{"id":2232,"date":"2022-01-06T13:00:14","date_gmt":"2022-01-06T13:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/01\/06\/how-rachel-aviv-of-the-new-yorker-exposed-the-troubled-teen-industry\/"},"modified":"2025-02-14T14:29:13","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T14:29:13","slug":"how-rachel-aviv-of-the-new-yorker-exposed-the-troubled-teen-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/01\/06\/how-rachel-aviv-of-the-new-yorker-exposed-the-troubled-teen-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"How Rachel Aviv of The New Yorker exposed the “troubled teen industry”"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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Untold stories remain one of journalism\u2019s and society\u2019s starkest gaps. The plight of the mentally ill and homeless, the Sisyphean struggles of the working poor, ingrained prejudice against minorities in the workplace, child poverty and hunger \u2014 those subjects make it into publications or broadcast outlets in bursts, but not with the consistency that underscores the stubbornness of the issues. Even when are highlighted, they\u2019re often met with a collective shrug from the public.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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These are just the types of stories that most interest Rachel Aviv<\/a>, a staff writer for The New Yorker,<\/em> especially when social significance undergirds a narrative featuring a compelling protagonist. Her award-winning journalism probes medical ethics, education, homelessness, criminal justice, elder abuse and police violence.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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A little more than two years ago, a friend suggested that Aviv look into Teen Challenge, a network of Christian schools that claims to impose discipline on troubled youths, mostly girls. Aviv found and joined a Facebook group of former students called \u201cExposing Teen Challenge: What really happens in Christian Prison Camp.\u2019\u201d Forty interviews later, she found Emma Burris, who was 15 when she was awakened in the dark one night by a man wearing \u201cJuvenile Transport Agent\u201d on the back of his shirt. As her adoptive parents stood silently by, she was hustled from her Florida home and thrust into a world that echoed Margaret Atwood\u2019s novel, \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Burris\u2019s journey creates the spine of \u201cThe Shadow Penal System for Struggling Kids,\u201d<\/a> published in October 2021 in The New Yorker. Aviv delivers a chilling account of control and discipline that often involves startling abuse of girls and young women who have been deemed incorrigible and sexually promiscuous.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Rachel Aviv<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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\u201cI\u2019m interested in how social theories match up or fail to match up to actual lives,\u201d she told me. \u201cThe way that systems are designed to treat troubled youths is one of those spaces where the mismatch can sometimes be particularly extreme.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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There are more than a thousand nonprofit Teen Challenge schools in America. They have earned praise from former President George W. Bush and tens of millions of dollars in state and federal grants. That despite the fact they typically operate without oversight from regulators.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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After interviewing more than 60 former students and staff around the country, Aviv discovered jaw-dropping examples of abuse under the guise of Christian discipline: One girl, who tried to run away from one of the schools, was forced to remain silent for 10 months; \u201cLittle Sisters\u201d wear knee-length skirts and flip-flops to keep them from fleeing; Pregnant girls, including Emma Burris, were forced to hand over their babies for adoption. Some situations are deadly: Naomi Wood had been vomiting nearly nonstop for 24 hours in a Florida school and was left alone in her room for long stretches; she lapsed into a coma and died in 2020. No charges were brought.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Because of COVID risks, Aviv reported her 8,000-word investigation by remote. She persuaded former Teen Challenge students to scan hundreds of pages of their personal journals. She reviewed streams of Facebook messages. She read widely for context, including an oral history of women forced to give up their children for adoption during the post World War II \u201cbaby scoop era<\/a>.\u201d Fiction deepened her interviews, including Atwood\u2019s haunting two-part tale of a dystopian utopia.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cOften I find that reading novels gives me a better idea of what kind of questions to ask people,\u201d Avid told me.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cThe Shadow Penal System\u201d bears the hallmarks of narrative nonfiction \u2014 scene-by-scene construction, dialogue and telling details. Emma Burris\u2019s tale is backed by a large cast of supporting characters and layers of context. The result is a damning portrait not of a school, but of an industry that delivers abuse with impunity.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Aviv unspools personal experiences over time. That results in textured accounts that are based as much on temporal documentation as more traditional records: \u201cI look for documents \u2014 journals, records, reports, informal writing \u2014 that capture the person\u2019s perspective in real time. It\u2019s less about different kinds of documentation and more about documentation that captures evolving moments in time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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A note about Aviv\u2019s process: She spends surprisingly little time on writing and revision to move from what she calls \u201cugly writing\u201d to clear and irresistible prose. Instead, her close attention to a story idea, informed by a decade of work with the same editor, Willing Davidson<\/a>, and time thinking about story structure streamlines her approach.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Aviv spoke with Nieman Storyboard about how she reported during COVID, her method of organizing voluminous research, her long-term relationship with a single editor, and advice for magazine pitches. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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<\/strong>This is such a disturbing story \u2014 one that likely hasn\u2019t gotten the attention it deserves. How did you discover it and what led you to write about it?<\/strong>
