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Restoring family unity for households in which children have careened out of control is the express goal of Spring Creek and the six other behavior-modification programs affiliated with the nonprofit World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) that oversee these for-profit juvenile boot camps. They clearly fill a need; about 2,500 students are enrolled in WWASPS programs. Yet in recent years, most of the schools have come under attack on charges of abuse, including food and sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, alleged beatings and the deaths of at least two children. In September the association's Mexican affiliate Casa by the Sea, near Ensenada, was abruptly shut down after local authorities investigated the school for several cases of suspected abuse, which, WWASPS president Ken Kay said, were proved "unsubstantiated." Nevertheless, a panel sponsored by the National Institutes of Health issued a study last month that called "get tough" programs "ineffective" and possibly harmful. Said the panel's report: "Programs that seek to prevent violence through fear and tough treatment do not work."
Yet the owners and managers of such schools profess a strong belief in what they do. Spring Creek allowed a TIME journalist to attend the parents' weekend and tour the campus, providing a rare glimpse into the daily regimens and conditions at one of these tough-love schools and an intimate look at the difficult choices facing parents who send their children to them.
Opened in 1996, Spring Creek is the largest WWASPS affiliate, with about 600 teenagers in residence. It is owned and operated by twin brothers Cameron and Chaffin Pullan, 33. Neither Pullan is a college graduate or has any formal training in child development. Cameron worked as a YMCA day-care administrator, and Chaffin served as a residential manager for a WWASPS program in Utah before starting the school in Thompson Falls, Mont. But the brothers pride themselves on their self-taught proficiency in rehabilitating kids. "We help build confidence," says Chaffin, "through character building."
Boys and girls dressed in khakis and maroon sweaters walk silently across the campus in tidy lines. Speaking out of turn is forbidden. All activities are directed toward correcting old bad habits. Tony Robbins' self-improvement tapes are played during meals, and the teens spend hours charting their behavior. Instead of receiving classroom instruction, they work their way through a self-guided academic curriculum. Residents who follow the rules move through the program's progress levels and are granted more leniency; those who disobey receive demerits and lose privileges. About 20% of the students are on behavior-related medications, prescribed by a visiting psychiatrist. Licensed therapists are available, at a fee beyond the hefty $3,085 a month it costs to keep a kid at Spring Creek. The average length of stay is a year, though the Pullans say it takes 18 months to complete the program. Every month, one or two kids try to run away. Although there are no fences, the school is surrounded by mountainous woods, and the nearest major road is 15 miles away, so they don't get far. Last month, however, a 16year-old girl who had arrived at Spring Creek in March hanged herself in a shower stall. The school says she is its first suicide.