Teen Tough Love Rehab: Scam, Torture, and Murder

[nancylebov]

Help at Any Cost by Maia Szalavitz covers various tough love residential and boot camp programs that teens get put into. They're incredibly destructive in the short and long terms, and sometimes lead to deaths from illness and deprivation. They're also very expensive for the parents and profitable for those who run them.

Here's a link to a podcast

Comments

[halimede]

What I mean by primary motivation is that like eating and drinking and music, cruelty doesn't need to be motivated by money or power or security or comfort or sex or any of the other things people like.

I've talked to a number of ex-bullies who all said things along the lines of 'I just felt like if I got in there first, no-one could get to me', or 'if I picked on smaller kids, I hoped the bigger kids wouldn't pick on me (and even though they did, anyway)' etc. Even if it looks like there's no secondary gain from an outsiders point of view, there usually is in the mind of the perpetrator. It's enough if people think and/or feel more powerful and/or secure when they act that way.

Same thing with bystanders, as soon as they see someone picking on someone else, the first impulse is to make sure that *somehow* they're seen to be on the side of the bully, not the victim. Because that's the only way they think they know of avoiding the same fate.

I'm not saying that those are excusable responses, BTW. Just that there *is* a very practical reward for idle, complicated, useless cruelty. The avoidance of a feeling of powerlessness by feeling powerful over someone else for a while.

[nancylebov]

Thanks for doing the asking. I wonder why bullying for self-protecton seems like such a plausible strategy.

It doesn't cover the case of bullying by high-status people, nor does it seem to cover the tough love rehabs. The folks running them skimped on food, housing, medical care, and education. They probably could have skimped on the abuse, too, but they didn't.