SINGLE FILE
Heading to class, students walk in single file at Spring Creek Lodge in Montana. After a
year at Teen Help's Paradise Cove camp in Western Samoa, Nathan Hollister completed
his training in Montana, where he became an unpaid staff member supervising newcomers.
____________________________________________

'It saved his life'
Littleton teen pulled his life together at
camps in Samoa and Montana

By Lou Kilzer Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
For Nathan Hollister, the moment of reckoning came about midnight Oct. 28, 1996, outside an apartment building near Arapahoe Road and Holly Street. That's where his father, with the help of the Arapahoe County sheriff's office, arranged his transportation into Teen Help's network of behavior modification camps. Nathan's odyssey would consume more than 15 months and take him, under escort, to the Pacific island nation of Western Samoa for confrontational therapy. Today, Nathan, now 18, lives with his mother and father in Connecticut. His opinion? "I honestly believe that if I hadn't gone into the program, I would be dead now." His father Alan, a doctor who worked at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, agreed. "It saved his life," he said. "He was beyond parental control at the time. ... He had been kicked out of school.

DAY 1 Desperate measures 'It saved his life' Emotional nightmare The series Share your thoughts

He didn't come home. He was just in a very downward spiral that was a really great risk to his life. "If we don't do something, the next thing we're likely to hear is he's been arrested by the police or he is in a morgue somewhere. Those were really desperate circumstances." Nathan's account of his Teen Help experience offers an inside look at the program -- from a strong supporter. At the time of his "escort," Nathan was a sophomore at Cherry Creek Senior High School. "I was 15, almost 16, and I was into punk gothic-type things," he recalled. "I wore really ratty clothes, had my hair multicolored and in spikes, and big boots and all that. I didn't get along with my parents at all. "Wasn't home much. Spent a lot of my time in an apartment with some older guys who were over 21. I was drinking a whole lot. I had been kicked out of school and withdrawn from school multiple times. I had done various drugs." That October night, Nathan was hanging out with his buddies at the apartment when his father phoned. "I said, 'I'm just going to stay here tonight because it's just easier that way,"' Nathan said. "We argued for awhile. Then he said OK and hung up." A few minutes later, Alan Hollister drove up to the apartment building. A police car cruised in behind him. "I think they were going to try to get me for a curfew ticket, of which I already had four," Nathan said. "I went out there, and there were a couple of cop cars, and then another car drove up. Three people got out, two men and a lady. And they and my father circled around behind me." Alan Hollister told his son he was about to be driven to Brightway Adolescent Hospital in St. George, Utah. "So I smoked my last cigarette and told my girlfriend I would be back in two or three months," Nathan recalled. He said he spent about 10 days at Brightway. He took a psychological test, talked for an hour or more with a psychiatrist and was driven into town to have a passport picture made. Next stop: Western Samoa. The night before Nathan and eight other boys left, Brightway staff members kept them up for hours "so that we were too tired to run or anything." Staff members supplied them with movies to watch and brought in pizza. "They threatened to turn up the air conditioning and make it real cold in there if we were going to fall asleep," Nathan said.

"They threatened to turn up the air conditioning and make it real cold in there if we were going to fall asleep," -Nathan Hollister

Early the next morning, staffers gave the boys new clothes for the trip: white T-shirts and red gym shorts. "Just so you're real obvious and really can't blend in." Guards drove them to the airport in Las Vegas, two hours away. "We had to walk in a line through the airport with our hands on the shoulders of the person in front of us," Nathan said. "They said if we let go, they would tackle us because they'd think we were running." Another group of security guards met the boys in Los Angeles and put them on a flight to Honolulu. Then came the last leg, to the atolls of Western Samoa and the final destination: Paradise Cove. Except this place was surrounded by something not usually found in paradise: Barbed wire fences.

Isolated in Samoa
If some parents find Teen Help's behavior modification seminars oppressive, they can get up and go home. Their kids can't. Detained hundreds or thousands of miles from home, sometimes across vast oceans, the teens of Teen Help must accept rigid controls on their activities -- or face the consequences. Communication with the outside world is limited. Teens cannot receive phone calls, even from parents, until their behavior improves. The restrictions and isolation are precisely what some parents say their teens need. Accounts from several teens who spent a year or more in the program portray the training seminars for young people as more intense than those for parents. When Nathan Hollister arrived at Paradise Cove in Western Samoa, he was enrolled in "Level 1," the lowest of six on the Teen Help ladder. A "buddy" -- an upper-level teen or staff member -- was assigned to watch him all the time. He was issued yellow shorts -- the Level 1 uniform. He slept on a mat in a thatched-roof hut without walls. According to Drew, another teen who lived at Paradise Cove, food was primitive: boiled chicken, tiny bananas, spaghetti with mystery sauce. Drew said his buddy watched him continuously -- even in the bathroom. A buddy stared at him when he slept -- lack of personal space is a key component of the program. Drew said that scores of rules control every behavior at Paradise Cove. A Level 1 teen must ask his buddy for permission to speak, move, go to the bathroom or do anything else. Level 1 teens stare straight ahead. When another person approaches, they bow their heads. Eye contact is discouraged because it's unauthorized nonverbal communication.

Teens who break the rules can be sent to solitary confinement.

The accounts of Nathan and Drew paralleled the observations of a Denver Rocky Mountain News reporter and photographer who visited Teen Help's Spring Creek Lodge in Montana, Cross Creek Manor in Utah and Casa by the Sea in Mexico. In a term special to the program, a buddy "consequents," or punishes, a new arrival who's not cooperating, typically having him or her sit in a corner and listen to taped history lessons played at high volume -- stories about Mozart, Dracula, the time machine. Teen Help's written rules forbid kids to "make negative statements about the program, the staff, the country or other students." They can't talk about drinking, drugs or sex.

"They had handcuffs on one kid who had been making plans to run away. And I know that on that one occasion there was a guy next to me and they had run out of shackles, so they used duct tape on him." Nathan Hollister

They receive demerits for horseplay, poor sportsmanship, frowning, rolling their eyes, burping or showing an "unsatisfactory attitude" in gestures or statements. Teens who break the rules can be sent to solitary confinement. Authorities who raided Teen Help compounds in the Czech Republic and Mexico reported finding children kept in isolation for prolonged periods. Some teens at the Czech facility reported that they had been handcuffed while isolated. To Nathan, isolation was no big deal. "They'll take you in the back -- it's a little box-type thing," he recalled about Paradise Cove. "It's as tall as a normal ceiling, but it's pretty small. And they have you take all of your clothes off, down to your boxers, so you can't really hurt yourself in any way. "I went in there once, for only 21/2 hours. They made me lie on my stomach. "They had handcuffs on one kid who had been making plans to run away. And I know that on that one occasion there was a guy next to me and they had run out of shackles, so they used duct tape on him." Nathan said Paradise Cove has four isolation rooms. When he was sent there, "they were all full because the three guys next to me were planning to run."

 

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