Though the bill lost some important provisions and funding to gain bipartisan support, this is still a real victory for those who care about kids.
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 06.23.2008 | Living
If the legislation to monitor the troubled teen industry is done wrong, promoters could tell parents that it is regulated, wrongly implying that this will prevent the abusive practices of the past.
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 06.19.2008 | Politics
Congressman George Miller recently introduced strong legislation to fight abuse in teen boot camps and other "tough love" residential facilities.
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 06.13.2008 | Politics
How can it be that there are unregulated private jails for teenagers in which they can receive corporal punishment that is prohibited even for convicted murderers in 21st century America?
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 05.19.2008 | Living
Two things I want to call attention to: first, last week, the House Education and Labor Committee approved historic legislation to begin to regulate...
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 05.05.2008 | Living
Despite thousands of cases of severe abuse, few attorneys have been willing to take on the unregulated "troubled teen" industry, and its practices that the government has labeled "torture."
Josh Ritter | Posted 05.01.2008 | Entertainment
The Stone Pony, with its long connection to Springsteen and the E Street Band, has become a mythic place to many. Tonight it's ours...
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 04.23.2008 | Living
Right now, many states regulate dog kennels more assiduously than they monitor "tough love" rehabilitation programs for teens.
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 04.04.2008 | Living
It's time to turn the page on this shameful chapter in the history of treating troubled children.
Pamela Redmond Satran | Posted 01.25.2008 | Living
Dear 14-Year-Old Son, I know you were pissed off at me this morning because I wouldn't write a note excusing your lateness. It seemed so easy to you: A stroke of my magic mommy pen and I'd save you from suffering through an hour-long detention for showing up at class two minutes late.
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 12.24.2007 | Living
No matter how many kids you order to be abused, there always seems to be a state regulator willing to give you one more chance.
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 12.21.2007 | Living
Here, however, poorly-trained staff inflicted serious and genuine emotional and physical pain on emotionally disordered children -- at the prompt of an anonymous caller, and outside an experimental setting!
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 11.07.2007 | Living
Oprah got to the heart of the matter: institutions in which children are fearful and silenced are institutions that will sooner or later, inevitably, become abusive.
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 10.23.2007 | Living
I think parents considering taking advice from the "Teen Whisperer" might want to know that he has been accused as well of being a "Teen Tormentor" and party to institutionalized child abuse.
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 10.17.2007 | Living
It was an incredible experience for me last week to sit in Congressional hearings and listen to two parents I'd featured in my book finally get a chance to tell their stories to people who might make a difference.
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 10.12.2007 | Living
How did we ever become so callous that we allow kids to be beaten in order to prove that they aren't making excuses to get out of exercising? When did we decide that death is an appropriate sentence for malingering?
New York Times | BETH LANDMAN | Posted 10.11.2007 | Living
WHEN Isabel Dassinger arrived at Townhouse Spa with its mother-of-pearl walls and roaring fireplace, she was anticipating an afternoon of coddling. Bu...
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 10.08.2007 | Living
These programs have done everything short of water-boarding kids with impunity for decades.
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 09.06.2007 | Politics
Romney has kicked troubled-teen titan Robert Lichfield to the curb. Lichfield's organization is being sued in a class action suit by over 100 plaintiffs. But national finance co-chair, Mel Sembler, remains.
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BARCELONA, Spain — Christian Bale swept into Barcelona on Wednesday night to attend a...
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A chimp in Japan escaped the sweltering confines of his cage, and a zookeeper with a tranquilizer gun...
WASHINGTON — Rescue legislation sailed through the House on Wednesday aimed at...
Maia Szalavitz | Posted 06.25.2008 | Politics