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Denver Rocky Mountain News – July 2000

Desperate Measures

FOUNDER'S ESTATE
Teen Help founder Robert Lichfield lives in this ramling estate in the scenic canyon country near St. George, Utah. In less than a decade, Lichfield has built Teen Help from a single behavior modification facility to a network of programs that bring in annual revenues
estimated at more than $30 million.

On foreign soil U.S. laws do not govern the care American teens receive in overseas behavior modification compounds.

"The U.S. government is definitely aware that these camps exist, but they are run by private companies, and these private companies have agreements with the parents," said Rebekah Drame, a spokeswoman for the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs. "The country where the facility is located is solely responsible for regulating these private entities since it has permitted the facility to operate within its jurisdiction and is therefore subject to its laws.

"When aware of the existence of such facilities, U.S. consular officials conduct periodic site visits, sometimes accompanied by host country officials, to monitor the general well-being of the U.S. citizen enrollees ... U.S. consular officials are not qualified to determine whether the programs offered by the facilities are of therapeutic benefit to the minors involved."

The official notified the Samoan health minister and "the situation did improve after that time," she said. She said State Department officials also have visited Teen Help facilities in Jamaica, Mexico and the Czech Republic.

Deciding what rights teens have -- even in the United States -- is complicated further when they come from broken families.

Many of the challenges to Teen Help referrals -- including the case of Eric Stone, the boy in the video made at Spring Creek Lodge in Montana -- have involved divorced couples fighting over what's best for their child.

Donna Burke, a Houston real estate agent who is suing Teen Help, said she was angry when her ex-husband sent her two sons, 16 and 14, to Tranquility Bay in Jamaica without her knowledge or approval. But Burke, who has been in a custody battle with her ex-husband, said she initially went along, thinking it might be the right thing.

"I didn't know they were going to alter their minds and make little robots out of them," she said.

Teen Help's Contract

Glossy Teen Help brochures and Web pages tout the beautiful natural surroundings at the behavior modification camps. Blue skies, sparkling beaches, waterfalls and glacier-fed lakes adorn promotional material.

"The boys experience a mixture of the great Southwest, incredible fly-fishing and peaceful solitude of this high mountain red rock desert," reads one description of Red Rock Academy near St. George, Utah.

But the contract parents sign with the company makes clear that life for their teen-agers in a distant behavior modification compound likely will be far less fun than summer camp.

For example, the contract for Paradise Cove in Western Samoa requires parents to hold Teen Help harmless for false advertising, for any medical complication caused by staff mistakes, for "bites, sores, infections, slow-healing cuts," and for all illegal or criminal acts committed against their child by staff members "outside the scope of their employment."

The Western Samoa contract specifies that "the School/Program services do not include any formal individual therapy sessions." Such sessions can be arranged for an additional $75 an hour.

Parents are told that the "teachers/tutors working with the students do not need or may not necessarily have U.S. credentials or equivalent."

Other points in the contract:

Parents cannot visit or call their teens until the youths complete two intense seminars. That usually means a wait of 60 to 120 days before the first phone call. Teens on medication must administer it themselves "under the general supervision of a nonmedical staff member."

"The students' living arrangements are primitive;" "water for cleaning or bathing comes from nearby springs or rivers and isn't heated;" and "food in Samoa is basic."

If any of these factors results in injury or illness, the program cannot be blamed.

Teen Help can hold students in isolation. "During the observation status period, the student diet is also adjusted since the student (as a safety precaution) is not allowed to use forks or butter knives during the observation status period."

A parent with a grievance can still be heard in court -- but not in America, according to the contract.

In capital letters, the parents are told: "SPONSORS AGREE TO BE SUBJECT TO JURISDICTION OF THE COURTS OF THE INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC OF WESTERN SAMOA IN ANY DISPUTE BETWEEN THE PARTIES TO THIS AGREEMENT."

Saros, director of the county agency in Columbus, Ohio, that intervened on behalf of Justin Goen, said he had major concerns about the contract parents sign with Teen Help.

"It was a document that raises many, many concerns, because it allows mechanical restraints of children for unlimited periods of time," he said. "It completely releases the organization from any liability. It is an amazing document."

A contract last year authorized Teen Help "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."

Such specific provisions have been removed from the contract, which now authorizes "school/program personnel to physically restrain, control and detain the student."

Thomas Burton, a California attorney who has filed three lawsuits against Teen Help in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, says the contract is "totally unenforceable" in part because it is "unconscionable." "I've never taken any of the contracts seriously," he said.

Federal judges in Salt Lake City have yet to decide the issue of jurisdiction or the enforceability of Teen Help contracts.

The men behind Teen Help

Teen Help was started by Lichfield, 45, a southern Utah businessman who lives on an estate in the spectacular canyon country near St. George. The estate features private trout ponds and a gymnasium.

Lichfield got his start in behavior modification two decades ago when he worked at Provo Canyon School in Provo, Utah. Provo Canyon is a strict punishment-and-rewards program for kids having problems getting along with their parents.
Robert Lichfield
Teen Help Founder

In the late 1980s, Lichfield attended encounter-group sessions organized by David Gilcrease. Gilcrease had been a trainer from 1974 to 1981 for LifeSpring, a company that perfected a form of encounter sessions called "large group awareness training."

Some psychologists call it "coercive persuasion." In December 1990, Lichfield incorporated a residential treatment center called Cross Creek Manor in La Verkin. He obtained a Utah state license to run it.
David Gilcrease
Developed Seminars

In 1993 Lichfield contracted to run Brightway Adolescent Hospital in nearby St. George. It became the receiving center for youths entering the Teen Help network.

About the same time, Lichfield developed the idea of placing teens in a compound in Western Samoa.

Karr Farnsworth
Teen Help Official

Brent Facer
Lichfield Associate

Ken Kay
WWASP President

Teen Help's first foreign venture was Paradise Cove in the Pacific island nation. Kids would be taken from their homes by an escort service, sometimes by one run by Lichfield's brother, Narvin.

TIMEOUT ROOMS

Girls at Cross Creek Manor who don't cooperate spend time in these
isolation rooms. Cross Creek is licensed by the state as a residential
treatment center and has therapists on staff.

The teens would be sent to Brightway for a quick psychological assessment, then put on a plane to the South Pacific.

Lichfield hired Gilcrease to create the behavior modification programs needed to all but guarantee parents changes in their defiant teens.

Gilcrease crafted a series of seminars called TASKS (Teen Accountability, Self-esteem, Keys to Success). He also created companion seminars for parents.

Some participants say they include all-powerful "facilitators" who use peer pressure, confessions, sleep deprivation, fear, anger, loneliness and self-criticism as tools to modify behavior. Other participants say the sessions were greatly revealing.

Lichfield, Gilcrease and Facer acknowledge that they have little use for formal psychology.

"We don't deal with emotional disorders," Gilcrease said. "We are not psychologists. We do not deal in that realm. I don't need to detect emotional disorders when I'm talking about the value of keeping your word."

"I think I'm talented working with youth, but I don't have a college degree in that area," Lichfield told Dateline NBC. "... I personally don't believe it's necessary."

Facer said training in adolescent psychology isn't necessary.

"Automakers learned a long time ago that if the right system is engineered, everyone who works on the assembly line is not required to be an engineer themselves," he said. "These (Teen Help) programs have been carefully engineered by many professionals in the field, who not only have extensive educational backgrounds but also have scores of years of experience." ... The programs are continually monitored on a daily basis to insure that the designed outline is being followed."

