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

[chickenfeet2003]

Don't let John Reid see that. You'll be giving him ideas.

[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

[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.

I knew one

[fabricdragon]

I knew a girl who got dumped in one of those. Lets review the facts, shall we

Re: I knew one

[nancylebov]

Thanks for posting this. The comments about the book at amazon were mostly favorable, but there were a couple attacking the book because it had little but "old stories". Looks like the same thing is still going on.

Re: I knew one

[fabricdragon]

well that was within the last two years, and the "school" is still there. Oh, and apparently she managed to escape and got caught by the police "tresspassing" on adjoining property, and was promptly returned to the camp.
Yes its still going on. They were going to keep here there until she turned 18, according to her sister (who wasnt allowed to contact her) and the rantings of her father. The only reason she got out early is because her father had some kind of fight with the director, and at least part of that was over money...

I've found your LJ (was: Re: I knew one)

[ndrosen]

I was one of the favorable commenters on Amazon. Years ago, anend a discussion of library censorship, I wrote on Usenet (I think on rec.arts.sf.written) that I thought children were human beings, and you said that you had been beginning to think that everyone on the group had joined the Adult Conspiracy. I liked that. (Well, not that the rest of them apparently had.)

I discovered your blog when you left a comment on libertarianhawk's LJ. I plan to add you to my Friends List, and maybe we'll meet again at a con.

Regards, Nicholas

[pocketnaomi]

The frustrating thing about the boot camps is that they originally stem from a valid concept, and have been twisted by people who don't get it and don't want to bother understanding. (Much like HeadStart in that way, although HeadStart has largely been rendered simply useless, whereas the teen boot camps have been rendered actually harmful

[nancylebov]

Here's what Szalavitz has to say about wilderness/survival programs:...while I believe that a wilderness challenge can be incredibly healng for the right child at the right time, the same program might be unmitigated torture for another child. Coerced survival training, even at its gentlest, has many of the same problems as teen military-style boot camps. As with those programs, you may bring home a more arrogant child who now knows he can survive almost anything, is in better physical shape than before, and is still furious with you and determined to do what he wants

[pocketnaomi]

I understand her, but I disagree based on the studies we looked at in my education classes (at a school definitely not known for its draconian views on education; they tended to progressive and non-punitive models). A more moderate perspective might say that they are good for certain very specific types of problems, but that they (like the boot camps) tend to be used -- and marketed -- indiscriminately to parents of children with any and all types of problems, with the result that their failure rate skyrockets. Doesn't mean they're useless, or that they're only for normal children who enter voluntarily, only that they address one highly specific kind of issue and aren't good at others.

[nancylebov]

I'm sure I've read that, but I'm not sure which story it's from. _The Jagged Orbit_?