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November 22,
2004
How to Save a
Troubled Kid?
By Wendy Cole
With its simple,
log-sided buildings spread out over 150 acres among the Ponderosa
pines in a remote part of western Montana, Spring Creek Lodge
Academy might pass as a rustic retreat for budget-minded travelers.
But Mary and Randy Carben didn't make the trip there from their home
in Bridgeview, Ill., for a vacation. They were at Spring Creek
because it's where their son John had lived since the morning in
June when the Carbens paid two handcuff-brandishing escorts to take
their 17-year-old there. Despite its bucolic appearance, Spring
Creek is a specialty boarding school that uses strict
behavior-modification techniques to rehabilitate troubled kids.
John, whose parents made the agonizing decision to commit him to the
school after he punched his mother, had made progress since his
arrival. And so, like the roughly 120 other parents who gathered
last month in a barnlike room near the academy's entrance, the
Carbens were waiting anxiously to see their child for the first time
since they sent him away.
Debbie Norum, a
program leader whose son went to a similar school, prepared the
group for the visit. No gifts were allowed, she told them. "Your
children need to understand that it is a privilege to live in your
home and that you are the gift. This is not a vacation. This is the
beginning of a lot of work." When the admonitions were finished, the
lights were dimmed, and the syrupy melody of the Diana Ross ballad
If We Hold On Together wafted through the room as Norum instructed
the parents to form a circle, close their eyes and take deep
breaths. "I'm inviting you to go back before the chaos, when you
felt unconditional joy, when your child wanted to hug you. That
child isn't gone," she assured them. As she spoke, 60 teens quietly
filed into the room, eyes darting from face to face in search of
familiar ones. "Now, parents, it's time to hold out your arms,"
Norum said. "Teens, see who's always held out their arms for you."
John's eyes
filled with tears when he saw his mom and dad and clenched them in a
long three-way embrace. Sobs and smiles filled the room as other
happy parents delighted in the changes they saw in their children.
"The kids who have done well are so responsible and engaged. We see
this as the road back for our family," said Tammy Swarbrick of Santa
Clarita, Calif., who beamed as she and her husband prepared to see
their son Daniel, 14.
Restoring family
unity for households in which children have careened out of control
is the express goal of Spring Creek and the six other
behavior-modification programs affiliated with the nonprofit World
Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) that
oversee these for-profit juvenile boot camps. They clearly fill a
need; about 2,500 students are enrolled in WWASPS programs. Yet in
recent years, most of the schools have come under attack on charges
of abuse, including food and sleep deprivation, solitary
confinement, alleged beatings and the deaths of at least two
children. In September the association's Mexican affiliate Casa by
the Sea, near Ensenada, was abruptly shut down after local
authorities investigated the school for several cases of suspected
abuse, which, WWASPS president Ken Kay said, were proved
"unsubstantiated." Nevertheless, a panel sponsored by the National
Institutes of Health issued a study last month that called "get
tough" programs "ineffective" and possibly harmful. Said the panel's
report: "Programs that seek to prevent violence through fear and
tough treatment do not work."
Yet the owners
and managers of such schools profess a strong belief in what they
do. Spring Creek allowed a TIME journalist to attend the parents'
weekend and tour the campus, providing a rare glimpse into the daily
regimens and conditions at one of these tough-love schools and an
intimate look at the difficult choices facing parents who send their
children to them.
Opened in 1996,
Spring Creek is the largest WWASPS affiliate, with about 600
teenagers in residence. It is owned and operated by twin brothers
Cameron and Chaffin Pullan, 33. Neither Pullan is a college graduate
or has any formal training in child development. Cameron worked as a
YMCA day-care administrator, and Chaffin served as a residential
manager for a WWASPS program in Utah before starting the school in
Thompson Falls, Mont. But the brothers pride themselves on their
self-taught proficiency in rehabilitating kids. "We help build
confidence," says Chaffin, "through character building."
