news about Oregon teen camp death

Sat Sep 5 16:27:13 CDT 2009

3 September 2009

KOIN TV NEWS  - PORTLAND, OREGON

http://www.koinlocal6.com/news/local/story/Teen-dies-at-correctional-boot-camp/hB5oSBsKLE-I3zIzwHM18A.cspx

PORTLAND - A 16-year-old boy died at the real-life “Brat Camp,” just  
one day after he arrived.

Sergey Blaschishen died in the care of Sage Walk Wilderness School in  
northern Lake County [Oregon] on Friday.

The Redmond-based behavioral correctional program was featured in the  
ABC reality television series Brat Camp.

His family says the boy dropped out of Park Rose High School as a  
freshman but wanted to go to the boot camp before returning to finish  
high school.
His mother says he was active and healthy and she cannot understand  
what could have happened.

Autopsy results are expected soon.

Web Exclusive: interview with Maia Szalavitz:

Maia Szalavitz, author of the expose "Help At Any Cost: How the  
Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids" responds to the  
death of a Portland teenager one day after his arrival at the real- 
life "Brat Camp" of reality television, and cautions that "tough love"  
too often is simply "tough".

QUESTION: IS THIS A SCENARIO THAT PLAYS OUT QUITE OFTEN?

Yes, unfortunately. We don't hear about these things happening in  
summer camps. And the reason we don't hear about this is partially  
because when you are in a camp of so-called normal kids., the staff  
believes the child when the child says "Hey, I can't do this" or "Hey,  
i'm hurting" or "Hey something's wrong I don't feel right." But in  
these brat camps the staffs say "Oh you're faking, you're  
manipulating, you're lying, keep going" and they don't believe  
complaints. And in the heat, this has been repeatedly deadly. There  
have been dozens of these deaths now.

QUESTION: HOW REGULATED ARE THESE CAMPS?

Not at all. There is no federal regulation on them at all. Oregon has  
what are supposed to be good state regulations, but the state  
regulations don't seem to have been well enforced at all. I wrote  
recently for Time Magazine about another troubled teen program in  
Oregon where I had at least half a dozen people, possibly more telling  
me about these seminars taking place. There were girls literally made  
to do lap dances. It just seems like there is very little oversight at  
all.

QUESTION: AS FOR THESE HIKES GO, ARE THERE GUIDELINES FOR CAMP LEADERS  
TO FOLLOW?

There are supposd to be, but again there seems to be high turnover and  
this attitude that any complaint from a child should not be believed.  
There was really horrifying case where a child died in Utah over the  
course of several weeks. he had an ulcer that could have been easily  
treated with over the counter medication and by the time he died he  
had lost about 30 pounds and was unable to control his urine or bowel  
movements and the staff continued to maintain he was faking.

QUESTION: WHAT TYPE OF MEDICAL PERSONNEL CAN BE FOUND AT THESE CAMPS?  
WHAT IS THE LEVEL OF TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE THEY HAVE, SHOULD HAVE  
OR, ON AVERAGE, DO HAVE?

In this camp, at least according to management, they were EMT trained.  
A lot of the camps, especially in the states were there are no  
regulations, have hired people off the street. You don't even have to  
have a high school diploma to work in some of these places.

QUESTION: WHAT WOULD BE YOUR ADVICE FOR ANY PARENT CONSIDERING A CAMP  
LIKE THIS FOR THEIR CHILDREN?

We have no evidence that the work. The only evidence supporting them  
is anecdotal. And given that they carry quite an extreme risk, but if  
your child complains and they are not believed something like this  
could happen, I would recommend using evidence-based treatment in the  
community instead.

QUESTION: AS FOR PARENTS WITH KIDS ALREADY IN THESE CAMPS, IS THERE  
ANYTHING THEY CAN DO TO MAKE SURE WHAT IS GOING AT THESE CAMPS IS  
ACCEPTABLE?

The problem is the lack of regulation and the lack of oversight. These  
places are less regulated than nail salons. I simply wouldn't take the  
risk of placing a child in a place like that.

QUESTION: IS THE IDEA OF SENDING PROBLEM KIDS OFF TO "BRAT CAMPS" A  
HOLDOVER FROM THE "MILITARY SCHOOL APPROACH "OF THE PAST?

