Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Ah, we are back. It's behind the Bastards, the only
Speaker 2: podcast that will be allowed once our junta takes over.
Speaker 2: We are we're actively planning the overthrow of the US
Speaker 2: government and the end of democracy, but not to any
Speaker 2: kind of political end. We don't really have an agenda
Speaker 2: or a plan. We just really want to get more
Speaker 2: people listening to podcasts, so, you know, a worthy, worthy
Speaker 2: cause for democracy to die as a result of Mara Wilson,
Speaker 2: How do you feel about killing democracy to moderately increase
Speaker 2: the profitability of a podcast.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, I guess it really depends which podcast
Speaker 3: we're talking about.
Speaker 2: I mean this one, not not one of those other podcasts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this one, this one, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: I mean for fundsis, you know, destroying democracy for funzis.
Speaker 3: I think a little destroyed a little bit, you know,
Speaker 3: we can and for a person who's.
Speaker 2: Been yes, think of the dog food Anderson will be
Speaker 2: able to afford once we purge all all of the
Speaker 2: opponents of our new regime.
Speaker 1: You know, if there was a dog food that was
Speaker 1: or it was like that worth it, I would spend
Speaker 1: every dollar on it for her, every dollar.
Speaker 2: That's what we're going to do with the dissidents is
Speaker 2: turn them into quality dog food. You deserve speaking quality
Speaker 2: dog food, not really speaking of that at all. That
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with our guests today, Marow Wilson, Mara,
Speaker 2: how are you doing? How are you feeling as we're
Speaker 2: coming to part two of this?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm doing okay. This is very infuriating to
Speaker 3: me for a lot of reasons, but I mean I
Speaker 3: am glad in some ways. I'm very glad that this
Speaker 3: is something that I'm passionate about and I fucking hate
Speaker 3: and uh.
Speaker 2: And yes that, but you've been a great guest. I
Speaker 2: am also so thrilled about your memoir. Where am I now?
Speaker 2: Which people can buy wherever books are sold, or you
Speaker 2: can buy it wherever books are sold. Take it to
Speaker 2: a place where books aren't sold, sell it there, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: help help out a little bit? Why not, Mara? As
Speaker 2: a as a side note, you were, you know in
Speaker 2: a movie people probably know famous film Matilda, in which
Speaker 2: the bad guy is an evil used car dealer. We
Speaker 2: talk a lot on this show about how used car
Speaker 2: dealers in general are one of the largest funders of
Speaker 2: the radical right. How would you feel about us like
Speaker 2: repurpot it, purposing some of the old art for that
Speaker 2: into like like World War two era, like we have
Speaker 2: to destroy the car dealer menace propaganda posters.
Speaker 3: I do kind of wonder about. I mean, Danny DeVito
Speaker 3: might be in favor of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he seems like a pretty cool guy.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's very cool. He's very cool. Like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: he's very cool. And he's also also also not a
Speaker 3: bad guy to talk politics with in my opinion, But
Speaker 3: he and I think have similar beliefs, So yeah.
Speaker 2: Much genuinely nice to hear. Well, folks, you know, make
Speaker 2: make matilt proud, destroy the political power of the car
Speaker 2: dealers trying to wrench our country away from democracy. I know,
Speaker 2: I just talked about ending democracy to increase my profits.
Speaker 2: But it's bad when other people do it, you know.
Speaker 2: Obviously speaking of things that are bad when other people
Speaker 2: do them. Wilderness camps not the best intro, but whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, Mara, you brought up last episode. I just
Speaker 2: wanted to highlight this because I thought it was particularly
Speaker 2: perceptive the similarities to sen and On, which was really
Speaker 2: meaningful because while I think there's maybe aspects of like
Speaker 2: the way in which they would kind of like basically
Speaker 2: kidnap addicts. That were probably inspirations to Steve Cartizano for
Speaker 2: doing this at his camps. The more direct inspirations were
Speaker 2: how they did a lot of the actual quote unquote therapy,
Speaker 2: because one of the things that he was a big
Speaker 2: advocate for in his camps was what's called anger therapy.
Speaker 2: This is when you sit everyone around in a circle
Speaker 2: and have everyone yell at one person at a time
Speaker 2: about how shitty they are and what a terrible person.
Speaker 2: It's basically the whole group abuses every individual member in it,
Speaker 2: one person at a time. Right, And the fact that
Speaker 2: such a rending experience creates this like feeling of catharsis
Speaker 2: that's the idea, right. The reality is it's just incredibly
Speaker 2: psychologically damaging.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think it's sort of like if you
Speaker 3: get into a fight with somebody and they say really
Speaker 3: mean things to you, you know afterwards, that's going to
Speaker 3: stay with you. You're going to think, you know, for
Speaker 3: the time, oh this is what they really think of me?
Speaker 3: Are they?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And that affects your relationships, that affects your self perception.
Speaker 2: So when we talk about Troubled Team Wilderness camps, that
Speaker 2: starve and beat students. The obvious question that comes to
Speaker 2: mind is how on earth is any of this legal.
Speaker 2: And in order to tell that story, we have to
Speaker 2: go back in time again to the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 2: the Second Red Scare. In the post war era, you
Speaker 2: see the birth of organizations like the John Birch Society,
Speaker 2: which had been formed kind of as a reaction to
Speaker 2: the fact that the New Deal got forced through and
Speaker 2: all of these rich guys had to get slightly less
Speaker 2: rich so other people wouldn't starve to death. So in
Speaker 2: order to stop that from ever happening again, they start
Speaker 2: funding these conspiracist organizations like the John Birch Society, which
Speaker 2: preaches about a vast communist conspiracy in which your sinister
Speaker 2: socialist professors and teachers are going to steal your kids. Right,
Speaker 2: That's a big part of the propaganda they put out.
Speaker 2: And this is the first time in which conservative parents
Speaker 2: start organizing as a group and insisting on doing their
Speaker 2: own audits of schools and of teachers, initially just to
Speaker 2: try to ferret out communist influence. Now, not long after this,
Speaker 2: she started getting desegregation, which leads to an explosion in
Speaker 2: the growth of private school facilities, and again a lot
Speaker 2: of parents being like, we should have the right to
Speaker 2: ensure our children don't have to be educated next to
Speaker 2: kids who are a color we don't like. Right that
Speaker 2: comes in right alongside we don't want our kids to
Speaker 2: be taught communism.
Speaker 3: Well, the funny thing is I think that like this
Speaker 3: led to and it is something that even went on
Speaker 3: I think in the nineties and two thousands. There was
Speaker 3: this sort of like like my family were like lower
Speaker 3: middle class, you know, my dad was like a libertarian
Speaker 3: Republican and my stepmother was kind of a political She's
Speaker 3: a Filipino Catholic, so she was religious. But basically like
Speaker 3: they thought that private schools were inherently better than public schools. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which meant that I spent most of my time at
Speaker 3: public school because you know, I guess my mom had
Speaker 3: been a Democrat and she and then when we got older,
Speaker 3: they really pushed my sister into going to private school.
Speaker 3: But since we weren't wealthy, she ended up at like
Speaker 3: the shittiest private school ever because there was no oversight
Speaker 3: and it was inexpensive. And so that happens all the
Speaker 3: time that people end up going to these places where
Speaker 3: there's no oversight and crazy shit happens all the time.
Speaker 3: Like that's that's what it is. Like, my my sister
Speaker 3: ended up at the school where just all this crazy
Speaker 3: shit happened. Yeah, and it was like a very specific
Speaker 3: religious sect that none of us belonged to, and so
Speaker 3: she got kind of brought just to that.
Speaker 2: I believe in God, there's no way they'll abuse kids
Speaker 2: like the Catholic church.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean it wasn't like actively abusive to her, but.
Speaker 2: It was weird school. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 3: She has a lot of very crazy stories about like
Speaker 3: oh yeah, there was a man who was living in
Speaker 3: the gym and see that sounds like like because his
Speaker 3: wife kicked him out, but he was like in good
Speaker 3: standing in the church, so he.
Speaker 2: Lived in oh man. See, I have my experience with
Speaker 2: private school kids that makes me always laugh whenever parents
Speaker 2: talk about like this is what I'm going to do
Speaker 2: so that the public schools don't ruin my kid by
Speaker 2: teaching them secular values. There was a Catholic private school
Speaker 2: called Jesuit in the Dallas area, and the Jesuit Boys
Speaker 2: were who you would buy drugs from as a teenager.
Speaker 2: Because the Jesuit Boys always had weed and acid and
Speaker 2: like cocaine and stuff.
Speaker 3: They're all on and they're all on drugs and make
Speaker 3: serious drugs too, Like nobody could afford cocaine at MBLIC school.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, rich kids can be and they
Speaker 2: cut it with baby powder to sell the pores. It's tragic.
Speaker 2: That's why I operate a charity that provides underprivileged kids
Speaker 2: with quality.
Speaker 3: Blow.
Speaker 2: This shit is straight from Columbia. We don't step on
Speaker 2: it all only Sophie. It's a five oh one C three.
Speaker 2: We're allowed to talk about it on the air.
Speaker 3: Does your friend Oliver North help with it?
Speaker 2: Yes, Actually he's been a huge part of our organizing.
Speaker 2: He knew a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Did he die? Did he die?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I think he's got to still be alive.
Speaker 3: See one of those one of those like, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2: Pretty sure he's still alive because I don't remember having
Speaker 2: a party for it, and I will have a party
Speaker 2: when all the North dies. So we were talking about
Speaker 2: why why the laws allow for these kinds of facilities,
Speaker 2: and yeah, a lot of it has its roots in
Speaker 2: kind of desegregation. This fear over communism and the whole
Speaker 2: religious right gets birthed in the seventies over what might
Speaker 2: euphemistically be called a question of school choice. Right, they're
Speaker 2: angry at like integration of Bob Jones University. Right, there's
Speaker 2: going to be black people at our private school. And
Speaker 2: an idea kind of starts to spread in American society
Speaker 2: as the religious right gains more power, that parents are
Speaker 2: having their rights infringed upon by the existence of a
Speaker 2: society that might at some point expose those children to
Speaker 2: attitudes and ideas they're parents dislike. This is low key
Speaker 2: one of the most dangerous things in this country right now.
Speaker 3: The parents' rights movement is very familiar.
