Adolescence strikes fear in the hearts of even the best parents,?
writes journalist Maia Szalavitz in her new book
Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons
Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead Books). That fear, she says,
drives well-meaning mothers and fathers to send their misbehaving
teens to ?tough-love? programs, where they?re subjected
to abusive treatment in the name of helping them.
Based on her own research, Szalavitz estimates that
between ten and twenty thousand American teens are forced
into ?boot camps,? ?emotional-growth centers,? and ?behavior
modification programs? each year. The industry is unregulated,
and some programs operated by U.S. companies place children
in facilities outside the U.S. What tough-love programs
all have in common, Szalavitz says, is the belief that teens
should be made to conform to the expectations of parents and
society, by whatever means necessary. Critics have accused the
programs of using beatings, extended isolation and restraint,
public humiliation, food deprivation, sleep deprivation, sensory
deprivation, forced exercise to the point of exhaustion,
and lengthy maintenance of ?stress positions.? Research shows
that tough treatment is not effective, Szalavitz says, and can
even be harmful.
Szalavitz traces the roots of the tough-love industry back
to the Alcoholics Anonymous offshoot Synanon, a 1960s treatment
program for heroin addicts that evolved into a cult and
was eventually shut down and discredited. She points out that
incessant verbal attacks were a core component of Synanon and
are now common to tough-love programs. But unlike Synanon,
the latter are not for adult drug addicts. They?re for troubled
teens, some of whom have never used a single illicit drug.
Szalavitz began her reporting career at the age of fourteen,
writing and anchoring her own cable-access news show in
Monroe, New York, an hour north of New York City. Seventeen
magazine ran a story about her in 1980, projecting a successful
television career for this precocious high-school student. But
Szalavitz developed addictions to cocaine and heroin while at
Columbia University and dropped out of college for several years
before seeking help. She went on to graduate from Brooklyn College
with a degree in psychology and soon began writing for the
Village Voice. Szalavitz returned to television as a producer for
The Charlie Rose Show on PBS, then worked with Bill Moyers
on his five-part series Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home.
Next she teamed up with University of Pennsylvania researcher
Joseph Volpicelli to write Recovery Options: The Complete
Guide (Wiley), which outlines the benefits and drawbacks of
various drug-treatment options in the United States.
Szalavitz had long wanted to write about the abuse in
tough-love treatment programs, but publishers showed little
interest. In the end it took her more than three years to write
Help at Any Cost. She conducted hundreds of interviews, spent
many days poring over legal and congressional documents,
made repeated Freedom of Information Act requests, and
traveled to Utah, Jamaica, and Texas?s death row. The book
focuses on four programs: Straight Incorporated, KIDS, North
Star Expeditions, and the World Wide Association of Specialty
Programs (WWASP). All but the last are now defunct, but many
former staffers still work in the industry.
I have a personal interest in the subject, having been through
a program that was a predecessor of Straight Incorporated in
the early 1970s.
Polonsky: What is a ?tough-love? treatment program?
Szalavitz: It?s any program that operates on the premise
that teens in trouble need to be broken down and rebuilt. The
idea is that suffering is good for the soul; therefore, we will
inflict suffering on them to ?help? them. Sometimes people
ask me, ?Well, there are teen boot camps, emotional-growth
centers, wilderness schools, behavior-modification programs
? aren?t they each a little different?? On the surface they are,
but what they all boil down to is ?Let?s be mean to teens in
the woods,? or ?Let?s be mean to them military style,? or ?Let?s
be mean hippie style.?
There are some wilderness programs that claim to take a
loving approach, but with so little regulation, it?s impossible
for parents to know what they?re going to get. The people
selling the program tell consumers what they want to hear.
The parents of Aaron Bacon, a teen who died in one of these
programs, had been told that North Star Expeditions used
kind, gentle methods. Then their son came home in a coffin
after being starved and denied medical care.
Polonsky: What exactly happened to Aaron Bacon, and
why was he put into the program?
Szalavitz: By all accounts Aaron was a compassionate,
highly intelligent kid, but at some point he started smoking
dope and taking psychedelics, and then his grades started to
of times. His parents also suspected that he was involved with
gangs, and they were worried. North Star sold itself to them as
a wilderness adventure experience with trained therapists. Aaron?s
mom thought her son might enjoy it.
