STORIES BY LOU KILZER PHOTOGRAPHS BY DENNIS SCHROEDER
© 1999, Denver Rocky Mountain News
FACING THE CONSEQUENCES
Supervised by a stern counselor, two girls face a wall as punishment at Teen Help's Cross Creek
Manor in La Verkin, Utah.They are receiving "consequences" for inappropriate behavior.

Network of behavior modification compounds known as Teen Help has straightened out hundreds of defiant adolescents, but its methods aren't for the faint-hearted

A tall, crewcut 16-year-old boy stares into the video camera and tries to stifle a sob.

"Dad, I miss you," Eric Stone stammers, his chest heaving. "I love you, Dad, I love you a lot."

He breaks down and wipes tears from his eyes.

"I miss you, and I never want to go through this again."

Eric is speaking from Spring Creek Lodge, a private behavior modification camp for teen-agers in a remote part of Montana. His mother sent him there.

A camp official has filmed the 11-minute video to persuade Eric's father, who is divorced from the boy's mother, to keep him there.

But the tape has the opposite effect. Craig Stone barely recognizes his son. The once happy-go-lucky boy now seems distraught.

Armed with custody papers, Stone drives from his home near Seattle to Thompson Falls, Mont., and contacts the county sheriff. The sheriff calls Spring Creek Lodge, and soon Eric goes free.

Outside the compound for the first time in 41/2 months, Eric says freedom came just in time -- right before he was "programmed."

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

Eric's story involves a Utah-based network of companies operating a far-flung chain of facilities designed to break American teen-agers of behavior that has driven their parents to desperation. The companies are commonly known as Teen Help.

The booming enterprise reaps handsome profits using sophisticated marketing and behavior modification techniques on families frightened that their children are out of control.

Teen Help's style is not for the faint-hearted. It helps some parents arrange the seizure of disruptive teens, even from their homes in the middle of the night.

Teen Help then ships them to far-off compounds where the message is simple: cooperate or you won't see Mom, Dad and the outside world for a long time.

Once inside the compounds, teens at first encounter a total lack of privacy. Some report being watched 24 hours a day at close range by "buddies." They can't do anything -- including talking or using the bathroom -- without permission.

The aggressive methods have spawned allegations of child abuse, prompting authorities to raid or investigate facilities in Mexico, the Czech Republic, Utah and South Carolina. Facilities in the first three locations closed.

Six former Teen Help students have sued the organization in the last eight months, claiming they were systematically abused inside the compounds.

Teen Help denies the abuse allegations and says that it has prevailed in every court challenge to its programs.

In the last decade, parents have sent thousands of children -- including more than two dozen from Colorado -- to Teen Help compounds in the United States, Mexico, Jamaica, the Czech Republic and Western Samoa.

Parents pay the company $26,000 to $54,000 a year to modify the behavior of their children. The company does that with methods that include intense group encounter sessions run by "facilitators " who generally have little academic training in psychology or similar fields.

The parents undergo training, too -- in multiday encounter seminars so disturbing they sometimes trigger mass wailing and pounding on chairs. Teen Help says it hopes soon to bring its parents' seminars to Colorado.

"If we could expose all of our children to this environment, there truly would be peace on earth," - Marsha Mandrussow Gallagher

Teen Help has many admirers. Hundreds of parents and teens credit its programs with producing spectacular turnarounds in troubled young people -- even saving their lives.

"If we could expose all of our children to this environment, there truly would be peace on earth," Marsha Mandrussow Gallagher, whose son Collin lived at Spring Creek Lodge part of last year, said in Teen Help promotional material.

Some parents say the seminars opened their eyes to the true meaning of life, but others report devastating experiences.
"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," said Barbara Baker, an Oregon woman who attended a parents seminar. "It was unbelievable. And it terrified part of me."

Other criticism of the organization came earlier this year from a company executive shortly after he temporarily left its staff.

"These people are basically a bunch of untrained people who work for this organization," Ken Kay told the Denver Rocky Mountain News in an interview before he rejoined Teen Help as a vice president. "So they don't have credentials of any kind. ...

"We could be leading these kids to long-term problems that we don't have a clue about because we're not going about it in the proper way. ...

"How in the hell can you call yourself a behavior modification program -- and that's one of the ways it's marketed -- when nobody has the expertise to determine: Is this good, is this bad?"

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