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Teen Behavioral
Centers Push 'Tough Love': Utah-Based Network's Program Draws Many
Cries of Outrage
Scripps Howard News
Service
July 21,1999
By Lou Kilzer
Denver -- A tall,
crewcut 16-year-old boy stares into the video camera and tries to
stifle a sob.
"Dad, I miss you,"
Eric Stone stammers, his chest heaving. "I love you, Dad. I love you
a lot.
"I miss you, and I
never want to go through this again." Eric is speaking from Spring
Creek Lodge, a private behavior modification camp for teen-agers in
a remote part of Montana. His mother sent him there.
A camp official
taped the 11-minute video to persuade Eric's father, who is divorced
from the boy's mother, to keep him there.
The tape has the
opposite effect. Craig Stone barely recognizes his son. The once
happy-go-lucky boy now seems distraught.
Armed with custody
papers, Stone drives from his home near Seattle to Thompson Falls,
Mont., and contacts the county sheriff. The sheriff calls Spring
Creek Lodge, and soon Eric goes free.
Eric's story
involves a Utah-based network of companies operating a far-flung
chain of facilities designed to break teen-agers of behavior that
has driven their parents to desperation. The companies are commonly
known as Teen Help. Teen Help's style is not for the faint-hearted.
It helps some parents arrange the seizure of disruptive teen-agers,
even from their homes in the middle of the night. T Government
regulation of these programs is spotty, and for now, teens sent to
these facilities have little legal standing to challenge their
confinement. Teen Help was started by Robert Lichfield, 45, a
southern Utah businessman who lives on an estate in the spectacular
canyon country near St. George.
He hired David
Gilcrease to create a behavior modification program to all but
guarantee parents would see a change in their teens.
Gilcrease had been
trainer from 1974-81 for LifeSpring, a company that perfected a form
of encounter session called "large group awareness training."
"Do I say that it's
for everybody in the world?"
Gilcrease said.
"No, but I don't think everybody in the world needs a psychological
examination, either."een Help then ships them to far-off compounds
where the message is simple: Cooperate or you won't see Mom, Dad and
the outside world for a long time.
They can't do
anything, including talking or using the bathroom, without
permission.
The aggressive
methods have spawned allegations of child abuse, prompting
authorities to raid or investigate facilities in Mexico, the Czech
Republic, Utah, South Carolina. Facilities in the first three
locations closed. Parents pay the company $26,000 to $54,000 a year
to modify the behavior of their children. The company does that with
methods that include intense group encounter sessions run by
"facilitators" who generally have little academic training in
psychology or similar fields.
Teen Help has many
admirers. Hundreds of parents and teens credit its programs with
producing spectacular turnarounds in troubled young people, even
saving their lives.
"If we could expose
all of our children to this environment, there truly would be peace
on earth," Marsha Mandrussow Gallagher, whose son, Collin, lived at
Spring Creek Lodge part of last year, said in Teen Help promotional
material.
Speculation has
reverberated among parents, mental health experts and social
commentators about whether Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold could have
been helped before they murdered 12 fellow students and a teacher
and killed themselves. The debate about Teen Help centers on whether
its brand of "tough love" is appropriate for adolescents stumbling
through one of the most emotionally vulnerable periods of their
lives.
Several
psychologists and psychiatrists expressed skepticism and alarm about
Teen Help's methods. "There's something very creepy about this,"
Seattle psychiatrist August Piper said. "It's kind of frightening.
It sort of smacks of brainwashing, doesn't it?"
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