HEADLINE: KIDS: IS IT TREATMENT OR TORMENT?
BYLINE: Laura Gardner, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: July 13, 1986, Sunday; Page A-1
(45 in.)
SECTION: NEWS
NOTES: Staff writer Susan Edelman contributed
to this report.
TEXT:
The Bergen County prosecutor is looking
into allegations of physical abuse and unlawful
restraint of teen-agers at KIDS of Bergen
County, a substance-abuse program in River Edge.
teen-agers no
longer in the program have told Prosecutor Larry J. McClure they
were repeatedly abused during rehabilitation. Some
said they were struck by other teen-agers and by
peer counselors.
Others said they were
isolated in small windowless rooms for hours or days at a time,
or pinned to the floor beneath other teen-agers.
Several said they were coerced into remaining
in the program.
Some teen-agers who
left the program as 1 recently as two months ago said they
suffered bruises, fractured noses, and back and neck
injuries while in the private, nonprofit
program.
The facility serves
teen-agers from Bergen, Passaic, Hudson, Essex, and Rockland
counties, as well as New York City.
"We are aware there
have been some complaints with respect to KIDS of Bergen County, and we
are inquiring into it," McClure said.
His office has
interviewed an undisclosed number of former clients and their parents,
and is looking into allegations of physical abuse,
unlawful restraint, and violation of rights,
McClure said.
He declined to
elaborate on specific complaints, saying only, "We're trying to
gather information at the moment."
Miller Newton, the
founder and director of KIDS, formerly directed Straight, a
drug-treatment program in Florida that was also the target
of severe criticism and several lawsuits
charging similar abuses.
They were settled out
of court, said Newton, who is a former Methodist minister and holds
a doctorate in anthropology.
He said his adolescent charges at
KIDS are not abused, and he questioned the honesty of
the teen-agers and parents making the
allegations.
"I would like to see
the program closed down," said Mary Miller of Bayonne. Mrs. Miller
removed her 16-year-old son Danny from KIDS when
he failed to make progress after one year and said
he had been physically abused.
Danny said he was put into a "chicken
wing" position once for slouching in his chair:
His arms were held straight out by other
teen-agers, who pulled his wrists and elbows in opposite
directions.
Like other clients,
Danny also said he was sometimes pinned to the floor by peer
counselors and other clients for "cliqueing" --
talking or signaling to others during a group
session.
Todd LeBlanc of
Teaneck ran away from KIDS in January after two years and four
unsuccessful attempts at escape. He said he told the
prosecutor's office that during treatment
at KIDS, he was confined to a 10-by-12-foot room
on three occasions for "acting out."
The first time, Todd
said, he was isolated in the room for 12 consecutive days and let
out at night by two teen-agers guarding the
door. The second time, he said, he was confined to
the room for 30 days; the third confinement lasted
58 days. Each time, he spent at least 14 hours a
day in the room, he said.
"All I could feel was
rage," Todd said of the isolation, which drove him to write all
over the walls and fight "for fun" with the other
adolescents who watched him. That period,
he said, was "pure hell."
Newton said the
charges were groundless.
"The complaints may be
endemic to this kind of program and this type of troubled
population," said Newton. "Most of the kids here have
a pathology of lying and blaming."
KIDS is a tough,
authoritative program that relies heavily on peer pressure to help
teen-agers overcome addictive behavior. Its name
apparently is not an acronym.
Most clients are
signed into the program by their parents and, Newton noted, very few
like it until they make progress.
Yet since its inception in 1984,
the privately funded program has grown rapidly and now treats 135 youths, aged
12 to 21, for drug abuse as well as eating disorders and other compulsive
behavior. While some parents laud KIDS, saying it saved their children from a
life of drug abuse, others believe the treatment is unusually harsh,
sometimes becoming mistreatment.
A Hawthorne youth,
whose parents signed him into the program three weeks before his
18th birthday, said he tried at least eight
times to leave KIDS after turning 18, but was held
against his will. His twin brother also was in
the program.
The young man, who
asked not to be identified, was expelled from the program in February
when his twin ran away from the KIDS program in
the middle of the night, clad only in blankets.
Yet some teen-agers,
while denouncing the boot-camp atmosphere of the program,
praised KIDS for helping them regain sobriety and
freedom from drug abuse. As one Closter youth
described the program: "Its intentions are good, but
there's a lot of bugs that have to be worked out."
KIDS is not licensed
as a drug- and alcohol-treatment center; it is not
required to be licensed since it does not provide
medical care or medication, only counseling.
The program's five
professional staff members are either certified as substance-abuse
counselors through a voluntary peer-certification
process, or hold master's degrees in counseling.
Although Newton
stressed that KIDS is substantially superior to the
Florida-based Straight treatment program in its
professionalism, complaints against both programs center
on excessive use of force against
teen-agers.
During Newton's tenure
as clinical director of Straight in St. Petersburg, officials
investigated the program on complaints
that included unlawful restraint and physical
intimidation, such as pushing and
striking clients.
Although criminal
charges were never filed against Newton, Florida officials said he
was responsible for policies that violated
state law -- particularly holding clients against
their will for weeks.
Newton became director
of the flagship St. Petersburg program in 1981 and took the
position of national clinical director of
Straight, with branches in four states, the following
year. Amid state probes, he resigned in November
1983 after Straight refused to hire more
professionally trained staff.
Newton bristles at
being identified closely with Straight because, he said, the
program was plagued with problems before and after
his stewardship.
But some former clients at KIDS,
and their parents, said they believe KIDS
sanctions an atmosphere of violence -- an accusation
Newton flatly denied. Many of their complaints
stem from the treatment program's reliance on peer
counselors --"druggie" teen-agers --who
are deemed rehabilitated enough to supervise
their peers.
The peer counselors
run marathon group-counseling sessions that last 12
hours a day, six days a week, as well as seven
hours on Sunday. The sessions are patterned after
the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which
require addicts to admit their powerlessness over
their lives and ultimately accept a "higher
power."
During the sessions --
held in large, windowless rooms containing only plastic
chairs and a table -- teen-agers stand
surrounded by their peers and talk about their
substance abuse and misdeeds.
Despite the often
painful self-exposure in the sessions, the meetings are highly
regimented by peer counselors and other teens. The
youths are not permitted to speak out of line or
slouch in their chairs and are subject to the
reproach or approval of their peers.
But some participants
in the program said the authority of peer counselors sometimes
crosses the line to intimidation -- a situation that
can be compounded when other teen-agers join in.
The mother of the
twins said, "If you have druggie kids holding down druggie kids,
they can lose control of themselves and hurt
somebody real bad."
Newton maintained that
KIDS peer counselors are typically more highly skilled in
counseling than psychologists with master's degrees.
He refused to accept
responsibility for the violent tendencies many of the
adolescents in the program may feel. "If the kid is the same
in the program as he was before, all of a sudden
it's our fault. I don't think so," he said.
While other drug
programs are failing miserably at treating adolescents, Newton
said, KIDS claims a five-year success rate
of 80 percent. About 20 percent drop out of the
program, and 15 individuals have been graduated
from KIDS since it started.
<END>
TERMS: RIVER EDGE. YOUTH. ABUSE. PROBE.
RIGHT. VIOLATION. DRUG. ASSAULT
ORDER NUMBER: 1315241
NOTICE:Copyright 1986 Bergen Record Corp.