Children hostages in custody fights (BlueFire Wilderness Therapy)

A number of parents do every year see their child exposed to danger when the custodial parent chooses to decide on a dangerous path with the child in the hope of alienate the child against the non-costodial parent.

In a recent tread on Reddit a parent write:

I tried to get custody back , but the Judge won't listen to me and left the custody with Mother, who convinced her ( judge ) she will do anything for the daughter and that the daughter wants to stay with her. The mother also got a psychologist and a psychiatrist to evaluate my daughter without my knowledge and they recommended for "Change of placement" , By the time I learned that this means to place her outside of home and within days, the educational consultants the Mother hired at the advice of the psychologist, placed my daughter into this camp for 8-12 weeks.

What parents need to realize is that both the medical industry as well as so-called educational consultants are not working independent. The medical industry needs to put diagnose on anyone so they can sell their products. Educational consultants received referral fees from wilderness programs and boarding schools in return for a recommendation towards the product of detention and so-called treatment, they deliver.

Wilderness programs are not a recognized treatment method in a lot of countries. Of course the wilderness programs have hired researchers to white-label the treatment approach but in reality the children could be placed in a enclosed box until they became adults and the same result would be achieved.

Second a number of children have died in wilderness programs. The program known from ABC's "Brat Camp" closed after a death and the local sheriff described the operation as a danger to the children and closed it down.

Sending a child into the wilderness means a risk which is far greater than letting them stay in the troubled home, they came from. Out of 4,000 children treated at the Catherine Freer Wilderness program, 3 died before they closed. Calculate on the percentage!

What is the best option? Based on a research paper in Denmark comparing children in need who was not removed from the home to children sent to residential treatment, there is no difference of the outcome for the children. Even when the parents were alcoholic or drug-users! Fact remains that residential treatment is warehousing. Once the regulated and secure environment is no longer there and the now-adult child has to go on without an important social heritage in the luggage, everything seems to be lost.

Denmark have increased the number of children who are placed outside their home. Many of them end up with Post-traumatic stress disorder and an inability to function on the labor market or in the educational system.

It is not good news for parents who are struggling to raise their children. Because the root of the problem is properly not the child. It is the parent or the school-environment the society offers the child.

All that seems to be the outcome of residential treatment seems to be that the owners of the residential solutions - wilderness program or boarding school - will earn a lot of money while the children and their families will suffer both economic and emotional.

Source:
Daughter , 13yo sent to Wilderness Camp BlueFire in Idaho without my consent , What to Do? (Reddit)

Worked selling treatment but was let down when she need treatment

Sarah Mulvey created the most awful television shows as result of being pressured and bullied to get more viewers.

She created "Brat Camp". It was a show where teenagers were sent to various treatment programs, so they could become better people. If you forget the world famoush glamour model with connections in the soccer world the results were very mixed. One participant died shortly after he turned 18 of a drug overdose.

When the concept was sold the result was even more tragic. ABC Family purchased the concept where teenagers were sent to Sagewalk. It made the parents believe that wilderness therapy was safe. In 2009 Sagewalk closed after at 16 year old boy died in the program.

The kind of television she created was dangerous. She and the managers who pushed her hard failed to see that teenagers carry a social heritage. And this social heritage should be respected. You cannot coach, teach or provide any kind of therapy which can push a teenager past the potential they are given by birth in a special social class.

Teenagers return broken in spirit as result of therapy which are inflicted upon them without their consent.

Years later it was Sarah Mulvey who need treatment. She entered Causeway Retreat. Here she was failed just as much as the teenagers she made victims in the TV-shows.

It is not justice or payback, it is just sad.




Sources:

• Father of C4's Sarah Mulvey claims treatment centre let her down (The Guardian)
• Channel 4 executive Sarah Mulvey 'overdosed after bullying' (The Telegraph)
• Sergey Blashchishen - 2009 (Today a child died memorial blog)