Mother and son question whether camp helped

[hurrikayne]

Article Last Updated: 09/12/2008 07:36:52 PM MDT

Awakened at 4 a.m. by escorts with handcuffs, 17-year-old Michael Lawton Jenkins was swept from his Florida home to Red Cliff Ascent in southern Utah.
    He refused to sign a program contract and was blindfolded, taken to an isolated camp, stripped of his shoes and assigned menial tasks, such as making a backpack out of rope and a tarp in under five minutes.
    Once he agreed to cooperate, his progress was measured by the fires he built and the holes he dug.
    "I just felt stripped of all my rights," Jenkins said. "You can't call anyone, you can't leave ... it just didn't feel right."
    Jenkins felt camp was a punishment that didn't fit his transgressions - slipping grades, hanging out with a bad crowd and dabbling in drugs. But he worked up to the elite level and was allowed to have a knife. Now 19 and enrolled in a Florida community college, Jenkins said he achieved that by "telling them what they wanted to hear so I could go home."
    Back in Florida after camp, "it was even more hard to relate to people my age," he said. He had trouble sleeping, afraid he would be "kidnapped." He dropped out of school, but later earned his GED.
    His mother, Diane Jenkins, said the 11-week, $50,000 stay was a last resort for her and her ex-husband. She fears her son is still a "lost soul" and is uncertain the wilderness therapy helped.
    "I don't think I'll really know until he's 30 years old," she said. "Would I do it again? No. I'm still so unsure it was the right thing."

-- Lindsay Whitehurst

http://http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_10438537

[Anonymous]

This sounds like an account of what would happen to some terrorist being taken by the US military. I still can't believe parents do this to their kids, and think it will help them. Tip to parents, if you pay to have your child handcuffed and taken to the middle of nowhere, blindfolded, until they cry uncle- your family is never going to be the same.

[hurrikayne]

My thought on this article was, if I spent $50,000.00 on my kid to get help, I would do a hell of a lot of research BEFORE I spent that kind of money.