Congress is finally looking into the "troubled teen" industry and the deaths, human rights abuses and other problems that have occurred in teen "boot camps" "wilderness programs" and other "tough love" residential settings. In many states, these institutions are less regulated than dog kennels and nail salons.
On Wednesday, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, will hold a full committee investigative hearing and present results from a Government Accountability Office report that he commissioned. The investigation promises to be revealing-- and may be highly unfavorable to industry claims that it can regulate itself.
My book, Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead, 2006), was the first to expose systematic problems in the industry and the complete lack of regulatory oversight on programs that are essentially private jails for kids. The book helped spur Miller's push for legislation.
As it stands now, there is more federal regulation protecting mule deer than there is preserving the rights of children in these institutions. Anyone can open one-- there are no qualifications required, nor criminal background checks. Some owners have even made deals with prosecutors and regulators to stay away from their facilities, due to accusations of sexual and other kinds of child abuse. But they were not made to leave the industry!
And no legal authority is required to inspect these facilities or see to it that kids are well-treated in them.
Teens placed in these settings do not have any right to appeal their confinement: they may be held without contact with the outside world until they turn 18.
Moreover, in the programs, they are often subject to "therapies" that many consider torturous: food deprivation, sleep deprivation, total isolation, punitive restraint and constant emotional and even sexual humiliation. When such tactics are used on suspected terrorists, there is a human rights outcry-- but these programs have done everything short of water-boarding kids with impunity for decades.
For example, one girl was made to dress as a prostitute, wearing a nametag that said "Shameful Slut." "Slut, 25 cents" was written on her skin in lipstick. Boys had to yell "slut" and "ho" and "bitch" at her. Others were made to wear diapers and boys were dressed in drag and called "faggot." In another program, a girl was gagged with Kotex; another was made to clean toilets with her bare hands. Some children had to use their toothbrushes first to scrub the floors, then their teeth.
That's not to mention the dozens of gruesome deaths that have occurred because "tough love" ideology does not accept the idea that teens ever have legitimate medical complaints. One boy lost control of his urine and bowels as he began to die-- and was humiliated for it by program staff, saying he was doing it deliberately. Another, also accused of faking, had two and a half quarts of pus in his chest when he was autopsied.
Right now, of course, seven boot camp guards and a nurse in Florida are on trial for manslaughter in another death-- that of a 14-year-old boy who couldn't complete required exercises and was beaten and forced to inhale ammonia to prove he wasn't faking. He died proving it.
I hope that these hearings will bring national attention to this issue. Hundreds of thousands of teens have been sent over the last 30 years-- and the industry continues to grow. There is no proof that its "product" helps anyone-- and a great deal of research suggesting that the programs may be causing significant harm.
We don't allow amateurs to diagnose and treat physical illnesses-- so why are we letting untrained people have total control, with no checks and balances, over vulnerable teens who have no way of contesting their confinement? I will have more after the hearings.
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This girl was placed in the program and within a week her behavior became erratic. She complained of headaches and dizziness. Rather than take her complaints seriously she was accused of malingering and 'antisocial' behavior. At one point she was put into a hole in the ground and chanted over by the adults and some of the 'senior' kids. She was told the headaches, nausea and vomiting were her body's reaction to the internal battle going on between what she was learning and who she had been.
She was finally pulled from the program and taken to a physician. Within a year she was dead. A tumor the size of an orange crushed her brain. Whether or not the tumor would have been operable if diagnosed six months earlier when she first complained of the headaches is unknown. What is known is that she had neither the comfort of pain management or her family during much of its growth.
The program was finally shut down SIX MONTHS after my husband's younger sisters were removed and placed with other family due to "neglect and gross emotional and mental abuses." A judge had to rule that DSS had standing as there were no rules on the books about programs such as theirs.
My inlaws still claim to have cured my husband of sociopathy. They still apply to a different state to treat foster kids. The DSS records and the lawsuit for wrongful death are all sealed and won't be discovered if their application is taken seriously. My husband, his sisters and former clients all pray that cheap doesn't win out over effective.
there are plenty of trained pros (and low cost ones) for troubled kids.
parents should care for their kids:not sweep them under the rug.
These MOTHERF*CKIN CAMPS are killing queer youths....their parents send to "wash-away-the-gay"
lock and load
It should come as no surprise that he wants to double the size of Guantanamo. The real question is would he keep Blackwater in Iraq or bring them back here to get those pesky kids in line?
Also interesting that the same religious groups who adamantly proclaim abortion to be murder, seem to have no problem with torturing troubled teens. Fetuses are people, teenagers are not.
Many of these camps seem to have close ties with fundy/nutcase religious groups that governments don't want to anger, so the law looks the other way.
Yes, parents have got to be bonkers to do this to their children, but no parent has the right to authorize anyone else to do these things to helpless minors. Any such "authorization" is illegal and therefore does not absolve the institutions.
Can you actually document "dozens" of deaths? Just wondering.
Accepting that there are serious problems, the responsibility for enacting and enforcing regulations resides at the state level. And speaking of responsibility ...
"why are we letting untrained people have total control"
By "we", you mean the parents who actually send their kids to these places, right? You know: the ones who should be calling for regulations before they ever send their kids to camp in the first place; the ones who should, but probably don't, read the camp contract in its entirety before signing it; the ones who might want to look inward at their own parenting skills (or lack thereof) and consider making improvements WITH their child, instead of deciding that it's all the kids' fault and shipping off the problem rather than fixing it themselves. It may be the job of gov't (STATE gov't) to regulate these camps, but the greater responsibility is that of the parents to raise their kids themselves and be less willing to pawn them off on third-parties. And, if the parents really can't take care of the problem on their own, do they take the therapy and medication route first or do the try the scared straight approach first?
The lack of regulation doesn't make it the government's fault that these (some maybe lazy, some maybe bad) parents send their kids to these places.
that being said, the government has, and further, SHOULD have, the authority to make sure that these children's rights are protected, even if, or even especially if, their parents could care less.
but leave it to a right winger to think that every problem could be solved by employing the model of the ownership of private property.