I wouldn’t consider myself a “Troubled Teen”… but as a kid diagnosed with ADD, I was struggling in school and my Mom was concerned for the future of my education. She decided to look for professional help and an opportunity for me to get a higher education.

Looking for a therapeutic boarding school on the internet she stumbled upon many options for teen behavior modification programs. Through an Educational Consultant (EdCon), she was recommended to a program called Casa By The Sea in Ensenada Mexico owned by WWASP,  World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools or Teen Revitalization as it has become today. To this day I don’t blame her for her initial decision to reach out for help, but help isn’t what she found from WWASP… What she got was conned… and I was abused.

The problem is Casa By the Sea wasn’t the only abusive school out there and WWASP is only one of the Multi-Million dollar corporations that make up the The Troubled Teen Industry. The Troubled Teen Industry is a global term for any privately owned teen detention facility, (some that accept government grants), that operate a “Tough Love” system and utilize the infliction of stress, humiliation, pain, isolation and over exercising as punishment for punitive rule violations. These “residential treatment facilities” commonly utilize pseudo-scientific methods, hire unqualified staff and operate under no clinical standards or child protective regulations.

These private prisons go out of their way to hide the reality of their practices, confusing parents by using commonly known words that do not accurately represent the truth of their programs. “Therapy”, is not real therapy, “Work Projects” are nothing more than meaningless punishments and “Restraint” is neither a safe procedure, nor administered for legitimate reasons, and has on too many occasions led to death. Despite the fact that many of these programs market themselves as “therapeutic boarding schools” in reality the schooling offered in these programs is sub-par, real teachers are scarce and real classes are non existent. For at least $60,000 a year you’d expect a quality education, a lot more than a self study program and some multiple choice tests.

Furthermore, their “therapy” is not therapy at all, their “case managers”  are not real therapists and their “program” does not follow a clinical standard in therapy and care. Human rights are not respected in these programs, “patients” are striped of all rights to consent to treatment, they are held against their will without the right to due process, they are forced into situations where they feel violated and refused the right to have access to phones or the internet to call for help if they are being abused. They are threatened with punishments if they try to tell their parents they are being abused and their mail and phone calls are monitored to make sure they aren’t speaking negatively about the program. Prisoners in high security prisons have more rights than these kids are given, all because when a parent signs the program contract they are giving up 51% of their own parental rights and giving the program the permission to discipline the child in any manner and for any reason they see fit.

The program is designed to manipulate their clients, using verified techniques of mind control and brainwashing to indoctrinate the parents into unquestioning loyalty, often using their love for their child as leverage to keep them in the program as long as possible. This kind of power, in the hands of unprofessional, uneducated, money hungry businessmen, can only too easily lead to abuse and fraud!

What they are telling the parents is that tough love is what teens need in order to change but what you don’t know is how far these people take the punishments, and to what length they will go to humiliate your child, brainwash them, and break them down in order to send them back home, just grateful to still be alive. I, myself was locked in dog cages for days, made to lay out on my face in the middle of the scorching desert sun, starved, burned, beaten unconscious and nearly murdered by a staff member who found a letter I wrote home describing the daily abuse. These people are child abusers, some are sexual predators… and they are still operating programs today. Despite the multitude of allegations of abuse against the owners and current employees of the troubled teen industry, thousands of families are still getting sucked into these programs, controlled by fear, lies and the cult-like practices of a company who’s only real interest is to make an un-godly amount of money.

These programs claim to treat any conceivable behavior/ mental disorder all with a puedo-scientific, admittedly experimental process where the psychological response to control, fear and intimidation is measured as significant change, and parents and students alike are led to believe the program saved their life. Until of course, the kid turns 18 and can’t be legally sent back to the program, the fear is lifted and all the negative behavior comes back. At that point, the program just insists that the kid was incurable anyway, $60,000 – $200,000 later and they are right back to where they started. Some ex-students may maintain that this program gave them a second chance at life, while most kids will be walking away with even more issues, PTSD, ruined family relationships, trust issues and missed educational opportunities.

