Some time ago, right after I finished grad school with new degrees in social work and public health, I developed an interest in the so-called "troubled teen" industry. I did a lot of research about "schools" that promised to help kids with behavioral problems. I discovered that a lot of the kids who attended these brat camps ended up being abused.

I noticed that a lot of the troubled teen programs were religious in nature. One notorious school was Mountain Park Baptist Boarding School in Patterson, Missouri. It shut down in 2004, but for many years prior, it was a place where kids were regularly paddled, forced to wear culottes, and call the owners Mama and Papa. Mountain Park was pretty bad, but then I read about the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP). It was based in Utah and had schools all over the world where problem kids were shipped off to and abused. They kind of made Mountain Park look like Sunday School.

The WWASP schools were founded and mostly run by Mormons. Some people who used to work at the WWASP schools later opened their own programs. One program, thankfully now defunct, was Thayer Learning Center, which was a military style boot camp run by John and Willa Bundy of St. George, UT. One time, back in the early 00s, I had an online exchange with Willa Bundy, who was advertising her school for people with "turret's syndrome" (sic). In 2004, a student named Roberto Reyes died on the Bundys' watch when he got bitten by a spider and was forced to exercise excessively.

Seems like LDS folks are also highly involved in the so-called "gorilla" business. That is, they transport troubled teens to these programs for big bucks. Here's a link to one based in St. George, which seems to be a mecca for teen help programs.

Does anyone here have any experience with these programs? They were very popular in the late 80s until the early 00s, when they started getting a lot of bad press.

I think they may have been an outgrowth from the BYU programs of their version of Outward Bound, where students with problems would pay, of course, for a 2-3 week survival program that involved a lot deprivation and prayer, plus a week solo in the desert. I knew one kid to finally walk to a highway and hitch back to Provo.

Whatever the case, this kind of treatment is widely seen by religious types as the way to get kids to fly right and get in line. In the end, since they are minors, it could only be considered abuse.

One of the guys I knew in high school went to BYU and became a high school teacher. He had a wife and 5 kids. But he fooled around on the side with his female students, and finally ran off with a 16 year old. He got fired, of course, lost his credential, and was excommunicated. But he started his new marriage off with 5 more kids and pursued a "career" in delivering Little Debbie products and shelving them in stores. Like 20 years later he got re-baptized, baptized his wife and all his kids, and moved back to Utah. He found a job with one of these troubled teen organizations based on his sterling erstwhile teaching credential. To me it was like putting the fox in the hen house.

YDE in Lanai.
I would love to see how much money Dole Pineapple paid the church.

My troubled teen older brother got shipped to Hawaii to pick pineapples.

I don't know if the church ran that program, but it was definitely Mormon flavored.

My brother says that's where he learned to use the really hard drugs.

It is an extremely lucrative facet of the recovery industry.

Much like LDS Inc claiming to merely want to show pastoral support while gang stalking their quitters, the recovery industry knows no social boundaries or decency.

Vulnerable people, many in quite unsafe mental and physical condition are exploited by this industry, for profit.

The key is determining and questioning success rates, which must always be calculated with suicides, deaths, and family destruction factored in.

This is a lucrative industry with nearly no oversight or regulation. If a religious angle is added, no licensing or background check is generally needed.

People need to to study up on this industry before sending their family members.

We must always remember the family of John Hinckley Jr. Decided to use "tough love" on their kid shortly before he shot President Reagan.

Any relation to President Hinckley, the beloved Mormon "prophet" ???

Somewhat related, Mormon therapists generally don't recognize emotional abuse, and won't hold parents accountable for it. Instead they tell the teen to learn to deal with difficulty, or s/he will have trouble later in life.

Informal impression of course.

Several people I know participated in the Anasazi program as teens, and had very positive experiences. Some of them ended up working as counselors or guides (whatever they call them). But to be honest, they were pretty good kids to begin with, with some rebelliousness and depression issues. At least one had racked up huge expenses on inpatient treatment, that they felt they didn't need.

That one had really horrible things to say about the traditional inpatient treatment, and how they tried to make them take medication they didn't think they needed. (They faked taking it). I'm sure there's a lot to this story I don't know, and I think they've published something about that experience, but I'm not sure how to get access to it.

I'm just saying, there is abuse in mental health treatment, too. I think in any situation where the patient is powerless, there are bound to be problems.

