Recovered Memory Therapy and the Troubled Teen Industry

Apologies that this post is so link-heavy but the information will (hopefully) make the issues clearer. I discovered a big problem recently that has some striking parallels to another ongoing interest of mine. I have something of an ulterior motive here: beyond sharing this information with people who might find the whole thing as amazing (and in urgent need of action) as I do, I'm also hoping some ISFers might be willing to share any information of their own that might help, and brainstorm about some ideas on how we can help break this industry.

IFS already has threads featuring Recovered Memory Therapy, the questionable (to put it mildly) diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka Multiple Personality Disorder) and the promotion of dangerous conspiracy theories/delusion by professionals in mental health care system, so I'll try not to go into too much detail about that here.

There's another pervasive yet amazingly under-recognized problem in the USA regarding various residential treatment programs for youth, known broadly as the Troubled Teen industry. There are a few basic templates: teen bootcamps, wilderness therapy, therapeutic boarding schools and some residential treatment/rehab centers for teens, as well as faith-based versions of these which can differ somewhat but are still considered part of the industry. At heart, these are thought reform/behavior modification scams.

The scam is that they market themselves to desperate parents as the answer for their unruly, troubled teen. The selling points are generally of the fear-mongering type, encouraging terrified parents to act immediately lest their pot-smoking, boozing teen end up in a gang, or pregnant, or in prison, or dead. Kids with serious mental illnesses, eating disorders, autism, and other issues beyond their control -- kids desperately in need of competent, compassionate medical and psychiatric care -- also end up at these facilities. Parents think they're sending their kids off to a facility where they'll be tended to by skilled, trained staff; a safe place with rules and structure. What actually happens is that the kids are subjected to psychological abuse at all the facilities, and at some of them, physical abuse, sometimes resembling what you'd find at Scientology's Rehabilitation Project Force. (Yes, at some of them it really is that bad)

Punishments, whether for wrongdoing or for simply not engaging in whatever way is demanded of them, are often meted out by upper level residents who, themselves, have no choice but to comply. (Think Stanford prison experiment here) They are psychologically broken down through the usual means - physical labor, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, isolation, forced confessions (analogous to the "disclosures" made via coercive therapy). Since the residents are isolated from family, friends, and outside influences, shunning and social ostracization are among the most powerful punishments for not "working the program". Those of you familiar with Recovered Memory Therapy will recognize the similar cult tactics in encouraging patients to break ties with family and friends who doubt their new narrative, and the subsequent dependence on the therapist and the "survivor" community as their primary peer group. The same psychological manipulation, creating the same forced helplessness and dependence on the group and the leaders.

As with the insular group of RM clinicians, these programs are generally run and staffed by the same group of people, many of whom are affiliated with the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, or WWASP. From time to time they come under scrutiny for deaths at the facilities or abuse allegations, and then they relocate and open another program with a new name. Or, they simply rename the same facility and populate it with "new" staff (from out of state programs, or programs run in certain non-US locales).

There are trade organizations, such as NATSAP (National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs) who offer the appearance of legitimacy and little else.

WWASP Survivors lists this on their Red Flags page:

Accredited by Program Trade Organizations that DO NOT properly monitor or set specific standards of care to ensure the safety and well being of all students. Often spearheaded by the program owners themselves and only perpetrated as a third party agency. Membership status does not depend on proof of standards being met, only requirement is payment of dues.

Likewise with RM clinicians, there's little or no recourse for victims, as they have friends in high places and program owners on the regulation boards.

The following transcription is from a (public) exchange with a survivor of one these programs who has done some excellent investigative work on the subject:

Former Program Resident said:

So, there's a pretty high concentration of programs of this type in Utah especially, and this was the first state to kind of specifically regulate Wilderness programs and residential facilities that are following this kind of thought reform model or behavior modification model. And it was I think in 2004 or 2005, legislation was passed requiring new rules to be written to regulate the industry, and the agency, the Office of Licensing which was responsible for writing these rules, allowed the trade organization to write their own rules, and allowed the trade organization to put a member on the board overseeing the implementation of these rules. I know also in Montana, something very similar happened: the state legislator who introduced the bill, and [unclear] the oversight for it, himself owned a program of this type. And when the board was created, he actually stipulated that the majority of the members of this board be from programs. And to my knowledge the only presidents of this board called PAARP in Montana have been program owners or associated with programs. So the problem is that when state legislation has been introduced it's been sweetheart legislation, and that even the oversight boards are either from the industry itself or extremely sympathetic to it.

