A LITTLE FREEDOM
Girls at Cross Creek Manor sign out as they leave the building on an outing. Students
begin Teen Help programs with no privileges and must earn the right to some freedom,
including limited off-grounds activities.
____________________________________________

Qualified to help?
Few staff members at the behavior modification camps have academic credentials in behavioral science or psychology.

"We hire people with good youth leadership," Lichfield said.

"The staff in Jamaica care about these kids incredibly much," Lisa Swan, a Portland, Ore., mother of a 17-year-old boy at Tranquility Bay, told the News. "Our family rep, Miss Davis, puts her heart and soul into assisting them. While we were visiting, we saw tall, gawky teen-age boys give her hugs and tell us how much they loved this lady. It was evident from watching other staff interact with the kids that they want them to succeed in life."

But lawsuits against Teen Help by former clients charge that staff members -- particularly those in foreign countries -- were woefully untrained.

Workers at Tranquility Bay in Jamaica inflicted "the most sadistic and unwarranted physical and psychological abuse" on teens, charges a lawsuit against Teen Help filed by Donna Burke of Houston.

"The so-called case workers were untrained, unlettered and uncredentialed natives." The suit is pending.

Teen Help said Burke's suit "is really about the mother trying to involve the program in an ongoing custody battle she has had with the father. ... This is a nuisance suit with no credibility."

But Kay, who ran Brightway and is now president of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs, a Teen Help umbrella organization, earlier this year acknowledged the controversy about the qualifications of Teen Help's staff.

"They are not clinicians," he said. "So their job is very important to them because the option a lot of times is a minimum-wage job someplace. And so it's very hard to get them to talk or to talk bad about the program or tell the truth about the program, actually."

Kay said there isn't enough clinical staff to ensure that the program is "headed in the right direction."

Despite the harsh criticism, Kay rejoined Teen Help in March -- this time as a vice president. He said he would work to change the organization from the inside. "I don't remember having a lot of doubts about the program," he said last month. "I've always thought that the program served a great purpose."

Kay became president of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs June 1.

A Hefty Price Tag
Teen Help in recent years has enjoyed impressive growth. With approximately 1,000 teens in its programs, at a cost of $26,000 to $54,000 each to their parents, Teen Help's revenues are estimated at more than $30 million a year.

Technically, the facilities are owned by a number of individuals and corporations. But all receive clients from Teen Help and connected enterprises. All billing is handled through an affiliate headquartered in St. George, Utah.

Lichfield controls the flow of money to the various compounds, according to Kay.

Teen Help opened Sunrise Beach near Cancun, Mexico, in 1995 and Spring Creek Lodge in Montana in 1996. Tranquility Bay in Jamaica and Majestic Ranch Academy in Utah opened in 1997. In 1998 came Morava Academy in the Czech Republic, Casa by the Sea in Ensenada, Mexico, Red Rock Springs in Utah, and Carolina Springs Academy in Abbeville, S.C. Linden House, a home for pregnant teens, opened last year in St. George, Utah, near Teen Help's La Verkin headquarters.

The average stay for a teen in the program exceeds 14 months, said Karr Farnsworth, until June 1 head of the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs.

Fees parents pay in advance range from $4,090 at Casa by the Sea to $8,245 at Linden House. Monthly rates at overseas compounds such as those in Samoa and Jamaica range from $1,990 to $2,400. Stateside monthly fees are higher, ranging from $2,790 to $4,500. The parents and the company both decide where to send the teen-ager for treatment.

According to an internal Teen Help document, one-way transportation of a youth to Paradise Cove in Samoa -- from "escort service" to airline tickets -- costs $2,999. Paradise Cove then charges each teen $80 a day -- or $29,200 a year. Teen Help's expenses per teen, as authorized by Lichfield, are $20 a day -- or $7,300 a year, Kay said earlier this year. He said Teen Help's overhead in the United States is financed by the up-front fees, leaving the company's return per teen in Samoa at $21,900 a year -- almost 200 percent.

Facer said the $20 figure is only part of the expenses in operating the facilities. "None of the programs could operate on $20 per student," he said.

Facer said staffing, maintenance, equipment, acquisition, accounting and billing costs and parent services add greatly to Teen Help's cost of doing business.

Teens at Spring Creek Lodge in Montana told the News that their parents had taken out second mortgages or other loans, spent savings and college funds or gone back to work to foot the bills. Parents who ardently believe in the program can help themselves with the finances -- by recruiting other families.

For each teen from another family that parents bring to the program, they receive a month's free tuition for their own child. Once their child graduates from Teen Help, parents can earn a $1,000 finder's fee for recruiting another family.

Some Colorado parents who have sent children to Teen Help say no cost is too high for the sweeping behavior improvements they are seeing.

"There is no question that this program is expensive," Barbara Rodgers said. "We were fortunate to have had a small college fund for Vanessa. ... The program works; it saved my daughter's life. "What would the cost of the alternatives have been? How much do funerals cost?"

Allegations of Abuse
While teens and their parents have flocked to its programs, Teen Help has endured a wave of unwanted scrutiny from police and regulatory agencies in the United States and abroad. Complaints against Teen Help facilities ranged from allegations of unsanitary conditions to physical abuse:

• Mexican police raided a Teen Help compound near Cancun in May 1996. They found that teens had been locked in small rooms for days and heard other allegations of abuse. A Utah man and his wife were charged with immigration violations. They posted bond and returned to the United States. The compound was closed.
  
• In November, Czech police raided a Teen Help facility after receiving a tip from a former employee that teens often were handcuffed and had to lie on their stomachs, sometimes for days. The same Utah couple, then running the Czech program, were charged with cruelty to people in their custody and with curtailing the students' freedom of movement. Again, the couple returned to the United States, and the compound was closed.
  
• A U.S. consular official reported finding sores on many teens at Paradise Cove in October. Samoan health officials demanded immediate sanitation improvements, and Teen Help complied.
  
• Teen Help in March 1998 closed Brightway Adolescent Hospital in St. George, Utah, after state investigators found it in violation of several regulations, including the failure to report alleged abuse of a child transferred there from another Teen Help facility. Officials also found that Brightway appeared to be rubber-stamping recommendations that teens be sent to overseas facilities for long-term placement. Investigators analyzed the records of 14 recent patients. They found that a form letter had been sent to the parents of all 14, saying that their teen needed "12 months or more in the residential treatment program in order to fully internalize the changes he needs to make."
  
• A South Carolina social services agency investigated a Teen Help facility there and found "two incidents of disciplinary action that may constitute cruel and inhumane punishment." The agency later said Teen Help is cooperating to obtain proper licensing and resolve other disputes. Another South Carolina agency, however, has issued a cease-and-desist order demanding that Carolina Springs stop operating as a residential treatment center.

Facer said that the facilities in Mexico and the Czech Republic were closed by their owners because they believed they couldn't get a fair hearing from local authorities. Lichfield said that Teen Help's problems have been exaggerated. "My biggest concern is that if the media focuses on the few negatives, while ignoring the overwhelming positives of these programs, it could scare off parents from getting help for a teen who is at risk," Lichfield told the News.

"This could result in another tragedy, similar to that at Columbine High."

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