Troubled Teens Schools - a Long History of Abuse and Murder
America certainly has a problem with youth out of control; the very number of options we have in different varieties of troubled teens schools is staggering - among others, there are military schools, residential treatment centers, wilderness programs, boot camps and boarding schools. These are "among others" because there are some ideas some parents at the end of their tether who opt for harsher measures still - that include some ideas that are even more trouble than the teenagers themselves - like a juvenile prison, or religious schooling. If you have turned your paper to the International section recently, you've probably read about Europe's number one headline these days - the pope apologizing to the families of all the children at Catholic-church run convent schools for the hundreds of instances over the last several years, of abuse suffered by children entrusted to those schools by the clergy in charge. Strict religious schooling is one way to put some fear and discipline into a troubled child - one way among all the above, that can badly backfire.
Back in 2007, there was a huge scandal that are erupted when the Government Accountability Office splashed on the papers its outrageous finding that at boot camps - places that promise steely discipline for children quite like the military - they had found thousands upon thousands of cases where the inmates were victims of shameful abuse and neglect. Boot Camps started out as a valid concept. In a real military setting, the boot camp is a no-excuses ruthless push towards results. The instructor has terrible powers over pushing his charges to terrible extremes in endurance and humiliation, to turn them into really hardened people capable of self-driven achievement on the battlefield. Give these instructors a program that is free from military regulation and oversight though, and you have a bunch of slave drivers, who really will kill a charge before they realize that anything is out of the ordinary.
Across troubled teens schools and programs in a half dozen states across the country, ten teenagers left there by desperate parents died after being subjected to punishments like being denied water for days, being forced to sit in their own excrement for days, and so on. Some children were forced to eat sand for food. These programs operate under no government oversight, and the management can be as harsh as their devious and twisted minds will allow. And there is no punishment for the management of these troubled teens schools either when their charges die. When we are taught at school that the world is now a civilized place, this is the kind of thing we need to think of to know differently.
How do we know that these death centers we send our troubled teens to operate in a legal no man's land? Here's how - most of these troubled teens schools are still in business. Perhaps you would like to believe that some semblance of fairness still exists in the world - maybe those unhappy parents didn't take care and make sure that the boot camps they sent their children to were accredited. Actually, the accreditation authority, the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs solidly defends those killer boot camps against any wrongdoing.
We tend to take reasonableness in people for granted. When we read about correctional programs like boot camps and other troubled teens schools, we imagine that things will probably be harsh, but within reason. We don't believe that they will starve your child for two weeks straight while torturing him while he treks 10 miles everyday in that starved condition. Government oversight exists with such thorough Big Brother intrusiveness for a reason. Over the centuries, society has learned how people, when left to their own devices, will somehow attract the worst policies and the worst people - more often than not.