Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry

Academy at Sisters

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Troll Control:
As I stated earlier, you should not take advice from someone who has a financial stake in programs.  Again, see the link in my signature about"fiduciary interest in Aspen Education."  

You should also know the program where he claims to have sent his daughter, the supposed "flagship program" of Aspen Education, the Academy at Swift River, was cited by state regulators for using abusive techniques as well:


--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---ASR was cited for several infractions, which included monitoring students' telephone calls and mail as well as "using behavior management techniques which subject students to verbal abuse, ridicule and humiliation, denial of sufficient sleep, and repetitive exercise as a response to an infraction of a rule."

From "Tough love may be a little too tough" (by Stephanie Kraft; June 24, 2006; Valley Advocate):

...At other times, Kent saw students compelled to do degrading make-work as punishment. One time, he said, he saw a girl forced to spend an entire day scrubbing a staircase with a toothbrush. He was also alarmed by the few bits of information he heard about the so-called Life Step sessions, forms of group therapy in which several students would be taken to one of the buildings for day-and-a-half to three-day stays.

"I was instructed repeatedly on paper to prepare very minimal meals for these overnights," Kent said. "I would put up carrot sticks, celery sticks, crackers, cheese, hummus, a few turkey sandwiches, and this plate would be sufficient for two mealtimes. Then I would send a very light breakfast. The staff would have bagels and cream cheese, the kids could only have fruit and cereal. I worried about the fact that the food for the staff was different, and I felt that these were very light meals."

Kent worried about whether the food was being rationed on a punish-and-reward basis during the sessions. The question was one of many the Advocate was unable to discuss with ASR officials, who declined to be interviewed about the program.

Kent had other concerns about the Life Step sessions. He did not witness them, but he heard that the students were kept up most of the night for "therapeutic" group conversations that were a more intense version of the communication sessions he had overheard.

One of the students Kent remembers best was a boy with a talent for drawing, whom he got to know through the mask-making class. One day Kent came to work and the boy was gone. Other staff members said he had been taken from the school in the middle of the previous night and sent west for a wilderness trip. Three weeks later, Kent said, the boy was back, and looking depressed. Another staff member told Kent that when she greeted the student with "Hi, it's nice to have you back," he burst into tears.

Other things worried Kent too. He noticed that the students were not allowed to make telephone calls, even calls to their parents, without a staff member listening, and that their incoming and outgoing mail was read. After he learned that a boy who had broken his collarbone had been forced to move heavy cans and jars and wipe down shelves in the kitchen as punishment for a trifling infraction just a week after being injured, Kent became so worried that he decided to contact the state Department of Social Services about the school's practices. DSS passed the information on to the state Office of Child Care Services, which sent an investigator, Eric Lieberman, to the academy.

Academy administrators told Lieberman it was true that students were denied sleep for 19 or 20 hours during the first Life Step session, called "The Truth." Staff and students might stay up all night, then break for a nap between 5 and 7 a.m., then continue the session until 2 the next afternoon, the administrators said. One administrator also acknowledged using profanity toward the students during communications sessions, and added, "Some days I have said things to students that I wish I did not say."

The Office of Child Care Services' investigators found that the school had not been remiss in getting medical treatment for the student with the broken collarbone, but it did substantiate most of Kent's other concerns. It cited the school for "using behavior management techniques which subject students to verbal abuse, ridicule and humiliation, denial of sufficient sleep, and repetitive exercise as a response to an infraction of a rule."

OCCS also cited the school for monitoring students' telephone calls and mail. The agency said that the right to privacy in communications, even for juveniles, can be restricted only by court order -- for example, if a therapist believes that the teen's communication should be monitored, perhaps to support a young person through a crisis in relations with his or her family -- and then only temporarily...[/list]
--- End quote ---

What is described above is typical for these places and you'd never know it without whistleblowers.  Believe me when I tell you, you will have no idea what is happening to Morgan behind closed doors, period.  And there will be no mechanism for her to report any abuse she might incur.  The kids are simply held incommunicado.

Morgans Dad:
DJ, if she reads up and shows responsiveness to a well defined plan, then problem solved.  I truly don't WANT to 'Institutionalize' her just because.  We've tried a lot of different approaches. We WILL be calling the county sheriff and DA and see what else may be discovered.  That may all be moot if Morgan can 'come around' and make some effort at change around here. It's just that there's not many years left for advancement.  The Academy looks like a fast track to bridge some of the parenting gaps we've encounter over the years. Some posters on this site have had good outcomes from TBS.  Granted there's lots of  data on schoolsprograms that have not been stellar.  But as a parent I'm not finding anything wrong with the child is the product line of thinking.  The child IS the product.  The product of our parenting. The product of the public school system, the product of the influences of society at large, the media, their peers etc. The end product becomes the adults which go out into the world and have to become a part  of society at large.If one doesn't learn how to respond respectfully to authority (notice I did NOT say RESPECT AUTHORITY) there's going to be trouble somewhere. We don't ask for 'respect' at home, but we expect our interactions to be in a respectful tone. As parents we LOVE out daughter for who she is.  We love the parts of her being that are uniquely her and are not looking to change that.  The habits she is is building at school are not conducive to keeping a job and we all know that being disrespectful to a bass is a sure fired way to not have a job.  I look at this as a last choice for our situation.  Never was this option a first choice.  This has not been an easy decision, nor is it a final one at this point.

