I suppose after watching, year after year, the same programs grow bigger and more profitable than ever before, and I tend to be pessimistic on the subject. WWASPS has received an unrecendented amount of negative media attention the past few years. We couldn't buy that amount of press coverage if we were multi millionaires. Magazines, prime-time news magazine shows, Montel, etc. I also notice that you don't see any daytime talk shows where the entire point is to send teens to boot camp, I am sure people remember sally jesse raphael, and the like when this tv show format was possible. Yet, even with an increase in negative attention, and positve attention in the sense that they don't advertise boot camps for teens on talk shows as much anymore, they still grow.
I think this all goes way beyond simple parental ignorance. As well, I don't believe that parents are going to vote for people who want to restrict their parental rights even more. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and he told me he brings up the subject of abusive programs to influential people he comes into contact with in his job, and about half will start a tirade about how wrong he is to criticize programs and how they save lives. College professors, lawyers, doctors, politicians (especially), cops, social workers, etc. We are in the minoriy. We are considered 'broken souls', the poor schmucks who the program didn't fix, and because of that we are bitter. That is what they believe. They do not believe we were normal people who didn't deserve to be locked up in the first place and be abused. Look at people's faces when you say something like that, then watch the wheels turn as they construct in their mind why you are exaggerating or lying. Afterall, we live in america, the greatest country on earth, this couldn't happen here, if it did it would be shut down already. People live in the naivety of tv land where problems are addressed and solved, everything is black and white and all is well in the world of middle and upper class white america. It's hard to convince people of truth when they don't want to believe it.
Now, to parents. How many families have two working parents? How many families don't live near their family, or don't get along with them so they are totally on their own? A lot. So when there kid starts acting like a teenager or does something noticeable enough for their parent to finally take notice, they don't know where to go for help. Parents absolutely love the idea of programs. They have a romanticized sense of 'getting away' and improving their kid, from an adult perspective it does sound great. Hell, give me a year vacation in the mountains and I'll take it. But they don't get it, that they are signing over their kid to people who don't give a crap about them. The kid already has problems and the parent obviously doesn't have the time to address them, but why do they think that a 1/20 staff to kid ratio is going to somehow give them what they need. Parents want to believe kids are getting therapy, riding horses, playing guitar and singing kumbaya while in fact we are treated like cattle, wharehoused and kept in secret, forced through physical and emotional manipulation to do one thing -- keep our parents on the hook.That's all we were, a comoddity. You cannot pay a stranger to love a kid, you cannot pay a stranger to get to know 100 kids and help them through issues which they are dependent on the kid to tell them about. But they don't even believe the kid, so the parents diagnose the kid at entry and the staff assume everything the parent says is true. Accoding to my parent I was a fucked up dude, but that just wasn't true. But if the kid says anything they are not given the benefit of the doubt from parent or staff, they are automatically assumed to be lying. What does that teach a kid?
I've said it before, if I had no moral standards, or my own bad experience, I would start a program or referal business this minute. Why? Beccause it is such an easy sell to today's urban middle/upper class parents. It's too easy, it's such a good scam, one corporation alone is pulling in over a hundred million dollars a year.
People create problems in their life and others, and then look elsewhere for someone else to solve it. This is the behavior of children. But that's what the US is becoming, a country of children who look to big brother for help with every issue they perceive wrong in their life. It's ironic to look to help to a govt. which enabled socialists policies (drug war, high taxes, public school) to solve the negative symptoms of said policies. Families, individuals and communities need to look to themselves to solve their problems, not a huge beuaracratic entity that has done so much damage already, and is partly responsible for the situation today regarding teen programs.
Things I would like to see in this industry:
1. Active criminal prosecution of child abusers (randall hilton for example) . I don't know why parents are suing WWASPS for money, who wants their blood money? They deserve to be in jail, they commit fraud (all the people selling and refering the program including parents) that ultimately ends in physical and emotional abuse. If I get a ticket and harrassed for cops for crossing the street not in a crosswalk, certainly these people deserve a trip to the criminal justice system.
2. I would love to see kids who were abused start to sue their parents. I was tempted to do this myself. I am not talkin gabout parents who were genuinely duped, but with a program like WWASPS if you kept your kid in past discovery seminar then the parent should be sued for wrongful imprisonment, and infringing upon the rights of their child, especially if they hired kidnappers.
It's time to stop being politically correct and beating around the bush -- this is a parent driven industry. I know it's more comfortable to blame the evil corporations run by the 'evil elite' program owners but they are not the problem. There will always be snake oil salesmen, ready to sell their soul for a quick buck, they should be expected. These parents have money, they are not retarded, yes some are duped but most are not. The teen help industry is a sick sick world of people with one thing in common, the are all the most self righteous people you will ever meet. You cannot debate with these kind of people, they think they are saving the world. Fanatics are good at recruiting new members, and convincing everyone that their ditractors are crazy and stupid.
If you are serious about wanting to shut down programs, I would ask yourself these questions. Why hasn't scientology been shut down? Why haven't cults that have sex with children ben shut down? Why can parents let their kids die because of their religious beliefs, even if they need a simple medication? Why does CPS love to take people's kids away, but won't set foot in programs? This isn't a black and white situation at all, it involves shitloads of money, politics, and power -- if you want to take down powerful wealthy people who are deriving that power and money from what you are trying to dissolve, good luck. It's kind of like asking, how can you dismantle the military industrial complex. Even the people involved in the defense industry think its out of control, yet it still grows. Sometimes things get to a point where they take on a life of their own, and become an integrated part of society in which thousands of people derive their livelihoods from it. So the discussion of whether it is moral or not takes a back seat to economics, politics and money.
I finally came to the concluion that looking at the industry as a goliath that needs to be slain by the anti-program david is naive at this point. There are too many forces working against us, including 'our own'. So I choose to tell my story to everyone who wants to know, and try to save kids from a tormented program experience one at a time, through advice to their parents. This worked for a couple cousins of mine already. Not sure what else to do at this point. :-?
