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Does your organization work with "transporters" to get youth to your location? If so, how do most of your youth respond to being brought to the DR against their will?

Hi Mark,

This AMA is very interesting to me as I lived in the Caribbean while serving in the Peace Corps, as well as that I have worked- and currently work with troubled youth in settings such as wilderness therapy and residential therapy.

What are the socioeconomic demographics of your clients? When I worked in wilderness therapy most of our clients came from very wealthy families who had many resources and who also had an interest in their childs life and well being. The wilderness therapy program was extremely expensive (as I imagine yours is looking at your beautiful facilities) so the families could afford to help their children.

I currently work in residential therapy with youth who are extremely poor and have been abused and have been in and out of the foster care program most of their lives. Most of these youth have little to no family support other than DHS or their caseworkers.

In my experience I have noticed that the youth with families supporting their therapy tend to be much more successful in making life changes and changing their behavior so that they can be productive members of society. The youth who have no family support tend to fall back into habits of drugs, gangs, and violence at a much higher rate than youth with positive resources.

How successful are your clients after they leave your program? Do you feel that their home life outside of your program has a large impact on that?

Many of our youth have been involved in crime and have been dealt with in the courts. Is it better for a youth to spend time in jail or in a therapeutic environment where they get to see a therapist and have counselors on hand 24 hours a day, seven days a week? In my opinion rehabilitation is a much better solution than imprisonment.

The kids who come to our program do not require the level of treatment that hospitalization provides. Sometimes we do have children who are so violent that they do require hospitalization. In those cases we make sure that their needs are met.

My current employer will only take in youth that need therapy, but when I worked in wilderness therapy it was not a requirement. In fact I felt the wilderness therapy program was so beneficial for confidence and life skills that I would encourage youth to attend a program like the one I worked at. No, it was not fun most of the time but you learn true discipline. Even as a staff being held to the same standards as clients I got a lot out of the program.

Of course clients are assessed before they are admitted. However there are many factors in how a client can be discharged: Therapists, doctors, case workers, parents, courts, insurance. Some or all of those come into play for how long a client stays.

I would argue that a therapeutic environment does lots of good for someone with those issues. Yes everyone misses home. But they are receiving a lot of help where they are at. Certainly it's better than being in jail and away from your family.

We work with children with emotional and behavioral problems plus co-occurring medical issues, children who have severe acting out behaviors, Children with problem sexual behavior, Emotionally disturbed children with developmental delays or disabilities. That's just the short list.

Actually you are incorrect about being in lock down facilities. Part of the facilities my organization operates are lock down. Those are for youth who are very high risk- who have violent behaviors or are at risk at running away. Some of these clients are so at risk that they even attack staff. I have personally been assaulted at work: I've been punched, kicked, spit on, urinated on verbally assaulted and had my life verbally threatened by some of these kids. Do you really think kids that display that behavior are going to be successful in society? The facility I work in has unlocked doors from the inside. Of course if a client tries to run away we are going to stop them, and if they do manage to run away we will call the police.

The wilderness program I worked for certainly was not locked down. If a client decided to run from that program we would simply let them. We always had one staff carry a backpack on them 24/7. This backpack contained first aid kit, water, small food supplies, flashlight, GPS, and satellite phone. If a kid ran away then that staff would run with them. We wouldn't grab them and make them come back. Of course we would encourage them to return, but the kid would make that decision on their own. What was their punishment for running away? They would have to walk back. I only saw one client ever truly run away. They were an adult and hitch hiked to town and called their parents. Their parents refused to send them a plane ticket home so the client asked us to take them to a homeless shelter in the nearest city. Which we did.

Then they should be dealt with in the community, just as they are in Britain.

The community deals with them by calling the police. What else do you expect the community to do? Ground them?

So you admit that it's wide-open for parental abuse; that kids can be kidnapped with no good reason and held against their will. That's not exactly a glowing endorsement is it?

