Abuse Allegations Fly
Government investigations, lawsuits claim that youths were mistreated; Teen Help denies charges

Behavior modification camps operated by the Utah-based Teen Help organization have won hundreds of advocates among parents convinced the programs saved their children from potential self-destruction.

But governments in the United States and abroad have intervened several times in the operation of Teen Help facilities, raising questions about how tough tough love can be before it crosses the line.

Teen Help's facilities and staff have been the targets of government investigations and civil lawsuits alleging that some teen-agers in its care were abused.

Those allegations and other concerns prompted the closing of three company facilities and restrictions on others.

Teen Help, a name referring to a group of limited partnerships and family trusts, blames the problems on overzealous regulators.

"Government agencies tend to overreact in that they make quick judgments and want to move ahead with their agendas recklessly and without fairness," Brent Facer, an associate of Teen Help founder Robert Lichfield, told the Denver Rocky Mountain News. "The problem was that local government agencies were allowed to operate without checks and balances."

Thousands of adolescents -- more than two dozen from Colorado -- have undergone Teen Help's behavior modification program at youth camps in the United States and abroad. Their parents can pay the organization more than $30,000 a year in the hope that their children will get straightened out.

But not every case has turned out happily.

Teen Help activities touched off investigations by law enforcement or regulatory agencies in several states -- including Utah, South Carolina and Ohio -- and three foreign countries -- Mexico, the Czech Republic and Western Samoa. Facilities in Utah, Mexico and the Czech Republic were closed.

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Teen Help also has been sued four times in the last eight months by six teens claiming the organization systematically abused them at its compounds.

Teen Help denies that abuse has occurred in its facilities.

One suit alleges that Teen Help's Paradise Cove compound in Western Samoa uses a "secret psychotherapy of threats, intimidation, invasion of privacy, physical abuse, mental abuse, verbal abuse and random punishment to break their captives' will and keep them confined."

Another suit filed in June charges that "homosexual attacks" by the staff at Paradise Cove "were not only tolerated on these two plaintiffs but threats of great bodily harm were made by these staff members if any attempt were ever made by either plaintiff to communicate information on the attacks to the outside world."

The suit also alleged that Teen Help's motivational training for parents provokes in them "an irrational veneration of the very defendants who had taken their money and abused their children."

"There's not physical abuse in any of the programs," said Karr Farnsworth, until recently the head of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs, a Teen Help umbrella group.

"I am confident that as in all other previous cases, when they have the opportunity to present factual, truthful information, the programs will prevail in court," Facer said.

Here is a case-by-case look at problems that have affected Teen Help programs: