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Program to Help Youths Has
Troubles of Its Own
September 6, 2003
By: Tim Weiner
Thompson Falls, Mont. -- Spring
Creek Lodge Academy, home to thousands of wayward children since
1996, calls itself "a safe haven for change." Many parents swear
with near-religious devotion that the program, one of the nation's
largest, has saved their sons and daughters. Others have come to
curse it.
The program is affiliated with
the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, or
Wwasps, a multimillion-dollar business in the industry of "tough
love" programs and "specialty boarding schools" that have
flourished, often unregulated, for two decades.
Dormitory units at the Spring Creek Lodge Academy in Montana.
The academy is one of several affiliates of a program for troubled
youths.
WWASPS affiliates in Mexico,
Costa Rica, Western Samoa and the Czech Republic have closed under
accusations of cruelty since 1996. The affiliate in Costa Rica, in
fact, collapsed in May when students revolted.
A review of seven of the
company's largest affiliates in the United States, where it remains
the fastest-growing program of its kind, found accusations of
misconduct or wrongdoing at four of them.
In Utah and South Carolina,
state officials have cited the programs and their staff members for
violations including child abuse and overcrowding, and have
challenged their right to operate.
Here at the company's largest
affiliate, Spring Creek Lodge, the program and its staff have been
accused of sexual abuse, physical violence and psychological duress.
Wwasps, whose programs house
about 2,400 youths in all, some as young as 10, has fought and
denied all charges.
The founder, Robert B. Lichfield,
49, called the accusations part of a difficult business. "When you
have troubled kids and troubled parents - any school or program that
works with troubled kids has complaints," Mr. Lichfield said in a
telephone interview. "We're no different."
He attributed the growth of
Wwasps to "the breakdown of the family," saying, "When the family is
not functioning, society suffers."
Wwasps has flourished and
profited by tapping a deep well of woe in American families,
interviews and correspondence with more than 200 parents, children,
staff members and program officials made clear.
Parents say they turned to the
programs in exasperation, or exhaustion, seeking salvation, or in
some cases exile, for their sons and daughters. Many say Wwasps was
their only alternative after schools, public health systems,
counseling and the courts failed them.
Spring Creek Lodge's associate
director, Chaffin Pullan, 32, said, "We're crazy enough to say,
'Hey, we'll take your child, and we'll work on their values.' "
But at Spring Creek Lodge, as at
several other affiliates, some of that work takes place under
conditions and circumstances that some children and parents call
physically and psychologically brutal.
Where state regulators have
challenged affiliates, government officials often spend years trying
to control or sanction the programs' defiance of licensing rules.
South Carolina officials, for
example, after four years of fighting, have barred Narvin Lichfield,
the brother of the Wwasps' founder, from Carolina Springs Academy,
the program that Narvin Lichfield owns in the tiny town of Due West.
In Utah, officials are wrestling
with Majestic Ranch, which takes children as young as 10, and where
a program director was recently charged with child abuse, as well as
with a new program at the flagship affiliate, Cross Creek, for
clients over age 18. Neither program has obtained the required
operating license, state officials said.
Robert Lichfield, who once said
he believed only Satan stood in the way of the programs' goals, said
state authorities were merely reacting to pressure from parents or
reporters, adding, "If I was in their position, I would be doing the
same thing."
Federal authorities are also
taking a look at Wwasps. On July 10, Representative George Miller of
California, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee,
asked the Treasury Department to see whether Wwasps received unusual
"tax deductions, tax credits or any special tax treatment."
Affiliates gross perhaps $70
million a year, an estimate based on their enrollment, tuition and
fees. A company spokesman, James Wall, said it had always filed its
federal income taxes properly. But Mr. Wall said Wwasps, which calls
itself a nonprofit corporation in Utah, had never applied for
nonprofit, tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service.
The company says it does not
directly own or control any of its affiliates, and claims no
responsibility for their programs. But Spring Creek Lodge employees,
for instance, say the program sends about 40 percent of its revenues
to Wwasps.
Amberly Knight, a former
director of Dundee Ranch, the affiliate in Costa Rica that collapsed
last spring, said in a sworn statement that the company took 75
percent of Dundee Ranch's income, leaving little money to care for
its 200 children. The statement also said company officials
maintained "offshore bank accounts," in part to "evade U.S. income
taxes."
Here in Montana, where 50 other
programs for troubled teenagers have opened in addition to Spring
Creek Lodge, the state does not regulate private schools, state
officials say.
"We have a tremendous number -
an inordinate amount - of these programs in western Montana," said
Paul Clark, a Montana state legislator who represents the Thompson
Falls area and also runs a program for about a dozen wayward
teenagers. But the state lacks the capacity or the expertise to
regulate them, Mr. Clark said, adding, "We'll get action after
there's a crisis."
Many children from the affiliate
that collapsed in Costa Rica wound up at Spring Creek Lodge, where
the enrollment has doubled to about 500 in two years, and whose
parents pay roughly $40,000 a year and up.
