Feds looking into youth boot camps
It seems like the administrators of “tough love” may have gone a little too far in the marketing. Federal investigators are looking into a number of youth “boot camps” — essentially boarding schools for troubled kids — for engaging in deceptive practices in encouraging parents to send their kids there. We weren’t aware this was such a big business! Now us parents are outsourcing discipline?
As part of the federal review, investigators at the Government Accountability Office made undercover calls to boot camps and referral services that work with them.
In one case, an investigator posing as a father was advised to hide information from his wife about a program, according to GAO investigator Greg Kutz, who was scheduled to testify about the investigation Thursday before a House committee.
“The referral agency warned our fictitious parents that his wife might ‘freak out’ about sending her daughter to a boarding school, and stated: ‘I want you to tell her that it’s a college prep boarding school … If she thinks that you want to send her daughter to a place where there are drug addicts and people that are all screwed up, she will look at you and say ‘no way,”‘ Kutz said in prepared testimony obtained by The Associated Press.
Kutz also stated that when investigators called a Texas wilderness therapy program, they were misled by a program representative into thinking health insurance would reimburse the family’s expenses upon completion of the program.
Information from: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,3524...
