I guess this means that Alex is still in there, still suffering. Wow. I really don't know how parents can be made aware of what happens in there can still stand by and allow these freaks to have total and complete control over their kid and family.
http://www.missoulanews.com/News/News.asp?no=4970Spring Creek's Short Leash
by John S. Adams, photos by Chad Harder
Above: With around 450 students, Spring Creek Lodge is the largest of Montana?s approximately 35 teen behavior modification and therapeutic programs. Students there are not allowed to fraternize with members of the opposite sex.
Below: Spring Creek director Chaffin Pullan, left, and program director Mike Chisholm, seated, say that ?intervention? rooms like this one are used to ?cool down? disruptive students. Former students say they are used as solitary confinement.
Montana?s behavior modification programs watch their troubled teen charges like hawks. Recent lawsuits and allegations of abuse raise the question: Who?s watching them?
By the summer of 2004 Janet Larson was at her wit?s end. Her 17-year-old daughter Christina (both names have been changed) was drinking, smoking, sneaking out, doing drugs and lying. Her parents were worried sick she would drop out of school, end up in jail, or worse.
So they made a difficult decision that summer, a decision they hoped would change their daughter?s life: They decided to send Christina to a private behavior modification program in Western Montana. Like thousands of parents around the country who send their children away in hopes of saving their lives, Christina?s parents were convinced they had no other choice.
Her experience at Spring Creek Lodge in Thompson Falls did change Christina?s life, but not in the way her parents expected. Less than two months after enrolling in the program, Christina was back home in southern California, dealing with what her mother calls the ?shock treatment? she received at Spring Creek, as well as the news that a bunk-mate and friend at the school had killed herself just days after Christina?s departure.
?Basically a pretty good kid?
Christina?s problems began in the seventh grade when she was 12 years old. Prior to middle school, Christina had been an honor-roll student in the 99th percentile in her class. Then her grades took a dive and she began hanging out with a girl her mom considered bad news. She and her new best friend tried to run away. (They were gone for a day.) She started smoking cigarettes and drinking. When her eighth-grade year rolled around, her grades went from bad to dismal.
Janet enrolled Christina in a private school and things improved for a while, but it didn?t last.
?We started getting calls from school,? recalls Janet. ?They said she?s not putting out her best effort and she was late to class all the time.?
By her sophomore year, Christina was dating an 18-year-old drug dealer.
?She was in love with that guy,? Janet says. ?She was only 15 and he was 18 and he was dealing drugs. We didn?t want our 15-year-old associating with this person. But she is a very stubborn young woman. I love her dearly but she is stubborn.?
Her parents hired a therapist but progress was slow, and soon Janet realized it wasn?t getting through to Christina.
When Christina was expelled her junior year for smoking dope, Janet was distraught and enrolled her daughter in a drug treatment program. Janet knew the situation was worsening, but she wasn?t desperate yet.
?She was still basically a pretty good kid. Maybe I was in denial?I don?t know?but it wasn?t that bad.?
By the end of the summer, however, Christina pushed her parents? trust to the breaking point.
She was caught skipping a friend?s funeral to get high. That?s when Janet decided to do something drastic.
?I started looking into wilderness treatment programs,? Janet says. ?I didn?t want to be with her any more. She was lying, coming home smelling like alcohol and cigarettes all the time. She didn?t care what we thought. She just lost all respect for us. She didn?t care anymore.?
Christina?s parents had learned about a school in Thompson Falls, called Spring Creek Lodge, from a counselor in Christina?s drug program. The counselor gave Janet a phone number and Janet made the call.
She made arrangements for Christina to enroll at Spring Creek in late August. Christina?s counselor warned the teen she could run and have the police track her down and arrest her and then send her by paid escort service to Spring Creek, or she could go willingly.
?My counselor told me there was a gym there and I?d be going hiking and swimming and kayaking,? Christina recalls. ?It sounded like a great place where I could get away from everything and turn myself around. All I wanted to do [was] finish high school and work out.?
Christina?s parents thought it sounded too good to be true. Spring Creek was located in a beautiful mountain setting in Western Montana, far from the influences steering Christina into trouble. Marketing materials pictured smiling kids taking part in fun activities amongst towering conifers and quaint log buildings.
A woman named Glenda at Spring Creek assured Janet over the phone that the program could help. She said all the right things and had all the right answers. In hindsight, Janet realizes the school never interviewed Christina or did any kind of psychological examination of her daughter. They took Janet?s word that Christina was a mess and said they would help get her life back on track.
The next thing Glenda did was hook Janet up with a loan officer. There was no discussion about Janet?s financial situation or whether she and her husband could afford the $3,390 monthly tuition the school charged (not counting enrollment fees, therapy costs, incidentals and uniform expenses).
Looking back, Janet says she should have sensed something was wrong when Spring Creek was so quick to square the loan away, but she was now desperate.
?I couldn?t stop worrying at night,? she says. ?She was going out at night and I didn?t know what she was up to. She was not progressing in school. I was worried she was going to end up a heroin addict. I was afraid for our daughter.?
So Christina and her dad flew to Spokane, where they rented a car and drove to Spring Creek Lodge.
?Every time we stopped somewhere to get gas or something to eat I wanted to just run,? says Christina. ?I remember thinking, ?I can?t believe I?m getting dropped off in Montana.? I was pissed off, but I kept telling myself, ?I?m only going to be here for four months. I am going to get out of here. It?s not going to be forever.??
