Too Tough Love

[Rebecca Fransway]

>From Forbes

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0322/6306112a_print.html

Too-tough love?

AT 3:46 ON THE MORNING of Nov. 30, 1996, Stanley Goold III, a
16-year-old high schooler from Middletown, Calif., recalls being
shaken awake. Over his bed stood three hulking strangers. One of them
tossed him his clothes. "Get dressed," he ordered the boy.

Still groggy, Stanley was hustled into a waiting rental car -- but not
before his mother, Jane Goold, handed him a small bag packed with a
few articles of clothing. Stanley says that she never even told him
where he was going -- to a "program" to help fight his alleged
marijuana and alcohol habits. (Stanley always denied he had a problem
and says he took two drug tests that were negative.) Two men
sandwiched him into the backseat, and the car sped off.

The next evening, Stanley says, he arrived at Brightway Adolescent
Hospital, a private psychiatric hospital in St. George, Utah, where he
was told to take a shower and put on a hospital gown. He asked to call
his dad -- who had divorced his mother years ago and knew nothing of
her plans to send Stanley away for treatment -- and was turned down.
Stanley spent the week being evaluated by a psychiatrist who diagnosed
him as normal, with above-average intelligence, but "underresourced"
-- a condition never explained to him, but apparently serious enough
for him to be sent to a drying-out camp for a year.

A week later, he says, he was put on a plane to Western Samoa, site of
the school called Paradise Cove, where he was forced to sleep on a
small mat in a crowded room. "It was worse than being in prison,
because we didn't know when we were going to leave," says Stanley, who
claims he still suffers from nightmares. His father discovered
Stanley's whereabouts only after his son failed to show up for a
scheduled visit.

That prompted him to go to court. Nine months later he got physical
custody of Stanley and took him out of Paradise Cove. Today he's an
18- year-old freshman at Ohlone College in Fremont, Calif., where he
lives at home with his dad.

Stanley Goold was one of about 950 teenagers who have been enrolled at
Paradise Cove or one of its six sister schools in the U.S., Jamaica,
Mexico and Western Samoa -- loosely directed by a LaVerkin, Utah-based
group known as the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs
(WWASP), which markets the schools under the name Teen Help. According
to ads in Sunset magazine, as well as its Web site
(www.vpp.com/teenhelp), Teen Help offers "schools, camps, other
alternatives" -- intensive rehab programs -- to help
13-to-18-year-olds with psychological or substance abuse problems.
Parents pay up to $54,000 a year for treatment and services. It is
estimated that WWASP and affiliated companies pull in $30 million-plus
in annual revenues.

Okay, lots of troubled teenagers aren't going to respond to gentle
suggestion, especially from their parents. But some of WWASP's camps
may push tough love too far. Last November its Morava Academy closed
down after Czech police charged its U.S. managers with child torture;
those criminal charges are pending. They were the same managers who
were arrested, did time and fled Mexico when Sunrise Beach, a school
for girls in Punta Sam, was shut down in May 1996 after employees
complained to the media about prisonlike conditions inside the
facility.

Karr Farnsworth, president of WWASP, defends the camps as highly
structured boarding schools. The programs, he says, offer a mix of
school, self-study and self-improvement seminars, along with therapy
to change attitude problems.

Students usually live in dormlike rooms and stay for 12 to 18 months.

"These kids are not being sent to Rikers Island," Farnsworth insists.

"Students get their lives in order and go home as productive
citizens."

He recently surveyed hundreds of parents and claims that all but a few
said they'd made a good choice enrolling their kids in the program,
and would recommend it to others.

FORBES talked to two sets of parents who were very happy with the
program and said their children came back minus their drug habits and
bad attitudes. Daniel Koller, Jane Goold's attorney, says he spent
$60,000 on therapy for his son Daniel before sending him to Paradise
Cove. "He was doing crystal meth; that was his drug of choice," says
Koller. Now, he claims, "he's a fantastic new human being, a real
loving guy," currently enrolled in the California Maritime Academy in
Vallejo.

These days Stanley Goold doesn't feel rehabilitated. He has enlisted
Thomas Burton, a Pleasanton, Calif. attorney, to sue the operators of
Paradise Cove. Burton has filed two cases against WWASP schools in
federal court and is preparing cases on behalf of eight additional
clients. Burton compares Paradise Cove to "a private prison," and
alleges it is a place where "adolescents are impounded, tortured,
berated, brainwashed and otherwise abused."

