By silentlysinging - Posted on August 30th, 2007
Tagged: child abuse • dangerous • death • industry • money • troubled teens • Shared responsibility
Imagine, for one moment, that you are, say, a 14 year-old boy or girl. (Perhaps you actually are a 14 year-old boy or girl.) Now imagine that you have been having some "problems". (Perhaps you actually are having some "problems".) They might be big problems, like battling clinical depression, dropping out of school, becoming addicted to cocaine... Or...maybe not. Maybe they're not big problems at all. Maybe they're small, "average" problems, problems everyone faces at some point: fighting with your parents, not cleaning your room regularly, experimenting with pot or alcohol. Staying out late on weekends. Crying over a lost relationship. Crying for no reason at all. Feeling insecure. Feeling irritable. Most of us experience at least a few of these things at one time or another. Emotional struggles, to some degree, are an inevitable aspect of adolescence, after all.
Now imagine that you are in bed one night, drifting peacefully off to sleep, when, suddenly, two, large, scary-looking men appear at your bedside. One is holding a shiny, new pair of silver handcuffs. Wait...what?? Why are they here? What do they want? How did they get in?! The door to your house was locked...wasn't it? This has to be a dream. But it isn't. Essentially, these men are here to kidnap you. And your parents are paying them good money to do so.
If you run, they chase you. You still don't know what's going on. They cuff you, and take you to a car, which takes you to a plane. And now you're on a plane. Nobody tells you where you are going. All your questions, screams and whimpers are dutifully ignored. When you arrive at your destination, you are in the middle of nowhere, though you still don't know where this nowhere is. (Chances are, you're actually in Utah or Oregon.) You are strip-searched and generally humiliated (and quite possibly sexually assaulted), and finally given something new to wear. And so it begins. You are about to start your Wilderness Program.
It sounds unreal, doesn't it? That this actually happens in America?! It happens every day. The fact of the matter is, the troubled teen industry is booming, and most of these programs are not regulated in any way. (
http://cafety.org/index.php?option=com_ ... 8&Itemid=2) Wilderness Programs are just the tip of the iceberg, though they do tend to be the most brutal. A typical program involves hiking all day, every day to the point of complete physical exhaustion, while simultaneously undergoing some sort of forced emotional brainwashing.
Some kids don't make it out alive. There have been several incidents where teenagers, even children, have actually died in such programs, largely due to being "restrained". For example, take William Lee:
"A 15-year-old Scappoose boy died while being 'restrained' at a wilderness school in the Oregon high desert on Monday night after he exhibited 'defiant behavior.' A camp counselor with Bend-based Obsidian Trails has been charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death. It occurred at a remote location in Lake County in south Central Oregon. It was the first known death in Oregon within the controversial wilderness schools. They focus on putting children in the outdoors under harsh survival conditions to teach them discipline and responsibility. Last winter, an investigation of Obsidian Trails by The Oregonian found that it was employing family members connected with another death in Utah in a similar program, and that this industry is completely unregulated by Oregon authorities. William H. Edward Lee, 15, was pronounced dead Monday night at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, said David A. Schutt, the Lake County district attorney. 'The boy . . . was standing and taken to the ground by the counselors,' Schutt said, 'for defiant and disruptive behavior. He was physically restrained. The person arrested was on his back.' A second counselor, a woman, also held Lee for the five-to 15-minute struggle. 'When the boy stopped resisting', Schutt said, 'the woman counselor noticed he had stopped breathing.' (from
http://cafety.org/index.php?option=com_ ... 1&Itemid=2, originally published in The Oregonian, September 21, 2000)
Or T.P.:
"T.P., 13, was pinned to the ground by up to three staffers on April 20 after he protested when he was denied food as punishment, according to documents from the Human Resources Department.
The traumatic death of a 13-year-old boy after he was physically restrained for about an hour and a half by camp counselors has been ruled a homicide, White County District Attorney Stan Gunter said Wednesday.
The autopsy of T.P., whom counselors held face-down on the ground at a wilderness camp for troubled boys, indicates he died because of the restraint, Gunter said.
'The manner in which they performed that restraint is what caused his problem,' the district attorney said in an interview. 'For all practical purposes, his heart stopped and he did not get enough oxygen to the brain, which led to his death.'"
(excerpt taken from
http://cafety.org/index.php?option=com_ ... 7&Itemid=2, originally published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 2, 2005 )
Or Anthony Haynes:
"Long, director of the America's Buffalo Soldiers Re-enactors Association boot camp, is charged with second-degree murder in the July 2001 death of Anthony Haynes, who attended Long's 'tough love' camp near Buckeye.