So one morning at six, two men ? one a 280-pound former military
policeman ? came storming into Aaron?s bedroom. His parents were
there too, assuring Aaron that they loved him, but
that he had to go with these men. They brought him to North Star in
Utah and put him and a group of other boys under the care of untrained
survival guides who wouldn?t let them cook their food to make it edible
if they couldn?t start their own fire. They gave Aaron boots that were too
small, a sleeping bag, and a backpack, and they
basically starved and froze him to death over the course of a few
weeks. Near the end, Aaron was so weak he was falling down
and incontinent, and the guides laughed at him and called him
a ?faker.? It?s a well-documented case, because Aaron kept a
journal, and the other boys were witnesses.
Polonsky: What about the therapists?
Szalavitz: There were no therapists. The guides were
nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one years old. Among the three
of them, they didn?t have a year?s experience leading wilderness
expeditions. They served at most a few days in jail after
Aaron?s death, and some of them even violated probation by
immediately going back to work in the industry.
Polonsky: There was a boy who died in a facility in Florida
earlier this year. Are there any similarities between his case
and Aaron Bacon?s?
Szalavitz: Not in the particulars, but in the root cause.
Fourteen-year-old Martin Lee Anderson was in a boot-campstyle
program. He complained of trouble breathing and couldn?t
complete his drill exercises, but the instructors thought he
was faking, so they punched, kicked, and ?restrained? him.
When he lost consciousness, they tried to revive him using
ammonia capsules, and he asphyxiated, either on the fumes
or because the capsules were pressed against his mouth and
nose and he couldn?t breathe.
The boot-camp instructors still maintain that they did
nothing wrong because they were legally permitted to use
?pain compliance.? Although the Supreme Court ruled in 1982
that agencies acting ?under color of state law? may not use
painful disciplinary tactics, that decision does not apply to
private corporations. In addition, Florida made a special legal
exception for its youth correctional boot camps, exempting
them from a ban on pain compliance, which includes punches,
kicks, and pressure to the head. Ironically, if parents treated
their own children this way, they?d be charged with child abuse,
but it?s all right for them to pay ?professionals? to do it.
Polonsky: Are all tough-love programs this bad, or are
you just focusing on the worst of them?
Szalavitz: Some may not be as bad as these two; I wasn?t
able to research every one of them. But it?s clear the industry
attitude is that troubled teens are not people in pain, but
manipulative liars who deserve rough treatment. Their philosophy
inevitably leads to abuse, whether it?s as mild as ignoring someone?s
emotional needs or as severe as ignoring a medical condition.
Polonsky: There are hundreds of similar programs in the United
States today. You focus on just four in your book. Why those four?
Szalavitz: I always knew Straight Incorporated had to be in the book,
because it was the first heavily publicized tough-love program. It
started in Florida, but at its peak it had facilities operating in
eight states.
In Straight you spent twelve hours a day sitting on hard chairs and
flapping your arm to be called on. If you didn?t get called on, you?d
never advance in the program and get to go home. And when
you did get called on, you had to have a good confession to
make about how terrible you?d been before entering the program,
or else you?d be attacked verbally. If you didn?t comply,
if you didn?t pay attention, if you didn?t say what they wanted
to hear or you mouthed off, they would literally throw you
on the floor and restrain you, with somebody sitting on your
torso and restricting your breathing, another person sitting
on your legs, two more people sitting on your arms, and
sometimes somebody holding down your head. This would
all be done by your fellow participants, which is not the way
restraint is handled in any legitimate psychiatric institution.
People had limbs broken.
Polonsky: And this restraint was administered as punishment?
Szalavitz: Yes. Sometimes people were restrained from
running out the door, but more often it was done as punishment
for violating all manner of rules. Straight also heavily
restricted access to the bathroom, so kids would wet and soil
themselves. It?s all part of the humiliation strategy employed
by many of these programs: an exercise of power and demonstration
of the teens? helplessness.
Polonsky: And what about the other three programs: KIDS, North Star, and WWASP?
Szalavitz: North Star, of course, was the wilderness program
in which Aaron Bacon died. KIDS was founded by Miller
Newton, who had been Straight?s national clinical director
and a charismatic leader within Straight. He falsely claimed
to be a psychologist. (He did eventually get a degree from a
correspondence school.) KIDS was like Straight, only worse.