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Still having trouble wrapping my mind around this, I asked who one might petition for an investigation:

That's a good question. What we find is that things aren't acted upon, programs are allowed to investigate their own - investigate themselves, and of course they find nothing wrong with anything that they're doing.

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So, there's a high concentration of these facilities in certain states where the governing agencies are either owners, or are sympathetic to owners. They're allowed to write their own rules, oversee implementation of those rules, and conduct their own investigations into complaints. Nonexistent oversight, zero accountability.

The industry also has its own journal, the Journal of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, with deeply flawed "studies" that "prove" the benefits of these programs.

Some further reading:

Mitt Romney's Special Interest

Excerpt:

During his run, one of his Romney’s biggest donors and his campaign's utah financial co-chair, was WWASP's owner Robert Lichfield, who also happened to be the primary defendant in a pending civil suit on behalf of over 350 plaintiffs suing for a long list of maltreatment including assault, willful negligence, sexual abuse and fraud. If that weren't bad enough, by 2008 over a dozen WWASP facilities had been closed following investigations of abuse and multiple lawsuits and charges had been filed against WWASP including the conviction of WWASP staffer, Randall Hinton for assault and unlawful imprisonment. Robert Lichfield claims this is all in the name of God… seeing himself doing "God’s Work" and the survivors who oppose his program as "evil" and fueled by Satan.

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Note the line "over a dozen facilities had been closed" -- which sounds great, but as mentioned above, they simply go off to work at other facilities, reopen somewhere else, or reopen at the same location with a new name.


Systematic Abuse and Neglect at Bain Owned Capital Treatment Centers

Excerpt:

...Levine tells the story of Brendan Blum — a 14-year-old autistic boy, left in an isolation room all night at a CRC facility as he screamed in agony. Hours later he was dead from a twisted bowel infarction, his corpse discovered on the morning shift. In the 12 years before Bain took over, CRC had no known cases of a wrongful death. But Levine uncovered fresh details about six wrongful deaths since the Bain takeover in 2006.

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Any thoughts, comments, ramblings, harassments, have at it.

From a quick search of research on the effectiveness of bootcamps, it appears most studies find no effect on rates of offending.

I've known people who worked for some of these programs and had some indirect interaction with a few groups when I worked in federal land management in Utah.

Some of the groups are terrible, frightening even. There was one called Olympus Acadamy that had a big walled compound that looked like a prison camp. It might actually be a nice place, but it sure looked like a prison camp.

A few of the wilderness programs were pretty good - but the good ones mostly only took kids who agreed to be there. For some, it was just a sort of an intensive break, with a big change of setting and some soul searching. Those programs viewed the kids as kids and were not critical of them, the programs just tried to help the kids learn how to manage and cope. Get them out of the situations that trigger them, get them some space to clear their thoughts and help them to look at it from another angle.

The true, more punitive boot camp type programs were pretty horrid. It was sometimes hard to tell the difference. In Utah they were finally cracking down on those the last I heard, but some of the programs had very strong political and cultural support. And, at any rate, as mentioned in the OP many of them just move to different states or use various corporate tricks to close out one program and then re-establish it under a new company name.

I too agree that "teen therapeutic schools" and boot-camps and the like are a serious problem, run largely by greedy predators, and actually don't accomplish anything meaningful when it comes to a child's behavior and attitudes after leaving the school.

I am puzzled though by the conflation, or correlation, of these facilities and "recovered memory therapy" in your thread. Both are charlatanry, and both involving taking advantage of vulnerable young people and their families, but I'm not sure I can see them as two prongs of a common stick. They don't tend to be run by the same people.