Nihilanthic:
So, what you're saying is because her grades are bad she has to be locked away and have no freedom at all in an unscientific unproven way of 'helping' her?

A few people say TBS helped them when the vast majority says they were abused, neglected, and not helped at all, so it's worth a shot for you - but she has no say in the matter?

Because you have gaps in parenting you think a fly-by-night institution with no medical diagnosis, diagnostics, or proof of efficacy is the best way to fix her because why?

Bad grades and disagreeing with you is called being a teenager. You say you had the possibility of going to a program, yet you turned out fine without. Why is she different?

If you're convinced she will be a 'loser' on account of disagreeing with her parents or having mediocre grades, and the only way to fix that is alternative medicine, you've been sold a good line from an edcon. There is no problem except the crisis of conscience. Bad high school grades really don't mean a damn thing. I personally dropped out on account of high school being worthless and that I found out that it was; when I went to college as a mature adult I got a 3.75 GPA and I'm now a paid undergrad teaching assistant and paid tutor, with everything covered by grants. The point of this being that if someone convinced you high school is some kind of do-or-die-moment, or that 18 is, that's false. There is absolutely no emergency and certainly nothing worth locking someone up over.

Nevertheless, programs don't fix anything and have never ever been able to prove they have. Ever. They play off of general, nebulous fears and then claim to fix general, nebulous things - and if the kid doesn't act perfect, they generally go very far out of their way to say the kid should be completely cut off from the parent until the kid turns around. Read up on exit plans sometime. Certainly not anything worth $5K a month and a daughter being held incommunicado indefinitely until eighteen, now is it?

However, the real question is how much is it worth to ameliorate your well intended but misdirected sense of worry. If she's not committing crimes, and she just doesn't care about what you care about, is that worth losing 60,000 dollars and your relationship with your daughter? Is it worth what you'd be doing to her, when nobody seems to know what is wrong or what will happen? Sending someone to get reprogrammed because you think she's 'going to be a loser' is going beyond the pail to address your own worries about her not being perfect. She's a different individual from you and eventually you'll have to come to grips with that, be it now, at 18, or whenever else.

This is a decision you will regret almost immediately, and when she's had to deal with months of abuse, bullshit and powerlessness, the only fault for her not having a thing to do with you would rest on your own shoulders. $5K/mo can do a lot, but it's your job to figure out what to do - not to let some people selling empty promises to allay fearful parents take it, and your child, and not even give her the right to speak to you or a lawyer without them cutting her off if she says what they don't want.

You wouldn't give her a pill if there was no proof it worked, so why would you lock her up for years?

Troll Control:
Dad, you're missing the point.  You mean "product" as in "sum total of her experiences," but Whooter stated clearly that the child is a commodity.  Big, big difference there.

Anyway you can click here to see what these program pimps believe about child rights.  

Again, he states clearly, the child has no rights in big, bold red typeface.  A "product" with "no rights"?  This sounds like a human slave trader, not a compassionate helper.

You need to understand this thinking and that it is the dominant paradigm in these institutions, especially the ones under NATSAPs umbrella.  As Pile stated before, abuse is not likely, it's damn near guaranteed.  It's a dead reckoning from my experience that this program, approved by NATSAP, will run the same abusive behavior modifaction scheme that has shuttered so many NATSAP programs before it.  I also worked directly under the founding father of NATSAP, Len Buccellato, who provided the funding and the heft to get it off the ground.  He was sued out of business for fraud and abuse by a program called Hidden Lake Academy.  I know exactly of what I speak, I assure you.

You can't "fast track" healthy relationships by splitting up your family and isolating Morgan.  On it's face, that's an illogical statement.  I also cannot conceive of institutionalizing a child for lying, which seems to be your chief complaint.  If all lying kids were institutionalized, none of us would be here today, right?  They're kids.  They lie.  It's part of growing up and she'll get over it.

Anyway, it sounds like you are willing to work with Morgan if she will work with you and avoid this sordid industry altogether.  I'd like to see you work it out.

Whooter:
Mom and Dad, Hang in there and keep reading, there is some good information if you look past some of the angered posts, most of them mean well.  Programs are not a good fit for everyone.  If there had been any problems with Academy at Sisters I am sure it would have made its way back here and we just cant seem to dig up any dirt at all on this place so far.  If we do it will be posted here for sure.

Some more thoughts would be to get as much info as you can.  Don’t just use fornits as your sole source because it is highly biased.

Seek the opinion of a local therapist, school counselor, speak with other parents who have had children in programs (as I suggested earlier).  You should tour the facility and speak to some of the girls who are there presently and get a sense for how they like it.  They will probably only expose you to those girls who have been there for awhile and are on a healthy track, but you will still be able to get a sense whether or not the school is a good fit for your daughter.  I was able to pull a few students aside during lunch with them and ask them questions.

Ask if they provide therapy from independent sources outside of the program or offer therapies which you pay directly to (not through the program).

Then take a look at the list we provided from the Government accountability Office (GAO) which will help to see how this school compares with their benchmarks of an acceptable level of choice for therapeutic schools.



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