Hope - Do you know about this book? "Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids" by Maia Szalavitz. This abuse makes me sick.


This book examines tough love treatment programs, boot camps, and wilderness programs that make up a billion-dollar industry. They have their roots in the cultlike sixties rehabilitation program Synanon and seventies large Group Awareness Trainings, such as est. With little unbiased information available, parents desperately seeking help for difficult adolescents have had few reliable resources - until now. Help at Any Cost digs deep to uncover the systematic abuses, ineffective treatments, and even patients' deaths that have been covered up for years by this unregulated industry.



[cultinfobooks.com]

Yes - it is a great book that really explains what these "schools" are like. The Fornits group is really grateful to have that resource. It would be great if celebrities like Dr. Phil and Montel would stop referring kids to these programs.

From my www.heal-online.org e-newsletter

Dear HEALers,

Greetings! I hope everyone is having a safe and fun December so far!

I was terribly saddened by the shooting in Nebraska this week. Robert
Hawkins (the shooter) spent four years in residential treatment programs.
He was only 19-years old. He had only been out of the program circuit for
one year. Residential treatment/behavior modification programs torture and
kill children. These programs have caused many to commit suicide, homicide,
and a litany of other heart-breaking acts. Adult survivors work just to be
let alone. Many survivors never feel safe, suffer night terrors, and find
it impossible to trust anyone. These programs cause an even greater
break-down in our society and our communities by creating love-starved
individuals who are unable to trust the love others are willing to give.
This is an ongoing tragedy. We must take action to restore our families and
communities. We must protect our nation's children from enslavement,
torture, and death. It's our duty!

This Week's Easy Online Actions (For more alerts, visit: www.heal-online.org
and choose a campaign!)
Tell Pacific Institute of Medical Sciences, "Stop Experimenting on Children
and Teens"--An advertisement soliciting parents to enroll their child to be
experimented on appeared in last week's newspaper. The add reads: "Lack of
interest, troubled, strange thoughts & words, withdrawn, DO THESE WORDS
DESCRIBE YOUR TEEN? There may be something more you can do! A clinical
research study in your area is currently enrolling teens between the ages of
13-17 years. Study participants receive...compensation (financial) for time
and travel." Yes, let these people pay you to exploit and experiment on your
child! No way! Contact Pacific Institute of Medical Sciences
[www.pimsresearch.org] today and tell them that you
are appalled by their unethical and unscrupulous business practices. Leave
our children alone!

Angela S.
HEAL Coordinator

From [www.yesoni-999.com]

Yes on I-999!
There is an epidemic striking American families. This epidemic is the teen "help" behavior modification industry. According to Rep. George Miller (D-CA) of the Congressional Education and Workforce Committee:

“There is a laundry list of abuse of children at WWASPS schools: deprivation of food, deprivation of contact with their peers, physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, and parents are paying big money for services not rendered," Miller added in a Nov. 6 news release.” To read the correspondence between Rep. Miller and former Attorney General Ashcroft, click here.

The Worldwide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) is not a lone culprit in the fraud and abuse of children and families. The behavior modification industry is grossly unlicensed and unregulated. This is why, at the Federal level, Rep. Miller and the Congressional Education and Workforce Committee have introduced HR 1738, the End Institutionalized Abuse of Children Act. The problem with HR 1738 is that the proverbial teeth have been taken out of the bill and now it will simply require that behavior modification programs be licensed by the state(s) they are in.

There are currently gross human rights violations at licensed programs, such as Provo Canyon School in Provo, UT. Provo Canyon School has been getting away with fraud and torture for over 20 years. The Utah Dept. of Licensing has refused the pleas of victims and allowed Provo Canyon School to remain in business even though they have been found repeatedly guilty of cruel and inhumane treatment of children. See: www.heal-online.org/sign.htm and www.heal-online.org/ashley.htm for more information on Provo Canyon School.

For more information on the rampant fraud and abuse of the teen "help" behavior modification industry, see: www.heal-online.org/teen.htm and www.isaccorp.org.

Which brings us to why Initiative Measure 999 is so important. It will put in place additional safeguards to protect children and families from fraud and abuse.

Ballot Title
Initiative Measure No. 999 concerns legal rights of minors.