WWASP officials -- the ones who returned phone calls -- steadfastly
deny all this. But the evidence strongly suggests that teenagers in
the program -- whose parents have signed away their rights -- live
under the constant threat of physical punishment and receive little
therapy.

Stanley Goold says he never received any counseling during his 11-
month stay. But he vividly remembers the physical treatment. "I saw a
few kids punched, kicked and thrown, but not nearly as many as I heard
about," he recalls. For small infractions -- chewing food with an open
mouth, talking back to the staff, failing a test -- Stanley himself
landed in the "dungeon" a half-dozen times for a day or two. There
he'd be forced to sit cross-legged on a cement floor for 12 hours a
day, listening to tapes about the lives of Socrates, Beethoven and
Genghis Khan. Students who tried to flee the dungeon, says Stanley,
would be locked up in a tiny cell for weeks at a time. "Sometimes
they'd put duct tape over the kid's mouth, hog-tie him or put on
handcuffs," he says.

Farnsworth says, "We do not permit physical abuse." If some kids were
to get out of control, he says, "they would be temporarily restrained
by a member of our staff until they calm down and promise to
cooperate."

It's difficult to establish a pattern of problems at the schools,
partly because they operate independently of each other, as do the
handful of other companies that provide services to WWASP. "The
corporate structure is extremely complex and convoluted --
deliberately so," charges attorney Burton. That way, he says, the
right hand can claim it has no idea what the left is doing.

In addition to the seven "residential facilities," WWASP does business
with firms in or around nearby St. George, Utah. There's Teen Help,
the marketing arm that directs parents to various camps and which,
according to Farnsworth, also provides referrals to "escort services"
of the type that whisked away Stanley Goold. Dixie Contract Services
helps the schools hire firms, such as R&B Billing, to do back-office
work.

Brightway Adolescent Hospital closed down in March 1998 for financial
reasons, the company insists -- but not before the Utah Department of
Health launched an investigation into its alleged practice of
admitting children without the consent of both parents. Then there's
Resource Realizations, which provides the camps with seminars and
training materials.

Farnsworth insists all the companies are independent of each other.

If so, there are some strange coincidences. J. Ralph Atkin, the
founder of SkyWest airlines and former codirector of business and
economic development for the State of Utah, has been an attorney for
Teen Help and a registered agent for R&B Billing and Dixie Contract.
According to the Utah Department of Commerce, he is a trustee of
WWASP. Atkin denies this, saying that state records aren't up to date.
"I don't have anything in common with the business operation," he
insists. He does concede that he co-owned Morava Academy, the WWASP
school that was closed down last fall by Czech authorities.

Another figure who keeps popping up is Narvin Lichfield, whose brother
Robert founded Cross Creek Manor in 1988, the oldest school in the
WWASP network, established Paradise Cove and ran Teen Help before his
retirement a few years ago. Narvin Lichfield owns Carolina Springs
Academy, a WWASP school in Abbeville, S.C. He is the president and the
director of St. George-based Adolescent Services Incorporated (ASI),
which, like Teen Help, is a marketing company for the schools. He is
on the board of At Risk Teen Foundation, which raises money to help
parents defray the costs of WWASP schools offered through ASI,
including Carolina Springs. The Internal Revenue Service is reviewing
At Risk's application for status as a tax-exempt charity. Lichfield
insists it's all perfectly kosher. "The foundation will be giving
grants to the parents, not to the schools," he says.

Still, the suits are moving forward. Most legal action to date has
been directed against parents. Last year a superior court judge in
Oakland, Calif. dismissed a suit brought by the Alameda County deputy
district attorney on behalf of then-16-year-old David Van Blarigan
against his parents for sending him against his will to a WWASP school
in Tranquility Bay in Jamaica.

And in January Children's Services in Ohio's Franklin County halted an
investigation of a Columbus couple who had dispatched their 17-year-
old son to Tranquility Bay. The boy was allegedly handled roughly on
the trip to Jamaica. The parents agreed to settle out of court.

Parents of deeply troubled adolescents face a terrible dilemma. A mild
response to the problem may get no results; an extreme one, like what
WWASP seems to be offering, may turn out to be overkill.

Read More:

http://www.aahorror.net/FAQ.htm#teens

More:

http://www.aahorror.net/AA%20Horror.htm#Scott

Rebecca Fransway
http://www.aahorror.net

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