'Troubled teen' camps have a history of deceptive marketing and risky practices, and most remain unregulated

Deaths include wilderness-therapy camps, boot camps, religious boarding schools,
reform schools and teen ranches. (Daily Yonder chart, from Unsilenced data)

Out of options and desperate, many parents turn to youth wilderness camps to "cure" their troubled teens, but the multi-billion dollar industry is generally unregulated, riddled with corruption and risky practices, reports Sam Myers of The Daily Yonder. "In the United States, thousands of pre-teens and teens have their rights signed over to 'therapy camps' in the troubled-teen sector. . . aimed at rehabilitating youth labeled as 'troubled or 'delinquent' by parents, guardians, psychiatrists, or school officials."

Wilderness camps are marketed as "tough love" where nature and military-like discipline root out problems, but research shows the opposite. Myers reports, "There is no evidence that wilderness-therapy camps effectively rehabilitate troubled youth. In 2006, Maia Szalavitz, a journalist who covers drugs, addiction, and public policy, published her book Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids. In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Szalavitz went as far as to say that the practices used by these programs would be violations of the Geneva Convention [provisions] for prisoners of war."

Kayla Muzquiz, who was sent to the School of Urban and Wilderness Survival, a wilderness-therapy program in rural North Carolina, is Myers' object example. She told him: "I was out in wilderness therapy for 72 days. . . . We would wake up every day and hike 10 miles with almost a 60-pound pack on our backs. It was excruciating because I had an undiagnosed autoimmune disorder. . . .While I was hiking, I was constantly in pain. . . . I woke up next to a snake, a copperhead, twice."

The programs' costs can be excessive, and parents are often lied to about the care and supervision provided. "A survey of 28 wilderness camps conducted by All Kinds of Therapy found that sending a child to one of these programs for 30 days costs, on average, $19,934," Myers reports. "In 2008, the Government Accountability Office reported that many programs employ deceptive marketing, including false statements and misleading representations of practices and policies. . . The report covered several deaths at wilderness-therapy camps. In one instance, a 14-year-old at a Texas wilderness-therapy program died of cardiopulmonary arrest after his hiking group got lost for hours in temperatures with a heat index near 105 degrees."

Meg Applegate, CEO of Unsilenced, an organization that raises awareness of institutionalized child abuse in the troubled-teen industry, told Myers: "Let's say a case of sexual abuse happens. What they'll do is just fire that person and then tell the authorities they took care of it … but that facility isn't held accountable. . . . So, that person will go and work at a different facility. . . . Let's say the whole facility did something terrible, and they shut down. Well, what they usually do is rebrand under a new LLC – even if they're in the same building and do the exact same things." Myers reports, "According to research done by the organization Breaking Code Silence, a mother accused a therapist at the facility of assaulting and sodomizing her 14-year-old daughter in 1991. The therapist was fired, but it's unclear if they were criminally charged."

Lawsuits used to be the only way to close a program, but in some states, "momentum for governmental regulation" is growing, Myers reports: "In March, Applegate testified in front of the Montana State Senate to support HB218," which the legislature passed to "revise program practices and provide additional licensing requirements."