Teen Tough Love Rehab: Scam, Torture, and Murder

[nancylebov]

Help at Any Cost by Maia Szalavitz covers various tough love residential and boot camp programs that teens get put into. They're incredibly destructive in the short and long terms, and sometimes lead to deaths from illness and deprivation. They're also very expensive for the parents and profitable for those who run them.

Here's a link to a podcast/video interview with Szalavitz.

The theory behind tough love programs is that teens are a grave risk from the use of drugs and such and that all that's wrong with those teens is insufficient discipline. Parents don't need to modify their behavior to improve the relationship--the teenager just needs to be hammered on enough to behave better and love their parents. Any complaints the teenager might have about the program is just manipulation to get out of it.

At those programs, insufficient food and sleep are routine, and extended immobility and exercise to collapse are typical punishments. There are high incentives for confession of misdeeds, including invented misdeeds, since ordinary lives aren't dramatic enough. The teenagers are blamed for everything which has happened to them. Arbitrary punishments are portrayed as natural consequences. Since complaints and failure to follow orders are viewed as manipulation and lies, necessary medical care is generally withheld.

This is what led to the death of a boy at a bootcamp. He couldn't keep up, and he couldn't manage to start a fire with a bow. He was deprived of blankets, clothing, food and access to group fires. His death from severe peritonitus took about two weeks at that camp.

Even when there isn't that sort of diaster, the psychological effects, starting with the teens effectively being kidnapped, and then being psychologically and physically abused for years are apt to be very serious.

For those of us with some vestigial patriotism, it's embarrassing to see the Samoan and Phillipine governments taking better care of US teenagers than their own government and parents have.

These programs cost about as much per year as an Ivy League education. It's common for them to pressure parents into putting siblings into the program by threaten to throw the first teen out (which is claimed to be a guarantee of a homeless death) if the siblings aren't enrolled.

I recommend this book--in addition to pointing out a major outrage, it's clearly written and sensible and tracks implications of the tough love philosophy very nicely. For example, if harshness is good for people, then ordinary decency is doing them no favor.

As nearly as I can figure it, cruelty is a primary motivation for a significant proportion of people, and a much larger proportion doesn't want to put a lot of work into cruelty but are pleased enough for it to happen.

What I mean by primary motivation is that like eating and drinking and music, cruelty doesn't need to be motivated by money or power or security or comfort or sex or any of the other things people like. Some people do it with tremendous gusto and inventiveness for its own sake. Social pressure and laws can limit cruelty, but don't begin to make it go away.

This means that being defined as a low-status person is very dangerous, and in my opinion, all teenagers in the US are defined as low-status people, regardless of the status of their parents.

A 1979 Supreme Court decision (Parnham v. J.R.) affirmed the legality of programs like Straight's to have absolute control over teens with their parents' consent. It upheld the rights of parents to send children to whatever private lockdown residential facilities they believe to be best, just as they are allowed to make schooling and medical decisions. The assumption is that parents won't consent to abusive care. And teens can be commmitted without a court hearing if a "neutral fact finder" (who can be a facility employee at an unlicenced program!) believes such restrictive care is needed. Teens have no right to appeal their commitment, nor does a teen's institutionalization need to be justified by a danger to self or others, as is necessary for an adult.

The section at the end of the book on the sorts of questions parents ought to ask leads me to the question of what anti-chump training would look like. Strong encouragement to get your information from more than one source, certainly--and that includes writing off any program which tells you not to listen to anything the teenager says. Mistrust anyone who says that what they're doing can't possibly go wrong, so they don't need emergency fallbacks.

Comments

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Don't let John Reid see that. You'll be giving him ideas.

[halimede.livejournal.com]

What I mean by primary motivation is that like eating and drinking and music, cruelty doesn't need to be motivated by money or power or security or comfort or sex or any of the other things people like.

I've talked to a number of ex-bullies who all said things along the lines of 'I just felt like if I got in there first, no-one could get to me', or 'if I picked on smaller kids, I hoped the bigger kids wouldn't pick on me (and even though they did, anyway)' etc. Even if it looks like there's no secondary gain from an outsiders point of view, there usually is in the mind of the perpetrator. It's enough if people think and/or feel more powerful and/or secure when they act that way.

Same thing with bystanders, as soon as they see someone picking on someone else, the first impulse is to make sure that *somehow* they're seen to be on the side of the bully, not the victim. Because that's the only way they think they know of avoiding the same fate.

I'm not saying that those are excusable responses, BTW. Just that there *is* a very practical reward for idle, complicated, useless cruelty. The avoidance of a feeling of powerlessness by feeling powerful over someone else for a while.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks for doing the asking. I wonder why bullying for self-protecton seems like such a plausible strategy.

It doesn't cover the case of bullying by high-status people, nor does it seem to cover the tough love rehabs. The folks running them skimped on food, housing, medical care, and education. They probably could have skimped on the abuse, too, but they didn't.

I knew one

[fabricdragon.livejournal.com]

I knew a girl who got dumped in one of those. Lets review the facts, shall we?

Parents allowed her to work at a "witch store" despite apparently being anti-witchcraft. They never said anything to the owners until after she was sent away. (I know, I was one of the owners)
Parents were "homeschooling" her, which apparently left her with loads of unsupervised time.
She was dating a much older boy, whom the parents said nothing about.
She had multiple peircings, which the parents did nothing about.

Teen had serious medical issues.
Teen had no supervision most of the day.
Teen had reliable work, and was reliable at work.
Teen had issues with attention span, and had caused accidents through carelessness.