She had good reason to think that. Her mother had promised her she would pick her up in a few months if everything was going okay.
Christina was terrified when she arrived at Spring Creek. After checking in she was given two tearful minutes to say goodbye to her dad, and then she was alone. For the next 42 days, Christina says she was told her parents weren?t coming for her like they said they would, that she would have to graduate the program or stay at Spring Creek indefinitely. Christina says she was made to believe that her parents had lied to her.
Janet says she saw her first red flag when her husband returned from dropping Christina off and told her they wouldn?t be able to talk to their daughter for three months.
Then, just days after Christina?s arrival at Spring Creek, Janet and her husband were instructed to sign a ?commitment letter.?
?I did not want to [send] that letter, because it wasn?t true,? Janet recalls furiously. ?That?s what the program does; it makes you lie to your kids.?
The commitment letter said Christina was expected to complete all phases of the Spring Creek program, a process that takes at least 18 months. The letter confirmed their commitment to the program, no matter how long it took.
Both parents signed.
?A lot of things set off bells in our heads,? says Janet. ?We told her three or four months. I mean, basically, she?s a pretty good kid. Now I was lying to her. We don?t want her to lie to us and now we?re lying to her.?
The letter was delivered to Christina, who was devastated.
?I thought my parents had lied to me. I thought I was going to be there until I turned 18.?
Janet was concerned about her daughter?s state of mind, but she wasn?t allowed to talk to her. Program rules explicitly deny parents contact for the first two months, and even then, only monitored phone contact is allowed, and only if the child has achieved ?advanced? status in Spring Creek?s program.
Students enrolled at Spring Creek, and other member facilities of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS), follow a strictly regimented points-based program and are organized into ?Families? with names like ?Integrity,? ?Serenity,? ?Eternity? and ?Innocence.? Families consist of 20 to 30 students and a staff member known as the ?mother? or ?father.? Students spend nearly every waking and sleeping moment with their Family. Families walk from classroom to cafeteria to their dorms in lockstep unison. According to news reports and families of students, a child can?t graduate the program until she demonstrates to the satisfaction of Spring Creek staff that she has taken responsibility for the actions that put her in the school in the first place. She must appear to believe that the program has saved her life. As reporter Decca Aitkenhead described the program at an affiliated facility called Tranquility Bay in Jamaica in a 2003 article in the London newspaper The Observer, ?They must renounce their old self, espouse the program?s belief system, display gratitude for their salvation, and police fellow students who resist.?
The WWASPS program is based on the theory that behaviors can be modified by the enforcement of consequences. Inappropriate behaviors, therefore, are met with swift retribution.
When a child arrives at Spring Creek, she starts at Level 1. In order to graduate the program, she must accumulate merit points. Points are hard-earned and easily lost. Speaking out of turn, looking at a member of the opposite sex, or horsing around?according to a card the students wear around their necks?can cost a student a day?s worth of points. Insubordination or fighting can result in the loss of three levels.
Level 1 students are prohibited from talking to Level 2 students.
?If your levels add up to four you can talk to one another,? says one Spring Creek student.
According to Christina, advanced, or upper-level students, Levels 4, 5 and 6, have more freedom than lower-level students. Girls, for example, might get to wear some make-up. For three days each week, upperlevel students work as ?junior staff.? They become the eyes and the ears of the staff when staff are out of sight, and they ?consequence? other students who step out of line.
Students who are disruptive or have outbursts are placed in ?intervention.? They are taken, sometimes by force, to a room students call ?the Hobbit,? where they sit in chairs. Some kids have reported being put in intervention for days, even months. The school maintains that a student is put in intervention for 30-minute ?cooling off? periods. If they fail to cool off or remain disruptive, they may stay longer, under the watchful eye of a staff member.
Christina says she tried to steer clear of trouble while she was at Spring Creek, because she believed she was only biding her time until her mother came to get her.
While she wasn?t allowed to talk to her daughter, Janet was paying an additional $75 per week for Christina?s therapy sessions. Then, one day in late September, she received a call from a therapist at Spring Creek, a woman she had never met. The woman told Janet that after only her second session with Christina, she was convinced Christina was depressed. The therapist said she wanted to prescribe anti-depressants.
?They wanted me to put my daughter on anti-depressants without even letting me talk to her,? Janet says, disgusted at the memory. ?Put her on drugs? That was the breaking point for me. I have read a lot about antidepressants in children and a lot of kids commit suicide while taking them. I didn?t even know who was prescribing these drugs. That was it for me.?
So Janet drove from southern California to Thompson Falls. Christina?s dad notified Spring Creek only hours before Janet got there, and when Janet arrived Christina?s things were boxed and waiting for her.
Unbeknownst to Janet or Christina, a mother from a community just a short drive from their California hometown was also on her way to Spring Creek. After hearing the news that Mexican authorities had raided and closed Casa by the Sea?an affiliated teen behavior modification facility located about 50 miles south of San Diego?that mother decided it was time to take her child out of the Spring Creek program. Her daughter was one of Christina?s Family members.
On that day in early October 2004, Spring Creek lost two students, and with them about $80,000 per year in tuition and fees.
Three days later, the school lost another of Christina?s Family members. Karlye Anne Newman, a 16-year-old girl from Denver, hanged herself in the bunkhouse that she?d shared with Christina only days earlier. She died just days before her 17th birthday.............
continues at Missoula News, link above