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STORIES
BY LOU KILZER PHOTOGRAPHS BY DENNIS SCHROEDER
Barbara Rodgers of Colorado Springs recounted her family's ordeal after her daughter finished seventh grade:
"I think that's when she started smoking. That's when she started drinking. She started sneaking out in the middle of the night. In December of her eighth-grade year, she was 13, she stole my husband's car when we went to some friends' house in the neighborhood for dinner and totaled it. Got picked up for shoplifting. Stole my car a couple more times.
"She got really bad in the ninth grade. That's when she started running away. ... She chose to stay out all night and party. ... One time she took my car and was gone for five days. We filed charges against her for stealing our car.
"It was just a nightmare. She was awful. She had a terrible attitude. ... It was kind of to the point where I didn't think she was going to survive her teen-age years.
"My friend called me and said, 'I hear your daughter is doing some pretty unacceptable stuff, and it's time that you stop forgiving her for doing some unforgivable stuff. Now let me tell you about this program."' Rodgers said she called about 20 parents familiar with Teen Help, then visited Cross Creek Manor, its residential treatment center for girls in La Verkin, Utah. She and her husband signed Vanessa up, but they decided they weren't up to driving her there.
"I couldn't quite envision getting in the car and driving for 12 hours to take my daughter to a locked facility," Rodgers said in a letter to the News. "My guilt was way too powerful."
Instead, she hired an escort service that specializes in removing children from their homes and taking them to locked compounds.
"They came on Thursday, Aug. 7, 1996, at 3 a.m. -- 10 days after I first heard the words 'Teen Help.' This was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. She was gone 10 minutes after Teen Escort arrived, and my husband and I were sitting at the kitchen table at 3:15 a.m., drinking coffee and telling each other what a great thing we had just done.
"Intellectually, I might have believed that, but my heart was not in alignment with my head."
Vanessa spent four weeks at Brightway Adolescent Hospital, at the time Teen Help's intake facility. The company later closed the hospital during an investigation by Utah health department regulators.
She then spent 15 months at Cross Creek Manor.
While Vanessa was in Utah, Rodgers and her husband underwent Teen Help's training seminars for parents.
"I thought it was awesome," she said. "It gave me the opportunity to take a look at myself and say, 'OK, what did I do to contribute to the situation?' I didn't come out of it feeling that I was a failure as a mother. I came out of it feeling like maybe I had made mistakes, but don't we all?"
The parent of another Teen Help client acknowledged that the parent seminars are arduous.
"Though these seminars are difficult and confrontive -- I very nearly left the first day -- when I finished, I was a changed man," said James Miller, of Sedro Woolley, Wash. "I learned a whole lot about myself."
Rodgers disputed contentions by Teen Help's critics that the program constitutes mind control.
"I didn't feel I was being brainwashed," she said. "I didn't feel like I was manipulated."
Parents at the Castle Rock meeting said that if anyone was manipulative, it was their children, not Teen Help's methods.
"Manipulation is a big word in this program," said Suzie McCarthy of Colorado Springs.
"A lot of the kids are very manipulative," a Denver woman said. "And you do have to be careful. I don't think you want to get caught up in giving them freedom (by saying), 'Yes, we're going to rescue you and take you out of there."'
Several parents scoffed at letters in which their teens complained about their treatment at the distant juvenile compounds.
"The letters we get from our kids when they first get there are pretty incredible," another mother said. "They will say anything to see if we will bring them home. We're told to expect that."
The parents at Castle Rock were white and middle- to upper-middle class, from a variety of professions: social work, medicine and private investigations.
They said they are convinced Teen Help is worth the $30,000 or more a year they are paying to house and train their children and attend the parent seminars.
One mother chided the News for even asking about the costs:
"That's none of your business. You didn't pay. The government didn't pay. We paid. It's our choice."
Images of death laced the discussion.
"When I see my son, I would have paid 10 times what I paid to get him through that program and not have to bury him," one father said.
Another parent said that without Teen Help, his child would have faced the "autopsy slab." A mother spoke of not wanting to get a call requesting her son's dental records.
"I would have mortgaged everything I have to save my son's life," another mother said.
They said they were grateful that Teen Help eases the financial burden by offering their children a month's free stay at a compound or $1,000 for each recruit a parent brings into the program.
"None of my motivation was a kickback from the program," one father said. "And it still isn't."
Barbara Rodgers describes Teen Help's influence on her family:
"Our family operates much differently now than it did before. We all have a greater awareness of each other and ourselves. We treat each other with respect. We are more honest and accountable. We communicate with each other.
"Are we the perfect family? No way! But we have the tools to deal with whatever comes up."
©
1999, Denver Rocky Mountain News
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