 86% of the Teen Challenge graduates in the study indicated on a questionnaire that they were drug-free, but a subsequent urinalysis showed that only 67% were drug-free at that particular time. Yet Teen Challenge has continued to claim an 86% "cure" rate in spite of what the urinalysis showed.

In a 1992-94 University of Tennessee study, 67% of the respondents indicated that they were abstaining from illegal drugs and alcohol. It's done by questionnaire - an honor system! Are we really
supposed to accept that an alcoholic or drug addict is going to tell the truth about whether or not they have drank or used drugs? Teen Challenge is described on one web site as "A 'faith-based'
drug rehab program owned by the Assemblies of God denomination and well known for years for fudging its success rate figures." In the February 14, 2005 issue of Dissident Voice, journalist
Amy Sullivan wrote in "Faith, Fabrications, and Fantasy" that "Teen Challenge's much ballyhooed 86 percent rehabilitation rate falls apart under examination -- the number doesn't include those
who dropped out of Teen Challenge and relies on a disturbingly small sample of those graduates who self-reported whether they had remained sober, significantly tilting the results."

This is a business whose number one purpose is to increase its assets. Teen Challenge gets the vast majority of its residents either directly from the jails, or from courts who sentence them to a
live-in program in lieu of jail. They promote themselves as a "Christian Life School," but at Teen Challenge, Almighty God runs a distant second to the almighty dollar. Teen Challenge students are
forced to sign up for food stamps and turn the card over to the staff. Anyone who refuses is immediately dismissed from the program.

Many of those who represent Teen Challenge have the IQ of a pencil eraser. They have placed boundaries on their minds, and they attempt to place these same boundaries on the minds of those
they come across. Their beliefs are two-dimensional, simplistic, and pathological.

"There are no bars on the windows, no locks on the doors," was the pseudosermon of Teen Challenge instructor/advisor Ahmed Morris, "you can leave any time you want." Of course, if you
chose to leave, you were "going against what God wanted." The barriers they tried to erect in each individual’s mind were far greater than any outside one. They wanted you to submit to the
assumption that Teen Challenge and its representatives truly spoke for God, and that you would be a fool not to accept every single thing they told you. To disobey them was to disobey God! To
question them was to question God! Any type of rational criticism or disbelief was condemned as being "of the flesh," or "of the devil." At a recent Sunday worship service, the minister told the
students that if they voted for anyone who was pro-choice, they were going against God. Aren't non-profit ministries required keep silent on political affairs?

The only thing Ahmed Morris possessed that was bigger than his mouth was his opinion of himself. He told our class a tale one day about "how he’d been offered the chance to run a rehab in San
Diego for $150,000 a year," but turned it down because "God wants me here." Get real. The reason Morris took up space at Teen Challenge is because no other place wanted him there. As I write
this in March, 2007, Morris - thank goodness - is no longer at Teen Challenge; he's taking up space in the Sacramento area. This certainly is a "blessing" for the current students at Riverside.

Staff members in places like Teen Challenge are forbidden to use alcohol or drugs, naturally. Yet on no less than four occasions, I observed Ahmed Morris (photo, right) with watery, bloodshot eyes and heavily slurred speech, the last being when Morris visited our class is May 2003 and giggled and slurred his way through an account on squirrels, who were causing problems on the grounds and had a date with the exterminator. It was difficult to keep a straight face, as Morris was totally oblivious to how loaded he was. Could this have been a manifestation of the Holy Spirit? I doubt it.

Assistant Director Marty Coleman told our class that sciences like physics and chemistry were “junk,” and they “should all be tossed in the trash.” A Boeing 757 weighing over 100 tons can take
off in New York and land in London due to a little something known as aerodynamics, which is a branch of physics. I guess Coleman figures they lay hands on the thing and pray it into the air.

There were some individuals at Teen Challenge who weren't at the back of the line when the brains were being passed out. Or the kind hearts. I had been at Benedict Castle for about a week
when I saw one of the students directing traffic for an event. He was talking to a pretty, fair-skinned brunette in a white Honda, someone who had an extremely pleasant personality. "Who was
that?" I asked him after she drove away. "Mrs. Sullivan" he replied. I had never met Mr. Sullivan, but I knew he had to be an all right guy if he was married to this nice lady. I was right; Kerry Sullivan
was one of the most reasonable staff members that I met at any of the Teen Challenge locations. Neither he nor his wife were the overly pious types that rub people the wrong way; they were just
a very nice couple that were also Christians.

Zak Sutton was another normal human being who lived at the Castle. I figured he was a regular guy from day one; anybody who drives a Camaro and rides a motorcycle more than likely has his
head in the right place. Like Kerry Sullivan, Zak guided us along without being all preachy. He wasn't some lop like Ahmed Morris who had nowhere else to go and made us suffer for it; Zak even
bought a big bag of Meow Mix for the resident cat (a calico that I pampered the entire time I was there), and would only accept three or four dollars from me when I offered to share the cost.

The only thing Mike De La Vega had in common with Ahmed Morris is they were both second phase instructors; all similarities ended there. Mike was the anti-Ahmed, a guy who led by example.
He earned a bachelor's degree in Pastoral Ministry while I was there, and was headed to Fuller Theological Seminary, a place with many well-known alumni. Mike was a normal, non-pretentious
human being who always gave us good answers to tough questions, and without being the constant irritant that Morris chose to be.