Speaker 2: Yes. In an explainer for the AP News Brooks Schultz
Speaker 2: rights quote. In nineteen seventy two, the US Supreme Court
Speaker 2: cited parental rights when it allowed Amish families to exempt
Speaker 2: their children from high school in Wisconsin v. Yoder. The
Speaker 2: court acknowledged that it was an exceptional case since the
Speaker 2: Amish lived separately and self sufficiently, said Joshua Weishert, a
Speaker 2: lawyer and professor at West Virginia University, and lawsuits stretching
Speaker 2: back to the nineteen twenties, courts have affirmed the rights
Speaker 2: of parents to direct their children's education, but they have
Speaker 2: emphasized that there's a balance to be struck with the
Speaker 2: state's obligation to protect children's welfare. Now, recognizing the obligation
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that you actually act as if there is
Speaker 2: any obligation. And one of the things that has resulted
Speaker 2: from this is you've had states like Utah establish what
Speaker 2: are like very permissive parental rights regimes, right, And as
Speaker 2: I noted last episode, that's why there's such a like
Speaker 2: that's why all these facilities are located there. There's other
Speaker 2: states where kids have more protection if their parents are
Speaker 2: crazy assholes who want to send them to an abuse camp.
Speaker 2: But if you get those kids across the border and
Speaker 2: down into Utah, they have no rights anymore. Right, the
Speaker 2: parents can do literally anything to them, because there's this
Speaker 2: idea that like, well, you know, particularly this faith based
Speaker 2: idea that like the parent ought to be absolutely sovereign
Speaker 2: to the child, which right, like ye is bad.
Speaker 3: It's I mean, that is a Christian thing, anna Mormon
Speaker 3: thing of the hierarchy of you know, there's God, then
Speaker 3: there's the father, then there's the mother, then there is
Speaker 3: the children, and and it you know, it is like
Speaker 3: they are right below, like the hierarchy is reinforced at
Speaker 3: every time, at every turn.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'll admit this is a complicated thing to figure
Speaker 2: out as a society because, like, I don't think the
Speaker 2: solution is the state has absolute power over the lives
Speaker 2: of children, because that's not great.
Speaker 3: They're necessari historically that is not sure, that.
Speaker 2: Doesn't end well. But also kids, kids are children. They're
Speaker 2: not absolutely they're not capable of like having absolute sovereignty
Speaker 2: over their own lives, like immediately. I think there's probably
Speaker 2: probably the best you can do is kind of a
Speaker 2: sliding scale, and you know, try to make sure that
Speaker 2: there are like human rights protections that make it impossible
Speaker 2: to force certain things on kids. Ever, no matter what,
Speaker 2: it's really not an easy.
Speaker 3: If you talk to anybody who's who's like ever worked
Speaker 3: with CPS, they'll you know, you can just see like
Speaker 3: the exhaustion in their eyes when they talk about it,
Speaker 3: because they're like, yeah, it's a really hard line. It's
Speaker 3: a very difficult thing to do, very very difficult. And
Speaker 3: there's certain things like I know in some states, like
Speaker 3: if a parent leaves marks on their child, like that's
Speaker 3: enough to prosecute them. And then there's other states where
Speaker 3: it's like, no, beat your kids as much as you want,
Speaker 3: like they are your children. You know, you can do
Speaker 3: whatever or even have you know, have somebody else beat
Speaker 3: your kids. And it's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, as we acknowledge that, it's
Speaker 2: kind of messy to try to figure out where exactly
Speaker 2: the line should be. The line certainly shouldn't be where
Speaker 2: Steve Cartizano puts it, right where you can pay to
Speaker 2: have your kids subducted and starved in the desert. And
Speaker 2: what's justifying all of these extreme adventures again is like
Speaker 2: drug use, right, the fact that drug use is so
Speaker 2: fucking scary and concerned parents have become the most powerful
Speaker 2: voting block in the country, Like both liberal and conservative
Speaker 2: parents in the late eight you know, in the eighties
Speaker 2: and then in the nineties, all have to be anti
Speaker 2: drug all have to talk about it like as opposed
Speaker 2: to well, you know, this is a thing that carries
Speaker 2: some dangers to kids, and we should make sure that
Speaker 2: they're informed about it. And you know, there should be
Speaker 2: a great of awareness and society about this. No, no,
Speaker 2: this is like going to ruin entire generations, and anything
Speaker 2: we do is justified in stopping this scourge. Steve Cartesano
Speaker 2: rides that wave.
Speaker 3: I know that like people who claim to have been
Speaker 3: hippies back in the day, like.
Speaker 2: That is you motherfuckers smoked pot once.
Speaker 3: Well that's the thing. Yeah, it's a much smaller percentage
Speaker 3: than we think. You know, it's a much smaller percentage
Speaker 3: than we think. But it happened to enough people, and
Speaker 3: enough people knew people who you know, smoked weed and
Speaker 3: you know, like dropped acid to know that these people
Speaker 3: did not end up, you know, murdering people, and you know,
Speaker 3: and you know heroin addicts, Like you would think that
Speaker 3: people in the eighties and nineties who had lived through
Speaker 3: the sixties and seventies would, at least if I had
Speaker 3: not smoked a lot of weed themselves, known somebody there
Speaker 3: like known people who did I.
Speaker 2: Think the two things that really amped this up to
Speaker 2: a massive degree are number one, like, heroin gets a
Speaker 2: lot more common, and heroin is a drug that if
Speaker 2: you fuck up on heroin, the consequences are more severe
Speaker 2: than smoking too much weed or even generally drinking too much. Obviously,
Speaker 2: drinking too much can be deadly, but it's a lot
Speaker 2: the lyne you got a lot more wiggle room with
Speaker 2: drinking when you do with fucking horse. And the other thing,
Speaker 2: probably the bigger thing is the AIDS epidemic, right, which
Speaker 2: is tied to drug use, particularly intravene to drug use,
Speaker 2: and kind of it does help make the case to
Speaker 2: these parents that like, well, anything that sets you on
Speaker 2: a road that ends in heroin is like you're going
Speaker 2: to die, right, so we have to intervene early on.
Speaker 3: And probably crack as well, which is.
Speaker 2: Also yeah, cras is also a massive part of this.
Speaker 3: And has a very racialized component. Yeah, so yeah, because.
Speaker 2: That's probably yeah, probably that's less of a factor in
Speaker 2: these rich kids parents being concerned just because of like
Speaker 2: where crack is. Like, although cope is probably anyway whatever,
Speaker 2: we don't need to get too much into it. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's so, that's that's kind of the stakes that are
Speaker 2: being set up, And it's important to understand where the
Speaker 2: stakes are because the thing parents are letting their kids
Speaker 2: like happen to their kids are insane. So once local
Speaker 2: law enforcement starts getting involved, kids start escaping the camp
Speaker 2: and like showing up in town or showing up at
Speaker 2: the police station, like battered and bruised or in some
Speaker 2: cases are taken to their parents after they're like let out,
Speaker 2: and so doctors start looking over these kids. In one case,
Speaker 2: a doctor counted more than eighty scars, marks, and contusions
Speaker 2: on the body of a single teenager. Another former student
Speaker 2: told the police that they had been dragged through the
Speaker 2: desert by instructors and then tied to trees as a
Speaker 2: punishment for not wanting to hike like insane shit, you know,
Speaker 2: like not even like tough love stuff, like just actual torture.
Speaker 2: As legal issues mounted, Steve seems to have mostly fucked
Speaker 2: off to spend the company's money on stupid shit. Frustration
Speaker 2: over this eventually led to one of his top employees,
Speaker 2: admissions director Gail Palmer, to quit and start Summit Quest, Inc.
Speaker 2: Which is just a copycat of Challenger without all the baggage. Right,
Speaker 2: but she is basically doing it. It's a sixty three
Speaker 2: day course just like Challenger, and the business plan is
Speaker 2: the same. This time ales going to run it, and
Speaker 2: she's going to hire some fucking drifters and give them
Speaker 2: a bunch of troubled kids and leaving them in the
Speaker 2: desert for two months. Right, And I want to quote
Speaker 2: again from John Krakouur, writing for Outside magazine. Five students
Speaker 2: were enrolled in the inaugural Summit Quest course, which cost
Speaker 2: thirteen thousand dollars for sixty three days. Palmer sent the
Speaker 2: group to the arid Schiwitz Plateau near the north rim
Speaker 2: of the Grand Canyon, supervised by two young counselors who
Speaker 2: were paid minimum wage. During the first several days, Michelle Sutton,
Speaker 2: a pretty fifteen year old who had enrolled voluntarily to
Speaker 2: regain self esteem after an alleged date rape, complained repeatedly
Speaker 2: of exhaustion, sunburn, and nausea. As the group hiked through
Speaker 2: the desert. She vomited up most of the water she
Speaker 2: tried to drink, and pleaded that she could not go on.
Speaker 2: According to councilor's field reports gathered by state and federal investigators,
Speaker 2: the lead counselor had been ordered to ignore such talk
Speaker 2: as manipulative behavior. You have been slapping off, she told Sutton.
Speaker 2: You are now being warned now a couple of things
Speaker 2: are going on there. One of them, probably the bleakest
Speaker 2: part of this is that, like Sutton was not sent
Speaker 2: here by her parents or against her own will, she
Speaker 2: was raped and thought this program might be therapeutic for her. Right,
Speaker 2: And this gets to what we've been talking about. These
Speaker 2: counselors who don't know what they're doing, who have no education,
Speaker 2: just treat every kid the same and the way they
Speaker 2: are trained. And this is Steve's training, right. Everything in
Speaker 2: this course has been stolen from Steve's program. Steve's program
Speaker 2: teaches anytime kids complain or say that they are physically
Speaker 2: uncomfortable or ill, they are trying to manipulate you. Well,
Speaker 2: that's like the.
Speaker 3: That's like the yeah, they they all of these things.
Speaker 3: They always say children are incredibly manipulative. You know, teenagers
Speaker 3: are incredibly manipulative, and like some are, but teenagers don't.
Speaker 3: Manipulation usually requires some kind of foresight. It's also like
Speaker 3: and you kidders are known for that.
