Colorado parents who meet monthly at the tiny Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock share painful personal stories about how their teen-agers' nightmarish behavior almost tore their families apart.

And how a Utah-based organization called Teen Help rescued them.

With unblinking detail, they chronicle the personal enlightenment they say they and their teens received by participating in the company's grueling group-encounter sessions. Many parents now volunteer to help train other mothers and fathers in the encounter sessions, where they are often led to confront unpleasant memories.

The Colorado support group is one of several around the nation. Similar sessions regularly take place in Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, Portland, even Fairbanks, Alaska.

More than two dozen Colorado children have entered Teen Help programs.

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Their parents are impassioned ambassadors for Teen Help, which runs strict behavior modification camps in the United States and overseas for American teens. It can cost parents more than $30,000 a year to place their teens in compounds in locations such as Montana, South Carolina, Mexico, Jamaica and Western Samoa.

Teen Help facilities in Mexico and the Czech Republic were closed after government authorities raided them following allegations of child abuse. Teen Help also closed an adolescent hospital in Utah amid a state investigation of allegations including a failure to report a case of alleged child abuse.

But parents who ardently believe in the organization and its tonic for troubled teens make no apologies. Many of them dismiss criticism of Teen Help as the work of manipulative youths or mental-health professionals whose theories about changing behavior look good on paper but don't work in today's combustible social environment.

In the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre, one Teen Help activist says referrals to the program are rapidly growing.

One Saturday earlier this year, two months before the Littleton tragedy, about 20 parents and some teen-agers sat in a circle of chairs in the Castle Rock library to answer questions from a Denver Rocky Mountain News reporter.

These parents were united in their praise for Teen Help's benefits for them and their children.