Teen Help's corporate structure changed in 1997 when the organization formed a series of limited liability companies and limited partnerships. Kay earlier this year said that Lichfield remains the controlling power. But Lichfield said, "I no longer own, control or direct any of the programs."

Facer said he and Lichfield "only consult with the directors of the programs at their request."

TEEN HELP HEADQUARTERS

The World Wide Association of Specialty Programs,
a Teen Help umbrella group, is headquartered in
this modest building in La Verkin, Utah.

Gilcrease crafted a series of seminars called TASKS (Teen Accountability, Self-esteem, Keys to Success). He also created companion seminars for parents.

Lichfield, Gilcrease and Facer acknowledge that they have little use for formal psychology.

"I think I'm talented working with youth, but I don't have a college degree in that area," Lichfield told Dateline NBC. "... I personally don't believe it's necessary."

Midnight 'escorts'

For many adolescents, the introduction to Teen Help comes in the middle of the night, when they are forcibly removed from their homes. At their parents' invitation, beefy employees of an "escort company" grab the youths and drive them to temporary processing facilities, including one near company headquarters in La Verkin, Utah.

From there, the 12- to 17-year-olds are transported to rustic compounds with idyllic names such as Paradise Cove, Tranquility Bay and Spring Creek Lodge.

But these teens enjoy no vacation. Minutes after they arrive, they begin the Teen Help behavior modification program.

They are cut off for months from speaking with their parents or anyone else in the outside world. Phone calls and visits generally are allowed only after the first two to four months.

New arrivals begin at "Level 1," the lowest of six on the Teen Help ladder. Level 1 teens get little privacy. "Buddies" -- upper-level youths -- often watch their every move, day or night, asleep or awake.

Buddies also administer "consequences" to teens who don't follow the rules. These penalties range from in-your-face dressing-downs to hours in solitary confinement and, some teens allege, to being hogtied. The company says it uses restraints only as a last resort.

Teens earn their way out of Level 1 and into a less-intrusive existence in the higher levels by completing a battery of multiday seminars and showing positive attitudes. Some teens who reach the upper levels become unpaid staff members, supervising -- and disciplining -- new kids.

A News reporter and photographer who visited Spring Creek Lodge in Montana saw Teen Help's philosophy in action. Level 1 teens walked silently between buildings in a tightly formed line. As the teens passed the visitors, they bowed their heads, saying "excuse me, excuse me."

At Cross Creek Manor in Utah, as a group of teens formed a circle for a discussion, another teen, ostracized for not participating, sat facing the wall.

Teen Help's system works for some youths, but others who don't get with the program have described dire circumstances.

Stanley Goold, a California teen-ager who lived at Paradise Cove in Western Samoa last year, charges in a lawsuit that he was subjected to "punching, being kicked, thrown and choked, hogtied and put in an isolation box."

A suit by another California teen and one from Nevada described Paradise Cove as "one of many closed and secret cult centers operated by the defendants where adolescents are impounded, tortured, berated, brainwashed and otherwise abused. ... Each plaintiff was subjected to cruel, unusual and abominable sexual abuse by his 'overseers,' the untrained Samoan staff at Paradise Cove." Teen Help has denied the allegations in the suits, which are pending. The organization said the suits are frivolous and the product of unethical lawyers or disputes between divorced parents.

"Some of those (lawsuits) go to show that anybody can sue anybody," Kay said.

"In every single case that has been reviewed in court, the decision has always been in the program's favor," Facer said.

High stress

Teen Help is part of a growing American industry of private detention and behavior modification programs for children who typically have been convicted of no crimes but whose parents have turned to desperate measures to control them.

The number of "tough love" facilities run for teens by American companies and churches is nearing 2,000, according to Alexia Parks, a Boulder businesswoman crusading against religious and secular behavior modification compounds for teens.

Alcohol, drugs, sex, ditching school, belligerence, staying away from home for days at a time, running with a bad crowd -- all are difficult teen behaviors confronting parents today.

In the past several years, programs for troubled teens that once would have seemed exotic have gained credibility and popularity among parents who don't know where else to turn.

Last fall, the News documented the case of Matt Grise, a 14-year-old honor student from western Colorado. After his mother died, Matt moved to Missouri to live with his father. Problems at home led the father to ship Matt to a juvenile detention camp in rural Louisiana. Barbed wire rings the facility, which is called the New Bethany Baptist Church and is run by a fiery preacher who uses corporal punishment and other methods to discipline his young inmates.

A prolonged campaign by Matt's aunt, uncle and grandmother and the intercession of their congressman helped free him after five months' confinement. The boy returned to Colorado shortly before Christmas to live with his aunt and uncle.

New Bethany and Teen Help are far from the only organizations running behavior modification camps for teens in the United States and overseas. In fact, two other companies have operated compounds in Samoa near Teen Help's Paradise Cove.

Government regulation of these programs is spotty. Social service agencies in Louisiana, South Carolina, Utah, Ohio and California have investigated various aspects of the teen behavior modification industry, including the forcible removals of teens from their homes. Some jurisdictions have pressured facilities to obtain state licenses and submit to periodic inspections.

But some programs, including one of Teen Help's, have resisted complying. The former director of Teen Help's South Carolina program, for example, said his facility was a boarding school not subject to state licensing. Church-sponsored programs have cited the constitutional separation of church and state as grounds to avoid licensing.

The private teen behavior modification industry "is just completely unregulated," said Sue Burrell, an attorney with the Youth Law Center, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group specializing in teen custody issues.

Courts rarely intervene

U.S. courts long have protected the right of parents to raise children as they see fit -- as long as no abuse occurs.

"If a parent sends a child knowingly into a situation where they're going to be abused, yes, the parents themselves are going to be guilty of child abuse," said Shannan Wilber, a staff attorney with the Youth Law Center.

Wilber said she doesn't necessarily blame parents who send their children to behavior modification camps.

"What happens often is that parents are desperate," she said. "They think their kids are really in trouble. They don't know what to do. They've been told either by a consultant or by an employee of one of the institutions that we have a great program, that kids are saved on a daily basis here. And parents put their faith and trust in people they consider to be professionals.

"They don't really know what's going to happen to their kids once they get there. And many of the facilities limit the child's ability to have any contact with their parents for some period of time. So there's really no mechanism even for the kids to tell their parents."

Wilber said she abhors the forcible escorts and confinement of teens in private overseas compounds and supports legislation in California to regulate the companies that practice it.

For now, teens sent to these facilities have little legal standing to challenge their confinement. A judge in Oakland, Calif., ruled last year that the parents of 16-year-old David Van Blarigan were within their rights to have forcibly sent him to Tranquility Bay, Teen Help's Jamaica compound.

As long as the parents sending teens away have legal custody, courts have found little basis to intervene.

But child welfare officials in Columbus, Ohio, interceded on behalf of Justin Goen, then 17, whose parents had him handcuffed and removed from their house in the middle of the night July 24, 1998, and sent to Tranquility Bay. While en route, Justin managed briefly to slip away from his escorts and call his girlfriend, telling her he was being kidnapped.

The Franklin County children's services agency filed a civil action against Barbara and Scott Goen, Justin's parents, charging that they abused, neglected or put their son at risk of abuse and neglect. The parents denied the accusation.

