I call BULLSHIT.
he didnt stop me from going down the wrong path after hidden lake. i had to figure things out on my own without the benefit of socialization through high school. going into college, i was at the same maturity level as i was in 10th grade because HLA halted my emotional growth and maturation. in addition, they filled my head full of lies meant to keep me in an imaginary HLA-created reality, which took me years to get rid of, along with leaving me with multiple serious anxiety disorders entirely caused by the emotional trauma i went through on a daily basis there.
same applies for 99% of the people that i know that attended there.
in the end, most of the kids turned out OK, but HLA seems to take credit for it. it's not their credit to take. The kids straightened out towards the end of college, while their misbehaven counterparts from high school that did not get sent away matured early in college. This is because most people get tired of smoking pot and drinking [etc] by the end of their first or second year of college. All HLA does is prevent individuals from partaking in deviant behavior while they are minors. to some, this is desirable. to anyone with commonsense, it's not. Teens generally learn from their own mistakes, and they have to be given the opportunity to make those mistakes early, so they can become functioning adults earlier.