According to Alexia Parks, a fiery advocate of adolescents freedoms and author of An American Gulag , an American teenager is kidnapped every 5 minutes to be disappeared by his parents to one of the 2000 specialty schools scattered in the depths of the least populated states of this country and abroad. Sometimes handcuffed or drugged, these teenagers haven t committed any crimes, sometimes barely a misdemeanor. But because they have smoked marijuana, drunk alcohol, failed classes or been truant or defiant, their parents panic, believing the children have begun a deadly downward spiral. It is usually by word of mouth or in a counselor s office that parents first hear of the camps. There, the young rebels will have to face Mother Nature, eat what she has to offer, hike 12 miles a day, and deserve their salvation by proving their ability to survive in an inhospitable environment, impossible to manipulate.
Some teenagers insist they have profited from the experience.
Many others, like Michelle Sutton and Aaron Bacon, don t survive it. According to testimony gathered from former students of specialty boarding schools in Oregon, Missouri, Italy and Mexico, psychological rapes, physical abuses, sleep and food deprivation are some of the techniques used by specialty schools to coerce pupils complete submission. Yet, by reading their colorful brochures, or watching their promotional videos, one would not imagine what treatment awaits the troubled teenagers. They show grateful parents smiling at their clean-cut teenagers whose lives have been saved by the schools programs. Psychologist Larry Brendtro, President of Reclaiming Youth International, a non-profit research, training, and advocacy group in the field of troubled children, says some parents are so desperate that when someone comes along offering to turn their child into a model citizen, they'll sign on the dotted line.