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Despite her shock at the facilitator's encounter with Lile, Baker stayed on.
"I've never seen anybody treated like that," she said. "But what was more alarming was watching the other people."
Participants sat passively as the facilitators verbally abused them. A powerful current of emotion swept through the parents.
"It was almost like a pulling force -- either go along with what we're saying or we're really going to lambaste you," Baker said.
The confrontational session lasted until almost midnight. The facilitators ordered the drained participants to go to their hotel rooms and craft essays about highly personal topics.
Distinguished specialist concluded that her profession couldn't help
Michele Harway is a prominent California psychologist -- and the mother of a troubled teen.
When family problems reached a crisis point, she made a difficult decision -- that her profession wasn't the answer. Instead, she and her husband sent her son to Teen Help, an organization that does not believe that training in adolescent psychology or related fields is necessary for staff members dealing with troubled teens.
Harway, who has a master's and doctorate from the University of Maryland, is a faculty member and director of research at the Phillips Graduate Institute in Encino, Calif. The institute trains professionals in marriage and family therapy.
When her teen-aged son's behavior became disruptive, she felt that she would be able to deal with it.
"For a number of years he was increasingly out of control," said Harway, a specialist in family psychology and domestic violence. "We tried everything my profession has to offer.
"It's really difficult ... to counteract what a peer culture does to a kid."
So they sent their son, then 17, to Teen Help's Paradise Cove compound in Western Samoa for 51/2 months and Spring Creek Lodge in Montana for another 21/2 months. He had advanced from Level 1, the lowest status, to Level 3, when a medical problem required him to leave.
"It was with great regret that we brought him home," Harway said. Today, her son is enrolling in junior college.
Harway, who was named the 1998 Family Psychologist of the Year by the Family Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association, offered these responses to common criticisms of Teen Help programs:
Lack of privacy -- "What do you think happens in jail? You've got to understand that these kids were really out of control. They will tell you, 'It saved my life."'
Encounter group seminars for parents and teens -- "I can certainly see where some individuals who are wanting their child to be taken and fixed and brought back home might be very offended at having to be in a seminar in which they're asked to look at their own behavior. ... There's no doubt if you put people through extreme experiences, it does get through your defenses. ... There was nothing in the Discovery seminar that would have had any kind of long-term impact on anybody, unless the kid was severely mentally ill, and in that case, the kid shouldn't be in the program."
Training levels of staff members -- "Having seen what mental health professionals can do to bring about a change with many of these adolescents, my son included, I think that as a profession we constrain ourselves by the way in which we deliver psychotherapy. We have an objective, neutral stance. We don't get very involved in our clients' lives. We see them an hour or two a week. ... There is lots and lots of evidence that paraprofessionals who have the requisite skills can be just as effective as trained mental health professionals. I sound like a heretic within my profession. But I do believe that. ... The staff at these (Teen Help) programs are just incredible."
Parents sending their teens away -- "When we have a situation such as (Columbine), where we have kids making bombs in their garage and they go into their school and kill themselves and 13 other individuals, (people) were very quick to blame the parents for not having taken the proper steps. ... If a parent sends a child into a program that literally turns people around and saves their lives, they're skewered for that as well. So from a parent's perspective, it's very frustrating.
"You know, these programs aren't perfect. I don't know of any program that is."
Other tasks: "Write one page on how your nametag relates to your life." "Write one page on the current deadness in my life." "Write 10 times that I asked for love and it was denied me."
'Extremely confronting'
On the second day, there was more game-playing.
"Extremely in-your-face confronting," Baker said.
"There was one woman literally reduced to tears every time (the chief facilitator) would go over to her," Baker said. "A lot of the people were playing into the way the facilitator wanted it to be. I found that very frightening, because you see all these people who are really turning against the one being chastised. I don't care what you're there for, you shouldn't be talked to that way."
Baker and the other parents then were separated into two groups -- a "red team" and a "black team" -- for a conflict resolution game with vague rules and a "you-weren't-listening" lecture afterward by the facilitators.
Baker said she told the other parents the rules for the game were unclear and that they were taking it too seriously.
Then came her turn for abuse.
"This assistant facilitator says, 'Miss Barbara, please stand up. Based on what you have said in the other room, I want you to know that if I were one of your children, I would have run away to the circus a long time ago.