My friend Jessica Silver-Greenberg<\/a>, an amazing reporter at The New York Times, told me back in 2019 that she had come across Teen Challenge in her reporting about arbitration clauses which require disputes to be settled through religious arbitration, rather than in court. I signed up for a related Facebook group and had conversations with a few people in the group. Then I set it aside, casually following the comments on the site.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Then, more than a year later, Paris Hilton came out with a documentary in which she spoke about the troubled teen industry<\/a>. Hundreds of people who saw themselves in her experience joined the group. The page had been basically inactive, but it suddenly lit up. I ended up talking to more than 40 people \u2014 I would reach out to someone who had posted something on the Facebook group and that person would put me in touch with classmates and friends \u2014 until I met Emma.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What do you think it says about this country that it even has a \u201ctroubled teen industry?\u201d
<\/strong>One of the reasons this industry exists is because the mental health system is so fragmented and deficient, especially for children who need inpatient treatment. There are very, very few options, and those that exist often require people to pay out of pocket. So parents are on their own to find other alternatives. And the fact that these programs are not covered by insurance means that one more layer of potential regulation has been removed.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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In September, 2018 you wrote an <\/strong>indictment<\/u><\/strong> of \u201cGeorgia\u2019s Separate and Unequal Special-Education System.\u201d<\/a> What draws you to the subject of children trapped in a system supposedly designed to help, but rather neglects and abuses them?
<\/strong>We have social theories for what makes people healthy or sick \u2014 what makes them functional or not functional \u2014 and I have always been interested in the ways that sweeping social theories so often fail to capture people\u2019s subjective and individual experiences.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Related<\/h2>\n\n
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Read Rachel Aviv\u2019s story on the\u00a0discriminatory special-ed program<\/a>\u00a0in Georgia public schools.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n\t\n<\/div> \n

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Your story is ingeniously structured. Could you describe your writing process?
<\/strong>The structure piece of it is always in my mind, even when I\u2019m reporting. Part of the reason that I ended up writing about Emma was because I understood how a story about her would unfold. I talked to many people that described very meaningful and momentous things that I wished I could narrate in a story, but I couldn\u2019t quite figure out how that would work structurally, in a way that could contain and hold the larger issues and questions with which the story intersected.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Then what do you do?
<\/strong>I eventually produce a full draft, but I feel it\u2019s kind of ugly writing. The most pleasant part is often taking an ugly draft and making it into writing that feels clear \u2014the kind of writing I would want to read \u2014 as opposed to writing that is trying to get from point A to point B to point C.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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How do you go from \u201cugly\u201d to what you like?
<\/strong>That\u2019s the fun part. You have all the facts laid out in roughly the correct order. And then you can make those sentences more succinct and clear and fluid. I don\u2019t know if I have a great explanation \u2014 I think I\u2019m just trying to put myself in the position of the reader and think about what kind of sentences and paragraphs I would like to read.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Your story strikes me as a perfect example of the intersection of narrative and investigative nonfiction. How conscious are you of that approach?
<\/strong>I\u2019m glad you feel that way. I want to expose aspects of life that are unknown. But I also want to do that through individual\u2019s stories. Not because I think it is inherently a better way of doing it \u2014 I am just very interested in people experiences on their own terms. It would be hard for me to write an investigation about some sort of system or institution without focusing on a person whom that system actually affects.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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How do you work with your editor?<\/strong>
Willing Davidson has been my editor since 2011. My idea of good magazine writing is basically an internalization of various things I\u2019ve gleaned from him over the years. I think he pushes me to be a less predictable writer. When he turns down story ideas of mine, it\u2019s often because there\u2019s a social message that is so obvious that we already know how the narrative will unfold.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Do you actually have to pitch story ideas to your editor?