Speaker 2: It's like when people say babies are manipulative, right, because
Speaker 2: a baby will like modulate how cries or whatnot in
Speaker 2: order to get certain kinds of attention. You can call
Speaker 2: it manipulative, or you can say like they have needs
Speaker 2: and try to fill those beads, like the teenager who
Speaker 2: is dehydrated and needs medical attention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when you like, like I got heat exhaustion,
Speaker 3: last year on my birthday because because I'm a late
Speaker 3: July baby and I was stupid and decided to have
Speaker 3: a party outside and many such cases, we all got
Speaker 3: heat exhaustion and I was the next day. I felt
Speaker 3: like I was going to throw up all day long.
Speaker 3: And yeah, if you feel like you're going to throw
Speaker 3: up after heat like that is when shit is really
Speaker 3: serious and you really need to Yeah, you need medical
Speaker 3: attention right away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you need to immediately start pounding the hottest coffee
Speaker 2: that you can get and ideally just get on a
Speaker 2: treadmill and sprint through it. You know, that's what's going
Speaker 2: to help.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you when you can't see anymore, then you know,
Speaker 3: that's when.
Speaker 2: You know that, that's when you're better.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But yeah, when you're bombing up.
Speaker 2: Water, that's that's a horrible side. Get to medical care.
Speaker 3: And the thing is, these these there are probably people
Speaker 3: who were like, oh, yeah, this would be good for me,
Speaker 3: Like I remember reading about like Harard bound and being
Speaker 3: like this could toughen me up.
Speaker 2: A real program, Michelle might have a real program with
Speaker 2: responsible counselors who were not pushing kids too much and
Speaker 2: understood medically, you know, wilderness first aid could have been
Speaker 2: helpful to her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could have been empowering to somebody who'd been
Speaker 3: through the sexual assault.
Speaker 2: If she thought I might I think I might benefit
Speaker 2: from this. It probably is something that might have benefited her.
Speaker 2: It's just the people, the adults that you know. For
Speaker 2: one thing, there was no kind of licensure for these programs,
Speaker 2: not really, there was no kind of like state board
Speaker 2: that was actually looking into any of this. So Michelle
Speaker 2: when she started looking for programs, had no way of
Speaker 2: knowing who is legitimate.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, what's like the summer camp program? You know,
Speaker 3: what's like a therapeutic program, and that that's the thing.
Speaker 3: A lot of these as therapy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and that, Yeah, that's exactly what happened, right,
Speaker 2: And you know, none of because she the fucking palmer
Speaker 2: who again is trained by fucking Steve, just brought in
Speaker 2: minimum wage people who like, did not understand anything about
Speaker 2: wilderness survival. They miss that she has the symptoms of
Speaker 2: heat stroke and dehydration. And if you ignore those symptoms
Speaker 2: and force someone to do an arduous mountain trek, there's
Speaker 2: a good chance they're going to die. And that is
Speaker 2: exactly what happened to fifteen year old Michelle Mo. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a it's fucked. Palmer alleged that Sudden, who remember,
Speaker 2: was in this program voluntarily after being assaulted, had died
Speaker 2: not because of dehydration and heat exhaustion, but due to
Speaker 2: a drug overdose. Right, Palmer didn't even do the work
Speaker 2: to know why this kid was there. She was like
Speaker 2: a kid in my program. I'll just say she was
Speaker 2: a drug addict, right, Like, it's so vile. It's vile
Speaker 2: and lazy.
Speaker 3: It also doesn't make any sense because don't they exam
Speaker 3: in them to make sure check.
Speaker 2: How did she get drugs?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did you let her get drugs out there? How is
Speaker 2: that happening? Yeah, that doesn't make you better. You realize
Speaker 2: that doesn't make it better. If she got access to.
Speaker 3: Drugs out here, that's even worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Now, obviously there's an actual coroner's inquest here
Speaker 2: and a doctor confirms that she did not die of
Speaker 2: drug overdose. There are no drugs in her system. She
Speaker 2: died due to dehydration. Given Palmer's this becomes a big
Speaker 2: media story. Right, Michelle is fifteen. You know her parents
Speaker 2: are very vocal. This actually like number one it destroys
Speaker 2: Palmer's program. But it finally, for the first time, these programs,
Speaker 2: a lot of which had proliferated as a result of
Speaker 2: Challenger's success, get some scrutiny, right, and as a result,
Speaker 2: the media reaches out to Steve Cartesano and to be like, Hey,
Speaker 2: seems like this lady basically just does exactly what you
Speaker 2: do and a kid died. Is there a danger a
Speaker 2: kid's going to die in your program? And Steve told
Speaker 2: them a Challenger, a tragedy like the one that killed
Speaker 2: Michelle Sutton could never happen. You want to guess what
Speaker 2: happened six weeks later? Oh my god, exactly, like literally
Speaker 2: two months later, something like that. On June twenty third,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, Kristin Chase enrolled at Challenger, And in this sentence,
Speaker 2: the mean the word enrolled means that she was taken
Speaker 2: in the dead of night by Challenger employees and driven
Speaker 2: from Florida to southern Utah. Kristin had been enrolled in
Speaker 2: the program by her mother, who, like most of these parents,
Speaker 2: thought her daughter was in danger and needed the tough
Speaker 2: love of a boot camp to set her on the
Speaker 2: right path. I think her parents are separated because her father, Ronald,
Speaker 2: claims he was not informed that Kristin had been forced
Speaker 2: into the program right Ronald was, like, I knew she
Speaker 2: was in the program. I thought this was something kind
Speaker 2: of like Michelle, that she wanted to do, which is
Speaker 2: not the case. So as soon as she arrives, the
Speaker 2: first thing they do is they starve kids. Right for
Speaker 2: the first two days that you're hiking, you don't eat
Speaker 2: any food. Right now, In addition to the fact that
Speaker 2: she is being starved, Kristen grows up at life. Has
Speaker 2: lived your whole life at sea level, and these are
Speaker 2: like seven thousand feet or more elevation mountains they're hiking in.
Speaker 3: Oh, so you're supposed to up.
Speaker 2: That'll fuck you up hard if you don't acclimate there. Again,
Speaker 2: if you know, if you understand anything about the medicine
Speaker 2: behind this, there are ways to responsibly acclimatize people to
Speaker 2: that environment.
Speaker 3: No, that's because Yeah, when I went when I went
Speaker 3: to my you know, hippie boarding school, we were on
Speaker 3: a hill that was I think about six thousand you know,
Speaker 3: we were up in the mountains, and yeah, I was
Speaker 3: always a little fucked up. Yeah, the first day back
Speaker 3: from vacation and a little fucked up coming back down
Speaker 3: to sea level, you know, with my parents in you know,
Speaker 3: the valley in LA. Like, you need time, and you
Speaker 3: need you need electrolytes, and you need to be very
Speaker 3: careful about what you eat.
Speaker 2: And walking start for two days exactly.
Speaker 3: Walking is exhausting. Walking, just walking is exhausting at that altitude.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A lawsuit from her father later noted that quote.
Speaker 2: Her medical history, forwarded Challenger by her mother, indicated that
Speaker 2: Kristin suffered from bouts of coughing up blood, stomach pain,
Speaker 2: urinary burning and frequency difficulty, running, minstreul difficulty, and a
Speaker 2: knee injury. So in addition, if I am and I'm
Speaker 2: not an expert on any of this, but I have
Speaker 2: some training in wilderness first aid. If I am doing,
Speaker 2: if I am working for an organization like this and
Speaker 2: a kid with this medical history wants to do a
Speaker 2: sixty three, I'm not letting them in. I'm sorry. If
Speaker 2: you cough up blood regularly, and like, we don't really
Speaker 2: have a clear idea as to why you are not
Speaker 2: spending two months out in the desert in my wilderness program.
Speaker 2: That doesn't seem responsible, you know, But they don't care
Speaker 2: over a challenger. They're like, come on, cough up blood
Speaker 2: here in the mountains. It'll be good for you. So
Speaker 2: Horsehair and the other counselors force her to do a
Speaker 2: six thousand foot elevation hike. The day that she arrives again,
Speaker 2: they deprive her of food. Next from a write up
Speaker 2: indserret dot com quote. Despite being upset, frightened, and ill,
Speaker 2: Kristin was forced to participate in four to five min
Speaker 2: hikes each day in temperatures exceeding ninety five degrees. She
Speaker 2: was not given a proper physical exam or any conditioning
Speaker 2: activities prior to the hikes. The day before she died,
Speaker 2: Kristin Chase fell several times on one of the hikes,
Speaker 2: experienced knee pain, and showed symptoms of heat exhaustion of
Speaker 2: the evening prior to her death, Kristen told one of
Speaker 2: the challenger counselors that she was afraid of dying. In
Speaker 2: the program, a counselor wrote on an evaluation form, Kristen's
Speaker 2: number one short term goal is to get out of
Speaker 2: here safe and alive, the suit says, and maybe as
Speaker 2: the employee, you shouldn't be working for a company. For lack. Well,
Speaker 2: this kid's goal is not to die here. I wonder
Speaker 2: if if we're handling health and safety properly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's yeah, some implications there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just incredibly bleak like this this, I mean,
Speaker 2: this poor girl is like murdered by negligence.
Speaker 3: Well but you know, oh sorry, is this a time
Speaker 3: for a break?
Speaker 2: It's time for an AD break. That's right, terrible time
Speaker 2: for an AD break.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, I was just going to say
Speaker 3: quickly that the thing that is like with my head
Speaker 3: is that I knew people who went to these places
Speaker 3: more than ten years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, still the same, Still the same. Yeah, yep, speaking
Speaker 2: of which, are ads the same as they ever were?
Speaker 2: We're back? Uh Okay. So on June twenty seventh, Kristen
Speaker 2: was made to do another five mile hike. She started
Speaker 2: showing symptoms of heat exhaustion and eventually collapsed on the trail.
Speaker 2: Despite the fact that she had stopped breathing, Challenger employees
Speaker 2: did not call for a care Flight helicopter to come
Speaker 2: in and rescue her. I don't know if it was
Speaker 2: literally the company CareFlight, but there's a company that did,
Speaker 2: Like you could like radio them and they would do
Speaker 2: emergency airlifts, right, which, if you are doing a service
Speaker 2: like this, if you're like a wilderness course like this,
Speaker 2: you want to have a contract with someone who can
Speaker 2: fly in no matter where you were and pick up
Speaker 2: an emergency case, right Like, that's part of the operating
Speaker 2: a business like Challenger. Responsibly, Challenger did not have an
Speaker 2: ongoing agreement with any of these services, and in fact
Speaker 2: refused to call them anyway because Steve hadn't paid the
Speaker 2: bill and he was in an what's described in the
Speaker 2: court case as an ongoing disagreement over an unpaid bill,
Speaker 2: so he had he had fucked this helicopter emergency service
Speaker 2: over so he could keep renting Lamborghini's and he wouldn't
Speaker 2: let any of his employees call them, even for an emergency.
