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For ABC's Primetime and Daytime shows, as well as our Movies and Specials and ABC Sports: Audience Relations Department at netaudr@abc.com



It can be short & sweet or long & detailed


To Whom It May Concern:

I find it very distasteful that your network is airing the series Brat Camp. The children deserve to have privacy and respect. This program publicly humiliates children and is abusive. Any therapist that calls their clients belittling names such as "brat" is in the wrong profession. Furthermore, the "treatment" practices used on these children are highly controversial. Many allegations of abuse have been substantiated at these types of facilities.

I will be contacting your advertisers and letting them know that I will be boycotting any company that airs commercials during this show. I will also be asking everyone I know to do the same.

[Anonymous]

Your show Brat Camp is exploiting children and promoting "boot camps" to troubled parents. I was in a "boot camp" when I was seventeen. It was very damaging. I have lost all respect for ABC. We are calling in a boycott of your advertisers. You are promoting a Babylon system. Congratulations on assisting the fall of Rome. There is truly no civil society left when children having a hard time are called "brats". You make me ill.

[Deborah]

Forward from an anonymous mental health professional:

Has anyone seen this show?
http://abc.go.com/primetime/bratcamp/
It's "reality show" about a wilderness therapy camp for troubled teens.

I only heard about it today, so wasn't able to watch the first episode.  I'm trying really hard to withhold judgment until I've watched it, but I can't conceive how any ethical professional could participate in such an egregious breach of confidentiality, or encourage a client to agree to it.  That the clients are minors, with limited ability to understand the ramifications of consenting to having their struggles broadcast to
the entire US, makes it worse.

The camp involved, SageWalk
(http://www.sagewalk.com/index.htm) looks on the
surface like a good program (the executive director is an MBA, which is a red flag, but they certainly say all the right things).  In any case, I'm preparing to write to ABC and the APA and OPA, and would encourage others to take a look (there are social workers and LPCs in the program) and act as your conscience prompts you.