"This is like any other case, with one exception -- this business of spiriting the youngster out of the country and placing him in a foreign country where we have no ability to monitor what is going on with that youngster," said John Saros, director of the county agency.

"You've got a situation where the facility is out of the country, not licensed, not certified. There are significant questions around the treatment program, the disciplinary policies, the medical program. There is no service care plan that we know of."

Saros' agency and Justin's parents settled the dispute out of court in January. The settlement provided that Justin be returned to the United States, where he completed the program.

"Once this case was reviewed in court, the judge determined that the child should stay in the program," Facer said.

Justin and his father told The Columbus Dispatch that, despite the dispute, his experience in the program "brought the family a lot closer together."

On foreign soil

U.S. laws do not govern the care American teens receive in overseas behavior modification compounds.

"When aware of the existence of such facilities, U.S. consular officials conduct periodic site visits, sometimes accompanied by host country officials, to monitor the general well-being of the U.S. citizen enrollees. ... U.S. consular officials are not qualified to determine whether the programs offered by the facilities are of therapeutic benefit to the minors involved."

Drame said a U.S. consular official visited Paradise Cove in Western Samoa in October and found that there was no hot water and that many boys were suffering from scabies, a skin disease caused by a parasitic mite. The official notified the Samoan health minister and "the situation did improve after that time," she said.

She said State Department officials also have visited Teen Help facilities in Jamaica, Mexico and the Czech Republic.

Deciding what rights teens have -- even in the United States -- is complicated further when they come from broken families. Many of the challenges to Teen Help referrals -- including the case of Eric Stone, the boy in the video made at Spring Creek Lodge in Montana -- have involved divorced couples fighting over what's best for their child.

"I didn't know they were going to alter their minds and make little robots out of them," she said.

A LITTLE FREEDOM

Girls at Cross Creek Manor sign out as they leave the building on an outing. Students begin Teen Help programs with no privileges and must earn the right to some freedom, including limited off-grounds activities.

Qualified to help?

Few staff members at the behavior modification camps have academic credentials in behavioral science or psychology.

"We hire people with good youth leadership," Lichfield said.

"The staff in Jamaica care about these kids incredibly much," Lisa Swan, a Portland, Ore., mother of a 17-year-old boy at Tranquility Bay, told the News. "Our family rep, Miss Davis, puts her heart and soul into assisting them. While we were visiting, we saw tall, gawky teen-age boys give her hugs and tell us how much they loved this lady. It was evident from watching other staff interact with the kids that they want them to succeed in life."

But lawsuits against Teen Help by former clients charge that staff members -- particularly those in foreign countries -- were woefully untrained.

Workers at Tranquility Bay in Jamaica inflicted "the most sadistic and unwarranted physical and psychological abuse" on teens, charges a lawsuit against Teen Help filed by Donna Burke of Houston.

"The so-called case workers were untrained, unlettered and uncredentialed natives." The suit is pending.

Teen Help said Burke's suit "is really about the mother trying to involve the program in an ongoing custody battle she has had with the father. ... This is a nuisance suit with no credibility."

But Kay, who ran Brightway and is now president of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs, a Teen Help umbrella organization, earlier this year acknowledged the controversy about the qualifications of Teen Help's staff.

"They are not clinicians," he said. "So their job is very important to them because the option a lot of times is a minimum-wage job someplace. And so it's very hard to get them to talk or to talk bad about the program or tell the truth about the program, actually."

Kay said there isn't enough clinical staff to ensure that the program is "headed in the right direction."

Despite the harsh criticism, Kay rejoined Teen Help in March -- this time as a vice president. He said he would work to change the organization from the inside. "I don't remember having a lot of doubts about the program," he said last month. "I've always thought that the program served a great purpose."

Kay became president of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs June 1.

A Hefty Price Tag

Teen Help in recent years has enjoyed impressive growth. With approximately 1,000 teens in its programs, at a cost of $26,000 to $54,000 each to their parents, Teen Help's revenues are estimated at more than $30 million a year.

Technically, the facilities are owned by a number of individuals and corporations. But all receive clients from Teen Help and connected enterprises. All billing is handled through an affiliate headquartered in St. George, Utah.

Lichfield controls the flow of money to the various compounds, according to Kay.

Teen Help opened Sunrise Beach near Cancun, Mexico, in 1995 and Spring Creek Lodge in Montana in 1996. Tranquility Bay in Jamaica and Majestic Ranch Academy in Utah opened in 1997. In 1998 came Morava Academy in the Czech Republic, Casa by the Sea in Ensenada, Mexico, Red Rock Springs in Utah, and Carolina Springs Academy in Abbeville, S.C. Linden House, a home for pregnant teens, opened last year in St. George, Utah, near Teen Help's La Verkin headquarters.

The average stay for a teen in the program exceeds 14 months, said Karr Farnsworth, until June 1 head of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs.

Fees parents pay in advance range from $4,090 at Casa by the Sea to $8,245 at Linden House. Monthly rates at overseas compounds such as those in Samoa and Jamaica range from $1,990 to $2,400. Stateside monthly fees are higher, ranging from $2,790 to $4,500. The parents and the company both decide where to send the teen-ager for treatment.

According to an internal Teen Help document, one-way transportation of a youth to Paradise Cove in Samoa -- from "escort service" to airline tickets -- costs $2,999. Paradise Cove then charges each teen $80 a day -- or $29,200 a year. Teen Help's expenses per teen, as authorized by Lichfield, are $20 a day -- or $7,300 a year, Kay said earlier this year. He said Teen Help's overhead in the United States is financed by the up-front fees, leaving the company's return per teen in Samoa at $21,900 a year -- almost 200 percent.

Facer said the $20 figure is only part of the expenses in operating the facilities. "None of the programs could operate on $20 per student," he said.

Facer said staffing, maintenance, equipment, acquisition, accounting and billing costs and parent services add greatly to Teen Help's cost of doing business.

Teens at Spring Creek Lodge in Montana told the News that their parents had taken out second mortgages or other loans, spent savings and college funds or gone back to work to foot the bills. Parents who ardently believe in the program can help themselves with the finances -- by recruiting other families.

For each teen from another family that parents bring to the program, they receive a month's free tuition for their own child. Once their child graduates from Teen Help, parents can earn a $1,000 finder's fee for recruiting another family.

Some Colorado parents who have sent children to Teen Help say no cost is too high for the sweeping behavior improvements they are seeing.

"There is no question that this program is expensive," Barbara Rodgers said. "We were fortunate to have had a small college fund for Vanessa. ... The program works; it saved my daughter's life. "What would the cost of the alternatives have been? How much do funerals cost?"

Allegations of Abuse

While teens and their parents have flocked to its programs, Teen Help has endured a wave of unwanted scrutiny from police and regulatory agencies in the United States and abroad. Complaints against Teen Help facilities ranged from allegations of unsanitary conditions to physical abuse:

Mexican police raided a Teen Help compound near Cancun in May 1996. They found that teens had been locked in small rooms for days and heard other allegations of abuse. A Utah man and his wife were charged with immigration violations. They posted bond and returned to the United States. The compound was closed.

In November, Czech police raided a Teen Help facility after receiving a tip from a former employee that teens often were handcuffed and had to lie on their stomachs, sometimes for days. The same Utah couple, then running the Czech program, were charged with cruelty to people in their custody and with curtailing the students' freedom of movement. Again, the couple returned to the United States, and the compound was closed.