In America, in general, we do have a love affair with tough love. We  
do think that the way to fix it is to kick someone into shape. And  
unfortuantely, it does not work well with psychological problems.

QUESTION: ARE THESE CAMPS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE?

I have certainly talked to probably a hundred teenagers or former  
teenagers who have been through some absolutely harrowing experiences,  
some of whom came home with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I  
guess you can imagine what it's like for other kids who see somebody  
die in front of them.

A lot of these programs are based on an idea of: let's break this  
child down... We will humiliate them we will attack them, we will  
emotionally degrade them and then build them back up again. The  
problem is no one is very good at building people back up and these  
kids come out often with a greater desire to use drugs and escape than  
when they went in.

QUESTION: HOW LUCRATIVE IS THIS TYPE OF BUSINESS?

It is incredibly lucrative, because you do not have to pay staff very  
much, because they often don't have to have particular qualifications.  
I think Sage Walk may have higher qualified staff than other ones, but  
often the people who work with the kids don't even need to have a high  
school degree, and you don't need a facility because you are out in  
the wilderness. You can really not feed the kids very much because you  
can have them eat lizards as they literally do with some of these  
programs in Utah. So what are you expenses? Marketing.

QUESTION: ARE THERE GUIDELINES TO CHECK A CHILD FOR PREEXISTING  
CONDITIONS PRIOR TO CAMP?

In Oregon, they have some specific regulations on that, but there are  
no federal guidelines that. The thing is, you could be in great shape.  
But if someone puts you in the heat and denies you water and the  
ability to stop exercising you are going to be in trouble.

It would be great for people to have physicals, but would be better is  
for the programs to actually have admission standards. Right now the  
admission standard is a wallet biopsy of the parent, i.e., can you pay  
for it? It is not how seriously troubled is your child? These programs  
can include anyone from somebody who is completely out of control and  
shooting drugs to someone who tells their parents to jump in a lake.

QUESTION: BASED ON YOUR RESEARCH, DESCRIBE THE AVERAGE EMPLOYEE AT  
THESE CAMPS.

Some of them are very well-intentioned. A lot of them enjoy working  
with kids and they want to be there. They don't have to have a degree  
in any particular subject. You know they just have to say I like kids,  
and so they may not know the things they need to know to work with  
these kinds of kids. The programs also tend to train the people  
themselves, and so they train that if kids try to get out of something  
they are just lying and manipulating and see the kids in a really  
negative light and be quite tough on them. On the other hand there are  
many people who work in these places who are predators and abuse the  
kids in many ways. I am not saying that is the case in this particular  
program but that has been the case in the past.

QUESTION: STATISTICALLY, HOW MANY DEATHS OCCUR AT THESE CAMPS EACH YEAR?

The problem here is no one keeps track. Because there is no  
regulation, there is no tracking. We don't even know how many kids are  
in these places. There are certainly are in terms of publicized  
deaths, there seems to be three or four every year, and dozens over  
the last 10 to 15 years.

______________ - end -

feel free to forward

MORE INFO VIA KOIN-TV

  1
The crime of being a teenager
by Kat Ricker

The next time you see a teenager walking down the street, perhaps  
wearing black, baggy
pants, with some faddish hairstyle, know that this person could  
disappear overnight.
There is an aggressive industry trying to find his parents. They want  
to tell them that their
child might be in danger. If that teen is hanging out with people the  
parents don’t approve
of; if he seems sullen or defiant, has “entitlement issues” or “mood  
disorders”; if he
hasn’t been arrested, diagnosed with emotional problems, substance  
addiction, or
received any form of therapy, yet he’s experimenting with drugs or  
alcohol, dating, lying,
shoplifting, running away, having sex; or if he hasn’t done any of  
these things, but he just
hasn’t been right since his molestation or since a loved one died…  
they want to tell his
parents that this boy may be on the road to destruction. And they want  
to tell them that
they can help.

This is the troubled-teen industry — residential treatment programs,  
wilderness therapy,
boot camps and similar "tough love" programs using thought coercion to  
modify the
behavior of juveniles. Marketers are cashing in on troubled parents,  
offering a solution
that sounds too good to be true – pay to have someone take the child  
away, fix him, and
return him – respectful and compliant.