Investigators said Haynes died of complications of dehydration and near-drowning after he collapsed in triple-digit heat and two counselors put him in a bathtub to cool him down.
Long is accused of telling the counselors to bring Haynes back to the camp rather than taking him to a hospital when he wasn't responding." (excerpt taken from
http://cafety.org/index.php?option=com_ ... 3&Itemid=2, originally published in The New York Times, October 8, 2004)
"The recently formed California activist group, Voices Forever Silenced, contends that more than a dozen youths have died nationwide since 1980 in various outdoor treatment or adventure camps. Three teens, including Aaron Bacon, died at teen camps in Utah between 1990 and 1994. The most recent death occurred last June, when 18-year-old Dawnne Takeuchi was thrown from a semi-truck near Pagosa Springs, Colo. Kimberly Stafford, the VisionQuest counselor driving the supply vehicle, was convicted of careless driving and was ordered to pay $270 in restitution.
'How many more lives are going to be lost before we see the necessary changes needed?' asks Voices Forever Silenced co-founder Cathy Sutton of Ripon, Calif. One of the group's main fights has been to pressure Congress for federal regulation. Sutton's 15-year-old daughter Michelle died of dehydration six years ago while enrolled in the now-defunct Summit Quest program in Utah.
So far, the group has had little success in convincing Congress to impose national standards on wilderness treatment programs. Buie and others in the industry continue to resist federal regulation, arguing instead that self-regulation is adequate." (
http://caica.org/NEWS%20DEATH%20Bacon.htm)
Clearly, "self-regulation" is NOT ADEQUATE. For more disturbing information on program deaths, try the following links:
http://caica.org/NEWS%20Deaths%20Main.htmhttp://www.nospank.net/camps.htmhttp://www.nospank.net/n-q52r.htmUnbelievably, not only do programs like these continue to exist despite all the deaths, allegations of abuse and lawsuits (many of which are simply settled out of court for obscene amounts of money), but they are actually thriving. Private wilderness programs, boot camps, pseudo-therapeutic boarding schools and "character education" programs make huge amounts of money every year by shamelessly targeting the desperate parents of "troubled" teenagers everywhere. Of course, this isn't all black and white. There are many subtle shades of gray. Some parents have valid reasons for considering these options. Some kids are truly out of control. Not all of these programs are horribly abusive, and, of course, some kids DO feel genuinely helped by some of them.
To an extent, I am one of those kids, though I certainly have VERY mixed feelings regarding the matter. I spent my freshman year of high school (from 2002-2003) at Hyde School, an infamous boarding school for "troubled teens" that focuses on "character education" in the tiny town of Bath, Maine. Now that I'm fully aware of what's out there, I've come to realize that Hyde is on the lighter side of the spectrum. I was not kidnapped from my bedroom. I was never strip-searched or "restrained". My biggest issue with Hyde at this point is simply that it conducts so-called "Discovery Groups"...like group therapy, except with NO LICENSED THERAPIST. In fact, there is not a single mental health professional at Hyde, which is extremely dangerous and irresponsible for a school that targets "troubled teens". Similarly, many of the "teachers" there don't have teaching degrees. Some never even went to college. And of course, I am extremely against using exercise/physical exertion as a means of punishment... And Hyde does have its own wilderness program, "outpost", which is sufficiently hellish... And don't even get me started on "2-4"... There is so much I could say. So much. I can't even begin to describe my personal experiences or what it was like there or why I went to begin with, because, at this point, this blog would probably never end. Perhaps sometime in the near future, I'll write a separate blog explaining. For now, you can check out these websites if you'd like to learn more about Hyde specifically:
http://isaccorp.org/documentsam.asp#hydehttp://wwf.fornits.com/viewforum.php?f=43I have lots more to share, but alas, it's past midnight now, and I must sleep! This will be continued sometime soon. And if you're at all concerned about anything you've just read, you might want to visit the following websites:
Community Alliance for the Fair and Ethical Treatment of Youth -
http://cafety.org/Coalition Against Institutionalized Child Abuse -
http://caica.org/International Survivors Action Committee -
http://isaccorp.org/http://antiwwasp.com/http://www.nospank.net/boot.htmhttp://wwf.fornits.com/I must reiterate that this is NOT a one-sided issue. Again, not all programs are abusive. And, even in some that I would personally consider abusive, there are kids who claim to have been helped, though sometimes it's a bit hard to tell if that is simply the result of thorough brainwashing. (I will NEVER drink the Kool-Aid!!)
Tell me, what are your thoughts on this topic? Have you ever been to a program like this? Do you know anyone who has? I want your honest reactions, experiences and opinions, please, negative OR positive!
http://www.progressiveu.org/005526-the- ... n-industryactive comment section