A U.S. consular official reported finding sores on many teens at Paradise Cove in October. Samoan health officials demanded immediate sanitation improvements, and Teen Help complied.

Teen Help in March 1998 closed Brightway Adolescent Hospital in St. George, Utah, after state investigators found it in violation of several regulations, including the failure to report alleged abuse of a child transferred there from another Teen Help facility. Officials also found that Brightway appeared to be rubber-stamping recommendations that teens be sent to overseas facilities for long-term placement. Investigators analyzed the records of 14 recent patients. They found that a form letter had been sent to the parents of all 14, saying that their teen needed "12 months or more in the residential treatment program in order to fully internalize the changes he needs to make."

A South Carolina social services agency investigated a Teen Help facility there and found "two incidents of disciplinary action that may constitute cruel and inhumane punishment." The agency later said Teen Help is cooperating to obtain proper licensing and resolve other disputes. Another South Carolina agency, however, has issued a cease-and-desist order demanding that Carolina Springs stop operating as a residential treatment center.

Facer said that the facilities in Mexico and the Czech Republic were closed by their owners because they believed they couldn't get a fair hearing from local authorities. Lichfield said that Teen Help's problems have been exaggerated. "My biggest concern is that if the media focuses on the few negatives, while ignoring the overwhelming positives of these programs, it could scare off parents from getting help for a teen who is at risk," Lichfield told the News.

"This could result in another tragedy, similar to that at Columbine High."

On the Move
Teens walk across the compound at Spring Creek Lodge in Montana. Life in Teen Help's behavior modification camps is spartan and humorless, designed to rid adolescents of destructive behavior patterns.

Roots of Behavior Modification
In some respects, Teen Help's behavior modification program has roots dating back a half-century.

Rutgers University psychologist Karlin said that Teen Help seminars share some techniques of the thought-reform program that Chairman Mao Tse-tung and his communist theorists pioneered in China in the 1940s. Teens are isolated from their normal environment, made to feel uncomfortable and induced to confess numerous shortcomings -- what Karlin described as the core of Mao's system of thought reform.

Psychologist Margaret Singer, professor emeritus of the University of California at Berkeley and one of the nation's pre-eminent experts on mind control, said Teen Help and similar programs attack the psyche in ways similar to Mao's methods.

It was 1949 when Mao introduced a new kind of thought reform for the newly conquered peoples of Communist China. Unlike the brutal torture techniques that Stalin had developed in the Soviet Union, Chinese methods were more subtle and in many ways more effective.

Western scientists became alarmed when these mind control tools were used on American prisoners in the Korean War of 1950-53. How could the Chinese so easily manipulate captured GIs into criticizing the United States and expressing admiration for the North Korean cause? The techniques, dramatized in The Manchurian Candidate, a Richard Condon novel and subsequent movie, quickly got a pop-psych nickname -- brainwashing.

In the 1960s, the methods began to be used in America. But instead of Communists with a collectivist political bent, the new practitioners were American entrepreneurs who charged thousands of dollars per client.

Amid the political and spiritual uproar of the 1960s, Americans developed an appetite for companies promising self-improvement in the secular world -- through personality change, enlightenment and self-awareness.

The first of the genre psychologists call "large group awareness training" was the Leadership Dynamics Institute, started by Robert Penn Patrick in the early 1960s.

For a fee of $1,000, LDI clients "were held virtual prisoners for four days of living hell, during which members of the class were beaten, deprived of food and sleep, jammed into coffins, forced to perform degrading sexual acts, and even crucified," said a 1972 study cited by the American Psychological Association.

Patrick also created a less extreme form of LDI called Mind Dynamics. Trainers in Mind Dynamics soon began their own companies, the most noted of them Werner Erhard's est and John Hanley's LifeSpring.

Beatings were now off-limits. The new groups relied extensively on what psychologists call "coercive persuasion."

Erhard Seminars Training, which used the lowercase acronym est, attracted an estimated 750,000 people in the 1970s. It exhorted participants to create their own version of reality through deep introspection and self-awareness. Many entertainment celebrities, including the late singer John Denver, embraced est.

LifeSpring has fought pitched battles as plaintiff and defendant in civil lawsuits. A key issue in these cases was whether it was a cult and used coercive psychology to induce clients to pay large sums of money for the program. LifeSpring settled several suits out of court and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements and judgments. The company denied that it was a cult.

Singer said Teen Help's techniques "are very similar to the ones used at LifeSpring. And I've interviewed many, many people that have been at other large group awareness training programs, and most of (them) feed off the same exercises."

Group leaders tell recruits to show their trust in a stranger by revealing deeply guarded secrets. The leaders use exaggerated rewards and punishments to control behavior, Singer said. Independent thinking and nonconformity are punished through humiliation and peer pressure. Recruits receive rewards for strict adherence to the new ideology.

Another ingredient: an us-against-them mentality -- the group is right, outsiders are wrong. Group leaders single out the deviant thinker and turn their anger -- and the group's -- against him or her.

While the Chinese attacked the political beliefs of their subjects, Singer said, the contemporary programs use "intense, coordinated, coercive influence programs to attack the person's very sense of self and being and reality. You are likely to get more psychological casualties from these commercial attack groups than from Mao."

"The way it works is to take the person, isolate him and make him uncomfortable," Karlin said. "And you ask him to confess, in some sort of way, his sins."

After the confessions, it becomes easier for the subject to be persuaded to adopt different ideas, Karlin said.

"These kids are seen as disciplinary problems ... so the program is oriented toward some sort of awareness of the way in which they have been making the wrong choices about how to behave," he said. "And that's all fine and dandy, except that it's done in a situation where you are totally isolated from all previous social supports, and in which you're made uncomfortable.

"You're in a strange place. You're out of the country in a world that you never made. And it's exactly the kind of situation that pulls the support out from under people and makes them vulnerable to this kind of influence."

"You don't need physical force," Singer said. "You just get a program put together that makes an attack upon a person's belief system."

In some cases, Karlin said, even those who seem to adopt the core philosophy can emerge with something missing.

"You can see a real loss in spontaneity, in ease, in creativity," Karlin said. "This kind of thing is not what we consider a real good idea for most people."

Gilcrease dismissed the criticisms and said his TASKS seminars for teens do not practice mind control. "We don't force the kids to do anything," Gilcrease told the News.

"We're not doing therapy with them. We're presenting concepts, like accountability and integrity. Is there some, at the time, emotional stuff? Yes, there is. ... "Do I say that it's for everybody in the world? No, but I don't think everybody in the world needs a psychological examination either."

One Colorado parent at a Teen Help support group earlier this year put it this way: "They call it mind control. Well, maybe mind control isn't such a bad thing."

Parents Expect Complaints

Teen Help warns parents to expect complaints from their teens in their initial letters home -- we're miserable, we're being abused, the program isn't working.

"Initially, the kid will call it kidnapping," said Farnsworth, until recently head of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs. "A kid will call it a bad thing."

Teen Help's explanation: They're manipulating you, just like they did before you sent them to us.

The company even categorizes the complaints that are sure to come: First, the denial phase. The child pleads, "I don't belong here." Second, the guilt trip. "You don't know how terrible it is here, or you would get me out." Next, the anger phase. "You'll wish you had never done this to me." Finally, the negotiation phase. "If you bring me home, I promise there won't be any more problems."

Ignore all this, Teen Help advises, and your teen finally will enter the acceptance phase. If the teen repeatedly refuses to participate in the program, parents are told they may need to cut off contact with their child once he or she turns 18.