Elaedith said:

From a quick search of research on the effectiveness of bootcamps, it appears most studies find no effect on rates of offending.

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I think the goal, from the parents perspective, is to get the kid away from them. "Soft jail" if you will. Used to be military school.

Do insurance companies pay for these programs? That would be an "in" if they did. A second "in" would be lawsuits arising from malpractice/malfeasance.

Dismember said:

Any thoughts, comments, ramblings, harassments, have at it.

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I have nothing to add apart from: bloody excellent post!

crescent said:

The true, more punitive boot camp type programs were pretty horrid. It was sometimes hard to tell the difference. In Utah they were finally cracking down on those the last I heard, but some of the programs had very strong political and cultural support. And, at any rate, as mentioned in the OP many of them just move to different states or use various corporate tricks to close out one program and then re-establish it under a new company name.

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It's still hard -- I would say nearly impossible -- to tell the difference, especially without knowing what to look for. I never would have known if not for my chance encounter with a couple program survivors, both of whom have actual documentation and facts and were able to show, conclusively, that these abuses happened and are currently happening at facilities. The professional websites, the impressive-sounding credentials of the staff (when they list them) and the testimonials, even knowing how fake most testimonials are, all that would have had me walking away without seeing any red flags.

Olympus Academy is DEFINITELY one of the abusive programs, and thank you for sharing the link, because the benign website is exactly what desperate parents are reading, and there's very little there that would raise eyebrows.

Olympus Academy is one that went through several name changes. It used to be known as Red Rock Ranch Academy (a girl died at "Red Rock" in 2002) and Diamond Ranch Academy (a boy died there in 2009).

Here's a warning page from when it was known as Diamond Ranch. Note the list of staff members who either have no licenses or are completely unqualified for the job or services they've been hired to provide.

It used to be that they were completely unregulated and unlicensed. The difference now is that they (the programs in general) make a point of having licensed staff, and that change was made specifically to circumvent the complaints and the scrutiny, but they still hire staff that aren't qualified for the specific responsibilities they're given, those staff members are often only there at certain times (they're not on-hand 24/7) and the residents are only allowed to see them in the presence of another staff member. The residents are limited in what they can say to doctors and nurses, their outgoing mail is censored and they can be subjected to punishment if they try to reach out for help via writing or calling outside sources (friends/family). And of course, the "regulation" is done by the program owners and the industry itself.

When Aaron Bacon died in 1994, he had been examined shortly before his death by qualified medical professionals. One of them actually examined him the day before his death.

LA Times said:

On March 30th one of Aaron's counselors called North Star's base and asked Georgette Costigan, another staff member trained in emergency medicine, to check Aaron out. Costigan arrived to find him on the trail. She gave him a piece of cheese, but she left as soon as he resumed hiking. Investigators say Costigan made no effort to perform a medical evaluation. She seemed to accept the prevailing opinion that Aaron Bacon was a shameless fake.

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The staff at these places are jaded and operate on the assumption that the kids are manipulative liars, so often their complaints and their pleas for help are ignored. At a lot (perhaps all?) of these programs, the staff themselves and the other residents mock and ridicule them -- this peer-group punishment is an integral part of the program.

Checkmite said:

I am puzzled though by the conflation, or correlation, of these facilities and "recovered memory therapy" in your thread. Both are charlatanry, and both involving taking advantage of vulnerable young people and their families, but I'm not sure I can see them as two prongs of a common stick. They don't tend to be run by the same people.

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You're correct, and I apologize if I made it sound like they were run by the same group of people. Although, there is one bit of overlap in that the therapeutic models in some of the schools produce false memories. Mercy Ministries in particular comes to mind. There's another therapeutic boarding school in CA in which the owner is publicizing his work with human trafficking victims, much like Mercy Ministries (who, it's worth noting, recently changed their name to Mercy Multiplied). MM came to my attention through researching false memories; I came to know a survivor of Mercy who eventually realized that her recovered memories of having experienced human trafficking were false.