<\/strong>I do. I\u2019ll ask him about the idea informally, and if he finds it promising I\u2019ll write up a longer and more formal proposal that is submitted to David Remnick.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Annotation:\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Storyboard\u2019s questions are in red; Aviv\u2019s responses in blue. <\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The Shadow Penal System for Struggling Kids<\/h2>\n\n

The Christian organization Teen Challenge, made up of more than a thousand centers, claims to reform troubled teens. But is its discipline more like\u00a0abuse?<\/em><\/h3>\nBy Rachel Aviv
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\n\nIn the spring of her freshman year of high school, in 2011, Emma Burris was woken at three in the morning. Someone had turned on the lights in her room. She was facing the wall and saw a man\u2019s shadow. She reached for her cell phone, which she kept under her pillow at night, but it wasn\u2019t there. The man, Shane Thompson, who is six and a half feet tall, wore a shirt with \u201cJuvenile Transport Agent\u201d printed on the back. He and a colleague instructed Emma to put on her clothes and follow them to their car. \u201cShe was very verbal, resisting,\u201d Thompson told me. Her parents, who had adopted her when she was seven, stood by the doorway, watching silently. <\/a>This is a chilling first graf, with ominous details and action verbs. Why did you open the story this way?<\/span>I could have started the story with Emma\u2019s early childhood in foster care. But this felt like the obvious moment of embarking on this institutional journey. It was dramatic on its own terms, to be woken up in the middle of the night by a stranger and whisked away into a car. There was also a level of ambivalence or uncertainty that I wanted to preserve: was she being kidnapped? All the basic facts pointed to that conclusion, even though ultimately that wasn\u2019t quite the situation.<\/span><\/span><\/a>How did you verify what happened?<\/span>Emma told me and I also talked to the transporter who removed her from her house. He still had notes from the meeting. He remembered Emma well because she was the first female that he’d ever transported. Emma’s adopted mother confirmed the details as well.<\/span><\/span>
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\nThompson drove Emma away from her house, in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, and merged onto the highway. Emma, who was fifteen, tried to remember every exit sign she passed, so that she could find her way home, but she was crying too hard to remember the names. In his notes, Thompson wrote, \u201cEmma voiced that she was confused as to why her mom was sending her away.\u201d She was on the track, volleyball, and soccer teams, and she didn\u2019t want to miss any games.
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\nPart Scottish and part Puerto Rican, Emma was slight, with long, wavy blond hair. <\/a>How do you choose which details to describe a character?<\/span>I find it really hard and I am not good at it. I find that when I describe people\u2019s physical features it can seem inadvertently offensive, or it can make them seem like a caricature. I look at other writers\u2019 physical descriptions for inspiration. Ian Parker<\/a> describes faces and bodies and clothes so well. Gideon Lewis-Kraus<\/a> does, too. I\u2019ve actually texted Gideon (who is a friend), saying, \u201cHow would you describe this face?\u201d<\/span><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Her parents, whose lives revolved around their church, admonished her for being aggressive toward them and for expressing her sexuality too freely. She watched lesbian pornography and had lost her virginity to an older boy. <\/a>How did you learn these intimate details of her life? Were there any ethical considerations using the information since she was a minor?<\/span>Emma was trying to explain the possible \u201cinfractions\u201d she might have committed to cause her parents to send her away. I felt it was important to offer the reader some explanation, and particularly, to show that Emma had not done something criminally or morally problematic. Rather, she\u2019d done something that conflicted with her parents\u2019 values.<\/span><\/span> She often read romance novels late at night, when she was supposed to be asleep. To avoid attracting her parents\u2019 attention, she used the light from the street to work on a novel that told a story similar to her own life: a young girl spends her early years in foster care, where she is abused, until a Christian family saves her. To keep the ending upbeat, she found herself straying from the facts of her life. Emma worried that her parents, who had three biological children, considered her a burden. \u201cThere was always a sense of exile,\u201d Emma said. <\/a>This implies that you interviewed Emma.<\/span>We talked a lot.<\/span><\/span><\/a>How did you settle on her as your protagonist?<\/span>After the Paris Hilton documentary came out it seemed as if there were a lot of people who felt they finally had permission \u2014 or the language \u2014 to describe their experience at Teen Challenge as a trauma and to redefine themselves as survivors. More and more people were joining the Facebook group. I really struggled to figure out who to focus the story on, and then at some point Emma joined the group and shared a few paragraphs about her experiences. As soon as I talked to her, I felt pretty certain that I would focus on her. She and her best friend from Teen Challenge put me in touch with more than a dozen of their classmates who had been at school with them at the same time.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>Her mother sometimes told her, \u201cIf I have to love you from a distance, I will.\u201d
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\nAfter a three-hour drive, Thompson pulled up to a ranch house in Lakeland, a small city in central Florida. About thirty yards behind the house was a much larger one, with white shutters and a brick fence. Emma was escorted inside the second house and told to strip naked and bend over while she coughed, to prove she wasn\u2019t hiding any drugs. She was informed that this would be her new school. It was called Teen Challenge, and she would remain there for at least fifteen months. She was taken to her bedroom, which she would share with four other girls. She noticed a streak of mascara on her pillow, which she took as a sign that the previous occupant had been crying. <\/a>This is such a powerful detail. When did you decide to use it; during reporting, drafting or revision?<\/span>When I was reading ”The Handmaid\u2019s Tale,” I was struck by a moment where Offred arrives at her new house and notices traces of the previous occupant of her room. It was an eerie window into why Offred felt so replaceable and demeaned, and it prompted me to ask Emma, \u2018Did you learn anything about who had occupied your bed before you? Were there any traces of her?\u201d<\/span><\/span>\u00a0The room had no doors, and floodlights in the hallways remained on all night. If anyone opened a window, alarms sounded.