That growth has created an
unfilled demand for trained teachers and counselors, staff members
say. The program is the largest employer in this corner of Montana,
where jobs are scarce and wages low.
As the school has grown, so have
accusations of abuse.
A log cabin with tiny isolation
rooms, called the Hobbit, sits on the edge of Spring Creek Lodge's
compound in the woods. Some teenagers, like Alex Ziperovich, 16, say
they have spent months in the Hobbit, eating meals of beans and
bananas.
"He came out 35 pounds lighter,
acting like a zombie," said his mother, Michele Ziperovich, a
Seattle lawyer. "When he came back, he was worse, far worse."
In March, the county prosecutor
charged a 20-year-old staff member with sexually assaulting two boys
in the Hobbit, one 14 and the other 17. He denies the charges.
In June, a girl was beaten by
students with a shower-curtain rod; in September 2002 a student bent
on escape beat a guard with a vacuum-cleaner pipe and shattered his
cheekbone, said Mr. Pullan, Spring Creek Lodge's the associate
director, and several staff members.
The September assault followed a
similar attack three weeks earlier; Thompson Falls residents say
escape attempts are rising.
Mr. Pullan said the academy was
curtailing use of the isolation rooms. He called the recent violence
against staff members unusual and "horrific." But he is said he was
convinced that the academy was helping the vast majority of its
children.
He acknowledged that it had been
hard to hire and retain skilled local staff members.
One former staff member, Mark
Runkle, who worked for two and a half years at the academy, said he
became skeptical of some practices, like taking children into the
woods at night for psychological tests of will.
"They take kids down to the
Vermillion Bridge at night, blindfold them, and push them off into
the river; they take them off into the woods, and they come back
hurt," Mr. Runkle said. "They claim it's a mind-increaser. I think
it breaks the kids down - breaks their will down. Mentally, they do
damage. Emotionally, too."
Despite such accounts, parents
continue to turn to such programs. The reasons that the parents,
children, staff members and program officials cite are the crises
common to American family life: fractured marriages, failing
schools, frantic two-job couples with no time to devote to children.
The accelerating pace of
adolescence and a "zero-tolerance" culture leave teenagers no margin
for mistakes, experts say.
Managed care has cut insurance
coverage for residential treatment. Reduced federal and state
support have hobbled community-based counseling. A new White House
study calls state and federal mental health programs a shambles.
Some parents of children damaged
by drugs, drinking, depression or divorce say Wwasps programs were
their sole alternative.
"We refer to it, my husband and
I, as the program of last resort," Debbie Wood said. She and her
husband moved from Seattle to Thompson Falls in March to be near
their son, Sam, now 17, at Spring Creek Lodge. "I don't know of
another program that would fill our needs the way Wwasps has," Mrs.
Wood said.
Other parents, too, are
satisfied. Deb Granneman, of Saline, Mich., said: "With my son it
worked; it's not going to work for every kid. When you send your kid
there, you're giving them the last chance to turn their lives
around."
Mr. Pullan, along with 37
parents, children and staff members interviewed personally, by
phone, or through e-mail, say few Spring Creek Lodge children are
delinquents.
Perhaps one-quarter are drug
users or drinkers, Mr. Pullan said, while "about 70 percent are not
hard core - they cannot communicate at home." Many children say they
were sent here after a parent died or departed, or a new stepmother
or stepfather rejected them.
A crucial part of the company's
effort to shape its success is a requisite series of
emotional-growth seminars for parents. "The seminars are the most
important thing we have experienced as a family," said Rosemary
Hinch, a teacher in Phoenix.
"It was painful; it was hard,"
Ms. Hinch said. "They teach you to take a really good look at
yourself."
But the seminars persuaded
Michele Ziperovich to pull her son Alex out. "It was 300 adults
screaming and beating on chairs, three days of no sleep, and after
that, you'll buy into whatever they say," Ms. Ziperovich said. "They
berate you, they scream at you, exhaust you. It's basically mind
control."
The question of control also
arises among staff members and children who say many teenagers at
Spring Creek Lodge are sedated, night and day. "There are girls on
so many antidepressants given out by the program that they can't
move," said Lauren Meksraitis, 18, of Tampa, Fla., a former Spring
Creek client. "They can't get out of bed. They are like dead
animals."
A company spokesman said a
visiting psychiatrist prescribed the drugs, which are dispensed by a
nurse or "other staff members."
But Ms. Meksraitis said: "The
Spring Creek staff members responsible for family contacts don't
tell your parents the truth. They lie to parents and tell them their
kids are going to get fixed."
Her father, Michael Meksraitis,
a lawyer, agreed, saying: "They misrepresent the program. They take
advantage of parents in a very vulnerable position, who don't know
what to do with their kids, who are at the end of their rope."
Robert Lichfield, who dropped
out of college and became director of residential programs at a Utah
institution for teenagers that was subsequently closed by the state
for cruelty to children, says he has learned some lessons from a
quarter-century of experience in the business.
"Kids think they ought to be
able to do whatever they want," he said. "And if they can't, that's
abuse."
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