ABC Brat Camp

[Anonymous]

Exploiting underage children who have been molested (and who, therefore, are more vulnerable to exploitation in the first place) by smearing them and their issues all over primetime television is not 'helping' them.

[Anonymous]

On 2005-06-17 14:04:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I worked on the American series, Brat Camp, and I have to say I am very ashamed to have done so.



The families and kids and Sagewalk were misled, to varying degrees, by the network and the producers.



I hope the public can see through the transparent hype that this show is in any way altruistic.  I am permanently out of the 'reality tv' 'business' now.



I would leave me name, but fear being sued by people with more money and less morals than myself."

Can you please be more explicit?  How were the families and kids misled?

[Anonymous]

I so upset that this new brat camp series is coming to ABC. As a young filmmaker I'm currently working on a documentary about children who were killed in both boot camps and wilderness programs. I've had to read about what happened to Aaron Bacon, Ian August, Tony Haynes, and so on. I know that there are some good outside programs but to allow this show to go on air with out any warning about the dangers that could happen is horrible and it a slap in the face to all the children who paid the ultimate price. They all suffered through such painful, humiliating, deaths, and the families receive little justice. It's just sad, and for the first time I am ashamed to be a part of the entertainment industry.

[Antigen]

Wow! No, don't be ashamed of the industry. You are the industry! Do it w. integrity and be proud.

Boundary, n.  In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
-- Ambrose Bierce,  The Devil's Dictionary

[Anonymous]

How terrible. I will not watch this trash. These children will grow up to hate their parents. Don't people realize how fragile teenagers really are. "Why don't we abandon our children, with strangers, and people will watch us."

  This show smacks of rehabs in the eighties.

[Anonymous]

On 2005-07-06 18:13:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I so upset that this new brat camp series is coming to ABC. As a young filmmaker I'm currently working on a documentary about children who were killed in both boot camps and wilderness programs. I've had to read about what happened to Aaron Bacon, Ian August, Tony Haynes, and so on. I know that there are some good outside programs but to allow this show to go on air with out any warning about the dangers that could happen is horrible and it a slap in the face to all the children who paid the ultimate price. They all suffered through such painful, humiliating, deaths, and the families receive little justice. It's just sad, and for the first time I am ashamed to be a part of the entertainment industry."

Well write to the producers, tell them they are smucks. Don't they'll listen or even care.  This is about money.  

BTW .. will your documentary focus on the sub-cottage industry of independent referral agencies and ed cons?

Talk about shameless!  Some of these outfits make upwards of 200k a year in revenue collected from programs who pay FINDER'S FEES.

Selling kids into programs?  Only in America.

 :smokin:

[Antigen]

Yes, it is all about the money. Reality[sic] TV is so cheap and so morbidly appealing. So, if you're going to write something, write to and about the advertisers.

They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit.
--Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer

[Anonymous]

http://theedge.bostonherald.com/tvNews/ ... at=&page=1

Brats for sale: Exploitive `Camp' turns the cameras on troubled teens
By Mark A. Perigard
Sunday, July 10, 2005

Some people shouldn't be parents.
     Some people shouldn't play at being counselors.
     And one TV network should know better than to televise such exploitive claptrap as ``Brat Camp.''
     In this ABC reality series debuting Wednesday at 8 p.m. on WCVB (Ch. 5), nine teenagers are whisked away to SageWalk, a ``therapeutic wilderness camp'' in Oregon.
     The kids have been lied to about the nature of the trip and have no idea their parents have signed them away for a minimum of 40 days - and as much as 90 - to work on their issues - all for the benefit of the cameras and millions of viewers across the country.
     If adults want to go on ``Extreme Surreal Bachelor Fear Factor,'' that's their business. If they want to risk being made fools of in front of millions of people, they are entitled.
     The stars of ``Brat Camp'' are troubled kids, struggling with problems ranging from hyperactivity to drug use to out-of-control rages.
     There's Jada, 15, the Boston representative, an unskilled compulsive liar who fails at covering her cocaine habit. At home, her father laments that she spends all her money on drugs.
     At this point, I yell at the TV, ``Then stop giving her money.''
     SageWalk's simplistic philosophy is to break the kids physically and catch them as their emotional shells crack from the punishment. In the opener, the teenagers are forced to hike several miles while wearing 40-pound backpacks.
     By the end of the two-hour premiere, a 17-year-old girl has admitted she was sexually molested when she was 12.
     One of the SageWalk counselors proclaims she is ``cool.''
     How could anyone at ABC think that televising children's emotional traumas in alleged outdoor therapy sessions would qualify as entertainment? Any facility that would expose its vulnerable charges to the cameras has no business operating. At its best, ``Brat Camp'' is an extended prime-time infomercial targeting desperate parents, such as the depressed mom who complains, ``I feel like there's nobody out there to help us, and I'm tired of doing it all by myself.''
     SageWalk's chief operative, Tony Randazzo, narrates the drama. He insists on being called by his ``earth name,'' Glacier Mountain Wolf. The other counselors have equally stupid monikers ranging from Mother Raven to Flying Eagle. Randazzo tells us the kids will have the opportunity to earn their own earth names. Because that is so important, allow me to christen ``Brat Camp'' with its own earth name: Dung Heap.
     It's where this show belongs.

