Word: creeks
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With its simple, log-sided buildings spread out over 150 acres among the Ponderosa pines in a remote part of western Montana, Spring Creek Lodge Academy might pass as a rustic retreat for budget-minded travelers. But Mary and Randy Carben didn't make the trip there from their home in Bridgeview, Ill., for a vacation. They were at Spring Creek because it's where their son John had lived since the morning in June when the Carbens paid two handcuff-brandishing escorts to take their 17-year-old there. Despite its bucolic appearance, Spring Creek is a specialty boarding...
Restoring family unity for households in which children have careened out of control is the express goal of Spring Creek and the six other behavior-modification programs affiliated with the nonprofit World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS) that oversee these for-profit juvenile boot camps. They clearly fill a need; about 2,500 students are enrolled in WWASPS programs. Yet in recent years, most of the schools have come under attack on charges of abuse, including food and sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, alleged beatings and the deaths of at least two children. In September the association...
...owners and managers of such schools profess a strong belief in what they do. Spring Creek allowed a TIME journalist to attend the parents' weekend and tour the campus, providing a rare glimpse into the daily regimens and conditions at one of these tough-love schools and an intimate look at the difficult choices facing parents who send their children to them...
Opened in 1996, Spring Creek is the largest WWASPS affiliate, with about 600 teenagers in residence. It is owned and operated by twin brothers Cameron and Chaffin Pullan, 33. Neither Pullan is a college graduate or has any formal training in child development. Cameron worked as a YMCA day-care administrator, and Chaffin served as a residential manager for a WWASPS program in Utah before starting the school in Thompson Falls, Mont. But the brothers pride themselves on their self-taught proficiency in rehabilitating kids. "We help build confidence," says Chaffin, "through character building...
...that every one of them would be casting a vote for Bush. The voters in Indiana and Ohio wouldn’t realize that we would get hit the hardest, that much of the job loss is from our factories, the outsourcing from our states. All the Battle Creek city positions would go Republican, and my cousin, who served a dedicated term as vice-chair of the county commission would squeak out a 104-vote victory. Never mind that his opponent was a late replacement with little time to campaign while he went to every door in his district...