In its present state, the unregulated troubled-teen industry is a  
dangerous breeding ground
for corruption and abuse. Allegations of abuse, neglect and deaths are  
increasingly being
brought to court. Teen Advocates USA counts 74 program-related deaths  
of juveniles
since 1980.

This billion-dollar industry profits by persuading parents to pay for  
the kidnapping and
captivation of juveniles. While it is difficult to obtain accurate  
figures for an unregulated
industry, most sources estimate that 10,000 to 20,000 teenagers are in  
behavior
modification programs this year. Programs typically charge $3,000 to  
$5,000 a month,
with emphasis on retaining a child until the staff decides she should  
be released.

Oregon has the dubious distinction of presenting the wilderness-based  
variety to the
general public in the guise of entertainment: in the summer of 1995,  
ABC’s reality show
Brat Camp filmed a group of teenagers held in central Oregon desert in  
winter by the
Sage Walk Wilderness School, based in Bend. The network paid Sage Walk  
the $22,440
fee for each of the seven teens to be entered into a 60-day program.

In many ways, their experience was typical of teens in the troubled- 
teen industry. They
were either kidnapped – forcibly taken from beds in the night – or  
their parents lied to
them – said they were going on a fun trip, drove to a remote spot,  
hugged good-bye and
left them bewildered, as strangers locked them in a room with other  
confused teenagers.

Men blocked the doors. They took their clothing, jewelry, and  
possessions, gave them
uniforms, and waited however many hours it took for them to sign an  
agreement to
  2
comply with the rules. These strangers told them they would be held  
indefinitely, until
staff decided they were ready to be released. Contact with the outside  
world was cut off,
from a newspaper coming in, to a distress call going out.

There were no medical or psychological examinations. There was no  
possibility of family
counseling, outpatient treatment, nor investigation of what role  
parents the might play in
family distress.

The teens were blindfolded and taken to unfamiliar wilderness. For  
some, this was their
first camping experience. For weeks, they were led on forced marches  
with heavy packs,
made to repeat useless tasks, moved camp frequently, and were  
subjected to prolonged,
intrusive “therapy” sessions. Despite the increased caloric demand of  
internal and
external stress, cold weather, heavy exercise, and reduced sleep, they  
were fed only
complex carbohydrates – beans, rice, and oatmeal – and were given no  
vitamin, mineral
or electrolyte supplementation. They were not permitted to know the  
names of their
humorless captors, who went by New Age aliases like Shimmering Aspen,  
Glacier
Mountain Wolf, and Mother Raven. In a ceremony involving face paint  
and a fire, they
gave the teens similar identities.

The teens were conditioned to obey without question. What their  
“counselors” wanted,
besides total, unquestioning compliance, were desperately tearful  
disclosures of their
innermost issues and admissions of wrongdoing. They used both stick  
and carrot – stick
being the understood threat of physical force, carrot the ever- 
eclipsing hope of release to
home (which was where they all wanted to be). Weeks into this ordeal,  
both teens and
parents entered into grief because of the separation, but the staff  
was firm: no teen would
be released “early”, and no visits, phone calls, or unmonitored  
letters were allowed. The
unsupervised staff repeatedly told the teens that their parents  
believed the program was
good for them; they told the parents that their child would manipulate  
them by
complaining of poor conditions and exaggerating their emotional pain.  
In order keep
themselves fresh, the staffers rotated, trucking in and out of the  
remote desert.

But this particular Sage Walk experience was different from other  
wilderness programs in
a couple of ways: one, it was televised – the parts that would get the  
highest ratings,
anyway – and two, compared to other wilderness programs, it was summer  
camp.

“Wilderness therapy” programs have been linked to abuse and death  
since their inception.
Teens have died of dehydration and heat stroke on forced hikes. One  
boy died of
drowning, in the custody of an unlicensed boot camp in Arizona called  
America's Buffalo
Soldiers. When 14 year-old Tony Haynes went delirious in 115-degree  
heat, ate dirt by
the handful and collapsed, even the punches of his counselor couldn’t  
revive him. So they
stuck him in a bathtub, turned on the shower, and left. When they  
returned, he was
covered in the dirt and blood he’d vomited. The coroner’s finding of  
drowning came as a
surprise to the courtroom.