I view it as, largely, the same problem. Both industries are run by an insular group who all work with and know each other (or know of each other), both industries are deceptive about their true practices, both industries conduct their own studies and have their own journal in which they present their findings (which are supportive of their industry). They both use cult-like coercion tactics to elicit false confessions (of wrongdoing) or false disclosures (of abuse), they both intentionally foster dependence on a group and/or an authority figure.

marplots said:

I think the goal, from the parents perspective, is to get the kid away from them. "Soft jail" if you will. Used to be military school.

Do insurance companies pay for these programs? That would be an "in" if they did. A second "in" would be lawsuits arising from malpractice/malfeasance.

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You are absolutely correct. The survivors (I've come to hate that word, but IMO it's appropriate here) I spoke with emphasized that while parents do need to be educated, they aren't really a primary target because in most cases they're sending their kid away so they can deal with their own problems. In other words, they're an easy sell. They also said not many of the parents apologize or come to acknowledge just how bad a decision they made. There seems to be a sunk-cost phenomenon going on there, too, since many of the programs charge exorbitant rates and it's hard for people to admit they've been had, and that they put their child in so much danger.

As for insurance, that's an excellent question. Some programs say their services (or some of their services) are covered, but they actually steer the parents away from checking with their insurance company in advance, instead recommending that they pay for everything themselves and submit all the expenses only after their child has "graduated" from the program. Many of the programs work with financial counselors who will help the family take out loans and second mortages, etc.

From what I've read, most insurance companies won't cover these programs because they don't meet the requirements for evidence-based, standardized medical or mental health care.

The Atheist, thanks so much for the kind words!

Elaedith said:

From a quick search of research on the effectiveness of bootcamps, it appears most studies find no effect on rates of offending.

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Yes, and as this survivor notes, "It doesn't matter if you're a healthy kid when you walk in there -- spend a few hours deprived of sleep, food, and the ability to use the restroom while adults call you fat. You'll walk out with a condition." They don't help, and they often do long-term damage.

As has been true for most of human history, exploiting desperate people is a good way of making a profit.

I tend to think that some parents are in a panic in terms of the behavior of their children, have run out of options themselves, and are happy to hand the problem over to a glossy organization that promises to fix it. This is whether the kids are really at risk or not- it is the emotional desperation of the parents that are being very cleverly exploited. I think the parents are making incredibly bad decisions. But the Troubled Teen Industry has learned how to draw them in by the claim to help.

Giordano said:

As has been true for most of human history, exploiting desperate people is a good way of making a profit.

I tend to think that some parents are in a panic in terms of the behavior of their children, have run out of options themselves, and are happy to hand the problem over to a glossy organization that promises to fix it. This is whether the kids are really at risk or not- it is the emotional desperation of the parents that are being very cleverly exploited. I think the parents are making incredibly bad decisions. But the Troubled Teen Industry has learned how to draw them in by the claim to help.

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Giordano said:

As has been true for most of human history, exploiting desperate people is a good way of making a profit.

I tend to think that some parents are in a panic in terms of the behavior of their children, have run out of options themselves, and are happy to hand the problem over to a glossy organization that promises to fix it. This is whether the kids are really at risk or not- it is the emotional desperation of the parents that are being very cleverly exploited. I think the parents are making incredibly bad decisions. But the Troubled Teen Industry has learned how to draw them in by the claim to help.

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Spot on, Giordano. The survivors I spoke with pointed out that the Tough Love/Troubled Teen scam is unique in that the primary victims aren't the people being scammed. The parents are targets of the scam itself, but the kids are the primary victims.

Also, while anyone with kids can be potentially vulnerable, there's a certain demographic -- namely, more conservative parents, often coming from a religious background -- who are, or were, most likely to be taken in by these programs. Essentially, the "spare the rod, spoil the child" demographic. From what I can tell, though, a lot of the programs seem to be making themselves attractive to a wider audience now.

Thought I'd share this for those who might be interested. Maia Szalavitz is a journalist who has done extensive investigation into the Troubled Teen Industry, and the graphic below, which shows the progressions of these progams much more clearly than I can verbalize it, is from her article "The Cult That Spawned the Tough Love Teen Industry:"

This harsh approach to helping troubled teens has a long and disturbing history. No fewer than 50 programs (though not the Rotenberg Center) can trace their treatment philosophy, directly or indirectly, to an antidrug cult called Synanon. Founded in 1958, Synanon sold itself as a cure for hardcore heroin addicts who could help each other by "breaking" new initiates with isolation, humiliation, hard labor, and sleep deprivation.