Speaker 2: So eventually Challenger, instead of getting an actual medical helicopter in,
Speaker 2: they call for a tour helicopter that does like helicopter
Speaker 2: tours of Bryce Canyon, which does not rease. And again
Speaker 2: the time by the time it reaches Kristens, she is
Speaker 2: very much dead, you know, like it's she was already
Speaker 2: not like the odds were already kind of rough for her.
Speaker 2: By the fact that she was not breathing in in
Speaker 2: the wilderness, but the fact that it takes hours for
Speaker 2: a chopper to arrive, you know. In the immediate wake
Speaker 2: of the disaster, Steve Cartersano started doing cable TV appearances
Speaker 2: where he claimed that Chase's death had nothing to do
Speaker 2: with the Challenger program. And I'm going to quote again
Speaker 2: from Desert News. She hadn't yet begun the sixty three
Speaker 2: day expedition and was on a four and a half
Speaker 2: mile day hike to explore some nearby caves and arches
Speaker 2: when she died. She could have walked over to Central
Speaker 2: Park and collapsed. Cardasano said on the Jane Wallace Show
Speaker 2: on the Lifetime TV channel. Her death, though heartrending, has
Speaker 2: not caused him to reevaluate his program. We've had too
Speaker 2: much success, Cartizano said, pointing out that over seven hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty youths have completed the program. Now there's a
Speaker 2: lot that's bad about that. For one thing, they had
Speaker 2: absolutely started the sixty three day expedition, there were days
Speaker 2: into it, and she had been forced to continue hiking
Speaker 2: despite repeatedly complaining that she was in physical distress. This
Speaker 2: is not a walking to I don't know. Maybe you've
Speaker 2: taken some hardcore hikes over to Central Park, but this
Speaker 2: is not like walking around in the park in the
Speaker 2: middle of the city now. Surprisingly, Kristen's mother is one
Speaker 2: of the people who came out to support the Challenger
Speaker 2: team and Steve, even though they had killed her daughter.
Speaker 2: She told her reporter, what we did for our daughter
Speaker 2: was the best thing we ever we could have ever done.
Speaker 2: We felt this was the answer. I truly feel it
Speaker 2: would have been if she'd been able to complete it.
Speaker 2: It was not the you killed her. It wasn't the
Speaker 2: best thing you could have done. Because she died.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess she just probably needed to. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like you need to justify the horrible
Speaker 3: things that happen.
Speaker 2: It's such an I don't know if I feel like
Speaker 2: it's such a fucking American response, like particularly like middle
Speaker 2: class conservative response, like I am not responsible for anything
Speaker 2: bad that happens. It is the world doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 2: Even if I do something that's like dangerous and on
Speaker 2: its face like reckless and on its face something that
Speaker 2: like any responsible person could have told me was a
Speaker 2: dangerous thing to do, I felt it was the right
Speaker 2: thing to do, which means it must have been and
Speaker 2: so the fact that it ended badly like can't be
Speaker 2: my fault. Right, it's this complete refusal to take any
Speaker 2: It's fucking a rack. It's a rack war syndrome, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's this it should have worked, like fuck you people, Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's it's really I mean, what makes what I wonder
Speaker 3: is how, like how did they they get like these
Speaker 3: people on shows that were like, oh, the program worked
Speaker 3: for me. Where the fuck did they find those people?
Speaker 3: Is what I'm wondering about, because.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was probably incentive programs together.
Speaker 2: There's definitely incentives. I think there may have been a
Speaker 2: degree of like money getting like who knows what Steve
Speaker 2: was doing behind the scenes with these people, but also
Speaker 2: some number of people of kids probably did feel like
Speaker 2: the program helped, right.
Speaker 1: There was especially there was a different Netflix documentary, I
Speaker 1: forget the name of it, but one of the things
Speaker 1: that they talked about was that that there was like
Speaker 1: specific parent incentive programs for recruiting and recruiting parents to
Speaker 1: send their children to places and to spread good word
Speaker 1: and speak highly about it. That was a thing that happened.
Speaker 2: And you also you have within these programs. You've got
Speaker 2: a bunch of kids, they're kind of hierarchies within the kids.
Speaker 2: Some of those kids you just have like helping out.
Speaker 2: You give them extra privileges and whatnot, and they kind
Speaker 2: of you're kind of almost in a lot of cases,
Speaker 2: weaponizing the kids who are the biggest bullies, right, having
Speaker 2: them bully the other kids to keep them in line,
Speaker 2: and maybe those kids wind up feeling like, well, I
Speaker 2: have a lot of power and agency in this situation
Speaker 2: that I don't back at home. So it is a
Speaker 2: positive experience because they're getting to be shitty to some
Speaker 2: of the other kids, right. A variety of things are
Speaker 2: happening here. But like he's it's the I think part
Speaker 2: of the one of the villains here is like the
Speaker 2: willingness of daytime TV to like, well, we're never going
Speaker 2: to actually do any research on how these programs should
Speaker 2: operate or how they do operate. But this charismatic guy
Speaker 2: stee have him and a couple of teenagers on, you know,
Speaker 2: like we'll talk to them about this thing and effectively
Speaker 2: give him free advertising, which is kind of all TV
Speaker 2: ever does in these cases.
Speaker 3: I think that there's also like I know that there's
Speaker 3: the like the cash for Kids thing, and I knew
Speaker 3: I knew a girl who almost ended up in one
Speaker 3: of these programs, but because a psychiatrist suggested to her
Speaker 3: father that she should go and after that, this girl
Speaker 3: was somebody with a lot of issues, but she refused
Speaker 3: to go to a psychiatrist after that because she was
Speaker 3: so afraid that one would try to send her away.
Speaker 2: Of course. Yeah, it's it's shited like the there's that
Speaker 2: fucking CIA program in Pakistan where they like pretended to
Speaker 2: be vaccinating people in order to like blood test them
Speaker 2: to try and find ben laden And it's like, well,
Speaker 2: when you do shit like that, Yeah, people are gonna
Speaker 2: think vaccines they're a scam.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people aren't going to think. Yeah, people aren't going
Speaker 3: to be particularly happy.
Speaker 2: Thanks the CIA. Yeah, so I know, I want to know.
Speaker 2: We just talked about Sharon, who I do not like
Speaker 2: very much, being like, this really was the best thing
Speaker 2: for my I know she died, but it's the best
Speaker 2: thing for my daughter. I gotta say, I don't know
Speaker 2: much about her relationship with her former husband, Ronald, but
Speaker 2: I'm gonna guess he was in the right side of
Speaker 2: that breakup because when he finds out about this, he
Speaker 2: was like, what the fuck did you do? You sent
Speaker 2: our daughter to die in the desert, and now you're
Speaker 2: defending the people who got her killed on television. So
Speaker 2: one of the things that came out as a result
Speaker 2: of all this is that she had not told him
Speaker 2: and she shared custody with him, that she had had
Speaker 2: their daughter kidnapped, that she was not there willingly. Ronald
Speaker 2: gets very angry about all this, and he is made
Speaker 2: by a court the representative of his daughter's estate by
Speaker 2: a state judge, and in this capacity, he sues the
Speaker 2: ever loving shit out of the Challenger program. Cardesano is
Speaker 2: charged with eight counts of child abuse and a misdemeanor
Speaker 2: for his involvement in Chase's death. Now, the good news
Speaker 2: is that, like Chase does win a bunch of money
Speaker 2: as a result of this lawsuit. The bad news is
Speaker 2: that Cardasano does not wind up with any criminal convictions
Speaker 2: because they fuck up the case. Like there's like a
Speaker 2: weirdly shitty judge due to like a series of like
Speaker 2: like at one point in the court, like the first
Speaker 2: time they try they try this case, it gets thrown
Speaker 2: out because the judge forgets to read the charges to
Speaker 2: the jury at the onset of the trial. There are
Speaker 2: a couple of more things like that, and Cardasano is
Speaker 2: eventually acquitted, but his company winds up more than a
Speaker 2: million dollars in debt and he has to file for
Speaker 2: Chapter eleven. Several more lawsuits follow from other children after this,
Speaker 2: all of which are settled out of court. By the
Speaker 2: end of nineteen ninety three, Cardasano is banned from ever
Speaker 2: running a similar program in the state of Utah again.
Speaker 2: So that's good, you know, Steve Cartersano, he's out of
Speaker 2: the picture. He's surely not going to come back later
Speaker 2: in this story running a series of of wilderness survival camps.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about what happens in Utah after this point,
Speaker 2: because the fact that Utah has gone after Cartisano to
Speaker 2: some extent doesn't mean that they have any interest in
Speaker 2: regulating what has become a multimillion dollar industry in the state.
Speaker 2: When local and national media covered Kristen's death, they needed
Speaker 2: an expert to reach out to and to get quotes
Speaker 2: about what had gone wrong in Steve's program. Many of
Speaker 2: them picked Larry Olsen, who, despite the negligent deaths of
Speaker 2: two students in his programs, was still held up as
Speaker 2: the good guy of the wilderness therapy industry. In an
Speaker 2: interview with the Salt Lake Tribune, he displayed particular disgust
Speaker 2: for Steve's boot camp model. You don't treat them like maggots.
Speaker 2: You treat them like human beings, which is a good
Speaker 2: thing to be said. I just don't trust you at all, Larry. Now,
Speaker 2: whenever something terrible happens in a program like Challenger, there's
Speaker 2: an urge in the media to minimize issues in the
Speaker 2: rest of the industry, especially if that business tough love
Speaker 2: care for troubled teens is one that mainstream culture just
Speaker 2: sort of assumes is necessary. As a result, the focus
Speaker 2: was on how Challenger was a proly run program and
Speaker 2: not the idea that the whole concept might be a
Speaker 2: bad idea. Right. Two former Challenger employees, Bill Henry and
Speaker 2: Lance Jagger are man Horsehair had testify against Steve at
Speaker 2: exchange for immunity from prosecution. Can you believe Horsehair rolled
Speaker 2: on Horsehair? You fucked over, Steve Montana? How could you so?