One of the most famous and horrific cases is that of Aaron Bacon, who  
died in 1994 at
the age of 16, three weeks in the custody of Utah-based North Star  
Expeditions (now
  3
defunct). Bacon’s protracted, agonizing death from acute peritonitis  
from a perforated
ulcer, compounded by abuse, has been retold by journalists many times.  
In his keystone
expose, Jon Krakauer writes that when Bacon’s mother identified the  
body, she became
hysterical. "His legs were like toothpicks. His hipbones stuck way  
out, his ribs – he
looked like a concentration-camp victim. There were bruises from the  
tip of his toes to
the top of his head, open sores up and down the inside of his thighs.  
The only way we
were even able to recognize him was a childhood scar above his right  
eye." (Read Loving
Them to Death at Outside Magazine Online,
http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/1095/10f_deth.html.)

In 2000, 15-year-old William H. Edward Lee of Scappoose became the  
first known death
in Oregon’s four wilderness programs. He died in Lake County desert  
when his
counselors forced him to the ground and one sat on his back. Bend- 
based Obsidian Trails
was charged with criminally negligent homicide. The U.S. Bureau of  
Land Management
then banished the group, which made that the second time that year BLM  
had revoked
Obsidian Trail’s permits.

In Oregon, as in most states, anyone who can purchase a permit to use  
the land can run a
wilderness survival program, and there are no agencies, state or  
federal, to oversee them.
What goes on in them is difficult to know, since by design, they take  
place in remote
locations.

But these are just the wilderness programs. What goes on behind the  
walls of indoor
behavior modification programs can be even more astonishing,  
unbelievable, and bizarre.

BLUE CHAIRS

The image of blue plastic chairs haunts thousands of survivors of  
Straight, KIDS, and
similar programs. For 12 hours a day, teens sit in blue plastic  
chairs, facing forward like a
schoolroom. They wave their arms manically, unnaturally, to be chosen  
to go before the
group and confess something terrible from their past. (Survivors  
commonly claim they
made things up just to have something to confess). The group berates  
them. If at any
point a teen is considered not to be sitting properly or “motivating”  
enough (that’s the
arm waving), he or she is physically restrained by staff and/or sent  
into isolation in a
small, windowless room, to lie facedown on the floor, for hours.  
Straight survivor
Samantha Monroe was not unique in being sat on for hours daily, as she  
traumatically
described on the Montel Williams Show in 2005. Nights are spent under  
the intense
scrutiny of an assigned peer, under the roof of a “host family” who  
also has children in
the program. And that is life, for months, or years.

Throughout the numerous exposes on the industry, reports document  
shocking things –
teens hog-tied, duct-taped, nooses placed around their necks, mouths  
and noses held
closed, teens subjected to fire ants, red ants, girls forced to dress  
revealingly and wear
signs declaring their promiscuity, a boy forced to wipe his feet on  
girls, teens vomiting
and urinating on themselves during extended hours of group “therapy.”

  4
While by far, most of the industry targets affluent American parents,  
some of the most
notorious programs do not hold children in America, but instead take  
them to other
countries – Samoa, Jamaica, Costa Rica, at least one operates entirely  
on a ship – where
the already minimal threat of American authorities is practically  
nonexistent.

The WWASPS-affiliate Sunset Beach in Mexico was shut down in 1996  
after local police
raided it and found girls were kept in “stress positions” like those  
publicized today in
relation to Guantanamo Bay, for days at a time. Two years later, in  
the Czech Republic,
WWASPS-affiliated Morava Academy was busted for holding kids in  
windowless rooms
and forcing them to lie on their stomachs for days.

GOOD HELP IS HARD

There is no way these programs can blame aberrant employees, because  
this is systemic.
The staffers are as much products of the programs as the incarcerated  
teens in their
charge.

Where do these employees come from? A quick, random visit to program  
websites shows
that most are constantly looking for “field staff”, and most do not  
ask for degrees in
psychology, medicine, nor any college education at all. An ad for a  
Utah-based program
posted on Oregon Craigslist just last month asked only for “primitive  
living skills”, while
promising the most rewarding job of your life. North Star hired  
Bacon’s counselors
literally off the street by men who pulled over in a pick-up truck and  
offered them a job
taking kids camping for a few weeks.

As in any industry, workers move from business to business within it.  
Twenty-six year-
old Eric Henry was among those convicted of child abuse and neglect in  
Bacon’s death.
He was ordered not to work for similar programs for nine months, yet  
six months later, he
was on staff at Sage Walk. The next year, he was on staff at Obsidian  
Trails.