"I strongly recommend you communicate to your teen the fact you are not willing to have them return home without (our) recommendation," Gilcrease said in a recent Teen Help newsletter.

Gilcrease suggested the parents give their teen a return ticket to their hometown, a two-to-three night stay at a hotel, money for food and no car. After that, he recommended, unresponsive teens should be on their own. It may sound unforgiving, but for some parents convinced they have no place else to turn, the tough Teen Help approach works.

"We are living proof of the value of these seminars and the success of the Tranquility Bay (Jamaica) program in improving our family health and happiness," said Timothy Riley of Huntington Beach, Calif. "We now embrace each other with love, honesty, integrity and commitment. My life is full of joy where before joy was fleeting.

"I feel we were blessed as a family when we had to put our daughter (16) into a Teen Help program. We will reap the benefit of this blessing for years to come."

No follow-up studies have been done to gauge the long-term effects of Teen Help's intervention. Rutgers' Karlin said he anticipates that Teen Help's techniques will produce post-traumatic stress casualties in "hearts, spades and diamonds."

Tulsa, Okla., psychologist Eric Nelson said re-entering American society after a year or more in a Teen Help camp "would have to be a very unusual situation psychologically."

Nelson treated a Tulsa teen who had spent a few months at Paradise Cove in Samoa.

"One of the points of these programs that remove kids completely from their environments is to provide an environment where there can be almost total control of their behavior," he said. "Some of the kids manage to internalize those values and take the external control and make it internal control.

"My suspicion is that's probably the exception rather than the rule and that when most of these kids get back where there is not that degree of control, they will deteriorate even further."

SINGLE FILE

Heading to class, students walk in single file at Spring Creek Lodge in Montana. After a year at Teen Help's Paradise Cove camp in Western Samoa, Nathan Hollister completed his training in Montana, where he became an unpaid staff member supervising newcomers.

'It saved his life'

Littleton teen pulled his life together at camps in Samoa and Montana

By Lou Kilzer Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

For Nathan Hollister, the moment of reckoning came about midnight Oct. 28, 1996, outside an apartment building near Arapahoe Road and Holly Street. That's where his father, with the help of the Arapahoe County sheriff's office, arranged his transportation into Teen Help's network of behavior modification camps. Nathan's odyssey would consume more than 15 months and take him, under escort, to the Pacific island nation of Western Samoa for confrontational therapy. Today, Nathan, now 18, lives with his mother and father in Connecticut. His opinion? "I honestly believe that if I hadn't gone into the program, I would be dead now." His father Alan, a doctor who worked at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, agreed. "It saved his life," he said. "He was beyond parental control at the time. ... He had been kicked out of school.

He didn't come home. He was just in a very downward spiral that was a really great risk to his life. "If we don't do something, the next thing we're likely to hear is he's been arrested by the police or he is in a morgue somewhere. Those were really desperate circumstances." Nathan's account of his Teen Help experience offers an inside look at the program -- from a strong supporter. At the time of his "escort," Nathan was a sophomore at Cherry Creek Senior High School. "I was 15, almost 16, and I was into punk gothic-type things," he recalled. "I wore really ratty clothes, had my hair multicolored and in spikes, and big boots and all that. I didn't get along with my parents at all. "Wasn't home much. Spent a lot of my time in an apartment with some older guys who were over 21. I was drinking a whole lot. I had been kicked out of school and withdrawn from school multiple times. I had done various drugs." That October night, Nathan was hanging out with his buddies at the apartment when his father phoned. "I said, 'I'm just going to stay here tonight because it's just easier that way,"' Nathan said. "We argued for awhile. Then he said OK and hung up." A few minutes later, Alan Hollister drove up to the apartment building. A police car cruised in behind him. "I think they were going to try to get me for a curfew ticket, of which I already had four," Nathan said. "I went out there, and there were a couple of cop cars, and then another car drove up. Three people got out, two men and a lady. And they and my father circled around behind me." Alan Hollister told his son he was about to be driven to Brightway Adolescent Hospital in St. George, Utah. "So I smoked my last cigarette and told my girlfriend I would be back in two or three months," Nathan recalled. He said he spent about 10 days at Brightway. He took a psychological test, talked for an hour or more with a psychiatrist and was driven into town to have a passport picture made. Next stop: Western Samoa. The night before Nathan and eight other boys left, Brightway staff members kept them up for hours "so that we were too tired to run or anything." Staff members supplied them with movies to watch and brought in pizza. "They threatened to turn up the air conditioning and make it real cold in there if we were going to fall asleep," Nathan said.

"They threatened to turn up the air
conditioning and make it real cold
in there if we were going to fall asleep,"
-Nathan Hollister

Early the next morning, staffers gave the boys new clothes for the trip: white T-shirts and red gym shorts. "Just so you're real obvious and really can't blend in." Guards drove them to the airport in Las Vegas, two hours away. "We had to walk in a line through the airport with our hands on the shoulders of the person in front of us," Nathan said. "They said if we let go, they would tackle us because they'd think we were running." Another group of security guards met the boys in Los Angeles and put them on a flight to Honolulu. Then came the last leg, to the atolls of Western Samoa and the final destination: Paradise Cove. Except this place was surrounded by something not usually found in paradise: Barbed wire fences.

Isolated in Samoa

If some parents find Teen Help's behavior modification seminars oppressive, they can get up and go home. Their kids can't. Detained hundreds or thousands of miles from home, sometimes across vast oceans, the teens of Teen Help must accept rigid controls on their activities -- or face the consequences. Communication with the outside world is limited. Teens cannot receive phone calls, even from parents, until their behavior improves. The restrictions and isolation are precisely what some parents say their teens need. Accounts from several teens who spent a year or more in the program portray the training seminars for young people as more intense than those for parents. When Nathan Hollister arrived at Paradise Cove in Western Samoa, he was enrolled in "Level 1," the lowest of six on the Teen Help ladder. A "buddy" -- an upper-level teen or staff member -- was assigned to watch him all the time. He was issued yellow shorts -- the Level 1 uniform. He slept on a mat in a thatched-roof hut without walls. According to Drew, another teen who lived at Paradise Cove, food was primitive: boiled chicken, tiny bananas, spaghetti with mystery sauce. Drew said his buddy watched him continuously -- even in the bathroom. A buddy stared at him when he slept -- lack of personal space is a key component of the program. Drew said that scores of rules control every behavior at Paradise Cove. A Level 1 teen must ask his buddy for permission to speak, move, go to the bathroom or do anything else. Level 1 teens stare straight ahead. When another person approaches, they bow their heads. Eye contact is discouraged because it's unauthorized nonverbal communication.

Teens who break the rules can
be sent to solitary confinement.

The accounts of Nathan and Drew paralleled the observations of a Denver Rocky Mountain News reporter and photographer who visited Teen Help's Spring Creek Lodge in Montana, Cross Creek Manor in Utah and Casa by the Sea in Mexico. In a term special to the program, a buddy "consequents," or punishes, a new arrival who's not cooperating, typically having him or her sit in a corner and listen to taped history lessons played at high volume -- stories about Mozart, Dracula, the time machine. Teen Help's written rules forbid kids to "make negative statements about the program, the staff, the country or other students." They can't talk about drinking, drugs or sex.

