Don’t be fooled. NATSAP is not a regulatory agency, and they do NOT investigate any of these facilities.
When a program wants to operate with NATSAP endorsement all they have to do is pay a fee and sign a piece of paper stating that they intend to follow NATSAP “protocol” – they are NEVER inspected nor does NATSAP have any means of checking to see if they actually operate according to the “rules.” NATSAP is also DRASTICALLY underestimating its numbers – these look more like the number of students in WILDERNESS-BASED programs (only a fraction of the total), but there are more like 100,000 kids in these facilities across the US. For an accurate and flawlessly researched account of these programs please refer to Maia Szalavitz’s book “Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled Teen Industry Hurts Kids and Cons Parents.”
As for how these kids – KIDS, remember, NOT criminals – all need “tough love,” consider my story and see what you think. I was NEVER in trouble with the law, I NEVER tried drugs or drank alcohol, and I was never even made to repeat a grade in school, and yet I was enrolled in one of these programs after my parents became convinced by their admissions staff that my talking back and general “attitude” meant that I was going to die. Literally, die. That is the kind of language these places use. And believe me, my parents are well educated individuals who don’t usually take wooden nickels.
Yes, I was an enormous pain in the ass and I had some academic troubles - I admit that. That said, once enrolled, I was subjected to the following (and my program was less harsh than many I have heard about and seen since leaving):
- I was duct taped, from ankles to chin, into a wool blanket and left in an over-air-conditioned 5’x5’ closet for almost 72 hours with nothing to eat but “food sanction rations” (dry tuna on an English muffin half and 6 oz of water, 3x per day – approximately 550 calories) as punishment for nonviolent infractions – I was not taken out for bathroom breaks but rather made to sit in my own excrement for that whole time;
- I was pulled out of school (I was an A+ student) for months at a time and made to carry huge buckets of rocks up and down an extremely steep hill for 12 hours a day on food sanction rations;
- I was made to dig my own 5’x6’x3’ grave with a hand spade, in January, with a denim jacket and no gloves – it took me more than a day because I was weak with hunger and the ground was frozen;
- I was publicly humiliated on a daily basis, including being told (in front of no fewer than 30 people) that I was “a blowup doll to be used for sex by men and then thrown in the trash when they found something better;”
- I watched girls made to relive rapes in order to find the moment when they “asked for it to happen with their behavior;”
- I was physically attacked by a staff member and shaken so violently that several years later I was told by former housemates that they still felt fear when they remembered it;
- I was made to sit either in a stress position or in an isolation room for almost a week because I “rejected the word of Jesus Christ during morning chapel service” (my family is Jewish, which they were well aware of, and I was never told HOW exactly I had erred);
- I was punished for telling a staff member that I loved my gay sister; I was punished by staff for expressing a belief in human evolution; I was made to eat meals off the dirty floor because I was “acting like an animal;” I was strip searched every time I entered the facility after a visit to the doctor or with my family;
- I was made to shower and use the bathroom while being watched for nearly two years – every single time I used the bathroom someone was standing less than 3 feet from me and staring at me; I was kept from seeing or speaking with my family any time I was treated abusively, and my family was told it was because I was “misbehaving and had lost my phone privileges;”
- I was refused medical treatment on several occasions, one of which led to permanent hearing loss in my left ear because they thought I was making up my ear infection “to get attention;” a student killed himself by jumping off a balcony a few months after I left; once a month or so someone would be absent from breakfast because he or she had drank cleaning fluid or tried to slit their wrists in the middle of the night;
- I was tackled and then body slammed by a 300lb male staffer for mopping a floor incorrectly and on another occasion for talking back; and worst, I WAS MADE TO DO ALL OF THESE THINGS TO OTHERS IN ORDER TO “MAKE PROGRESS.”
I am in my 30’s and I am JUST pulling my life back together. It took me years just to adjust to the “real world” outside of that compound in the middle of nowhere. And I am the EXCEPTION, NOT THE RULE. The majority of people who were there with me are going nowhere with their lives, because they don’t know how to live in the world anymore. And NATSAP? It helps give these places a thin veneer of respectability and accountability. They are a business, not a regulatory agency, and they make millions doing what they do. Do your homework, and spread the word - I've waited over a decade for someone to care about what was done (and is still being done) to us.
Source:
Original testimony to be found as a comment to this NBC News article