Boys and girls
dressed in khakis and maroon sweaters walk silently across the
campus in tidy lines. Speaking out of turn is forbidden. All
activities are directed toward correcting old bad habits. Tony
Robbins' self-improvement tapes are played during meals, and the
teens spend hours charting their behavior. Instead of receiving
classroom instruction, they work their way through a self-guided
academic curriculum. Residents who follow the rules move through the
program's progress levels and are granted more leniency; those who
disobey receive demerits and lose privileges. About 20% of the
students are on behavior-related medications, prescribed by a
visiting psychiatrist. Licensed therapists are available, at a fee
beyond the hefty $3,085 a month it costs to keep a kid at Spring
Creek. The average length of stay is a year, though the Pullans say
it takes 18 months to complete the program. Every month, one or two
kids try to run away. Although there are no fences, the school is
surrounded by mountainous woods, and the nearest major road is 15
miles away, so they don't get far. Last month, however, a 16year-old
girl who had arrived at Spring Creek in March hanged herself in a
shower stall. The school says she is its first suicide.
What would make
a parent send a child to such an isolated place, where he or she has
to earn the right to use ketchup, sugar or salt, where calls home
are rationed and where the smallest infraction can result in a stiff
punishment? The Carbens say they did it because they had tried
nearly everything else. John, their eldest son and the third of
their six children, was smoking pot, routinely ignoring curfews,
lying about his whereabouts and erupting in anger whenever he was
challenged. When his girlfriend gave birth to a baby boy, he dropped
out of 11th grade to work but after just a month on the job was
fired from his father's business for slacking off. He spent much of
his time driving around town with similarly unambitious friends.
Last year he crashed his prized Mustang after running a red light
and seriously injured a woman in another car. Then in the spring he
slugged his mother hard in the back for taking away his cell phone.
The Carbens had
sent John to countless counseling sessions, two weeks of psychiatric
observation at a local hospital and another stint in an outpatient
therapeutic program. He was found to have bipolar disorder and was
prescribed lithium, but he took the drug only sporadically.
Desperate, the Carbens made the wrenching decision to send their son
someplace that could impose the discipline they had been unable to
give him at home. Mary found Spring Creek in a Google search for
military schools. She and Randy were impressed by the "40 referrals"
from ecstatic parents that the school sent them. "I didn't call any
of them," Mary admits, a bit sheepishly. "I just trusted the
program." The school's tuition was a real stretch for Randy, 44, who
manages a demolition company, and Mary, 40, who supervises security
guards at a chemical firm. But they agreed, says Randy, that "we
would do whatever it takes for him to be there." They borrowed the
money from Mary's mother and planned to pay her back by selling
their three-bedroom home and moving in with her.
It took John
practically all summer to get with the program at Spring Creek. He
would get 25 points for good behavior (well on his way to earning
brown sugar for his oatmeal as a reward) and then mouth off and
return to square one. It took him three months to earn his first
phone call from home. But he eventually came around and completed
the two seminars necessary to qualify for the visit from his family.
Their first moments after the group hug were awkward but, haltingly
at first, they began to talk. Mary and Randy told John about the
arrival of his sister Bethany's new baby boy. He told them about the
school. "I hear gunshots in the forest sometimes. It's a little
scary," he said. "There are a lot of hunters around." Still, the
Carbens liked what they saw, the polite way he spoke. Even the two
piercings on his left ear had nearly closed up during his four
months away.
Their impression
of the school began to change, however, just before the family was
about to depart for a trip outside the campus with their son.
Strolling through the family clusters, Norum, the event's
facilitator, stopped abruptly next to John. "Is that gum? There is
no gum here," she scolded. Baffled by her response but determined to
have a good time, the Carbens went off for the visit, shopping at a
Wal-Mart for clothes that John would need for Montana's rough
winter, dining at a Subway and driving through a bison preserve,
content to be together even though they saw no bison. But when they
returned to the school, they learned that the chewing gum, which his
father had given him, would cost John two progress levels and
hundreds of hard-won points. It would take at least two months for
him to make up the demotion. The Carbens knew about the school's
no-excuses philosophy, but somehow seeing it in action was
different. Said Randy: "They need to motivate and inspire them, not
just break them down." He and Mary decided to pull John out
immediately.
Back in
Bridgeview, the Carbens are cautiously optimistic about their son's
future. Despite his outrage over the pettiness of the gum incident,
Randy acknowledges the program's benefits. "They've improved his
attitude and sense of responsibility," he says. John says he plans
to re-enroll at his old high school in January. "I learned a lot
about how not to talk back to people and how to resolve conflicts,"
he says. Even his grandmother is impressed: "He seems like he grew
up a lot." But taking nothing for granted, the Carbens are
instituting their own tough-love rules at home. "We'll have a lot
more boundaries," says Mary. In the meantime, they have confiscated
John's car keys.
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