"They had handcuffs on one kid who
had been making plans to run away.
And I know that on that one occasion
there was a guy next to me and they
had run out of shackles, so they used
duct tape on him."
Nathan Hollister

They receive demerits for horseplay, poor sportsmanship, frowning, rolling their eyes, burping or showing an "unsatisfactory attitude" in gestures or statements. Teens who break the rules can be sent to solitary confinement. Authorities who raided Teen Help compounds in the Czech Republic and Mexico reported finding children kept in isolation for prolonged periods. Some teens at the Czech facility reported that they had been handcuffed while isolated. To Nathan, isolation was no big deal. "They'll take you in the back -- it's a little box-type thing," he recalled about Paradise Cove. "It's as tall as a normal ceiling, but it's pretty small. And they have you take all of your clothes off, down to your boxers, so you can't really hurt yourself in any way. "I went in there once, for only 21/2 hours. They made me lie on my stomach. "They had handcuffs on one kid who had been making plans to run away. And I know that on that one occasion there was a guy next to me and they had run out of shackles, so they used duct tape on him." Nathan said Paradise Cove has four isolation rooms. When he was sent there, "they were all full because the three guys next to me were planning to run."

PRIMITIVE LIVING

Nathan Hollister spent a year at Paradise Cove
in Western Samoa. He said living conditions were
difficult and the training intense and sometimes
disturbing, but he said he greatly benefited

Passing Level 1

For teens, the only way out of Level 1 is to embrace Teen Help's rules without question. Thatmeans actively participating in group seminars so intense, according to some teens, that they sometimes cause group vomiting. The first seminar Nathan and the other Level 1's attended was "Discovery." It lasted three days. Nathan described it as "very intensive and tough. If you're not putting out effort, they will kick you out." Consequences for kids thrown out of Discovery included writing essays or listening to motivational tapes.

A FIRM HOLD

Cameron Pullan, director of SpringCreek Lodge, demonstrates
a restraint hold sometimes used at Teen Help compounds.
The organization says that restraints are used as a last resort,
but teens at two compounds say they were left hogtied for hours.

One essay, Nathan recalled, was "Why do I let fear run my life?" Nathan said that to pass the seminars, a boy must participate "genuinely and sincerely, really trying to get something out of it." The seminar's facilitators were Teen Help staffers from southern Utah. "They do processes that teach you really powerful lessons," he said. "They teach you a lot about trust. I learned a lot about trust and about trusting others. And they help you discover who you are inside, so you have a sense of identity." Eventually, even the most resistant teens relent and go through at least some of the seminars. Participants say that to pass, they must make confessions and show what the facilitator believes is real emotion. Some participants say that many teens in the seminars are reduced to tears or nausea. Drew, a 16-year-old from the Midwest, was sent to Paradise Cove after he was expelled from a military school for breaking and entering and vandalism. He reached Paradise Cove the same way Nathan did -- a forced "escort" to Utah and flights from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, Honolulu and Samoa. He said he spent about two weeks on Level 1 at Paradise Cove. "You have to raise your hand and call for a helper when you walk around," he said.

"You have to ask somebody to walk
you to the bathroom, and then you
have to have somebody watch you
in the bathroom."
-Nathan Hollister

"You have to ask somebody to walk you to the bathroom, and then you have to have somebody watch you in the bathroom." Unlike Nathan Hollister, he disliked the seminars. He and his father spoke only on the condition that their last name not be used. "I hated them," Drew said. "You're in there and they're telling you everything. ... And they tell you something you did wrong. It's just to destroy your self-esteem. "They'll get up and say, 'This is what you did wrong.' A lot of kids are just, like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' But a lot of kids are just faking it." The counselors "tell you to get out of what they call your comfort zone. And when you're uncomfortable, things change, and la-di-da-di-da. And basically you've got to do it or you get kicked out. "You hear about all these seminars and how beastly they are. And you're pretty scared when you first go in there. And when you're done, you feel pretty good." The euphoria, however, isn't the result of self-discovery, Drew said, "but because you got through the stupid thing." Drew said sanitation at Paradise Cove was poor and that many boys became ill and developed sores on their bodies. "I have one on my leg that still hasn't healed," he said months after leaving the program.

Powerful experience

The second seminar is called "Focus." "Focus is harder," Nathan said. "More intensive and more powerful. ... Like helping you find your purpose in life and cut through all the crap that's piled up.

TEEN HELP'S VIEW OF SAMOA

A Teen Help promotional brochure depicts the
scenic views at the organization's Paradise Cove
facility in Western Samoa. But recreation and
exploration are offered only to teens at high levels
in the program.

You know, really start living life. It was the most powerful experience of my life. And it really, really helped me." "Focus is the turning point of it all," Drew said. "This one's really hard-core, focused on what screwed you over in life and all this other junk." Drew said the teens must confess "to anything you've done, to your parents, to yourself or to your sister or to your brother or to anybody. They ask questions, like, 'What's the worst thing you've done? Why are you here?' "They have something called dealings. That means you deal with your problems. Normally, you're just crying, bawling your eyes out. And after they find out what you dealt about, then they'll use it against you in the next seminar. "Focus is really a lot of pressure.

They yell and scream at you. They get in your face. ... They get a towel and they wrap it up and duct-tape it. And then you hit the floor. "You're banging the floor with the towel, and it makes a real loud noise. ... You close your eyes." The group leaders tell the teens to pretend they're placing photographs of family members on the ground, Drew said. "Then," he said, "you take the towel and you pound the pictures to dust. "And that's supposed to get rid of everything, or something. ... And normally when you do the towel process, you're so weak you can hardly walk. A lot of kids throw up."

They yell and scream at you.
They get in your face.

Then comes "the horseshoe." "That's when you get up in front of your friends," Drew said. "And what they do is basically try to attack you, like what you do wrong. When you're hearing it from your good friends, you just break down. I mean, that's what it's meant to do, to break you down." Drew never got to the third seminar -- "Accountability." His father persuaded a judge to order him returned to the United States after five months in Teen Help. But Nathan pressed on. At Level 3, his freedom was still restricted, but he gained more privileges -- occasional pizza and, once a month, a call home to Mom and Dad. Nathan said he was happy. "You have more privileges. And you're looked up to, and you're pretty much moving up through the program."

Nathan wanted to reach Level 4 --
where the teens leave their assigned
Teen Help "family" and finally get to
see part of Samoa.

Nathan wanted to reach Level 4 -- where the teens leave their assigned Teen Help "family" and finally get to see part of Samoa. To get there, though, he would have to pass Accountability. "It was more intense, if it could be. It focused on your biggest pattern that brings you down. It focuses on teaching you how to get past it." Nathan got past it and reached Level 4. "We'd have on-shift weeks and off-shift weeks. And off-shift weeks, we could play at our beach. We could play around and swim and do anything we wanted to that was not too outrageous. On-shift weeks, we'd go to the beach and work on the beaches and help out ... the staff guys. Like watch the kids. We could give consequences." Then came Level 5, one step from the top. He was allowed to leave Paradise Cove for day trips to a nearby town -- even a water slide. After more than a year, Nathan's stay in Samoa ended. He was returned to the United States, to Spring Creek Lodge in Montana. As a newly minted Level 6, he became part of the staff, helping run seminars for lower-level teens. Nathan left the program last year and returned to Colorado. A week later, he and his family moved to Connecticut. Now 18, he is completing high school -- at home. He said he doesn't want to be back in "that environment." Nathan won't reveal everything he experienced in Teen Help. "I can't tell you the exact processes," he said. "They ask you to give your word not to go tell everybody what the processes do because then it would ruin it for the other people." But he readily calculates the influence Teen Help had: "I honestly believe that if I hadn't gone into the program, I would be dead now."