Stan Williams was my advisor. Stan was a reasonable man; when it came to the subject of abortion he allowed me to be "on the fence," as he put it (neither pro nor con). I know I let Stan down
when I began drinking before I could graduate; as I write this I have been sober for 32 months by adhering to the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. Stan tried to help students, not browbeat them
into submission every waking moment like Morris or the dreaded Paul Montoya. Montoya was the kind of guy who always had his rear end handed to him when he was younger, and now he was
getting even with the world. This sixtysomething bully actually got angry at my roommate Ed Mimms for developing walking pneumonia after washing cars in sub-freezing temperatures! 2007 has
arrived and Montoya is still there, and my sources tell me that he is still at his acid-tongued best, with one recent student describing him as "a psycho." This young man was granted a program
change after his mother read this site and contacted an attorney. Upon hearing that an attorney had called about the program change, Montoya told this student, "Pack your bags, I'm sending you
to prison!" The young man was able to leave the castle and is now in a secular program which uses 12-step principles, and is doing quite well.

Teen Challenge interns are no different than staff members; some are good, some are not. An intern is someone who has completed the one-year program and is now undertaking a four-month
residency, which will allow him to graduate and go on to TCMI, the Teen Challenge Ministry Institute, which is located in a dump known as South Gate, CA. One intern, a bully named Ryan
Simmons, had an interesting occurrence while at TCMI; he was shot by someone trying to "rob him on his way to the store." It turned out that Ryan was buying drugs and the deal went bad.

Trying to cure (or even control) addiction through prayer is like trying to eat soup with a fork; after a while, you begin to realize that it's not happening! Something is wrong here, your common
sense tells you. "Don't listen! Common sense and logic are tools of the devil. They'll keep you from getting into heaven," is what we were taught at Teen Challenge. Participating in intercessory
prayer is a colossal waste of time also; the 2005 Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) concluded that intercessory prayer has no effect on a person's recovery - from
substance abuse, disease, or infirmity - whatsoever. The very last thing anyone needs in medicine is some cult ministry getting in the way of sound medical practices. Despite this, Teen
Challenge continues to solicit prayer requests via email.

Programs like Teen Challenge that claim to "take authority over you in the name of Jesus" do so as a deception; the survival of their "ministry," and most importantly, their income, are dependent
solely on concealing the fact that it does not work. Anyone who begins to see through their scheme is immediately threatened with Jesus. That's right! Jesus is not a caring and forgiving savior to
them; Jesus is a pit bull on a leash. Sociologist Mark Chaves of the University of Arizona said in May 2001, "There has not yet been any research that gives clear evidence that faith-based
partnerships are more effective than current models."

There are two weekly worship services at the castle; Sunday mornings, which are fairly normal, because that's when parents and other prospective "contributors" (see money) generally attend,
and Thursday evenings. "Thursday Night Madness" is what we called it, with its con artists, pretenders, and plain old sinful liars, it was the Pentecostal equivalent of a circus sideshow. We saw all kinds at those services: The pear-shaped woman with the hideous blonde bleach job who was losing her hair, but claimed she had the power to heal others! And there was Penguin, a short,
stocky, tattooed ex-convict who took stories from the Gospels, fast-forwarded them to contemporary times, inserted himself into the hero's role and expected us to believe him. Then there was a
joker named Bobby, a Teen Challenge graduate who "warned" us about "the evils of masturbation." Ooh, heavy stuff, huh? Obviously an expert on the subject, Bobby accused us of masturbating
in the house of God. "I know you're jackin' off in there," he ranted. Some of us could barely contain our laughter, and many others just shook their heads in amazement.

Things get kind of weird when someone insists that you're doing something of this nature without having any type of reasonable or logical proof that such an act is taking place. To this very day
staff and interns get in students' faces about masturbating, asking them if they're doing it, or - gasp! - thinking about it. Strange.

Do Teen Challenge staff and interns actually believe that through threats and intimidation they can terrorize someone into sobriety, if not salvation? Do they also believe that they can harass and
abuse people and simply walk away unscathed? Believe me, once they read this they'll realize they haven't gotten away with anything.

Sunday, November 19, 2006 was another graduation day. The speaker told the graduates who didn't sign up for TCMI that to show their appreciation for what Teen Challenge "had done for them,"
they were to sign over their very first paychecks to Teen Challenge. Students were told that once they enter Teen Challenge, they should not even consider leaving, because seven times the
demons of addiction would come back and get them, and after they do their prison time - if they live - God will call them back to Teen Challenge. They were left with the caveat that one "can never
run from Teen Challenge." There is a simple solution: Don't ever go there in the first place. Please.


This article was originally found at:  http://www.teenchallengeexposed.com/index.html

However, that link now directs to a Teen Challenge website: http://www.teenchallengeschools.com/

The article above is now located at the following link:

http://teenchallengeboycott.blogspot.ca/2013/11/boycott-teen-challenge-teen-challenge.html

The article above is now also archived at:

http://www.culthelp.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2746