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Congress Takes Aim at Abusive Teen Programs House Bill Would Curb
Worst Abuses
By Justin
Rood
April 24, 2008
 Beatings,
smotherings and more horrific details of life inside abusive teen
residential programs are in store for a panel of lawmakers Thursday
morning.
Jon Martin-Crawford says he spent
four years in such a facility, and can recall "staff punching
students in the face while restraining [them]," as well as staff
"wrapping kids up in duct tape and blankets" and not letting them
out "even to use the bathroom," according to testimony he prepared
for today's hearing before the House Education and Labor Committee.
Martin-Crawford is expected to say
he saw other young residents at the Family Foundation School of
Hancock, N.Y., "forced to eat food they were allergic to, and [made]
to keep eating even if vomiting was a result."
Jeff Brain, the school's head of
external relations, said in an e-mail Wednesday that in the four
years he has been at the school, "none of the allegations. . . have
occurred," and that he "would not work at a program which engaged in
such practices."
The practice of using blankets to
restrain students in danger of harming themselves or others, he
wrote, "was replaced many years ago."
Following up on a similar hearing
last year, panel chairman George Miller, D-Calif., asked
congressional investigators to dig deeper into cases of children who
alleged mistreatment or who died in teen "boot camps," wilderness
programs and other residential facilities, and take a critical look
at how the programs marketed themselves.
More than 20,000 American youth are
believed to be enrolled in such programs, which often cater to
children with psychological illness, drug or alcohol addiction or
other issues. The programs operate under a patchwork of state
regulations; no federal law expressly governs how such facilities
are run.
Miller is expected to introduce
legislation at tomorrow's hearing which would tighten oversight of
teen residential programs. It would also explicitly prohibit certain
types of mistreatment which have been alleged at programs around the
country: withholding of food, water, shelter or medical care;
unreasonably barring access to a telephone; or employing staff who
are not trained to understand what constitutes child abuse and
neglect.
Also at the hearing, GAO
investigators are expected to reveal the results of an undercover
probe of several referral services and programs, which turned up
evidence of deceptive marketing practices, among other things.
One referral agency recommended the
same boot camp in Missouri for three different fictitious children
with very different problems, the GAO found. It turned out that the
woman who owned the referral service was married to the man who ran
the boot camp, GAO said though that was never disclosed to
callers.
One referral service coached a GAO
investigator posing as a father about how to present the option of
residential treatment care to his reluctant wife: call the program a
"college prep boarding school that focuses on the emotional needs of
a teenager." [Listen to the call]
"If she thinks. . . you want to
send her daughter to a place where there are drug addicts and people
that are all screwed up, she will look at you and say no way," the
counselor told him, dispensing what the GAO would later judge to be
"questionable ethical advice."
In another call, a referrer told a
GAO investigator posing as a parent that a program he recommended
treated children's psychological issues by feeding them whole
grains, restricting their sugar and making sure they got lots of
exercise and rest. [Listen to the call]
"We find that these kind of issues
go away," the referrer said. "The bipolar, the depression, those
kinds of things. They just go away after awhile."
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