One of the most astonshing responses I’ve had while seeking information for this book has been from a group of young people, mostly women, who were at Provo Canyon School in Utah during the three year period that Cousin was confined there. I had heard about these wilderness programs, residential schools, whatever you want to call them, that use behavioral modification techniques to treat troubled youth but not given them much thought until Cousin’s story planted another bomb in my minefield.

I found a website called Provo Torture School, started by former residents I assume, and put a note on the stream that I would like to hear from anyone who was there while Cousin was. Now I just want to hear from anyone who was there, period. See if this works for you. Twelve year old girls strip searched? No contact with family? Haldol injections used to control residents? Hours and hours in a concrete room staring at one spot on the wall? Force feeding? Dragged in the middle of the night out of bed and muscled into a car to be driven to one of these places? Staff take downs of difficult residents? Forced marches in heat and cold? And public money pays for most of it and pays big time. Tuition runs from around $5,000 to $10,000 a month, not a year, a month! Insurance covers some, private money some, but the largest chunks of cash come from federal tax dollars funneled to the states and then to school districts and juvenile courts. The average stay is 8 to 10 months; Cousin was there for three years!

No wonder so many of these young people have shown up on my e-mail account wanting to tell their story or just say they were survivors. I might wonder about the veracity of some of this if I didn’t continue to hear the same stories over and over and find mountains of additional evidence on the internet. Except for the parental testimonials on the websites of the various schools and programs I cannot locate even one positive story for any of them and I would really like to hear from the other side. Given the paucity of pro voices and the avalanche of criticism, at this point I can only assume there aren’t many supportors out there. These programs are loosely regulated in slightly over half the states and not at all in many and others are moving to Mexico and the Caribbean to avoid regulation. Digging deeper I learned that most of the schools and programs are owned by huge companies that are billion dollars businesses. In corporate American troubled youth and worried parents translates into gigantic dollar signs.

Deaths and severe injuries have resulted in these facilities. For example one 15 year old girl on a forced hike died of heat exhaustion after complaining repeatedly of being ill but since none of the staff, none much older than the victim, had thought to bring communication equipment they covered her with a shirt and left her body in the middle of the trail for 12 hours while someone went for help. Sounds preposterous, right. I would have thought so also, but this and other equally disturbing incidents are in two reports from the Government Accountibility Office. Almost no charges of any sort have made their way into the court systems and companies with these levels of resources settle lawsuits quietly out of court.

There is no doubt that adolescents can get themselves and their young lives into awful messes but surely there are better solutions than this. I know some wonderful, compassionate psychologists and psychiatrists who are capable of amazing things given time but insurance companies cover only short, limited numbers of therapy visits; however, federal money is available to stash a difficult kid in an unsafe, destructive, ultimately unsuccessful program for months and years. Where is the logic in that? In Cousin’s case she was back on drugs and homeless again in a matter of months. Where would she be if a fraction of her tuition had been used for decent, competent, long-term therapy? One thing for certain, it couldn’t be any worse.