Which leads me to question where they are coming up with these “success rates”. How do they come to the conclusion that the programs have actually been successful at rehabilitating teens when no clinical studies or long term surveys have been taken into account. How do they measure their satisfaction rates when they refuse to listen to the dissatisfaction of their former clients and pay off their accreditation agencies not to report significant claims of abuse. I find it very hard to believe, especially when nearly every survivor I have ever spoke to has said these places caused them harm and caused the relationships with their families to suffer, that they would even be capable of estimating the actual satisfaction rate of their schools. By my calculations, feed back for the WWASP’s schools have been primarily negative, with even those claiming to have been helped by the schools, corroborating the existence of abusive practices.

False advertising isn’t anything new for the troubled teen industry, These corporations have the money to buy themselves the best online marketing and provide you with some pretty convincing videos and testimonials. Sometimes it’s even hard to tell the good programs from the bad ones but the facts remain, these places are still violating human rights, committing malpractice and torturing children. The truth is the program is completely designed around it’s hard sell marketing techniques and everything from the seminars to the monitored phone calls are set in place to manipulate and con parents out of thousands of dollars a month, simply to incarcerate their kids.

For more than a decade we have been monitoring and reporting on new abuses in the Troubled Teen Industry, so it’s no secret that abuse, both physical and sexual, as well as psychologically damaging practices are still being used in these facilities today. What you don’t know is why?… How are these people STILL getting away with murder? (both figuratively and literally)
The problem lies with the government agencies whose jobs it is to regulate this industry, and simply choose not to.

Since the Government Accountability Office’s investigation in 2007 into Abuse and Torture in Residential Treatment Programs for Teens, there have been several attempts to pass sweeping federal legislation to reform and regulate the Troubled Teen Industry. None of those attempts, including subsequent attempts in 2013 and 2017 have succeeded. Some progress has been made in California, Washington and Oregon to keep these kinds of programs from being able to operate within their state’s borders but kids are still being sent out of state to programs in Utah, Montana, South Carolina and other states without adequate regulation, some with absolutely none.

The Troubled Teen Industry is a large and profitable industry in Utah. With a lack of accountability from licensing agencies, bordering on complicity, there are little to no consequences for programs and their program owners when abuse is reported. unlawful deaths have been swept under the rug, sexual abuse goes unreported, perpetrators are protected from legal action and often allowed to simply open up a new program under a different name with no significant background checks.

There is no central database to track all the programs these individuals have worked for and while the office of licensing may possess records of complaints against these schools/ individuals, they do not make them public and they require unreasonable amounts of fees to obtain them. One Journalist recently collected an impressive amount of data on these programs but even she wasn’t able to obtain any records of complaints against these programs.

However, if you take into account all of the arrests, lawsuits, and the survivor’s testimony of abuse the truth becomes all too clear. This isn’t just a few bad actors in a few negligent organizations, the problem is systematic because the abuse is inherent in the program model. Some advocates might say that we can’t reform this industry because you can’t regulate evil. My personal sentiments aside, I’d be inclined to agree with that statement… yet there is hope that SOMETHING can be done to prevent programs from operating unlicensed, unmonitored and with impunity. Institutional abuse survivors/ Advocates aren’t asking for more than what is reasonable. If every other institution that offers mental health treatment is subjected to rigorous standards of care, required licensing and accreditation, why does one single industry just get a free pass to claim to offer those same services, but isn’t held accountable to provide care that is safe, ethical and evidence based? Why does an industry that claims to care for at-risk youth, actively fight for the laws and regulations that simply require their operations to be vetted for safety be whittled down, excluded or completely abolished? Because they are NOT in the business of caring for youth. They are in the private prison business, and they want to continue to be able to cut costs by not hiring qualified staff, not providing adequate housing and nutrition and they don’t want anyone coming in and telling them they can’t “treat” children’s mental health issues with severe methods of punishment. This business is highly profitable, at the expense of the lives and psychological wellbeing of the children in their care, and they want to keep it that way.

Our only hope to address the rampant abuse in “troubled teen” programs, is for parents of at risk youth to come to one very clear realization… There is no such thing as a “quick fix” for your teenager’s behavior. Sending a child away for “help” is not a solution that will change the family dynamic that led to the behavior issues in the first place. Any program that advertises that they can treat a myriad of behavior and mental health issue is flat out LYING to you. There is no such thing as a one size fits all approach to behavior modification/ mental health treatment but that is all these places have to offer.

The fortunate truth is that there ARE other options. We recommend exhausting every single one of them before ever considering long term residential treatment.