Speaker 2: Horsehair and his buddy Bill are still clear to operate
Speaker 2: a wilderness rehab survival camp thing in Utah, and now
Speaker 2: there's an opening in the market because Challenger is no
Speaker 2: longer accepting anybody. And so in nineteen ninety two they
Speaker 2: launch a company, north Star Expeditions. That's a nice name,
Speaker 2: makes it sound very adventurous.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a cruise. That like it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like Yeah, it does sound like a cruise.
Speaker 2: Given that the company was owned and operated by men's
Speaker 2: trained by Steve Cartesano, who had played a direct role
Speaker 2: in the death of christ and Chase, you probably won't
Speaker 2: be surprised to hear that they almost immediately got another
Speaker 2: child killed. In early March nineteen ninety four, about a
Speaker 2: year after they start doing this, Aaron Bacon enrolled in
Speaker 2: North Stars again, sixty three day wilderness program. They all
Speaker 2: are the same length. Bacon is one of these kids
Speaker 2: who had been a good student most of his academic career,
Speaker 2: but got into pot in his sophomore year and started
Speaker 2: missing classes. In February, he was in a fight with
Speaker 2: some kids. In the local news reports that came out
Speaker 2: after this, Alta said he was in a fight with
Speaker 2: the crips, and I don't know if he was in
Speaker 2: a fight with the real crips or there were some
Speaker 2: other kids in his school calling themselves the crips, which
Speaker 2: I think is likelear.
Speaker 3: That's like every time people talk about gangs, it's like,
Speaker 3: are you guys talking about organized crime or are you
Speaker 3: talking about like a group of kids that we know.
Speaker 2: We definitely had some kids in my middle school who
Speaker 2: called themselves bloods, and I do not think they were
Speaker 2: affiliated with the criminal organization.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you have these like you have these like
Speaker 3: thirteen year olds who will like in LA who will
Speaker 3: tag like m S thirteen on something. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you guys, you're not MS thirteen tagging that on a locker. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big part of their operation. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that's if you want to move some serious crystal, you
Speaker 2: got to have lockers in every state. Oh yeah. So
Speaker 2: his parents get convinced that he is in a downward
Speaker 2: spiral that's going to lead with him murder, end with
Speaker 2: him murdered in a gang war. Now. In his article
Speaker 2: for Outside, John Krakauer describes how Aaron Bacon's mom found
Speaker 2: out about north Star. Students at north Star learned that
Speaker 2: mother Nature does not make exceptions, explained the outfits brochure
Speaker 2: they learned responsibility, self disciplined motivation. Tuition was thirteen zo
Speaker 2: nine hundred dollars for a sixty three day course, plus
Speaker 2: another seven seventy five to have erin forcibly escorted to Escalante,
Speaker 2: something north Star strongly recommended Bob's architecture firm. That's his dad,
Speaker 2: once prosperous, had lately been teetering on the brink of insolvency,
Speaker 2: and the Bacons no longer had that kind of cash. But,
Speaker 2: says Sally, his mom, after talking to several parents whose
Speaker 2: kids have been helped by the program, we were given
Speaker 2: a lot of hope that north Star was going to
Speaker 2: build Aaron's self esteem. I knew it would be rigorous,
Speaker 2: but I pictured him out there with God and nature,
Speaker 2: hiking all day, discussing his issues with therapists around the
Speaker 2: count fire at night. Just a totally fanciful idea of
Speaker 2: what was actually going on here. None of these counselors
Speaker 2: are therapists. None of them have relevant training in this.
Speaker 2: They're not even like any kind of teacher. Now it's
Speaker 2: unclear to me do Sally and Bob know that, But
Speaker 2: they are aware of some of this, because several days
Speaker 2: into his time with north Star. Aaron sends a letter
Speaker 2: back to his parents and writes, I'm trying to work
Speaker 2: this program as well as I can, but I can't
Speaker 2: believe you want me believing this stuff. I've been told
Speaker 2: that all therapists, counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists are quacks. I've
Speaker 2: been lectured on the stupidity of believing in them. I
Speaker 2: miss you, mom and dad. And maybe that's a side
Speaker 2: that your kid's not going to get good therapy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at the Wilderness camp. That's teaching him that psychiatrists are liars.
Speaker 2: You've got to trust only horse Hair knows how to
Speaker 2: be an adult. Great stuff. So, prior to handing their
Speaker 2: child off to strangers, the only concerns Bob and Sally
Speaker 2: had expressed to north Star was that their son was
Speaker 2: very thin, and they worried that he wouldn't be provided
Speaker 2: enough food. Our old, pale horse Hair assured them he
Speaker 2: would never let a student lose weight during one of
Speaker 2: their one of their sessions. For three weeks after Aaron
Speaker 2: was taken away in the night, his mom called regularly
Speaker 2: to check up on him. She was told that her
Speaker 2: son was a whiner, lingering pretending to be sick and
Speaker 2: doing so badly at the program that they might have
Speaker 2: no choice but to have him repeat it kids. The
Speaker 2: counselor said, we're angry at Aaron for slowing them down. Now,
Speaker 2: the reality of what's happening here is that for the
Speaker 2: first two days that they're on these hikes, Aaron and
Speaker 2: his classmates are starved. North Star claimed that this was
Speaker 2: to cleanse the toxins out of them. Aaron, very thin,
Speaker 2: already hiking and not eating, grew very quickly ill. Then
Speaker 2: he fell and injured himself badly enough that a week
Speaker 2: or so in he was unable to hike with his
Speaker 2: backpack and left it behind. His counselors were like, well,
Speaker 2: you left your backpack behind, that's where your food was.
Speaker 2: You don't get to eat now. So he spends another
Speaker 2: two days without food. He gets even sicker. Because he
Speaker 2: was clearly ill and slow. He became the subject of mockery,
Speaker 2: with counselors calling him homosexual and in one case taking
Speaker 2: his sleeping bag away as punishment. In a letter to
Speaker 2: his parents, Aaron wrote, I feel like I am losing
Speaker 2: control of my body. I've peed my pants every night
Speaker 2: for the past three nights and tonight when we started
Speaker 2: our little hike, I took a dump in my pants.
Speaker 2: I didn't even feel it coming, It just happened. All
Speaker 2: the other students started a I've been telling the staff
Speaker 2: that I'm sick for a while, and they say I'm
Speaker 2: faking it now again. If you were to tell those
Speaker 2: symptoms to anyone with fairly minimal medical training, those are
Speaker 2: signs of serious illness. Right. When a theoretically healthy young
Speaker 2: teenager loses control of their bladder and bowels during extreme
Speaker 2: physical exertion, that means something is very wrong and you
Speaker 2: need to get them to a hospital immediately. Right, nothing
Speaker 2: is done. On March thirtieth, three weeks into his trek,
Speaker 2: Aaron's mom called the school, which warned her that he
Speaker 2: might need to repeat the program because he was doing
Speaker 2: so badly. The next day, they called to inform her
Speaker 2: that her son was dead due to a perforated ulcer
Speaker 2: that leaped through his small intestine and cause a massive
Speaker 2: fatal infection. North Starr insisted they had done nothing wrong.
Speaker 2: Aaron had just been sick, the ulcer had been there anyway,
Speaker 2: nothing they did could have prevented his death. But then
Speaker 2: Sally saw her son's body. Here's how she described it. Quote.
Speaker 2: His legs were like toothpicks, his hip bones stuck way
Speaker 2: out his ribs. He looked like again, a concentration camp victim.
Speaker 2: There were bruises from the tip of his toes to
Speaker 2: the top of his head, open source, up and down
Speaker 2: the inside of his thighs. The only way we were
Speaker 2: even able to recognize him was a childhood scar above
Speaker 2: his right eye. Jesus, Yeah, yeah, it seems like a
Speaker 2: good time to go to ads and we're back. So
Speaker 2: that's fucking bleak and like adjacent to murder. I think
Speaker 2: negligence this bad. Like I don't really see much of
Speaker 2: a difference between this and just like killing a kid
Speaker 2: right like purposefully, like.
Speaker 3: It really is. I mean, I do know that, like
Speaker 3: the humiliation there is is just kind of it's just
Speaker 3: part of it.
Speaker 2: It's a nama. That kid was in hell the last
Speaker 2: days of his life exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're and and yeah, they do make it seem
Speaker 3: like these kids are all manipulative, you know, But his.
Speaker 2: Crime was he smoked weed. Great great parenting by the
Speaker 2: way from Bob and Sally there. I don't want to
Speaker 2: shit on him too much because their kid died, but
Speaker 2: also you're part of the reason why. So I don't
Speaker 2: really feel all that.
Speaker 3: There's got to be Like, I know they must like
Speaker 3: the way that they do it, because I know people
Speaker 3: who had terrible parents who were sent to these programs.
Speaker 3: But I also know people who had very loving, caring
Speaker 3: parents who sent their kids to these programs that if
Speaker 3: they knew, they never would. So I think all the
Speaker 3: money in this goes into sales.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it goes into sales. It goes into like making this,
Speaker 2: and and you also have the cultural inertia is with you, right,
Speaker 2: the weight of well, obviously kids these days are worse
Speaker 2: than they've ever been, right, which is a big thing
Speaker 2: in the media. Obviously, the consequences of kids getting into
Speaker 2: drugs or so dire. Obviously tough love is the only
Speaker 2: thing that works. Right, Like all of these things together
Speaker 2: that you're doing most of the ad work for these companies.
Speaker 2: All they need to do is come in and say,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll give your kid this kind of like
Speaker 2: you would imagine hiking through the desert, you know, sharing
Speaker 2: wisdom with your probably will we'll kind of insinuate Native
Speaker 2: American counselors. They'll learn all sorts of ancient wisdom, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's literally how the ad campaigns work for this
Speaker 2: A lot of them. The money is in like we
Speaker 2: know these different native techniques for like providing therapy too, right,
Speaker 2: Like there's all sorts of bullshit stacked on.
Speaker 3: They there is. I think there's a religious element underneath
Speaker 3: it all.
Speaker 2: Yep, I think.