But more acceptable hiring policies do not guarantee improvement.  
Recently, the nation
has been riveted by the televised, videotaped deadly beating of 14  
year-old Martin Lee
Anderson, just hours after he was admitted – not into a private  
program, but a
government one – Bay County Sheriff's Office Boot Camp. A nurse took  
the boy’s pulse
as guards beat him for 90 minutes, long after his body had gone limp.  
Documents show
the punching, kicking and pressure-point techniques the guards used  
were routine. Lee’s
second autopsy showed that he died of suffocation; the guards held  
their hands over his
mouth and forced him to inhale ammonia sticks to keep him conscious  
(which finally
failed). Staff regularly used these sticks to force teens to keep  
exercising (Miami Herald,
coverage ongoing since January 2006).

UNDERSTANDING THE ABUSERS

While the sadistic sociopath may well find his way onto program  
staffs, most arguably
sadistic staffers are made, not hired. “If you can’t beat them, join  
them” is a cliché for a
reason - these systems are designed so that the only way to survive  
the abuse is to
  5
become an abuser. Programs are full of staff that “graduated” the  
program, and some put
deviating staffers back into the program as patients, until they’re  
fixed.

Judge K. L. McIff ruled that the North Star program was “fraught with  
a desensitizing
mentality” which contributed to the death of Aaron Bacon. This  
mentality is critical to
these operations, and it is systematically created. Staffers are  
conditioned to see their
prisoners as less than human: they have done bad things, deserve to be  
punished, and will
“manipulate” staffers in order to escape their deserved punishment. So  
staffers disregard
any cry for help or complaint of pain. That’s why Bacon, whom his  
fellow captives
recognized as seriously ill, was accused of faking, right through his  
death. That’s why 12
year-old Mikey Wiltsie was accused of “playing possum” when he claimed  
he couldn’t
breathe, and his 320-pound counselor crushed his 65-pound body to  
death (Eckerd Youth
Alternatives, 2000). That’s why the body of 15 year-old Erica Harvey  
lied dead for 45
minutes after dehydration and heat stroke killed her – because the  
counselors thought she
was “faking it” (Catherine Freer Wilderness Program, 2002).

It is difficult for most of us to understand the mindset of the people  
in charge at these
programs. How can you tell a girl held 13 years, as Lulu Corter was,  
who’s gnawing a
hole in her arm, to go ahead and hurt herself? How can you insist she  
face her sexual
predator and take responsibility for her pre-pubescent molestation,  
tell her she is obsessed
with sex, stand over her on the toilet and dictate the number of times  
she may wipe? How
can you tease a 15 year-old girl like Michelle Sutton, moments before  
she went blind and
died of dehydration, that her parched white mouth makes her look like  
she’s been eating
marshmallows? How can you force a remarkably intelligent and  
peacemaking boy like 16
year-old Aaron Bacon to hike without pants after he repeatedly loses  
control of his
bowels from a perforated ulcer; how can you take away his blanket in  
freezing
temperatures, deny him food for days on end, laugh and tell him he’s  
faking it when he
collapses again and again; how can you mock him while his head beats  
the window of the
pick-up in the final, gruesome moments of his young life? How, for  
that matter, can you
convince someone who’s never abused drugs, alcohol, food or sex to  
confess to all these
perversions and more, under the verbal assault of scores of peers, and  
how can you
convince this victim and parents that this “treatment” saved the  
person’s life?

By brainwashing.

HOW IT WORKS

To explain thought coercion in teen treatment programs, Maia Szalavitz  
outlines the work
of professor Robert Jay Lifton in her book Help at Any Cost. Lifton  
was the first
Westerner to classify mind-control methods, after interviewing prison  
survivors of
Chinese prison camps from the 1940s and ‘50s. At the risk of  
oversimplification, the
system works like this – to extreme degrees: subject people to  
constant surveillance;
control their environment (induce sleep and food deprivation, restrict  
communication);
exhaust them; break them down physically and psychologically; elicit  
confessions (real
or invented); and finally reprogram their life perspective via  
“mystical manipulation”:
convince them that everything in their lives has led them to this  
program (there are no
  6
coincidences), and that the program represents THE ultimate power of  
good in the
universe (so that any means justify the ends).