FATHER AND SON

Eric Stone and his father, Craig, spend time in a
park near their home in suburban Seattle, Craig
Stone arranged Eric's release from Teen Help's
Spring Creek Lodge after becoming alarmed by
the boy's emotional condition there.

Emotional Nightmare: Video of Sobbing Son Prompts Dad to Yank Him From Montana Youth Camp

by Lou Kilzer

Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

There's no doubt Eric Stone had a problem. Grades. "I was doing very crappy in school," concedes Eric, 16, who spent 41/2 months in Teen Help, the Utah-based network of behavior modification camps for teens.

His father, Craig Stone, said he wasn't all that concerned. Eric, who lived with his father north of Seattle, didn't drink, do drugs or run with outlaws. The poor grades were just a phase, Craig Stone thought.

That's one side of the story. But as in many other cases involving Teen Help, Eric's other parent saw things differently.

Vickie, Craig Stone's ex-wife, declined to discuss her son's case in detail with the Denver Rocky Mountain News. But her actions indicate that she was concerned about her son and arranged to send him to Teen Help. Craig Stone says that Eric often visited his mother on weekends. So when Eric did not return home one Sunday night in September after a visit with Vickie, Craig Stone says he was not overly concerned. Eric would be home the next morning.

But by Monday afternoon, Craig Stone said he "kind of felt something was up."

Soon Craig Stone's brother called. Vickie, the brother said, had just told him she had sent Eric to a boarding school.

"It was devastating for me," Craig Stone said. "I tried calling her. She wouldn't take my calls. She just sent me a letter stating that Eric's in a new school and she would tell me where he was if I agreed to sign a contract and leave him there."

Craig Stone wouldn't agree. But he said he "played it like a sucker and got as much information as I could."

Craig Stone's sister hit the Internet trying to piece together what might have happened. After three months of detective work, they thought the most likely spot that Vickie had taken Eric was a place called Spring Creek Lodge near Thompson Falls, Mont. If so, it would mean that Eric was in the care of Teen Help.

"The information we were digging up was scaring us because we were afraid of them transferring Eric to Samoa or Jamaica," Craig Stone said.

"So I kept quiet until I was absolutely sure."

Finally, he called Spring Creek director Cameron Pullan. Yes, Pullan said, Eric was there. He said he thought that Craig Stone had known it all along.

Because Craig Stone had joint custody with Vickie, Pullan said, Craig Stone must sign the contract authorizing Eric's stay at Spring Creek Lodge. Craig Stone said no.

A court hearing to resolve the parents' dispute over Teen Help was set. Then two things happened to make Craig Stone decide to take charge.

In an effort to convince Craig Stone that Spring Creek Lodge was right for Eric, the Teen Help staff there videotaped the interview with Eric included in this article.

The video shocked Craig Stone. It showed a sobbing, distraught Eric saying how much he missed his home and how much he knew he must remain in Montana. Craig Stone became even more alarmed when he called Spring Creek and learned that Eric was on suicide watch.

He gathered his brother, sister and a friend who is a former pro football lineman. The four headed to Thompson Falls.

Craig Stone went to the sheriff's office and showed a deputy the custody papers. The deputy called the compound.

"If Eric wants to come home, you let him go," Craig Stone said the deputy warned Pullan. The four adults drove to Spring Creek Lodge, where Pullan met them.

"All of a sudden, Eric comes running out of nowhere, crying his head off," Craig Stone said.

Eric flew into his arms. "He was overwhelmed," his father said. "He couldn't believe it was happening."

Many kids report positive experiences in Teen Help, but Eric isn't one of them. He didn't like it from the day he arrived, and he said it only got worse.

When he started out on Level 1 -- the lowest rung on the Teen Help ladder -- he said a "buddy came everywhere with me. Took showers with me. Came with me when I had to go to the bathroom."

The only way to shake the buddy was to take and pass Teen Help's rugged group encounter seminars. To Eric, the sessions were worse than staying on Level 1, although they lasted only three days each.

"They just rip you with feedback," he said. "They tell you you're crap. They try to bring you up in more of their beliefs. ... They try to get you to be like a kid that doesn't talk back, that doesn't question authority, that just goes along with whatever happens."

Eric said he faked his way through the first two seminars but lacked the emotional defenses to withstand the third seminar, called "Accountability."

"It's known to make you programmed," he said. " ... You totally will into the program. You don't see anything wrong with it. You don't have anything against it." An hour into Accountability, Eric said he refused to go on. He said that's when the staff and other students turned on him.

"Everybody was getting down on me because I chose out of the third seminar," Eric recalls. "I knew it wasn't for me."

Soon, Craig Stone said he was told, his son was on suicide watch.

Unknown to Eric, Craig Stone was trying behind the scenes to get him out.

Now living again with his father, Eric is readjusting to life, but it's a struggle.

"In school, he's doing great," his father says, but then he hesitates. "It's up and down," Craig Stone says.

"He's angry. Still angry. Sparks fly between us occasionally. "There's a lot of resentment and hard, unanswered feelings. We both need to get some counseling to get over this whole thing."

FACILITY CLOSED
Teen Help closed its Brightway Adolescent Hospital after a state investigation found that the facility did not screen patients before admission to determine if the hospital was appropriate for them.

Czech Republic

In 1998, Glenda and Steve Roach -- who had run Sunrise Beach near Cancun -- left to run a Teen Help compound in the Czech Republic. Morava Academy called itself "Europe's finest specialty program for teens," but it didn't last long.

Czech police raided Morava in November after receiving a tip from an employee that teens were being abused and forced into isolation against their wills.

The Roaches were charged under Czech law with cruelty to people in their custody and with curtailing the students' freedom of movement, police said.

Adolescent Rights

--> Some groups that oppose Teen Help's programs support the establishment of basic rights for defiant adolescents. Following are some of the rights endorsed in September by the Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nurses:

ACAPN opposes the abduction and involuntary transport of children to facilities for confinement unless such measures have been clinically justified in specific, operational terms by a licensed mental health professional with the legal authority to do so. In the event that such tactics are necessary for the immediate protection of the child and/or society, the child must have access to an appeal process commensurate with the same right of habeas corpus available to every citizen of the United States.

Children have the right to appropriate treatment in the least restrictive available setting.

Treatment (including behavior modification procedures, therapies, education activities) provided by any facility, including psychiatric hosptals, drug and alcohol treatment centers, residential treatment facilities and behavior modification boarding schools, must be professionally and clinically justifiable ... within the realm of professional psychiatric standards of practice.

ACAPN affirms the right of children to talk and write to persons outside the detainment facility at any time ... without having such communication censored or monitored unless such monitoring is clinically justifiable for the safety of the child or others. This right includes the right to contact an attorney.

ACAPN opposes any prohibition or barriers to communicaton imposed by any facility, including rigid and restrictive visitation policies, policies that restrict parents from visiting their children, limited access to telephones and barriers to mail service.

ACAPN opposes any and all punitive measures. Children should not be physically restrained (restriction of body parts by device or by placement in an isolated, locked room) unless every avenue of prevention of harm to themselves or others has been exhausted.

Children and their families have the right to a treatment plan that is individually developed for their situations, as well as the treatment plan for care after they leave the facility.