[Anonymous]

It's hard enough for any one to go through just normal therapy, let alone in the woods, exhausted, constantly under fear of punishment, all in front of a camera!  I really, really hope these kids come back and sue the shit out of ABC for exploiting them on national television.  

Now the whole world knows so-and-so had drug problems, and this girl was raped.  Does anyone care about these kids' futures?  They're going to go back into the real world (the REAL real world) and have to go back to "you look familiar"  "don't I know you from somewhere?"  "Oh I remember, you were the gothic druggie from brat camp that was raped as a kid!  Can I have your autograph?"

[Anonymous]

Yup.  Hope they get sued.  The people producing the show probably got themselves to sleep at night thinking they were doing these kids a favor by offering them this "opportunity".  The kids, being, well, kids, probably won't realize until later in life how exploited they were, and then they'll get mad.  For now they'll probably enjoy their 15 minutes.

As for the camp itself, I'm surprised they actually agreed to the show.  Maybe they thought it was more of a documentary...maybe they don't watch a lot of reality tv and didn't realize what they were getting into.  Maybe they just wanted the free publicity.  Maybe they just have big egos.

It's sad, any way you look at it.

[Antigen]

Not that I'm complaining. I'm glad people are showing a little outrage about this. But where the hell have you been for the last 20 years? Daytime talk has been making hay from just this thing (minus the hiking and camping). Every see Maury hook a 14yo girl up to a polygraph machine and ask her if she sucked a 35yo man's dick? Ever watch Sally Jesse send a 9yo off to the tender mercies of Charles Long II? Or Dr. Phil sending kids off to Provo Canyon?

This is nothing new. Just the continued slide of primetime infotainment toward the depths of the soap opera faux reality.

Harmlessly passing your time in the grasslands away;
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.
you better watchout,
there may be dogs about.
I've looked over Jordan, and have seen.
Things are not what they seem.


--Roger Waters 1977

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return undef() if /coercion/i;

[Anonymous]

On 2005-07-06 18:13:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I so upset that this new brat camp series is coming to ABC. As a young filmmaker I'm currently working on a documentary about children who were killed in both boot camps and wilderness programs. I've had to read about what happened to Aaron Bacon, Ian August, Tony Haynes, and so on. I know that there are some good outside programs but to allow this show to go on air with out any warning about the dangers that could happen is horrible and it a slap in the face to all the children who paid the ultimate price. They all suffered through such painful, humiliating, deaths, and the families receive little justice. It's just sad, and for the first time I am ashamed to be a part of the entertainment industry."

Don't forget about Roberto Reyes. Thayer Learning Center in Kidder, Missouri.

[tkhein]

DRASTIC ACTION ARE NEEDED IN DRASTIC TIMES.  Some kids, like one of the kids on this show that I know personal, required drastic actions.  If he would have died, I would have been sorry.  As he was living his life, he would have been dead soon anyway.

These kids kids act out because they feel safe doing so.  No one can touch them until they are 18 years old.  Then it may be too late.  in this case death is not the worst that can happen.

[Anonymous]

On 2005-07-13 06:16:00, tkhein wrote:

"DRASTIC ACTION ARE NEEDED IN DRASTIC TIMES.  Some kids, like one of the kids on this show that I know personal, required drastic actions.  If he would have died, I would have been sorry.  As he was living his life, he would have been dead soon anyway.



These kids kids act out because they feel safe doing so.  No one can touch them until they are 18 years old.  Then it may be too late.  in this case death is not the worst that can happen."

DRASTIC action is needed to inform directionless idiots like you that you just fell for the "deadinsaneorinjail" shit that "program" money-makers shoved down your throat.

You KNEW one of them kids??, how in the fuck do you live with yourself allowing a bunch of chumps to no less EXPLOIT this kid on TV let alone mind-rape him. Maybe we ought to do that to YOU and give you a taste of how the fuck it feels.

Quit acting like you're such a damned authority on young people, you're just a plain idiot who needs DRASTICALLY to be 'outed'.....

[Anonymous]

As he was living his life, he would have been dead soon anyway.

Wow! A fortune teller! How much do you charge per reading?  :roll:

Really, how would you know if that kid would be dead? When was he scheduled to die, exactly? All you know is that old bullshit "he'll be dead without the program" line. Which is a lie designed to scare parents into giving their children up and paying someone to lock them up and abuse them.

You are pathetic.