From Forbes.com

1999

In the burgeoning new industry that promises parents to straighten out their defiant teens, no programs are more controversial than those linked by several Utah-based umbrella groups.

One of the programs, in Mexico, was shut by local authorities in 1996.

A program in the Czech Republic was shut by local authorities last fall.

A third, Brightway Adolescent Hospital in St. George, Utah, closed during a state investigation last year.

Several civil suits allege mistreatment in other linked programs. Major national media, including Forbes magazine and the television shows "48 Hours" and "Dateline," have recently run critical pieces.

And Internet bulletin boards for parents are filled with vitriolic denunciations and equally ardent defenses of the programs.

At issue are the programs' reliance on behavior modification techniques instead of therapy, allegations of actual abuse, and aggressive and sometimes misleading marketing techniques.

Currently, seven individual behavior modification programs comprise the network, commonly referred to as Teen Help (the name of one of the umbrella companies). Forbes magazine estimates that the programs gross more than $30 million a year. They are:

-Cross Creek Manor, in LaVerkin, Utah. Founded in 1987, it is licensed by Utah as a residential treatment center for up to 270 girls. Tuition: $3,490 per month.

-Red Rock Springs, also in southern Utah. It's licensed as a residential support unit - basically, a group home for 12 boys, and serves mainly as a short-term holding area for youths on their way to other Teen Help programs. Because of overcrowding, Utah's Department of Human Services put the program under close observation through June. Tuition: $3,290 per month.

-Spring Creek Lodge, an unlicensed facility for 250 boys and girls on a ranch near Thompson Falls, Montana. Tuition: $2,900 per month.

-Carolina Springs Academy, an unlicensed co-ed program for about 60 youth near Abbeville, South Carolina. This program was recently ordered by the Department of Health and Environmental Control to "cease and desist" operations after investigators determined that it required a license. Tuition: $2,990 per month.

-Paradise Cove, a rustic beachside facility for 130 boys in Western Samoa. Tuition: $2,190 a month.

-Tranquility Bay, a co-ed program for more than 250 youths at three separate sites in Jamaica. Tuition: $2,290 per month.

-Casa by the Sea, a co-ed facility for more than 100 youths near Ensenada, Mexico. Tuition: $1,990 per month.

Common Links

At least four umbrella companies with overlapping principals link the seven programs:

-Teen Help LLC, is a for-profit, limited liability company, incorporated in March 1997, that provides marketing, screening and admissions services for all the programs. The owners of Teen Help LLC are two limited partnerships.

-World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP) is a nonprofit corporation, incorporated in January 1998, that also provides marketing, screening and enrollment services for the programs.

-Adolescent Services., Inc. (ASI), is a for-profit company, incorporated in April 1995, that provides marketing, screening and admissions services for the programs.

-At Risk Teen (ART) Foundation is a nonprofit corporation set up last year to solicit charitable donations to help families pay tuition at the programs.

One reason the programs provoke so much controversy may simply be their size. Altogether, their capacity is more than 1,100 youths - more than 5 percent of the 20,000 youths believed to be enrolled in private-pay behavior modification programs around the country. ("Emotional Growth Programs Save Teens, Stir Fears," May 1999.) In any group of that size, there are bound to be critics.

Another reason may be the foreign locales in which three of the programs operate. The remoteness of these programs raises questions in some critics' minds about what the operators are trying to hide.

Then there's the shroud of secrecy behind which they operate, with the owners' identities virtually impossible to divine. "I cannot make any sense out of why they're so mysterious about the ownership," says Thomas J. Croke, an educational consultant in Pennsylvania.

From Obscurity to Controversy

The Teen Help programs operated in relative obscurity until 1997, when a custody fight erupted publicly over Stanley Goold III, a California youth who had been sent first to Brightway and then on to Paradise Cove.

Then came a battle in 1998 over the placement at Tranquility Bay of Justin Goen, 16, of Columbus, Ohio. State child protection officials sought child-abuse charges against Justin's parents for sending him there in handcuffs.

And last December an Alameda County (Calif.) prosecutor charged that 16-year-old David Van Blarigan of Oakland was being falsely imprisoned at Tranquility Bay. The judge denied the prosecutor's request to force the boy's return, but not before newspapers, magazines and television shows across the country seized upon the story, characterizing it as an issue of parents' versus children's rights.

For many youth advocates, the publicity about these cases marked the first time that they knew these private-pay residential behavior modification programs even existed. Since then, advocates have been struggling to figure out appropriate responses. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a group has been meeting regularly since the Van Blarigan case to discuss possible legislative and regulatory remedies.

A major criticism of the Teen Help programs is that they provide behavior modification, not therapy, at a cost that leads parents to expect therapy. "They advertise themselves as therapeutic programs, but they don't provide therapy," said an educational consultant who asked not to be identified. "A freaked-out parent who is worried about their kid isn't necessarily going to notice that."

According to literature from the Teen Help programs, the therapeutic component consists of group seminars called TASKS (Teen Accountability Self-Esteem and Keys to Success). TASKS is marketed by Resource Realizations, an Arizona company whose founder, David Gilcrease, is a former software developer and corporate trainer. Youths who go through the TASKS seminars sign a pledge of secrecy, so little is known about what happens in them.

Cross Creek Manor, one of the few Teen Help programs visited regularly by state regulators, is licensed as a residential treatment center, and its literature promises daily group sessions and one individual session a week. Dick Baldwin, a Utah licensing official, says, "They're meeting the minimum standards. Their therapy is okay, but they're not a shining star. They're much stronger on the business side than on the therapy side."

Says Thomas Burton, an attorney in Pleasonton, Calif., who is representing 10 families in legal actions against Teen Help programs: "What they call therapy I call child abuse. My clients were stripped of their identities, called every obscenity in the books. They've destroyed some of these kids."