Police said they had found diaries and other documents that confirmed the allegations of abuse. Teens at Morava "were often isolated and denied food" and handcuffed, police said.

The Roaches were released pending a trial. Czech authorities allowed Glenda Roach to leave the country but ordered her husband, who had been in charge of security at the compound, to remain in the republic. But Steve Roach returned to the United States, Czech police said.

Parents of Morava's teen patients streamed in from the United States, and many praised the program. Many arranged to send them to other Teen Help facilities -- Spring Creek Lodge in Montana or Carolina Springs Academy in South Carolina.

Police interviewed 25 of the 75 teens at Morava. Eight complained of harsh treatment.

Farnsworth said the allegations at Morava were "absurd, ridiculous. Disgruntled employees got the ear of the state police. They did not do any abuse over there. The kids were manipulative."

"If the owners and operators of Morava and Sunrise Beach would have had the same confidence in their local legal system, both of those programs would still be running today," Facer said.

Farnsworth said he would not hesitate to hire the Roaches again.

"If they wanted a job, they would be welcomed," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, the Morava thing was blown way out of proportion, and there was much misinformation about the whole situation.

"They did not abuse kids. If the Czech police had listened to the other 55 kids ... they talked to about 25-30, and when they found out that they were positive, they quit talking to them. All they ever talked to were the three or four who were trying to manipulate their way out of the program."

Cameron Pullan, director of Spring Creek Lodge, agreed. He said the eight teens at Morava who had complained of abuse later recanted.

"All the kids I've talked to that have been through Morava said they weren't tortured," Pullan said. "They realize that Glenda and Steve did the best they could for them over there. And nobody's reporting any of that."

The News tried unsuccessfully to reach the Roaches for comment. The newspaper also interviewed several Morava students, in the presence of Teen Help staff members, at Spring Creek Lodge. They said they loved Morava and that they believe it saved their lives.

South Carolina

"Carolina Springs Academy teaches values, integrity, honor and respect for authority."

So begins the Teen Help marketing handbook's description of one of the company's newest teen facilities. It has housed dozens of teens, including a 17-year-old girl from Colorado.

Opened last year near Abbeville, S.C., Carolina Springs "helps teens to become an asset to the community," the promotional material continues. "The program is located on (a) campus with a southern style all its own. The youth experience a mixture of Old South courtliness, European heritage and American nostalgia."

But investigators for the South Carolina Department of Social Services found conditions there far less idyllic.

In the fall, the agency three times ordered the facility to close because it was operating without a state license. Richard Byars, Carolina Springs' director at the time, refused, saying the compound was a boarding school, not a residential care facility, and didn't need a license.

Teen Help attributed Carolina Springs' licensing problem to unnamed foes of its behavior modification system.

"Unknown to us, sources hostile to the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (a Teen Help umbrella group) made the (state) believe that they were dealing with some kind of boot camp/brainwashing process that did nothing but abuse kids," Teen Help said in a recent Internet statement. "As a result, their interaction with Carolina Springs Academy was less than ... balanced."

State social services investigators inspected the facility in December and January. Their reports said that:

Several teens, including at least one who had attempted suicide before arriving at Carolina Springs, no longer were taking medication for depression.

One girl told them that another girl "tried to kill herself. She was hitting, kicking, spitting, etc. They said that her hands were crossed over her chest and her wrists were handcuffed behind her neck. They said duct tape was put over her mouth and around her legs. At the top of the stairs, she jumped on her head to try to break her neck so she could go to the hospital."

The teens' letters to their parents were read before being mailed "and if the child says something inappropriate ... you require the child to change it." Telephone calls are monitored. "There is very strict control of the content of written correspondence and telephone conversations. And the children do not have opportunities for free conversation with their parents."

Children's records contained little information about previous hospital stays and psychological evaluations.

Toilets lacked doors or curtains.

A psychiatrist Byars said examined the teens had never visited the facility.

One teen-age girl was found sitting in a mop closet -- "she was crying."

A Jan. 26 letter from the agency warned Byars that "there are currently two incidents of disciplinary action that may constitute cruel and inhumane punishment." A follow-up letter nine days later said: "to our knowledge, the facility staff members who are alleged perpetrators have not been relieved of their duties."

"I have never abused anybody," Byars told the Denver Rocky Mountain News. " ... We have no punishment here. This is just a boarding schoool. That's it. ... Most kids lie if they have the opportunity."

The social services agency said the staff members at Carolina Springs weren't qualified for work with teens.

Many staff members had held only low-wage jobs before being hired. Some had worked as checkout clerks, laborers, porters and appliance salesmen. Many were from Utah.

"The staff have little or no training in child care issues," the agency reported. "Most of them (excluding teachers) have only a high school education and no experience in child care."

Gena Boggero, a former employee at Carolina Springs, harshly criticized Byars' supervision.

"Half the kids didn't deserve to be there," she said. "Richard tells them when they first get there that he has custody of them. ... He tells these kids that they not only will be there until they are 18, if they don't really bust their butts to get out of there, but if he sees no improvement, he can keep them until they're 21. The kids don't know any different.

"I would not wish it on my worst enemy to have a job there."

Boggero described how one teen-age girl told her she had come to Carolina Springs:

"Her mom had told her that they were going to go out to eat to try to patch things up. ... Her mom goes inside (a) store and leaves her in the car. This van pulls up. They jump out, open up the passenger door where she is sitting and grab her. She had no idea who these people are. She thinks she's being kidnapped. She was hanging on to the steering wheel for her life. They reached inside the car and pried her hands from the steering wheel, placed her in a van and drove her to South Carolina."

The social services agency in April put on hold a request for an injunction to close Carolina Springs when Teen Help agreed to replace Byars and make other changes.

Byars was succeeded as director of Carolina Springs Academy by Peggy Elaine Bell Davis.

"We will expect the program to blossom under her direction," Teen Help said in a statement.

Jerry Adams, spokesman for the Department of Social Services, said the agency and Carolina Springs are trying to work out their differences but the facility remains unlicensed.

"They are operating in good faith to correct the problems," Adams said of Carolina Springs.

"CSA believed then and now that they are a boarding school, but to end conflict and better serve their students by resolving that conflict, CSA decided to try to meet the (state) demand for (a license)," Teen Help said in a recent statement. "... In the interest of the students' progress, we made the agreement so that we could get on to helping to change the kids' lives."

"Local government wanted to close the facility," Facer said. "However, after reviewing the facts, the legal system determined that complaints were unfounded and unsubstantiated and further ruled that Carolina Springs should continue to operate their facility."

However, Carolina Springs still faces a strong challenge by another state agency.

The Department of Health and Environmental Control, is seeking an injunction to close Carolina Springs for "operating as an unlicensed residental treatment facility."

Its investigation uncovered several potential problems. One girl told investigators that girls were told to remove their clothing and be subjected to "full body searches by junior staff."

Another girl complained of stomach pains and asked to be taken to a doctor. Aid was delayed five days "and by that time, my cysts had ruptured," she told investigators.

Another girl said that "one of the girls was really mad because he (an employee) came over into the room and jumped on her while she was in bed." The girl reported that the employee "lay down on top of her" and "was rolling around."

Officials removed two girls who had spoken to investigators for fear that upper-level teens might harm them, Adams said.

Davis said she expected the social services department to issue Carolina Springs a child care license by the end of this month. She said she was unaware of the health department's motion for an injunction.