It is no accident that these programs have continued for decades and  
produce both people
who swear it’s the best thing that ever happened to them and people  
who refuse to talk
about it at all, and it is no accident that survivors who end up in  
court typically come with
genuine diagnoses of depression and post-traumatic stress. These are  
the outcomes this
system produces, and there are no studies on the effectiveness – nor  
the longterm effects
– of these “therapy” programs.

 From a 1999 expose series by Lou Kilzer, Donna Burke sued WWASPS  
affiliate Teen
Help, alleging that the Tranquility Bay subjected her sons to "the  
most sadistic and
unwarranted physical and psychological abuse. ... Both are changed  
from the wonderful,
spontaneous young men they were before Tranquility Bay into robotic  
victims, afraid of
any authority figure," the suit says. "They have lost their  
individuality, their spirits are
broken, and their characters ruined. Instead of independent men, they  
are afraid, haunted
by nightmares, subject to panic attacks and refuse to go anywhere near  
a beach." (Read
Desperate Measures in the Denver Rocky Mountain News, http://www.denver-
rmn.com/desperate/site-desperate/day2/2front-pg.shtml.)

BRAINWASHING CYCLES

There is no eery resemblance here to the abuse perpetrated on  
prisoners of war; it’s the
same thing. These program founders aren’t inventing the wheel. They  
are following
established methods of brainwashing and torture. These are techniques  
of military
interrogations, including American forces torturing Muslim prisoners  
today; insane
asylums a century ago; drug rehabilitation programs, beginning with  
rehab-turned-church
Synanon in the ‘60s and ‘70s; and in every successful cult, religious  
and/or commercial.
Beginning in the 1970s with Straight, then KIDS, SAFE, numerous  
derivatives, to
today’s corporate giant WWASPS/Teen Help, the troubled-teen industry  
is just the latest
face on the movement to psychically destroy people and reprogram them  
into compliant
subjects devoid of critical thinking.

The difference in this cycle of institutionalized thought coercion is  
considerably easy to
manage, and profit margins are huge. While cults typically have  
targeted adults, juveniles
have no rights. The profit is earned up front, fees are set high,  
overhead and staff costs
are low. And anything goes, from marketing – typically programs have  
pretty names and
advertise teens doing fun activities in idyllic settings, like a  
vacation – to the treatment
itself, done in secret, without any legal interference. The occasional  
court challenge from
scarred survivors is generally settled out of court for exuberant  
sums, and when programs
are forced to shut down and people ordered out of the industry, they  
simply reopen and
change names. The day after Straight Inc. was forced to close, SAFE  
opened, with the
same model, the same building, and the same staff  (See Help at Any  
Cost for details).

It’s difficult to know how many programs are operating in the U.S.  
Some programs have
religious themes (Mormon is common), some disciplinary, others drug  
rehabilitation, and
  7
more. Since the linking of Straight, Inc. with the War on Drugs in the  
1980s proved so
successful, programs have addressed whatever problems society deems  
most frightening
– at the moment, ADD, ADHD, and sexual promiscuity, for example.

What this amounts to is a cult industry gone wild. Without  
governmental oversight, it has
managed to slip through legal challenges time and time again, and is  
burgeoning with
success.

What is most sickening about this suffering is how unnecessary it is.  
People are paying
for their children to be institutionalized. And whether they are  
obviously tortured or not,
what does it say about a society that accepts the kidnapping and  
incarceration of its
children, who are not yet fully formed, and who have committed no crime?

SIDEBAR

THE NETWORK

These programs are not random. The same names come up again and again,  
and their ties
are strong with the Republican party. (See Michelle Chen’s article  
Behavior Modification
Money Trail in the New Standard at
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2620) Much of the  
following
information is drawn from the Help at Any Cost.

Many controversial programs are linked to the Utah-based industry  
giant, World Wide
Association Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS). WWASPS  
corporation was
founded in the mid-1990s by Bob Lichfield, assisted by Karr  
Farnsworth. President is
Ken Kay. Director of its notorious affiliate Tranquility Bay in  
Jamaica is his father, Jay
Kay. Teen Help is the WWASPS “teen transport” service, which will  
kidnap teens for a
fee and deliver them to their program.

