Spring 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.
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