Youth Program for Troubled Teen

Because of some bad apples, even the good apples becomes bad. Paige Bierma's article really hit hard on the truth of the reality about teen programs and that is why we are spending more of our resources to inform families that "there is true hope for teens and families."

The headline in the paper on that August 2001 morning, another young boy had died in a wilderness boot camp -- a victim, like many before him, of abuse at the hands of those in charge of helping him.

6 years before Tony Haynes' death, an expose for Vibe magazine about a new trend in managing America's rebellious teens -- "wilderness therapy" programs that promise to straighten out problem children with tough love, fresh air, and strenuous hikes through the desert. The camps were touted as an effective middle-ground solution for worried parents -- something in between institutionalizing problem kids and doing nothing. Hundreds of teens were sent off to camps like these during the 1990s, most because they were experimenting with drugs, doing poorly in school, defying their parents, or even just refusing to do their chores.

The philosophy behind the wilderness stays was to remove the teens from whatever bad influences they were exposed to in their hometowns, and rely on camp counselors and the harsh elements of the desert to teach kids discipline and responsibility. Other goals were to build self-esteem though physical prowess and survival skills, and to make the teenagers long to get back home to air conditioning, ample food, and the other comforts of home.

Unfortunately, some kids never made it home. three teens had already died in three separate camps in Utah.

In one of Aaron's last entries, in handwriting that had begun to deteriorate, the teenager speculated that his parents would never have sent him to the camp if they'd known what it would really be like.

"It's my 21st day here, and I'm in terrible condition," he wrote. "I feel like I'm losing control of my body.... I'm so scared of everything here -- staff, slick rocks, nights, the cold, everything. I couldn't tell at all that I would be doing this sort of thing from the catalog. I describe it as legal child abuse."

Following Bacon's death, Utah state officials shut down several camps and adopted strict standards for regulating the private, for-profit camps in the mid-1990s.