Back to the Anasazi stuff: I know there is a lot of Mormonthink mixed in with the program, because the people who created it (Terri Warner from BYU) are Mormon. If I had a troubled kid, I would research that carefully before sending them to make sure there is no brainwashing going on. But some key elements I heard participants (and their parents) talk about were quiet, hard work and self-sufficiency, confidence through learning how to survive, exercise, fresh air.

edit: Probably 20 years later, all of these kids are responsible adults, married with kids. Good people, loving people, who are very intelligent, very interesting. Some are in the church, some out.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2015 11:07AM by imaworkinonit.

I have read about the Anasazi program. That one didn't seem that abusive to me. WWASP is pretty notorious for abuse and many locations were forced to close due to kids getting sick and not being treated or being physically abused. Also, the cost of attendance was exorbitant and parents were pressured to recruit others with promises of lower bills.

The independent film "over the GW" is a lot like the spin dry I was in, in 2007.

All of my fellow "inmates" are now dead, with the exception of two which are drunken/drugged messes.

I am only alive because of my complete rejection of AA theology.

Here is a copy of the film.

https://vimeo.com/28493462

I was sent to a WWASP program in 1999. (Spring Creek Lodge in Montana. It was shut down in 2007 after a girl committed suicide there). It's nice to hear the validation of what most program kids feel suspect which is that the LDS has a big influence in the "troubled teen industry". It IS an abusive industry. Pretty much every program mentioned in this thread are notorious horrible places among survivor groups.

Interesting that this comes up again. I just watched Kidnapped for Christ, a documentary about an evangelical program for teens that was run in the Dominican Republic for decades. It was shut down in 2012 amid allegations of abuse.

I highly recommend the film if anyone else is interested in this subject.

And Nessi, I'm sorry you had to endure Spring Creek Lodge. The WWASP schools all had such peaceful sounding names, but it seems like a lot of them were hotbeds of abuse.

There is a book it is called Help At Any Cost it is basically the program kids bible. It describes the rise of the industrial troubled teen industry.

I also am friends with the guy (Nick Gaglia) who wrote and produced Under The GW, both him and his sister were sent to programs. He is an awesome guy.

We are a pretty close community. Last night I was scrolling around looking for the newest variations on the industry. You can check out sites like www.teenrevitalization.com and they will give you referrals (and get paid for every child that gets sent to a "school" through their site), for anything from ADD to adoption issues.

Cuz that makes sense right? Have problems relating with a kid you adopted? Send them away!! Some of them for kids as young as 7.

I read Help At Any Cost years ago. There was another book by Alexa Parks about POW camps for kids. I can’t remember the exact title offhand. Her niece was sent to Mountain Park Baptist Boarding Academy in Missouri.

About thirty years ago I was a counselor in an outdoor program for juvenile offenders- Vision Quest VQ in Tucson.This program had nothing at all to do with Mormonism This program was for kids with serious offenses not just kids being rebellious and most in the program were locked up in a California Youth Authority prison prior to being in VQ. I never saw any abuse or neglect of any of the kids in my year there. What I did see was young people finding a life outside criminality. Did every person stop being a criminal? No, but considering the alternative which is a CYA kid prison they had much better outcomes . The great thing about this program was the staff did the same things as the kids. We went by wagon train from southern Arizona to North Dakota a trip that took seven months. We slept in Tipis . When it was cold everyone was cold , when it was hot and dusty. Everyone was hot . The staff and the kids formed close bonds. it was difficult for everyone but it was also a great adventure and I cherish the memories of both staff and kids I knew . The problem with some of these programs is that they don't know the difference between a self esteem building challenge and abusive treatment. There exists an sickening lack of regulation of some of these programs .Social Services should be able to show up at anytime and monitor and observe and be able to talk confidentially with kids in these programs. There are programs that help kids but there are also programs that are abusive and need to be shut down and staff charged with child abuse

Vision Quest huh? Were you working there when Dawnee Takeuchi died from being thrown off a truck by an employee? And tell me, exactly how is being thrown off a truck theraputic?

Vision Quest...You mean the for profit company that signed a contract with the juvenile court system to basically experiment on low level, non violent juvenile offenders - give them options on not going to detention - and then taking the money and running amok with it?