The girl was informed they were going to go to Florida on vacation, and was driven to a religious gulag and left there. No contact allowed with anyone, no letters, no nothing. The idea was to get her "off drugs" and back into good Christian life,and away from that "wicca" thing. The parents claimed she was dealing and using hard core drugs. Somehow they never told the store owners that they objected to the teen working there...and while I believe she might have been using marijuana, she had NONE of the symptoms of a hard core user, or dealer.

The father came into the store ranting and raving about how he "didnt blame us" for being witches, but we were evil and needed to be saved. This after we called up to get our key back, you see she had a key to the door.. so yeah, sure.. real serious drug problem...the girl had a key to the door and knew where the cash was.

She was out after a year when the parents had a fight with the director, but the one contact I had with her since, she sounded pretty zoned. Very flat affect, very atonal delivery, parroted a lot of phrases....

Re: I knew one

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. The comments about the book at amazon were mostly favorable, but there were a couple attacking the book because it had little but "old stories". Looks like the same thing is still going on.

Re: I knew one

[fabricdragon.livejournal.com]

well that was within the last two years, and the "school" is still there. Oh, and apparently she managed to escape and got caught by the police "tresspassing" on adjoining property, and was promptly returned to the camp.
Yes its still going on. They were going to keep here there until she turned 18, according to her sister (who wasnt allowed to contact her) and the rantings of her father. The only reason she got out early is because her father had some kind of fight with the director, and at least part of that was over money...

I've found your LJ (was: Re: I knew one)

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

I was one of the favorable commenters on Amazon. Years ago, anend a discussion of library censorship, I wrote on Usenet (I think on rec.arts.sf.written) that I thought children were human beings, and you said that you had been beginning to think that everyone on the group had joined the Adult Conspiracy. I liked that. (Well, not that the rest of them apparently had.)

I discovered your blog when you left a comment on libertarianhawk's LJ. I plan to add you to my Friends List, and maybe we'll meet again at a con.

Regards, Nicholas

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

The frustrating thing about the boot camps is that they originally stem from a valid concept, and have been twisted by people who don't get it and don't want to bother understanding. (Much like HeadStart in that way, although HeadStart has largely been rendered simply useless, whereas the teen boot camps have been rendered actually harmful.)

The original premise of the boot camps was more like Outward Bound than a punishment center. They were places where kids could go to learn that they were not inherently fuckups -- that they were able to do things they didn't think they could, earn leadership roles, learn self-confidence and self-esteem, and give themselves a mental image of themselves which they might feel worth preserving by their behavior when they get home. It's not designed for kids who are in massive trouble, or who are using drugs to self-medicate from mental illness or anything like that, but it can really help a kid whose surroundings have conspired all his life to convince him that there's no point in trying to do better.

The problem with this sort of thing, of course, is that it takes well trained counselors and careful handling. It's much easier to pervert the whole concept and make it a place kids get abused into temporarily behaving.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Here's what Szalavitz has to say about wilderness/survival programs:

...while I believe that a wilderness challenge can be incredibly healng for the right child at the right time, the same program might be unmitigated torture for another child. Coerced survival training, even at its gentlest, has many of the same problems as teen military-style boot camps. As with those programs, you may bring home a more arrogant child who now knows he can survive almost anything, is in better physical shape than before, and is still furious with you and determined to do what he wants.

My main problem with recommending even the wilderness programs witht he best reputations is what happened to Aaron Bacon [the death I described in my article] and in several of the other wilderness deaths. The Bacons did everything a parent is supposed to do: asked questions, met the program's owners, were referred by a therapist. And yet they were still deeived, being told their son would receive tender loving care, when in fact he was starved and allowed to die a hideous death.

She says that a voluntary program which is for normal kids who want a challenge in the outdoors is quite possibly ok, but there isn't evidence that they do much good. The dangers of programs in dangerous environments which assume that complaints are malingering (obviously a more likely belief in coercive programs) are just too serious.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I understand her, but I disagree based on the studies we looked at in my education classes (at a school definitely not known for its draconian views on education; they tended to progressive and non-punitive models). A more moderate perspective might say that they are good for certain very specific types of problems, but that they (like the boot camps) tend to be used -- and marketed -- indiscriminately to parents of children with any and all types of problems, with the result that their failure rate skyrockets. Doesn't mean they're useless, or that they're only for normal children who enter voluntarily, only that they address one highly specific kind of issue and aren't good at others.

[src.livejournal.com]

"The theory behind tough love programs is that ... all that's wrong with those teens is insufficient discipline. ... IAt those programs, insufficient food and sleep are routine, and extended immobility and exercise to collapse are typical punishments. There are high incentives for confession of misdeeds, including invented misdeeds, since ordinary lives aren't dramatic enough. "

Dear G-d, I hate how prophetic John Brunner can be.

"... I work for Anti-Trauma, Inc, you see. Very sensibly, the moment Gail's parents detected signs of deviant behavior in her, they signed her pu for a full course of treatment. ... it was all a setup, naturally. We dosed her with scotophobin and shut her in a dark room, to negate the womb-retreat impulse, gave her a phallic weapon to degrade residual sexual envy, and turned an anonymous companion loose in there with her. When she struck out, we turned up the lights to show her mother's body lying all bloody on the floor, and then we gave her the chance to run like hell. With me trailing her, of course. Wouldn't have wanted her to come to any harm."

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I've read that, but I'm not sure which story it's from. _The Jagged Orbit_?

[src.livejournal.com]

Shockwave Rider.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Where do the Samoan and Phillipine governments come in? Have they been stepping in to regulate conditions in the camps?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I don't know about regulation, but they have stepped in to get teenagers out of camps in those countries. I've returned the book to the library and I don't remember the details.