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...The bad publicity led some supporters of The Seed to create a copycat organization under a different name. Straight Inc. was cofounded by Mel Sembler, a Bush family friend who would become the gop's 2000 finance chair and who heads Lewis "Scooter" Libby's legal defense fund. By the mid-'80s, Straight was operating in seven states. First Lady Nancy Reagan declared it her favorite antidrug program. As with The Seed, abuse was omnipresent—including beatings and kidnapping of adult participants. Facing seven-figure legal judgments, it closed in 1993.

But loopholes in state laws and a lack of federal oversight allowed shuttered programs to simply change their names and reopen, often with the same staff, in the same state—even in the same building. Straight spin-offs like the Pathway Family Center are still in business.

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To digress just a tiny bit, Szalavitz also co-wrote a book with Dr. Bruce Perry entitled The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog. In it, Perry describes a tragic experience with a couple in Texas - a "therapeutic foster home" - who repeatedly slammed their foster son's head onto a wooden floor, putting him in an irreversible coma. This atrocity was, in part, the result of having recently attended a seminar on Satanic Ritual Abuse which convinced them that their foster children had been subjected to this. The brutal physical beating was the end of a prolonged attempt to extract a confession. He refused to "disclose" SRA, even after an extended period of "attachment therapy" which included forcing him to run up and down the steps repeatedly. When he could no longer continue, they assumed malingering. (I have yet to determine if therapeutic foster homes and the organizations which license/accredit them are linked in any substantial way to therapeutic boarding schools/the TTI)

In any case, Synanon was the origin of what eventually became the Troubled Teen/Tough Love Industry. A couple layers down are the programs some of you, and the general public, might be familiar with: Straight INC and Kids INC. This link also points out that "Pathway Family Center" is, for all intents, the present-day incarnation of Straight INC.

Mercy Multiplied, formerly known as Mercy Ministries, is one of the Faith Based programs that sits firmly in both categories -- they are part of the Troubled Teen Industry and they are also Recovered Memory proponents, using a Theophostic Counseling model that's notorious for instilling false memories in residents. They're also notorious for their use of "reparative" or "conversion" therapy to "heal" the residents of homosexual urges, which founder Nancy Alcorn believes are evidence of demonic oppression or possession.

I've had a few friends and acquaintances who were put through programs like these by their parents. In all cases, the kids were "troubled" because they were homosexual, insufficiently religious and clashing with their parents over it, or they had some form of at-the-time undiagnosed mental illness. A similar number were institutionalized in mental hospitals by their parents for similar reasons, or for just being too "weird" (this is especially common among Goths who grew up in the '80s).

luchog said:

I've had a few friends and acquaintances who were put through programs like these by their parents. In all cases, the kids were "troubled" because they were homosexual, insufficiently religious and clashing with their parents over it, or they had some form of at-the-time undiagnosed mental illness. A similar number were institutionalized in mental hospitals by their parents for similar reasons, or for just being too "weird" (this is especially common among Goths who grew up in the '80s).

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Ugh, how sad that some of your friends were sent off to these places, luchog. Elaedith pointed out earlier that even for the criminal offenders there are no measurable benefits; it must be even worse for the ones who are suffering from depression or otherwise especially vulnerable.

Since I've been trying to make a case that RMT and the Tough Love/Troubled Teen Industry are linked, it's worth nothing that in 2014 Trinity Hunt Partners, owner of Castlewood Treatment Center, acquired "Family Help and Wellness".

Description from Trinity's portfolio:

Family Help & Wellness ("FHW") is a leading operator of behavioral health programs serving adolescents and young adults nationwide. The Company operates 11 residential and outdoor programs that provide treatment options for families who have sons and daughters exhibiting dysfunctional behaviors such as oppositional defiance and anger. FHW has a unique, decentralized model, which supports and empowers premier site-level management teams to own and operate exceptional programs with outstanding clinical care.