Speaker 3: But the thing is, like I know somebody who went
Speaker 3: into this program and said that they came out believing
Speaker 3: in God, but only because they felt like they had
Speaker 3: to in a way, because it was like they they well, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was basically they were like they were like, I
Speaker 3: feel like right now the only thing that's giving me
Speaker 3: hope is the idea of a God, you know, and
Speaker 3: the only thing you know and so and it it
Speaker 3: feels like it is like when people, some people who
Speaker 3: come out of traumatic experiences lose their faith, but some
Speaker 3: people they gain it because they're like God was the only,
Speaker 3: you know, thing that I could think of, and I
Speaker 3: was praying to God to let me go through this,
Speaker 3: you know, and let me get through this alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you need to, especially as a child. Yeah,
Speaker 2: your degree of context, your understanding of like like what
Speaker 2: are your your degree of power in any situation is
Speaker 2: so little like that. I get how that might be
Speaker 2: psychologically necessary. Like some people, what's going to get you fath.
Speaker 3: Exactly that's what That's what's going to get them through,
Speaker 3: you know. And I mean you're probably also like you
Speaker 3: could you can hallucinate really easily after after the desert,
Speaker 3: so probably.
Speaker 2: That oh yeah, that also has Yes, yes.
Speaker 3: Starvation and heat exhaustion can make you see something.
Speaker 2: It we'll fuck you up again, you know. That's why
Speaker 2: we're offering like a you know, a special camp. We're
Speaker 2: just gonna take you out into the desert until you hallucinate.
Speaker 2: It's nice, it's legal. We may mix a little bit
Speaker 2: of peyote into the water. It's not really peyote. I
Speaker 2: got it off a Facebook, but it's got mushrooms on
Speaker 2: the side of the bottle. So that's got to be
Speaker 2: good enough for you, you know, in the desert with me. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: something will happen, and don't worry. I know what dehydration
Speaker 2: looks like. So one thing you'll notice from all of
Speaker 2: the stories if kids who have died in these programs
Speaker 2: is that while the child who died was obviously ill
Speaker 2: and in very clear need, of medical attention. They were
Speaker 2: attacked by staff for faking it, for having a bad attitude,
Speaker 2: for trying to get out of the program, for being manipulative.
Speaker 2: All of this trace is back to Steve Carrsano, Remember,
Speaker 2: trained all of these people and running these other facilities.
Speaker 2: These all of these deaths are people linked directly to Steve.
Speaker 2: In an interview earlier in his career with Challenger, Steve
Speaker 2: told a reporter, we are breaking down facads. Kids come
Speaker 2: in with all sorts of little ways to manipulate, with
Speaker 2: a lot of anger. We physically stress them out and
Speaker 2: that breaks down the facades to get to their heart.
Speaker 2: So again, the training that Steve established is you have
Speaker 2: to physically stress these children to break down the barriers
Speaker 2: between them and healing. So really, by ignoring when this
Speaker 2: kid start shitting blood in the desert, we're doing the
Speaker 2: best thing for him. He's just trying to manipulate us
Speaker 2: by losing control of his bowels. See why the.
Speaker 3: Kids I know who did like who didn't necessarily suffer
Speaker 3: physical effects from it, although I mean they all did
Speaker 3: because they all were you know, lack of food and
Speaker 3: lack of sleep, right, But and you know, exposure to
Speaker 3: the elements, but they were all humiliated. They were made
Speaker 3: to be dirt, if you know, people were made to
Speaker 3: like people were forced to like be nude or like
Speaker 3: pee in front of each other like what themselves as
Speaker 3: punishments things like that, like you know, in addition to
Speaker 3: being yelled at, But humiliation was a big one. Humiliation
Speaker 3: in front of a group of people.
Speaker 2: And it's the kind of thing it's it shows you
Speaker 2: how it's just like the primary difference in toxicity between
Speaker 2: like the programs that Larry Olsen is running, which are
Speaker 2: very much imperfect, but don't do this to kid Like
Speaker 2: the deaths there are, I think generally due to your responsibility,
Speaker 2: but they're not torturing kids the same way. Like one
Speaker 2: of the things that the on a Sazi camp that
Speaker 2: he runs afterwards will do is that, like you get
Speaker 2: two thousand calories a day. Now, they do have this
Speaker 2: weird rule where if you like eat your food early,
Speaker 2: you have to like catch animals and like forage and
Speaker 2: what not to like fill up the gap and you're
Speaker 2: But none of their kids ever like starved to death,
Speaker 2: so I guess they probably did it right. And I
Speaker 2: think the key thing is that like aspects of that
Speaker 2: were like, well, you have to manage the amount of
Speaker 2: food that you have, like you're on a high for
Speaker 2: a while. This is like part of learning wilderness survival.
Speaker 2: If you're not pairing that with and all of the
Speaker 2: kids are going to yell at you and make fun
Speaker 2: of you, and the counselors will beat you and call
Speaker 2: you gay, then it's not necessarily a bad ex as
Speaker 2: long as there's a certain degree of like medical training present,
Speaker 2: not necessarily a bad experience, right. It could be useful
Speaker 2: to learn things about, like managing calories when you're out
Speaker 2: in the wild. That's not what's going on in these places.
Speaker 2: Right after Chase's death in nineteen ninety, Utah had forced
Speaker 2: through its first serious regulations for wilderness therapy. Most of
Speaker 2: these focused on what kids couldn't be made to do.
Speaker 2: There were restrictions you can't have a kid hike up
Speaker 2: with a pack that's above a certain percentage of their
Speaker 2: body weight. You have to give kids a set number
Speaker 2: of calories per day. But as Krakauer noted in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, responsibility for enforcing these regulations fell to a
Speaker 2: loan civil servant, Kin Stettler, who was supposed to monitor
Speaker 2: more than one hundred youth treatment companies statewide. In practice,
Speaker 2: it was impossible for him to write her it on
Speaker 2: so many programs, and North Star was among those that
Speaker 2: escaped close scrutiny. Stetler devoted Mormon knew Jagger and Henry
Speaker 2: well and says that he trusted them as fellow saints implicitly.
Speaker 2: After Bacon's death, Stetler's confidence in Jagger and Henry remained steadfast.
Speaker 2: He quickly cleared North Star of any wrongdoing and allowed
Speaker 2: the program to stay in business, which it did for
Speaker 2: six months until the State of Utah filed criminal charges
Speaker 2: in October nineteen ninety four. So again, the guy they
Speaker 2: when they decide to regulate this after two kids die,
Speaker 2: the guy who does it is like, well, it's Mormons
Speaker 2: running this camp. Mormons would never put a kid in danger. Oh,
Speaker 2: the kid died, must not have been their fault, you know.
Speaker 2: Thankfully the Bacon's parents make enough of a problem that
Speaker 2: the State of Utah does something, But like they almost didn't,
Speaker 2: you know. And again, yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Is really I don't know the idea of like yeah,
Speaker 3: of like, well, nobody in this group would would be
Speaker 3: a bad person.
Speaker 2: Well he would never do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just it's such a strange. It's such a
Speaker 3: strange idea to me like that that well, yeah, of course,
Speaker 3: of course you wouldn't do that.
Speaker 2: It's this thing we can all. It's easy to see
Speaker 2: what a bad idea that is, right when you're thinking
Speaker 2: about like, well, I'm not a Mormon. I know a
Speaker 2: lot of bad things about the church of about the
Speaker 2: Mormon church, right, Like the LDS church has a dark history.
Speaker 2: Churches in general often have dark histories of child abuse.
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised that stuff like this happens. But we
Speaker 2: all have our groups where we're like, well, no one
Speaker 2: in this group whatever abuse a kid, right, That's how
Speaker 2: kids keep getting abused, Like everyone has has different groups.
Speaker 2: That that's why you always need some sort of oversight
Speaker 2: that is not the group itself making sure when you're
Speaker 2: dealing with like organizations that take care of kids, making
Speaker 2: sure kids aren't getting molested, because there is no group
Speaker 2: that will not include some child molesters in it.
Speaker 3: No, it's it's sociology one o one. You know, everybody's
Speaker 3: always like like this is its social ties are the
Speaker 3: most important thing, and it's why people will some people
Speaker 3: will be like, you know, I can't believe this famous
Speaker 3: person is standing with with this abuser. And it's like, well,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not a good thing that they're doing it,
Speaker 3: but probably they have close social ties with them, and
Speaker 3: it's really hard for people to cut off social ties. Sometimes.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's a good thing, because it's not,
Speaker 3: but it blames Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is specifically why you don't leave it
Speaker 2: up to random people. Yeah, it's why you build robust organizations.
Speaker 2: That's job is to like not take it as red
Speaker 2: that people aren't abusing kids, right, and to be an
Speaker 2: advocate for those kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people on the outside who can be objective about it,
Speaker 3: because you get this sort of like like I mean,
Speaker 3: this is and and obviously this isn't just like a
Speaker 3: Latter Day Saints thing like this is in every religion
Speaker 3: and every institution. There's some kind of old boy network.
Speaker 3: There's some kind of you know, oh well, yeah, well
Speaker 3: this guy is my friend. He would never do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And yeah, when we talk about like cases of
Speaker 2: like film sets and stuff like that, especially back in
Speaker 2: the day that we're abusive to like child actors, and
Speaker 2: there's always the question of like, well, what did other
Speaker 2: actors on the set know at the time. But the
Speaker 2: bigger problem is that like, well, it shouldn't have been
Speaker 2: up to them either, Like there should be again, professional agencies,
Speaker 2: that's job is to do this so that you're not
Speaker 2: trusting that everyone's going to like you don't. You can't
Speaker 2: just trust that everyone involved in the organization is going
Speaker 2: to be the best version of themselves. You assume that
Speaker 2: there are going to be that people are going to
Speaker 2: be cowards, you assume that people are going to be sneaky,
Speaker 2: and you build a system that does not like take
Speaker 2: that for granted.
Speaker 3: I think, I mean, I think a lot of us
Speaker 3: who didn't have bad experiences on film sets because I
Speaker 3: mostly had good experiences on film sets, But it was
Speaker 3: because we had people in our lives, like our parents
Speaker 3: and studio teachers who always advocated for us, who always
Speaker 3: made sure that we weren't doing anything unsafe, and who
Speaker 3: would take us aside and say, hey, are you sure
Speaker 3: about this? Do you really want to be doing this?
