What We Lost When We Lost Rocky -- Paper First Exposed Teen Torture

When people talk in the abstract about what we lose when we lose newspapers, it's often hard to drum up much concern. Yeah, people are losing their jobs--that's what happened to the buggy makers when the car took over. Yeah, news is important--but hey, we've got the web now. And the MSM blew it on Iraq, so who needs them anyway? We've got twitter.

Just last week, Denver lost the Rocky Mountain News and before its website disappears, I wanted to share an example of just how much newspapers matter.

This series--Desperate Measures--was the first to comprehensively take on the multi-million teen abuse empire variously known as WWASP, WWASPS and Teen Help. Please take the time to read it--once you start, it's hard to turn away. (And sadly, though WWASP has lost a few rounds lately, it's still operating).

Expensive to conduct, extensive, well-written and well-reported, this journalism helped inspire a generation of activists, as well as my book, Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, which is the first book length investigation of the billion dollar business.

In the series, Pulitzer-prize winner Lou Kilzer and photographer Dennis Schroeder make abundantly clear that the programs affiliated with WWASP are harsh, abusive and wildly popular--and they get a top WWASP official to admit that their staff is untrained and its methods completely untested:

"These people are basically a bunch of untrained people who work for this organization," Ken Kay told the Denver Rocky Mountain News in an interview before he rejoined Teen Help as a vice president. "So they don't have credentials of any kind. ...

"We could be leading these kids to long-term problems that we don't have a clue about because we're not going about it in the proper way. ...

"How in the hell can you call yourself a behavior modification program -- and that's one of the ways it's marketed -- when nobody has the expertise to determine: Is this good, is this bad?"

Kilzer shows that WWASP's contract with parents allows the programs to "use handcuffs, mechanical restraints, electrical disabler, Mace or pepper spray in order to restrain the student." Parents could not sue the program for "liability or damages resulting from restraint procedures."

In one of the earlier demonstrations of the power of multimedia, the series includes a haunting video of a child sobbing that he wants to come home, but insisting--as though brainwashed--that he needs to stay in WWASP's program.

The series shows how--in facilities located both inside the U.S. and in countries like Jamaica, Mexico, Samoa and the Czech Republic-- WWASP staff beat, intimidated, humiliated, sexually abused and in some cases tortured teenagers.

In case after case, officials and staff present sometimes bizarre excuses for what are clearly systemic abuses. One claimed a program in Mexico was shut down because the police thought it was a 'house of ill-repute'.

As a result of hard-hitting journalism like this, legislation just passed the House for the first time in the new Congress last week. It bans the use of any technique "designed to degrade or humiliate" children and allows them access to a hotline to report abuses at these facilities. The bill was championed by Education and Labor Committee Chair George Miller (D-CA) and work is underway to introduce it in the Senate.

Websites cannot afford to do investigations like this--bloggers are not paid and reporters are hurried to keep up with one breaking news story after another. Authors cannot investigate every incident without back-up. The loss of newspapers and the investigations they do is a tragedy and it puts us all at risk. Jefferson said he'd rather see a country without government than one without newspapers--it looks like his nightmare is coming true.

Program note: My other book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook, co-written with Bruce Perry, MD, PhD, the child psychiatrist in question, is featured on Oprah today!!!

Comments

[elo]

At the same time, if the readership of RMN was falling, doesn't that suggest that it might Not be the best place to break this sort of story or to raise awareness? Or that it is no longer that place, even if it may have been when the story was printed?

I think there will still be a place for large news organizations, paper or otherwise, precisely because, as you mentioned, a lot of research and reporting takes a team, or financing, that a one-person operation just can't muster. But I think there will be fewer newspapers--and they will have to become more specialized and really demonstrate what they have to offer that free online news sources don't. (And if they Do offer something unique that people want, they be giving it away for free.)
A piece on a marketing blog commented on the closing of The Rocky Mountain News and the decline of the newspaper industry in general, saying that newspapers never really got marketing after the age of penny papers, and that as they were transformed into institutions, they just began to think of themselves as indispensable. http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2009/03/01/brand-winners-and-losers-kindle-and-the-rocky-mountain-news.aspx

A recent WSJ Op-Ed by the Publisher of the WSJ gets at the question of: what can we provide that people will want to pay for? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123534987719744781.html

[elo]

If the readership of RMN was falling, doesn't that suggest that it might Not be the best place to break this sort of story or to raise awareness? And/or that it is no longer that place, even if it may have been when the story was printed?

I think there will still be a place for large news organizations, paper or otherwise, precisely because, as you mentioned, a lot of research and reporting takes a team, or financing, that a one-person operation just can't muster. But I think there will be fewer newspapers--and they will have to become more specialized and really demonstrate what they have to offer that free online news sources don't.
A piece on a marketing and branding blog commented on the closing of The Rocky Mountain News and the decline of the newspaper industry in general, saying that newspapers never really got marketing after the age of penny papers, and that as they were transformed into institutions, they just began to think of themselves as indispensable. (Full post.)

A recent WSJ Op-Ed by the Publisher of the WSJ actually gets at the question of: what service can we provide that people will want enough to pay for?

[Guitarsandmore]

I’ve read B.F. Skinner’s books; behavior modification is never torture, it’s positive reinforcement for good behavior. Negative reinforcement for bad behavior is ignoring the person, not punishment.

You know teenage years are very difficult for teenagers and they are going to try a cigarette and drink a beer. That’s normal and shouldn’t be punished. Shipping a kid off because you don’t like they’re behavior is just giving up.

I noticed there is not one word in this whole entire story about church, and trying to take the kids to church to learn some values. I don’t see anything in here about the dad being allowed to come in and help or anyone else for that matter.

This mother was clearly overwhelmed with being a parent but rather than trying to bond with her kids and reaching out for help she pushed her kids away. Of course it didn’t help that she was working full time and a single mom. It really does take two to raise some kids. Hell, it takes a village!