"'You're not fit to be a mother. And God help all the rest of your children for the way you are."'
The assault staggered Baker.
"You're wrapped in guilt anyway," she said. "You know you've got to be a crappy parent. And for someone to blast you like that, to me it was horrid. It was absolutely uncalled for. It was devastating.
"... The assistant facilitator told me that I was the most phony person she had ever met in her life. And that I was not really a real person. And that until I could get out of my head and get with the program, I would never realize who I was. She didn't say that once. She said it to me three times in different groups."
When she came back, she was "told that in order to continue with this program, 'You have to acknowledge that you have broken your vows because you left the room without permission.' And I just looked at the man and said, 'You've got to be kidding. I went out and I vomited."'
Soon, Baker said, the session dissolved into near-madness.
"They told everybody to take their chairs and move apart from one another. They lowered the lights. (The chief facilitator) started talking about climbing the mountain and then coming down. They put on some very soothing music. He went into a very charismatic, soft type of voice and started talking about people's pain and feelings you have about not being worthy.
"He said he was going to take you on this trip. First it had to do with your mother. ... You are this little child, and you're in a room, and he just sort of walked people through this. Literally, the whole room is going into a trance. ... Now he said, 'Don't hold this back.' And he's walking you through all this horrible stuff. 'What would you say to that mother if she were here?'
"People started crying. And they had them beating on the chairs like taking out your frustration and your anger.
"One man literally broke the chair. He was pounding the chair so hard. I cannot explain to you what it sounds like to be in an enclosed room with a hundred people, with all but four of them screaming, moaning and crying. It was unbelievable. And it terrified part of me.
"This young girl -- 19, 20 years old -- was lying on the floor about seven or eight feet from me. And she was saying things about her mother that, I mean, I'm about to cry, I was so absolutely taken aback by this girl. This girl was in so much pain. ... Her mother had died not too long ago. There were a lot of abandonment issues. Abuse issues. There were a lot of abuse issues with this girl's father."
When it seemed it couldn't get worse, it did.
"Once they got through with the mother, they let you recover a bit. They're back in the chairs. Calming. Let it all go. Let it go. Then they start in on the dads, the same route again.
"If you thought the crying and lamenting was loud with the mothers, it was horrendous with the fathers.
"Everybody was pounding and screaming. I mean, that went on for an unbelievably long time, listening to all these people screaming and yelling and crying.
"I mean, it was just a sea of non-ending wailing. That's what it sounded like. Pain. Just pain. Like if you were on a battlefield or something."
Finally, the emotions subsided, the chief facilitator talking "about the healing and the releasing of this and releasing of that. People started getting back up on their chairs."
It was almost 1 a.m. The lights came on. The facilitators told the parents to return to their rooms and do their homework.
'Like a party'
The next morning brought a totally different mood. Instead of hostility, there was warmth.
"When we walked in on Sunday, they had new music. There were people dancing. It was like a party. It was like the whole thing had been lifted from you. We did a couple small exercise things. But nobody was in your face. The attitudes of the staffers had all changed. They were wearing smiles. They were being pleasant to you instead of trying to chop you down to nothing."
The facilitators introduced a mother and father who said they'd taken their son out of Teen Help before he had completed the program. Their boy, they said, had committed suicide.
"Please, parents," they told the group, "don't take your kids out too soon."
Baker began thinking about something the chief facilitator had said at the beginning.
"Do you think this is hard on you parents?" he asked. "You should see what I do to the kids. This is nothing compared to what your kids go through."
"He was bragging about it. About kids throwing up over in Jamaica and Paradise Cove (Western Samoa). And I'm thinking, there's no kid that should be subjected to what I saw and not have a counselor or therapist there to help them."
Baker and the other parents paid nothing for the three-day seminar. But the last item on the agenda was a sales pitch. Teen Help counselors urged them to sign up for the next seminar, costing about $300.
Instead of signing up, Baker left and quickly got on the phone.
She was getting Scott out of Tranquility Bay as fast as she could.
Today, Scott Baker attends a private school in Texas. His mother said he's doing well.
Of her experience with Teen Help, Barbara Baker says simply:
"These people are not nice."
©
1999, Denver Rocky Mountain News
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