When Wilderness Boot Camps Take Tough Love Too Far
It’s dusk in the high desert of Utah. The heat of the day is starting to abate, and the cooling air smells of sage. There’s nothing but rough terrain for miles—the closest town, a tiny hamlet called Enterprise, is about an hour and a half away by car.
A group of teenagers huddle together by a tarp shelter. They are members of the latest crop of students at Redcliff Ascent, a wilderness program for troubled youth. They talk animatedly, exuding a kind of brittle bravado—all except for one of them, a heavy-set, red-faced girl who cries under the tarp with her knees pressed to her chin.
“I just want to go home!” she wails. “Please, I just want to go home!”
The boys and the other girl in the group don’t seem to notice her distress. Instead, they exchange tales of how they came to be in this camp—leagues away from their familiar world of running water, soft beds and Playstation 4s. Two adults stand close by with watchful eyes.
“They woke me up at 4 a.m.,” one of the boys says. “My parents came in and told me, ‘We love you,’ and then left me alone with these goons … after that, I just tried to act nice, but I was really pissed. I didn’t cry or anything, but my bat wasn’t in my room, so I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“I tried to run, and they arrested me,” another girl says. “I was listening in on my mom’s conversation over the phone, and I heard that these people were coming to get me. I ran, so they put cuffs on me and put me in the car. I was crying my eyes out. I almost had a panic attack. This place is hell … I didn’t do that many bad things that I should get sent away to a place like this.”
Eventually, she’s led to a pickup truck, where she sits in the backseat. She’s being moved to another group, an all-female one, and she’s not happy about it.
“I hate women,” she mutters. “All my friends are guys.”
After a while, she heaves a sigh.
“I mean, I know I need help,” she says. “I’m fucked up in the head. Maybe I do need to be here, but I don’t want to be.”
There are dozens of institutions similar to Redcliff across America, and they promise therapeutic treatment for teenagers who are engaging in drug use or other behavior frowned upon by their families or schools. Parents often hire transport agencies, which are charged with delivering the teens to their programs, . This industry, which has only reached mainstream popularity in the last couple of decades, is still controversial. Its proponents maintain that this type of isolation, away from the temptations and perils of society, can benefit youth who are straying down the path of addiction and dysfunction. They present