How do you feel about kids who are sent to summer camp and don't want to go? Do you consider that kidnapping? As I said, I felt the program I worked for is beneficial.

Maybe some of those kids are not very nice kids. That's certainly a strong possibility, but ask yourself, wouldn't you act like that if you were held against your will? I will admit that I lashed out at "staff" at the place I was held. It didn't me no good as I was punched to the ground for it, but I did so in self-defense. I'm not a violent person; but no-one was going to treat me like shit and not have me defend myself. Perhaps you don't seem to realize that maybe you induce those behaviors?

No, I would not display that behavior. That is anti-social behavior and it is not self-defense. They are not defending themselves against any harm. It is behavior they displayed at home and would have continued to display if they do not arrive in our program. I have seen a staff who is incredibly sweet and done a client no harm be pulled into a room by clients and assaulted. The staff was sent to the hospital. It is anti-social behavior that is no way accepted in society. You did not deserve, and should not have been punched to the ground. We do not do that to our kids, and they have no reason to harm us other than being emotionally disturbed from previous life experiences.

Are they not a free person? No...to you they aren't. They're a prisoner...perhaps because they are grieving for a lost loved one. Get what I'm saying?

If a child runs away from any healthy home police are notified. It is not healthy behavior for a child to run away from home. Is a child who is grounded by their parents a prisoner?

Maybe they are grieving for a lost loved one, we have plenty of clients who are, but they need to learn appropriate ways to deal with those emotions. Running from home to do drugs, commit crimes, and harm themselves or others are not appropriate ways to deal with those emotions. We teach our youth how to deal with those emotions.

Do you receive kids from hired kidnappers ("escorts")? And roughly what percentage are delivered to you via those means?

Where I work, no, we do not. Unless you count case workers as kidnappers.

At the wilderness therapy I worked at we did, however it was entirely up to the parents to do that. The only way the company I previously worked for associated with transports was by receiving the child from them. I am not justifying the use of transports, however one perspective is that a youth needs treatment and will refuse to go, or may become violent with parents when they try to take them to treatment. I have talked to the kids about this before and they said that if they knew they were going to come to treatment they would have ran away from home. However nearly every child whom I had this conversation with said they understand why their parents hired transports.

Do you not think that for a depressed child, a socially anxious child, or a grieving child, that being pulled from their beds in the middle of the night is wholly inappropriate

yes, I do believe it is inappropriate to use a transport for children who are depressed, socially anxious or grieving. I do not believe it is inappropriate to transport a child who is violent and refuses help.

I do know of some Samoan men who are frequently talked about in those stories, however I have never first hand heard of accounts of men hitting the youth, taping their mouths, or making them urinate in bottles. The youth I worked with talked about their transports frequently and thankfully I never heard a youth talk about being physically abused by the transports. I assure you if I had I would have reported it as a mandated reporter.

I'm really sorry you had such a traumatic experience. Programs like the one you went to absolutely should not exist. I personally don't believe punitive programs have any lasting change on youth, and agree that they can be traumatizing. Fortunately there are a ton of legitimate and non-punitive therapy programs out there, and they are not difficult to find.

The program I currently works for takes all sorts of youth with troubled pasts- from abusive families, drugs, gangs, depression, self harm. We provide them therapy, guidance, safety, and education in order to get their lives back on track. Some of the kids are sent there by their parents, some by the court system, and a few even decide to come on their own. If you went up to each kid and asked them if they should be there, 99% would say no. They would say that they don't need help. They would say they hate it, that it's worse than jail, and that it's a waste of their time. But if you look at these kids history and what they have been through, you would agree that they need to be there. The 14 year old girls that have been coerced into prostitution would tell you that they're fine. But really, they need help.

While I agree that there are times when parents over react and send their kids to these programs. A kid gets caught smoking weed a couple times and ends up with us for 4 months may not require therapy... but the vast majority of these kids in programs need help.