Trinity Hunt plans to invest heavily in FHW to support its continued growth through acquisitions and the development of de novo programs.

From the CEO of FHW:
"From the beginning, it was clear that the Trinity Hunt Partners team was different in that they understood our industry and the importance of the clinical work that occurs within our programs," said Tim Dupell, CEO of Family Help & Wellness."

(Yeah, I bet they do )

Some of the facilities are former Aspen schools which were sold or shut down amidst lawsuits and abuse allegations. FHW has reopened at least one under a new name (Elevations RTC, formerly Island View), but as usual, it's still the same people running it. A couple of the others are also newly renamed/reopened facilities. These name changes mean that parents who are googling for info, thinking about sending their kids to these programs, are unlikely to find the histories and the truth of what goes on there.

Trinity Hunt is very diversified, but they and Universal Health Services (owners of the notorious Timberlawn, where the equally notorious Colin Ross had an office until just this year) seem to be investing in a lot of questionable or outright abusive facilities. UHS also owns several therapeutic boarding schools, some of which are known for the same abuse and neglect that nearly got Timberlawn shut down.

It's also worth noting that Lia DeLand, who helped Richard Schwartz develop the Internal Family Systems Self Scale (IFS is the model being used at Castlewood treatment Center), spent a few years working at a teen detention facility in Costa Rica called New Summit Academy. I can't find much on New Summit, but there's some discussion of it here. It's apparently not as overtly abusive as some of the other schools, but that it's linked with Aspen schools make it automatically worthy of suspicion, in the same way that being linked with Schwartz and IFS also pretty much guarantees that those kids are being subjected to the same harmful therapeutic practices that brought about the false memories of Satanic Ritual Abuse at Castlewood and had the residents convinced they had Multiple Personality Disorder (aka Dissociative Identity Disorder).

And to illustrate that point, here's the "about" page of one James McIntyre, who lists as his occupation "Personal Growth Advisor (New Summit Academy)". One of his public posts is shared from the Internal Family Systems Google+ page, so IFS is obviously being practiced at New Summit Academy.

Sorry if this was mentioned above, but I seem to recall CNN doing some stories on some of these places, maybe in the past year? It seems like public exposure is one way to separate the bad from the good.

sylvan8798 said:

Sorry if this was mentioned above, but I seem to recall CNN doing some stories on some of these places, maybe in the past year? It seems like public exposure is one way to separate the bad from the good.

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I don't think that's come up - thanks, Sylvan! I agree that public exposure is the way to go. One of the survivors I spoke with has done some excellent investigative work into this. I think I mentioned earlier that these facilities tend to proliferate in certain states because those states are especially lax with regulation and oversight, and Utah in particular, is probably the worst of these. One place to start is to push for federal regulation so they're all accountable and held to the same standards. Without going into too much detail, if we could expose the atrocities in one state and bring that under public scrutiny, we could then point to all the affiliates, the sister schools and programs in other states (and a handful out of country), and bring the whole industry down. (That's how I'm thinking it would work, anyway.)

Dismember said:

I don't think that's come up - thanks, Sylvan! I agree that public exposure is the way to go. One of the survivors I spoke with has done some excellent investigative work into this.

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One of the survivors? Don't they pretty much all survive? This isn't death camps we are talking about.

marplots said:

One of the survivors? Don't they pretty much all survive? This isn't death camps we are talking about.

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Well, no, they don't all survive. There have been a number of high-profile cases of kids dying in these programs. Roughly 86 to date. Many from untreated pre-existing health issues, some from suicide triggered by the abuse, others from mistreatment.

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/life-and-death-in-a-troubled-teen-boot-camp-20151112?page=6

And that's not counting the ones who commit suicide afterwards because of the trauma inflicted on them by their parents via these programs. Or those who acquire serious health problems as a result of the mistreatment they endured.

Of course, "survive" was probably used metaphorically. But even there, some of these kids come back so mentally and emotionally damaged, not to mention physically injured, that survival is a relative concept.