This measure would require a minor’s consent for certain types of treatment, modify minors’ rights to make certain decisions concerning themselves, and modify the laws on domestic violence and the emancipation of minors. Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]

Ballot Measure Summary
This measure would prohibit the transportation of minors age thirteen or older outside the state for behavior modification purposes without the consent of the minor or a court order. Minors age sixteen or older would be legally responsible for fifty percent of each decision with regard to their own bodies or their children. Domestic violence petitions could be filed based on physical, psychological, emotional, or sexual abuse. Courts could expedite petitions for emancipation of minors.

Another Troubled Teen Industry organization to watch out for is leadershipworks. They are Sterling Institute graduates, promoting their misogynist sickness on unwitting families.

Don't ever let anyone you know or love get involved in that or send their kid to one of their "camps" or a "young men's weekend". My 19-year-old son, who has always been troubled, was "helped" voluntarily by someone involved in that organization. He helped my son by talking to him in explicit, filthy detail about my son's sex life, made my son promise he would never, under any circumstances, reveal to me what occurred in their "intervention". My son, however, told me later that they got him to release his anger by screaming in his face (pardon the foul words I'm about to type) that I was a crazy fucking bitch, that all women are fucking bitches and that while he has to respect me as being his mother, he doesn't have to listen to me (at the time he was living in my house, you bet your sweet ass he has to obey my rules), and admonished him to remember that I'm crazy anyway, as are all women. This man WAS a friend of my husband's, until my husband found out what this asshole called me to my son!

Leadershipworks takes your money and messes up your kid.

Don't let them touch your family.

Ask Your Senators to Vote "No" on "Community Health Workers Act"!--Senate Bill 319, "Community Health Workers Act of 2009" was introduced by Sen. Bingaman (D-NM) and Sen. Durbin (D-IL). The purpose of this bill is to provide behavioral and mental health interventions to poor and minority women and children. Sen. Bingaman is attempting to expand his state's failed juvenile system to the federal system. Even in state run facilities in New Mexico, there have been severe problems. Beyond this, the NM Children, Youth, and Family Department utilizes OptumHealth (based out of Utah) for referrals to behavioral health programs including those operated by notoriously fraudulent and abusive programs like Provo Canyon School and Aspen Education Group/CRC Health. Sen. Bingaman is looking to fast-track and fund the placement of children in programs unfit for human service. His partner in this faulty and misleading legislation is Sen. Durbin. Sen. Durbin has voted to fund programs like Teen Challenge. Based on the language and intent as well as the practical history of both senators in this regard, HEAL requests that you tell your senators to vote "no" on Senate Bill 319. Please ask your senator to refuse to co-sponsor and vote "no" on this misleading legislation.

For more Teen Liberty Action Alerts, visit www.heal-online.org/teen.htm#action

Let me tell you what can happen if a child is put in sucha program.

1) The kid can be kept in there until at least age 18, possibly age 21, depending on the laws of the state where the bin is located.

And the kid can be kept there even if he or she has not committed or been charged with a crime. No attorney or visitor from the UN or Red Cross comes in to monitor people's well being.

At least adult prisoners in the US can get access to their attorneys.

Other consequences. If you ever get out, you risk lagging behind your peers in terms of social development, due to your years of incarceration.

You risk lagging far behind in terms of academic preparation. You will not have been able to learn to drive an automobile, essential if one is to be employable in many places.

When you arrive home, if allowed to arrive home, you risk being stigmatized as the family fuck up, especially if the really sicko members of the family are the parents and
need a scapegoat onto whom to deflect attention from themselves.

Being put in one of these places is a stigmatizing event and a gap on your resume and it can instill shame. A young person released from one of these holding pens may learn to keep things about his or her life secret, and this may breed a habit of secrecy that hampers the ability to form intimate and honest relationships with other people.

Last but not least, if the incarcerated kid has brothers or sisters they see that the risk of challening the parents is to be taken away and locked up. So this means they learn to feel afraid, and very often, they may be told by the parents to lie to others about
where their sib is.

So if this is mismanaged by parents at the helm of a sick family, even the brothers and sisters who are not sent away to the bin learn to lie about family secrets and they're harmed too.

Now, in very rare situations, a child is sufficiently troubled that some kind of inpatient care is needed.

But the best thing is to keep the child as close to the home community as possible so friends, family and relatives can visit. Shipping someone away, out of state, as part of the Troubled Teen Industry we are describing here--that is quite a different matter.