Stanley Goold, one of Burton's clients, charges in his lawsuit that he saw other youths at Paradise Cove get "punched, kicked and thrown." He himself was sometimes sentenced to spend up to 12 hours in a cement-floored isolation box. Youths who tried to escape were hog-tied, handcuffed, or silenced by duct tape, he has said.

Even Justin Goen - who came home in March from seven months at Tranquility Bay asserting that he had benefited from his stay there - describes behavior-modification techniques that would be considered child abuse in most states. He told the Columbus Dispatch that youths who misbehaved were forced to lie face down on a tile floor for up to 15 hours, with five-minute hourly breaks.

Questionable Marketing Practices

Another common criticism is that the Teen Help programs' marketing techniques are misleading. The programs make use of the Internet in ways that dazzle other programs struggling to attract clients. Whatever youth-related topic you're searching for information about, it's virtually impossible not to end up somewhere in the Teen Help web empire. That's because the WWASP, ASI and Teen Help websites all employ a technique called "spamdexing" to make sure that Web surfers looking for any of about 100 youth-related topics are steered to their sites.

Print advertising by ASI, WWASP, and Teen Help also contributes to confusion about what they are. All run magazine ads in which they promise to help parents find the right programs for children. But parents who call in search of independent opinions from the three groups are referred to the same seven programs under their umbrella, which is likely to make parents think these must be the best in the business.

"When I called Teen Help, I thought I was calling a nonprofit organization that would give me objective advice," says Karen Lile of Clayton, Calif. Lile sent her daughter to Tranquility Bay in 1998, but ultimately became an outspoken critic of Teen Help. "Most parents have no clue, because they're in a crisis, and they've never done anything like this before. They're very vulnerable."

The promotional brochures of both ASI and WWASP are also misleading, written in superlatives that are short on detail. (Except for the cover, ASI's glossy brochure is virtually identical to WWASP's, even though the organizations claim to be independent of each other.) The pictures that accompany the program descriptions show attractive, wellgroomed teens in gorgeous surroundings. On the back covers come a caveat in small print: "Not all photos taken at facilities."

Another questionable practice is the granting of tuition credits to families with teens in the programs as a reward for referring other youths. Lile received $6,000 in tuition credits for three referrals she made before becoming disenchanted.

The Issue: Parents' Rights

Karr Farnsworth, a spokesman for the Teen Help programs, says that criticism is being masterminded by a few disgruntled people. "We surveyed the parents whose kids have completed the program in the last two and one-half years," he says. "Almost 98 percent said they would do it again if they had it to do it over, and almost the same number said they would recommend the program to other people. People who haven't even been to our programs and are not open to hear about them have these preconceived ideas."

Farnsworth blames "nosy neighbors" and the media for stirring up controversy. "What the whole issue's really come down to: is does a parent have a right to get help for their kid without waiting until the kid is in the juvenile court system? Our kids come from families where parents are willing to do something before the kid is dead."

Although he did not respond to repeated requests for an interview about the complaints against Teen Help programs, Farnsworth provided a thick file of endorsements from parents and teens, plus a list of several dozen parents willing to be interviewed.

Here's a typical comment from a mother identified in the endorsements as Nancy: "Back in January of 1996 I had a son who was full of anger, drug- and alcohol-addicted and so involved in the downward spiral he called his life that he was close to death. We sent our son to Spring Creek Lodge and have recently brought home from there a very alive, warm, loving and caring young man."

Here's another testimonial, from a former student named Angie: "Hell is when you're trapped in a life of drugs, stealing and lies, and no matter what you don't even feel the pain any more because you're stoned most of the time. I got another chance at life. I was sent to a World Wide Association Program, and today I'm so thankful for the year I spent there. If I had never gone, I would be dead right now."

A Rogue Program?

Within the relatively new private-pay behavior modification industry, the Teen Help programs are considered rogues. They make the operators of some other behavior modification programs uneasy. Executives with other programs wonder, for instance, why none of the Teen Help programs has joined any of the trade organizations set up in the last few years to set standards.

"Teen Help programs cause a lot of problems for us," says Mark Hobbins, cofounder of the Outdoor Behavioral Health Care Council, a new standard-setting group, and senior vice president for customer services at Aspen Youth Services, which runs 34 expeditionary programs and personal growth boarding schools. The main problem: the negative publicity that Teen Help seems to attract, which, when generalized to other programs, gives them all a bad name.

Educational consultants, who help parents find appropriate programs, are divided about the Teen Help programs. Deborah Trounstine, who operates an educational consulting service in Sacramento, Calif., called Teen Recovery Strategies, won't refer kids to them. "Let's just say there are plenty of other schools that provide really good treatment for the same cost," she says.

Lon Woodbury, an educational consultant in Idaho, says: "I'm neutral on Teen Help. I'm waiting for a confirmation of a kid being abused. I'm waiting for a kid to come forward and say I was duct-taped for 30 days. Rumors get started and never die."

Woodbury publishes a bimonthly newsletter and interactive website on behavior modification programs. He complains that the media give attention only to the critics, "but if you start talking to parents, there's an overwhelming endorsement of Teen Help programs."

What's in the future for the Teen Help programs? From all indications, growth. Most of the programs seem to be operating near capacity. Red Rock Springs intends to expand to 200 beds if it can obtain water rights. (It's going to call itself a boarding school, so it won't need to be licensed.) The overseas programs in Jamaica and Western Samoa seem to have weathered the critical media attention.

Ironically, every national television piece about Teen Help programs, however critical, produces a rush of inquiries from parents who are at their wits' end and think that the no-nonsense Teen Help approach just might work for their teens.

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