The World Wide Association of Specialty Programs is the
biggest tough-love organization currently in operation. It?s
similar to Straight in that you gradually work your way up by
confessing and verbally attacking other teens. Their ?curriculum?
includes confrontational weekend seminars, where they
sometimes make young girls dress up as hookers to humiliate
them. Newcomers are assigned ?buddies? who monitor them
and have the power to punish them, even though these buddies
are not staff, or even adults.
After being released from these programs, many teens
immediately return to dangerous behavior, and some are
so traumatized that they are unable to function in a college
environment. Others can?t afford to go to college because their
parents have spent their entire college fund on WWAS P. The
overseas programs cost about three thousand dollars a month,
and the ones in the United States cost four to five thousand a
month. And there are additional charges on top of that, such
as for bringing the kid to the program in handcuffs.
Polonsky: What kind of teen gets sent to a place like WWASP?
Szalavitz: Anyone who has annoyed the hell out of his
or her parents, who is mouthy and disappointing and maybe
isn?t doing well in school or is using drugs. Many teens with
depression or serious mental disorders end up there. WWASP
seems to take anyone. There are no restrictions. Even a child
who has never smoked pot and gets straight As will be accepted
as long as the parents believe the child?s behavior requires
drastic action. A WWAS P official told the press that 70 to
80 percent of their students are not hard-core drug users or
criminals; they just have trouble communicating with their
parents. Paul Richards, a WWAS P graduate I interviewed for
my book, had never even smoked cigarettes. But most of the
boys and girls are somewhere in the middle. Maybe they were
smoking pot every weekend, or they took acid.
Polonsky: How do parents find out about these programs?
Szalavitz: In the eighties and nineties many parents were
referred to them by ToughLove, a nationwide network of support
groups for parents of troubled teens. The couple who
founded ToughLove had written a book in which they told
how they?d refused to bail their daughter out of jail, and they
claimed that this was what had saved her. To its credit, the
ToughLove network eventually denounced Straight Incorporated,
but only after recommending it to parents for years.
Nowadays parents might get referrals from so-called educational
consultants, who are not required to have licenses and
who often get kickbacks from programs for giving referrals.
An ?educational consultant? could easily be another WWAS P
parent who will get a thousand dollars or a free month in the
program for their own child in return for a referral. Then
you have school guidance counselors and psychologists and
other professionals with whom the tough-love programs cultivate
relationships. And of course, if you search for ?troubled
teens? on the Internet, multiple WWAS P-sponsored websites
come up.
Polonsky: Do parents have any idea what?s really going
on in these programs?
Szalavitz: Phil Elberg, an attorney who successfully sued
Miller Newton and the KIDS program, liked to say that it was
the parents who really belonged to the KIDS cult, not the children.
In most of these programs, the parents proselytize to
other parents and meet in groups and encourage each other
to stay strong and be tough. If the parents weren?t convinced
that tough love works, these places couldn?t operate.
There?s enormous pressure for parents to take the tough love
approach. After an article I wrote about the troubled-teen
industry appeared in the Washington Post, I got dozens of
e-mails from parents who didn?t want to send their children
to these programs, but everybody was telling them it was the
only way and that they were hurting their son or daughter by
not doing it.
Polonsky: Don?t the teens inform their parents of what?s
going on?
Szalavitz: They try to, but the parents are told to expect
complaints and treat them as lies or attempts at manipulation.
And almost all communication is monitored, with discipline
for kids who complain. Also the programs teach the kids
that it?s all their fault, so most of them come out saying that.
Unfortunately, that?s exactly what many parents want to hear.
It?s hard for parents to accept how much harm they have done
to their children by placing them in these programs. I have
talked to parents who were horrified when they discovered
how bad it really was. They spend years trying to make up for
it. Some, however, prefer to stay in denial.
I would say the vast majority of parents who send their
children to these programs are devoted mothers and fathers
who would honestly prefer to have their child at home. Most
would likely have chosen family therapy were it more widely
available and had they known that research supported it over
these programs. A large percentage of these parents are in the
middle of a divorce. Their children are acting out, unhappy,
and vulnerable. That?s why family therapy makes the most
sense. But the parents don?t want to think the divorce is what?s
causing their son or daughter to rebel or take drugs.
Many parents are simply fooled. Unless you?ve been told
otherwise, you?d think these programs are run by experts
who have some knowledge you don?t. Aaron Bacon?s parents
are smart, well-intentioned, and kind. They were in no way
negligent; they asked all the right questions, consulted all
the right authorities. But they were lied to. It could happen
to anybody.