Miller Newton ran Straight and later KIDS, which paid millions to  
settle two lawsuits, in
1999 and 2003, both alleging cult-like tactics and abuse. KIDS closed  
after it lost
Medicaid funding in 1998, but Szalavitz claims it continues  
underground (p. 274).
Newton now goes by Father Cassian, operating a church in Florida.

Straight Inc. was founded and operated by Melvin and Betty Sembler  
until investigations
and lawsuits forced its closure in 1993. Then president G.W. Bush made  
Mel ambassador
of Italy. He resigned in 2005, the day after the Montel Williams Show  
aired a segment
with survivor Samantha Monroe describing her torture in Straight.  
“Straight Foundation,
Inc., the education arm of Straight, continues to operate as a  
national and international
drug policy think tank under the name Drug Free America  
Foundation” (activist Wesley
Fager, The Montel Williams Show on teen rehabs
http://www.thestraights.com/articles2005/montel-1-18-05.htm. Fager has  
posted a
flowchart of Straight derivative programs at http://thestraights.com/the-
straights/thestraights-fc.htm.)

  8
 From Krakauer’s article: “…the man who single-handedly made tough- 
love wilderness
therapy a high-revenue proposition: a military veteran named Steve  
Cartisano, who many
contend is motivated more by greed than compassion. Significantly, the  
three most recent
deaths at wilderness-therapy camps occurred in programs run by  
Cartisano or former
Cartisano employees. And despite years of controversy, criminal  
charges, and civil suits,
Cartisano himself is still in business,” although charged with  
negligent homicide and
child abuse.

SIDEBAR

MAKING AN ISSUE OUT OF THE ISSUE

If this is the first time you’re learning about this issue, you’re  
probably wondering where
the outcry is. It’s there. It’s growing.

This article draws from just some of the exhaustive and impressive  
exposes journalists
and activists have been producing on the troubled-teen industry over  
the past few
decades. Major networks have aired reports when local programs are  
busted, and the
issue keeps resurfacing in talk shows. Many respected news  
organizations have produced
exposes on the industry. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Lou Kilzer  
of the Rocky
Mountain News and Tim Weiner of the New York Times have written  
exposes. The first
book-length expose came out last February – Help at Any Cost: How the  
Troubled-Teen
Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, by respected journalist Maia  
Szalavitz.

A new film called Self-Medicated, the autobiographical story of  
filmmaker Monty
Lapica’s harrowing experience, is cleaning up on the independent film  
circuit right now
(see www.selfmedicated.com).

The Internet is filled with survivors, publishing their stories and  
talking to one another
about their experiences in discussion forums (Fornits Home for Wayward  
WebFora at
http://fornits.com/wwf/ is a major one).  Watchdog activist  
organizations meticulously
track the industry and its players. Yet, without governmental  
oversight, journalists,
activists and survivors remain by far the best sources of information  
on the issue.

ANOTHER SIDEBAR

Legislation for reform is on the table, but receiving little support  
in Congress.
Representative George Miller (D-California) proposed the “End  
Institutional Abuse
Against Children Act”—HR 1738—in April of 2005.

The bill would

     * Provide $50 million in funding to states to support the  
licensing of child residential
treatment programs. States would have to monitor the programs  
regularly to ensure their
compliance with licensing requirements;
  9
     * Establish federal civil and criminal penalties for the abuse of  
children in residential
treatment programs;
     * Expand federal authority to regulate programs located overseas  
but run by U.S.
companies and provide civil penalties for program operators that  
violate federal
regulations; and
     * Require the State Department to report any abuse of American  
children overseas.

For details, visit http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ed31_democrats/rel42005.html 
. To
sign the online petition in support of the bill, go to
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?hr1738.

BOX INFO

Major activist organizations

International Survivors Action Committee - www.isaccorp.org
- Mission is to expose abuse, civil rights violations, and fraud  
perpetuated through
privately-owned facilities for juveniles.

Teen Advocates USA www.teenadvocatesusa.homestead.com
A list of teens who have died in treatment programs is in the section  
Holy the Children at
http://www.teenadvocatesusa.homestead.com/HolyTheChildren.html.

Fight Institutional Child Abuse
www.kathymoya.com/FICA/index.html

Activist Wesley Fager runs an online newspaper and multiple blogs on  
these issues at
www.thestraights.com