Speaker 3: Do you feel safe about this? But obviously that's not
Speaker 3: the case everywhere, but yeah, but that's the thing. You
Speaker 3: have these people who are advocating and these people who
Speaker 3: are a little bit outside of this, you know, And
Speaker 3: yeah you do. You need the outside, the outside eye,
Speaker 3: the outside perspective, you need the chicks and balances.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the Boy Scouts shit, right, Like I had
Speaker 2: a great time in the Boy Scouts while a bunch
Speaker 2: of kids were getting molested, right, Like, you just can't
Speaker 2: you just never, You shouldn't. You shouldn't leave it up
Speaker 2: to people who are whose expertise is not sniffing out
Speaker 2: child abuse to try and figure out if that's happening.
Speaker 2: You know, we keep learning this, Lets schools learn this
Speaker 2: lesson all the time. You know, I can't believe this
Speaker 2: teacher was doing that. You know, they were the cool teacher. Like, well,
Speaker 2: we all had a cool teacher who was doing something
Speaker 2: they shouldn't have been doing.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: That's the thing, too, is when people say to me, like,
Speaker 3: so many children are abused in Hollywood, I say, yes,
Speaker 3: but children were abused also.
Speaker 2: At nearly the Catholic Church.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the children. Well, and that's what I say to them.
Speaker 3: I say, this is not a problem that's unique to Hollywood.
Speaker 3: It's a problem that is in every institution where somebody
Speaker 3: has extreme power over anybody else. And maybe that's my
Speaker 3: anarchist street talking. But I think that it's you know,
Speaker 3: any kind of institution.
Speaker 2: I obviously agree with you one hundred percent. I feel
Speaker 2: the same way when people obsessed. Not that it's not
Speaker 2: like the Epstein was not worth like certainly at one
Speaker 2: point when his crimes are being ignored, a lot more
Speaker 2: attention was needed, but the obsessional focus on this idea
Speaker 2: of like teenage and like child girl victims as opposed
Speaker 2: to how the vast majority of child sex trafficking looks,
Speaker 2: which is people's parents and relatives primarily doing it right
Speaker 2: and is mostly kids who were poor, and like, don't intersect.
Speaker 2: They're also the people who are abusing them are poor,
Speaker 2: and so there's not this angle of like this is
Speaker 2: the wealthy and powerful engaging in these these horrible things.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, these are like poor adults of using
Speaker 2: poor children, and like that doesn't get any kind of attention, right,
Speaker 2: and even though it's a much more common version of
Speaker 2: the problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think also if somebody has complete control over
Speaker 3: you and complete control over what you're doing, and you
Speaker 3: know in Hollywood it's they have complete control over your
Speaker 3: dreams and your future, you know that says something in
Speaker 3: a church they have complete you know, and any kind
Speaker 3: of rep your soul, yeah, or your soul. You know,
Speaker 3: those are very big things. And you know if it's
Speaker 3: your mother or your father, your grandfather, your stepfather doing it,
Speaker 3: you know, like your grandparents, like you know, these are
Speaker 3: the people that you're supposed to love and look up to.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and that takes us back to these facilities.
Speaker 2: This idea that like the parent or guardian of a
Speaker 2: child should have absolute power over them. No, they shouldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like again, where do we draw that line is a
Speaker 2: question of society should have ask itself. But like you
Speaker 2: shouldn't trust parents to control children either, like to a
Speaker 2: degree of fatality, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean like a lot of times there might
Speaker 3: be like an aunt or and uncle who's nearby who's like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, is stuff going on here? Okay, Like things
Speaker 3: like that. There's there's got to be some kind of
Speaker 3: checks and balances and do have that because we yeah.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's hard, and so we just don't do it.
Speaker 3: Ironically, we are not We talk about being very family oriented,
Speaker 3: but we're not really like we're family oriented in a
Speaker 3: in a one interpretation of family but not in a
Speaker 3: extended community, you know, extended family, extended you know respect.
Speaker 3: I don't know that's that's a whole other topics, but.
Speaker 2: There's a lot to say about, like our attitudes towards
Speaker 2: I think a lot of this toxicity comes back to
Speaker 2: the Roman Empire, if I can go go back to Rome,
Speaker 2: because back back in the Roman Empire, there was this
Speaker 2: understanding that like, you were legally a child as long
Speaker 2: as your father was still alive, right, and he could
Speaker 2: he could kill you. They have parents had the specifically
Speaker 2: the pattern Familius had the technically the legal ability to
Speaker 2: execute his children. And there I think there's a surprising
Speaker 2: number of people who think that that should more or
Speaker 2: less still be the law. Certainly, the way that a
Speaker 2: lot of parents treat their their gay and trans kids
Speaker 2: makes me think that like, oh, so that that idea
Speaker 2: is still kicking around in a lot of heads.
Speaker 3: Huh yeah, or you need to take your child.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to break your kid down, right. So
Speaker 2: we've just talked about what Steve's people did after he
Speaker 2: left the state of Utah, and I know that I
Speaker 2: sneakily said Steve was gone from the story now, But surprise, Mara,
Speaker 2: Steve has a post scrunt. He's got a third approach.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, he has like three more acts here. So
Speaker 2: for his own sake, Steve did not take the fact
Speaker 2: that he was no longer allowed to operate a wilderness
Speaker 2: therapy camp in Utah lying down. He moved to Hawaii
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety, where he started to run a child
Speaker 2: treatment facility without a license. Write up in the New
Speaker 2: York Times notes Thomas D. Ferrell, the deputy district attorney
Speaker 2: who sought the injunction to close the up, said he
Speaker 2: interviewed the children who were removed from the Malachai program,
Speaker 2: and every damn one of them, he said, told officials
Speaker 2: that camp counselors physically abused them. So that's great. I'm
Speaker 2: sure that's the end of Steve's career, right, How many
Speaker 2: more times could the government get involved with you abusing
Speaker 2: children in your camps? And oh? A couple of years later,
Speaker 2: he got caught operating another facility, this time in the
Speaker 2: US Virgin Islands, again without a license. He was shut
Speaker 2: down again, but several months later, two boys escaped from
Speaker 2: another facility he was running in Costa Rica and told
Speaker 2: parents that they had been imprisoned and physically abused.
Speaker 3: In nineteen they start going to because like then you
Speaker 3: had these ones. Wasn't there like a school. It wasn't
Speaker 3: a wilderness program, but there was like a school I
Speaker 3: think in Guantanamo Bay or a No Tranquility Bay.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, Puerto Rico. Okay, he operates at
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, he operates a camp in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2: And this camp gets busted because he's operating it under
Speaker 2: a fall name. This camp gets busted because local law
Speaker 2: enforcement finds, like a cop finds like a car parked
Speaker 2: kind of in the woods and finds five boys tied
Speaker 2: up with rope in the back of the car with
Speaker 2: nooses around their necks.
Speaker 3: Jeezu go.
Speaker 2: So the cops are like, what's what's going on here, kids?
Speaker 2: And the kids are like, well, we're in this wilderness
Speaker 2: camp and they're disciplining us. And the cops are like,
Speaker 2: this doesn't seem like something you should legally be allowed
Speaker 2: to do to children. We're taking you in And so
Speaker 2: they look into the matter and it turns out that
Speaker 2: counselors had gotten fed up with these boys and left
Speaker 2: them tied in the back of a car because they
Speaker 2: didn't want to, like do a hike or something. Steve
Speaker 2: and his program were charged with child abuse yet again,
Speaker 2: but they bounced before being served. Frustrated by the fact
Speaker 2: that he kept getting caught, Steve was by this point
Speaker 2: using a fake name in order to operate his businesses.
Speaker 2: When he was asked about this by The New York Times,
Speaker 2: he told them that he had to use an alias
Speaker 2: now just to stay in business and feed my family.
Speaker 2: That article goes on to tell the story of Christopher Humble,
Speaker 2: who was enrolled by his mother in an outdoor therapy
Speaker 2: program in Samoa. After finding an advertisement for something called
Speaker 2: the Pacific Coast Academy, his mother talked on the phone
Speaker 2: with their head marketer, Stephen Michaels, who was really Steve Cartisano.
Speaker 2: The man has caught an imagination, but he cannot fathom
Speaker 2: having a name that is it's Steve oh Man. That's
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but that's quite funny. Yeah, Michaels,
Speaker 2: here's the New York Times again.
Speaker 3: Turned his back on his Italian heritage.
Speaker 2: Yeah he did. He did, really threw that away and
Speaker 2: threw away his Montana heritage too. Quote mister Michael she
Speaker 2: recalled told her that her son would receive proper care
Speaker 2: as well as stern discipline at the academy's camp on
Speaker 2: the South Pacific island of Samoa. Persuaded by his promises,
Speaker 2: Miss Humble enrolled her son, Christopher, in a one year
Speaker 2: program for twenty thousand dollars. Christopher lasted six months. When
Speaker 2: he returned home in December nineteen ninety nine, Miss Humble
Speaker 2: said his weight had dropped to one hundred and eighteen
Speaker 2: pounds from one hundred and sixty five. He had scars
Speaker 2: from beatings, and he could barely walk or talk. So
Speaker 2: it always ends the same way. All of these camps
Speaker 2: worked the same way, which at this point the first
Speaker 2: one I might be like, well, maybe you were just
Speaker 2: so negligent that you let this happen. We're now four
Speaker 2: camps send this is how you want them to operate, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's clear to everyone, I think now. The Times notes
Speaker 2: in that article that over his twelve year career up
Speaker 2: to that point, Steve had been accused of fraud and
Speaker 2: abuse at every single camp he operated. His Samoan program
Speaker 2: lasted just three years before more than a dozen children
Speaker 2: made reports of physical abuse. One teenager claimed to have
Speaker 2: been molested by multiple camp counselors, all of whom had
Speaker 2: been hired by Cartesano. When confronted about all of this
Speaker 2: by The Times, Steve defended himself by arguing that the
Speaker 2: children were all habitual liars whose parents just wanted refunds.
Speaker 2: He would argue that only twenty five of the twelve
Speaker 2: hundred children who'd attended his camps were even complaining, a
Speaker 2: number that was blatantly untrue even at the time. When
Speaker 2: asked about the numerous allegations of abuse by his students,
Speaker 2: Steve told The Times, all of them are unfounded, all
Speaker 2: of them exaggerations. It never happened. These kids were no
Speaker 2: angels to begin with, and they would say anything to
Speaker 2: get sent home. So angels, Hey, are you going to say?
