TIERRA Blanca Ranch is advertised as the bootcamp where troubled youth can make “a new beginning”. For Bruce Staeger, it was the place he would suffer and die.

His mother and stepfather were like any desperate parents trying to help an out-of-control teenager. They had run out of ideas for how to save their 16-year-old from a vicious cycle of drug use, skipping school and running away, and the strict program on a remote New Mexico outpost was the last resort.

Today, they have heard endless shocking stories about the camp, where teenagers reported being beaten, chained, handcuffed and starved by abusive leaders. Most disturbing is the punishment peers say they doled out to Bruce — a story straight out of Lord of the Flies.

MOB MENTALITY

After months of being broken down at the camp, the traumatised boys started bullying Bruce, they told Rolling Stone magazine. They say camp staff tacitly encouraged them to beat and abuse Bruce in gangs, or turned a blind eye. He was the perfect scapegoat. Several say they still have nightmares about their own vile actions.

Bruce’s death came in September 2013, two years after his arrival at the ranch, when he fell from the back of the camp owner’s pick-up truck, which another boy was driving in the dark on a dirt road. The ranch was 64 kilometres from the nearest town with little mobile phone coverage, so it took some time to get help. Bruce died of internal bleeding in El Paso.

The tragic accident marked the beginning of a major investigation into the ranch, which had been the subject of disturbing reports since 2006.

In October 2013, local authorities began looking into allegations teens were beaten by an ex-employee and forced to wear leg shackles and cuffs for minor infractions of ranch rules, the Alberquerque Journal reported.

Witnesses told police the staff member hit one boy with a “Kubaton” baton and another youngster was made to run all day and then shackled. Officers called to the ranch by a boy on phone he took from the site found a boy wearing restraints.

Police reports also showed camp staff allegedly had groups of teenage residents beat another for being uncooperative.

New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez said authorities were particularly concerned when they arrived to search the site and found nine boys and owner Scott Chandler missing. She said evidence found at the ranch appeared to corroborate some of the boys’ claims, the NY Daily News reported.

‘BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES’

Chandler has repeatedly denied the accusations and said he was proud of his site’s reputation for helping at-risk teens. “Most youth get on track to successful and rewarding lives outside the ranch,” he said in a statement.

He claimed he had simply been on a wilderness walk when the authorities turned up.

Shortly after Bruce’s death, he and wife Colette appeared on the Today show, where he admitted restraints might sometimes be used on boys “when we go into a detention centre to pick up a child that has been court-ordered before a judge or something to have him placed in our program.”

But he added, “that is actually very minimal of what we do.”

The Chandlers call themselves “cattle ranchers with a heart for God, and turning kids [sic] lives around”, and claim their $80-a-day youth program is run on “sound Biblical principles”.

They have been running the “tough-love” treatment for 20 years. In 2000, the ranch’s website says, 104 pre and early teens visited for summer sessions funded by the National Institutes of Health, in partnership with a major university and New Mexico’s second largest county.

The Children, Youth and Families Department has also come under fire because it never followed up allegations that started in 2006, claiming the ranch was a “wilderness program” rather than a “residential program” and therefore not under its jurisdiction.

HOGTIED AND DRAGGED IN DIRT

A year after Bruce’s death, his family filed a lawsuit against the program and the ranch’s auto policy at Santa Fe County District Court, local news station KOB4 reported. They alleged Bruce had been subjected to cruel punishments, including being forced to eat horse dung and having jalapeño juice poured in his eyes. They alleged the teenager was carried from a pole by his bound hands and feet, like a pig.

“His death was the end result of a pattern of abuse and negligence,” said the lawsuit.

Several boys gradually approached Bruce’s mother Carla Moffat to talk about their experiences, and what they did to Bruce. They described having to run up and down hills carrying truck tyres and rocks, and made to work and sleep in restraints that left scars. They said staff encouraged them to “help” out-of-shape Bruce, by dragging him or punching him in the gut, Rolling Stone reported.

That’s when the beatings started. Several boys admitted to hanging Bruce from the horse trailer, lassoing him and dragging him over the ground and putting him in a sleeping bag filled with dung and kneeling on his chest.

Another family have now also sued, with James and Cheryl Morgan claiming their grandson suffered physical and emotional abuse and naming the CYFD as another defendant for not doing enough to protect kids on the ranch.

Liz McGrath, executive director at Pegasus Legal Services for Children, told news.com.au: “We are very concerned that Tierra Blanca may be accepting minors to their program. It is critical that the State of New Mexico exercise its authority to license and oversee these types of programs to ensure that the kinds of abuses reported in the Rolling Stone article never happen again.”

CYFD said it wanted jurisdiction over such programs, with secretary Yolanda Deines telling KOB4: “I just need to know we don’t create a Lord of the Flies situation anywhere in New Mexico and as long as we don’t have supervision for this kind of program, there’s potential for that.”

TROUBLED TEENS INDUSTRY

There are hundreds of extreme teen rehab programs like the one at Tierra Blanca across America. Many are unregulated and employ questionable techniques, often based on fundamentalist Christian ideas.

Rolling Stone estimates the industry generates $1.7 billion a year and has around 10,000 teenagers from around the world in its care at any one time. In 2007, the US Government Accountability Office found “thousands of allegations of abuse, some of which involved death” at residential programs.

A shady transport industry has grown up around it, with parents often hiring “escorts” to forcibly take their offspring to US camps. Eddie Curry, from First Step Adolescent Services in Las Vegas, told the BBC British families would pay up to $8000 to have him get their kids.

“It’s a wonder no one has died out there before,” said Bruce’s stepdad, Jim Moffat. “There are kids who attempted suicide, kids who ran away in the desert, and it’s in the middle of nowhere, kids who felt like they were starving to death.”

While some speak of trauma, many of Chandler’s graduates say the tough program turned their lives around. Bruce’s mother hoped it would save him from an early grave — instead it sealed his fate.

Do you know anyone who has attended a bootcamp for troubled teens? Email emma.reynolds@news.com.au or tweet @emmareyn and @newscomauHQ.