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/109581NCJRS.pdf

I would never say VQ is perfect . What would you do with serious youth offenders ? What happens without a program like VQ? A kid sits,in a California Youth Authority kid prison doped up on psychotropics that is what happens. Those places are nothing more than prep school for Pelican Bay and Folsom. Is that what you want ? VQ is an adventurous place and kids AND staff get hurt .I had a Tipi pole hit my shoulder causing a fracture .Got kicked by horses and mules, got thrown off horses a few times . No I was not there when this young lady died . I was there when some kids learned that there is more to life than prison, getting shot in a drug deal or ending up being a junkie . I am waiting to,hear form you on what to do with serious habitual youth offenders.,Easy to be critical of a program when you offer no ideas yourself. Kids and staff have died in VQ? Doing adventurous dangerous shit does have its bad outcomes, but compared to a CYA Prison I'll take VQ a abyday

Yes i had a friend do one of those programs in the nineties. But the father that sent her was abusive. When she came back she was not the same person but in a bad way. She was straight-laced cult member upon return like some nazi camp got through with her or something. She has been a straight-laced cult member ever since i think. Those camps act like safehouses but they are not, they are no different than churches pretending to be safehouses. When all the adults are cult members, where do you turn?

There used to be "wilderness programs" for "troubled teens" in
Southern Utah. Parents would ship their "troubled teen" off to
Southern Utah where they'd be marched through the wilderness and
have lots of group meetings etc.

They ended after a couple of teens died in the wilderness when
the counselors ignored their claims of pain etc. One counselor
was interviewed on the radio AFTER one of the deaths and said,
"but you don't know how manipulative these kids can be."

I came up with my own idea of how to run a "troubled teen
wilderness program."

(1) We take the trouble teen out into the wilderness and teach
them how to live off the land. We turn them into survival
ninjas. No "breaking down their personalities," no long group
therapy sessions; just really intense wilderness survival
training.

(2) After 6 weeks of this training we bring the parents down and
plop the parents with the kid in the middle of the desert miles
from civilization. The parents are now dependent on the kid for
their very survival.

That's it. I think my program would get awesome results.

It's probably better than anything else I've seen currently in existenc, Baura

At SCL (and the other WWASP programs), the parents were required to take a watered down version of the seminars we attended. My parents didn't of course. but, even when parents become skeptical of the programs methodology after seminar attendance, there were still lots (like thousands), of parents who kept their kids enrolled. Part of it would be the constant pressure from "family representatives". At SCL they built a town dependent on timber that was broke and gave them a economic out - that depended physically and psychologically abusing kids. I'm sure it happens in economically depressed places in Utah too. It's a manipulative money machine, it still is. Dr Phil gets kick backs from CRC for every kid he recommends to a program on his show. I would invite you guys to look into WWASP survivors. And here is a PBS documentary about sCL http://wwaspsurvivors.com/whos-watching-the-kids/

Some time ago, I read a statement by Karen Lile, whose daughter was sent to Tranquility Bay in Jamaica. The Liles were LDS and described that watered down course you mention. They were pretty freaked out about it. http://wwaspsurvivors.com/breaking-the-vow-of-secrecy/



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2018 04:25PM by knotheadusc.

Wasn't Michael Jackson's daughter Paris put into a treatment center in Utah?
It would be interesting to hear her impressions of the time she spent there.

Of course, the minute she turned 18 she came into her inheritance and moved on with her life in L.A. lol

The mom in Kate Plus 8 has had her eldest son - the male twin - in a program for almost 2 years. The survivor community (cuz that's what we are), have been rallying the whole time for people to find out where she put him and where he's at (he has been seen at any family holidays or anything in almost 2 years), but right now program deaths are big overseas and since all the bad press they got here in the 2000s they are doing everything they can to look pretty and have big money come in. Look into Bain and Mitt Romney and him and his wifes associations with teen help. This stuff runs real deep.

has NOT* been seen at any holidays or family functions in 2 years.

Larry Dean Olson started "youth rehabilitation through Outdoor Survival" at BYU in the 1960's. Went bigger into the early 1970's and is basically the precursor to so many of these programs.

Olson is the man with Anasazi. He is the writer of Outdoor Survival Skills, a book about wilderness primitive living skills. He knows his stuff.

It is one of the most successful programs around. Yes, mormon centered but they don't force it. Force and military mentality is not what they are about. If you wanted to send a kid to any program, this is the one.

Many of the programs are more "Outward Bound" and Military boot camp types. More force and "you will submit" mentality. They try forcing kids to "choose to be good". Anasazi gives experiences and guidance and lets kids choose - knowing no matter what a number won't make wise choices. Yet they don't force their beliefs on them.

Some programs are beneficial just as Navy Seal Training is - for some people. Way too many don't respond well to the militaristic type of forced goodness and brinwashing mentality.