Speaker 3: No angel?
Speaker 2: Steve's shaking hands with every cop in the country, like.
Speaker 3: It's it's the thing. I mean, the thing is like Also,
Speaker 3: I can only imagine how many of these children were
Speaker 3: sexually assaulted but were too terrified. Never said you can't
Speaker 3: say anything about it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yep, yep. Yeah.
Speaker 3: If you come home unable to speak, you know you're
Speaker 3: not going to be able to say this person did
Speaker 3: something to me.
Speaker 2: It also like, it takes a lot of trust, as
Speaker 2: does anyone to talk about that. And if your parents
Speaker 2: have just paid for you to be abducted for a year,
Speaker 2: maybe you don't trust him anymore. Yeah, I wouldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it might not be smart to trust them after that.
Speaker 3: Well, these places also ruin families because of that too,
Speaker 3: because even parents who were taken in, who were you know,
Speaker 3: miss like, think about this, you know, they're going to
Speaker 3: be the subject of a lot of hate and resentment, understandably,
Speaker 3: understandably so for the rest of these kids' lives.
Speaker 2: Don't send your kids to these programs parents, you know anyway.
Speaker 2: So now I will say this about Steve. He seems
Speaker 2: to have a he was a customer as well as
Speaker 2: a purveyor of these services, because he sent both of
Speaker 2: his kids, I think to these programs. He definitely sent
Speaker 2: his son David, who developed a drug problem, paid for
Speaker 2: him to be kidnapped and taken to a wilderness camp.
Speaker 2: Now I don't know much about David, but the documentary
Speaker 2: that came out recently, Steve's wife says that David is
Speaker 2: in prison at the time the documentary was formed. So
Speaker 2: I'm going to guess not great. The tough love didn't
Speaker 2: work here. Steve Cardesano died of a heart attack in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. He left behind a massive industry largely formed
Speaker 2: in his image. As this paragraph from an article in
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone makes clear, his Wilderness Camp set the foundation
Speaker 2: for thousands of other programs. More than one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty thousand children live in troubled teen facilities which include
Speaker 2: wilderness programs. Training standards fluctuate drastically from organization to organization,
Speaker 2: and in two thousand and five, the US Government Accountability
Speaker 2: Office recorded more than fifteen hundred employees of involved in
Speaker 2: litigation for abuse in thirty three states, and from twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen to twenty twenty one, thirteen people were fired or
Speaker 2: resigned from youth treatment centers in Utah due to sexual
Speaker 2: behavior and sexual assault allegations, according to a twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two investigation by the Salt Lake Tribune.
Speaker 3: So, there was a TV show about wilderness Camp. I
Speaker 3: remember that in like the two thousands, called like you know,
Speaker 3: brat Camp or something like that, like camp. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: had it had a that was like like they had
Speaker 3: like a moment you know when doctor Phil is sending
Speaker 3: them away to everybody.
Speaker 2: See if we can get some good TV out of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and considering that they're you know, for it had
Speaker 3: been more than like it'd been ten or fifteen years
Speaker 3: and these children had been dying, It's it's like, that's
Speaker 3: the thing that just drives me up the walls that
Speaker 3: these places still existed, They still you know, there was
Speaker 3: no no oversight that these places were able to get
Speaker 3: even bigger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, in the.
Speaker 3: Two thousands and and you know, in twenty tens, and
Speaker 3: now finally you know, are being shut down, but are
Speaker 3: probably going to spring up other places.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure they'll have another renaissance at some point.
Speaker 2: At least sixteen children have died in these facilities since
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety. Thousands more suffered injury and trauma. As you noted,
Speaker 2: attempts to reform the industry or even develop a comprehensive
Speaker 2: understanding of its harm have been uneven at best. I
Speaker 2: found an article by the BBC that summarizes the US
Speaker 2: Government Accountability Office report in two thousand and seven, which
Speaker 2: quote found it difficult to grasp the national picture due
Speaker 2: to irregular licensing rules at the state level and ambiguity
Speaker 2: surrounding the label's facilities used to describe themselves like boot
Speaker 2: camps or therapeutic boarding schools. Still, the investigators found thousands
Speaker 2: of allegations of abuse and several deaths at programs like
Speaker 2: this around the United States and in US owned businesses.
Speaker 2: So yeah, basically, like we found huge numbers of allegations
Speaker 2: of physical sexual abuse, we found a number of deaths.
Speaker 2: But there's so little standardization and even what these places
Speaker 2: are called that it's impossible to get like the kind
Speaker 2: of data that you would want to have for programs
Speaker 2: like this. I can't say there's no evidence they fucking
Speaker 2: work right. As a result of how like decentralized, all
Speaker 2: of this is about how difficult it is to kind
Speaker 2: of even find out what's going on. It's been left
Speaker 2: to the parents of dead kids and to adult survivors
Speaker 2: of these programs to try and force accountability. Cynthia Clark
Speaker 2: Harvey is one of the former Her daughter Ericad died
Speaker 2: of dehydration and heat stroke one day into a Nevada
Speaker 2: program in two thousand and two. Cynthia had done her
Speaker 2: homework in trying to pick a place for her daughter,
Speaker 2: and by two thousand and two there were state licensing
Speaker 2: requirements so she thought, like, this place is licensed by
Speaker 2: the state, it's accredited, they have a good reputation. This
Speaker 2: should be safe and then quote. After weeks of deliberation
Speaker 2: and planning, they traveled to Nevada under the guise of
Speaker 2: a family trip with her younger sister. When the deception
Speaker 2: was revealed, Erica became scared and angry and refused to
Speaker 2: get out of the car. After a turbulent hours long
Speaker 2: group therapy session with other families, she and the other
Speaker 2: children were taken away. This was the last time Cynthia
Speaker 2: and her husband ever saw their daughter alive. By the
Speaker 2: time they got back home to Arizona the following evening,
Speaker 2: there was already a message waiting on their answering phone
Speaker 2: telling them to call. They were told Erika had an
Speaker 2: accident and staff were performing CPR. So Cynthia wound up
Speaker 2: testifying to Congress about what had happened to her daughter.
Speaker 2: And she's been joined in her advocacy by a number
Speaker 2: of celebrity survivors of these programs, most famous among them
Speaker 2: Paris Hilton, who has funded a significant amount of advocacy
Speaker 2: in documentary journalism to try to bring this industry to
Speaker 2: an end. It's taken a long time, but the work
Speaker 2: of these survivors and parents is borne fruit, as this
Speaker 2: article in the Salt Lake Tribune makes clear. Legislators enacted
Speaker 2: more regulations in twenty twenty one in response to increased
Speaker 2: scrutiny in recent years of youth treatment programs amid allegations
Speaker 2: of mistreatment and abuse. The legislation placed limits on the
Speaker 2: use of restraints for all programs and addressed the use
Speaker 2: of drugs and isolation rooms and residential centers. It also
Speaker 2: earmarked more money to hire more state regulators who now
Speaker 2: go into youth treatment programs more often, and it requires
Speaker 2: programs to report when a staff member used a physical
Speaker 2: restraint on a young person or puts them in seclusion.
Speaker 2: Perhaps the greatest damage has been done to the reputation
Speaker 2: of the industry as a whole, and that may ultimately
Speaker 2: be the thing that's actually does more to kill it
Speaker 2: than any of these regulations, right, is the fact that
Speaker 2: at this point, the sheer weight and you know, celebrity
Speaker 2: has helped with this of attention on this has given
Speaker 2: it a black eye. In twenty twenty three, nearly half
Speaker 2: of Utah's wilderness camps shut down. The ones that remain
Speaker 2: are hosting only a fraction of their full capacity. So
Speaker 2: as you've said, you know, we can be hopeful that
Speaker 2: this thing is dying out, but uh, you know, someone
Speaker 2: will come along with something else at some point.
Speaker 3: I think that letting parents know, you know, and letting
Speaker 3: people know what these places really are and what they
Speaker 3: actually do, I do think is because obviously the you know,
Speaker 3: trying to get oversight through you know, any other means
Speaker 3: doesn't seem to be really working. And I think that
Speaker 3: really just sort of spreading the word is is probably
Speaker 3: the best that you know, they can do. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: you know, that helped shut down some of the some
Speaker 3: of the like some of the places like this that
Speaker 3: were actually school schools. You know, if something has a
Speaker 3: bad enough reputation, sometimes that sort of you know, starves
Speaker 3: itt of oxygen and you know, yeah, and it's I
Speaker 3: don't know, I think that that's one of the one
Speaker 3: of the best things, one of the only things really
Speaker 3: that can happen. And yeah, you're right, probably something something
Speaker 3: else that's just as shitty might take its place. But yeah,
Speaker 3: hopefully hopefully these places will not be around much longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I think that's as good a note to
Speaker 2: end on as any Mara Wilson, Mara, your memoir Where
Speaker 2: Am I Now? Out in stores, available on the internet,
Speaker 2: being beamed into space to be listened to by our
Speaker 2: coming alien overlord so that they can understand human culture.
Speaker 2: Congratulations on that contract, by the way, that's a big one.
Speaker 2: Anything else you want to plug before we roll out?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been writing articles for The Guardian about psychology
Speaker 3: and wellness, and I've been doing a lot of audiobook
Speaker 3: narration these days. I love doing it voiceover and audiobooks
Speaker 3: or narration are like my favorite thing. You can find
Speaker 3: a lot of those books on liber dot FM. And
Speaker 3: also I wrote another short memoir called Good Girls Don't,
Speaker 3: which is about being a pissed off people pleaser, and
Speaker 3: that is available on what was formerly known as scribbed
Speaker 3: and I believe is now called ever Rand.
Speaker 2: So yeah, change scribed.
Speaker 3: I think they did. Yeah, I think they did, And
Speaker 3: so yeah, check out check out Where Am I Now?
Speaker 3: And Good Girls Don't?
Speaker 2: Excellent. Thank you so much, Mara. You've been wonderful, and
Speaker 2: you listeners have also been wonderful listening to this these
Speaker 2: horrible stories of terrible things. You know, go go hug
Speaker 2: a kitten or you know again. Drive to the corporate
Speaker 2: offices of.
Speaker 3: No, Absolutely not.
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