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\nTeen Challenge, a network of nonprofits that has received tens of millions of dollars in state and federal grants, has more than a thousand centers in the United States and abroad. George W. Bush<\/a> has praised it as \u201cone of the really successful programs in America.\u201d The organization, which is affiliated with the Pentecostal Assemblies of God church, is made up of centers for adolescents and adults seeking to overcome \u201clife-controlling issues,\u201d such as drug use, depression, or sexual promiscuity. Many people are sent there by courts, as an alternative to juvenile detention or jail.
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\nThe school followed a Bible-based curriculum emphasizing character development, and a counsellor gave Emma a thick handbook. Touching was forbidden, she learned. For her first six weeks, she would be a Little Sister. She had to stay six feet away from people, including staff. She was not allowed to speak, except to her two Big Sisters\u2014students who had been in the program for at least six months\u2014and she could not enter a room unless her Big Sisters accompanied her. At church, she had to sit between them. The school was all girls, and contact with boys was prohibited. If she saw a boy at church, she had to look away. At one Teen Challenge, in Oklahoma, students told me,boys and men were called the Others.
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\nThe handbook warned against the act of \u201ccondoning\u201d\u2014the failure to report another student\u2019s misbehavior. The staff often repeated a phrase from the Gospel of Luke: \u201cEverything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all.\u201d When students break rules, they are often assigned \u201cCharacter Qualities,\u201d such as gratefulness or reverence. They must write over and over a paragraph summarizing the attribute, citing Scripture, up to a hundred and fifty times. Another punishment, called Silence, outlaws communication among students, including \u201cmaking gestures.\u201d Depending on the center, this form of punishment is also known as Reflection or Talking Fast. Students given the discipline at some centers told me they had to wear ankle monitors or a yellow reflective vest.
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\nAs a Little Sister, Emma was put \u201con skirts\u201d\u2014she had to wear a knee-length skirt and flip-flops, to make it difficult to run away. <\/a>Who was the source for this Teen Challenge shorthand?<\/span>The students. I was very interested in the language that they used, the idea that as they enter this community they begin to speak its language–which felt cult-like to me. Whenever someone would say a new phrase that struck me as eerie, I would ask other people I talked to if they used that phrase, too.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>Emma was informed that when girls ran away, or even spoke about the idea, their program was re-started, with two extra months added. She signed a \u201cCivil Rights Waiver,\u201d agreeing that Teen Challenge \u201cmay call the local sheriff\u2019s office and\/or police department (hereafter \u2018Third Party\u2019) if I am being rebellious and non-cooperative and such Third Party may handcuff me and take me away to juvenile detention.\u201d (Teen Challenge no longer puts people \u201con skirts\u201d or uses this waiver.)
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\nWhen Brittany Hotte, who arrived at the school three months before Emma, was told about her status as a Little Sister, she asked her Big Sisters, \u201cIs this a cult?\u201d She said they exchanged glances and laughed. \u201cI guess this is kind of like a cult,\u201d one responded. Brittany\u2019s parents had sent her to Teen Challenge after they discovered that she had been working at a brothel in Fort Lauderdale. Brittany, who was sixteen years old, quickly saw that the only way to move through the program was to conform. \u201cI wish sometimes that I could brainwash myself,\u201d she wrote in her journal. <\/a>How did you get access to Brittany\u2019s journal and backstory?<\/span>I asked if I could read them. During her lunch hour at work she took pictures of every single page of three different journals \u2014 probably 300 pages or so \u2014 she kept from the time that she was at Teen Challenge. For the most part, it was very much the journal of someone who was an A student, conforming to the requests of her teachers (she knew they were reading her journals). But occasionally there were these glimmers of ambivalence: you could her discomfort about the pressures they were placing on her, and the way she felt her mind was being controlled.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cI\u2019m tired of not being able to control my dreams. It\u2019s hard enough to control my thoughts when I\u2019m awake.\u201d <\/a>You do an impressive job of varying the documentation to tell your story.<\/span>Legal records regarding previous lawsuits against Teen Challenge helped to provide one layer of detail, as did pamphlets and rule books and guidebooks published by Teen Challenge, which I obtained from students and parents. But I also wanted to have documentation of people\u2019s individual experiences. Sometimes former students would send me pictures. Others had old journals or letters or, in Emma\u2019s case, drafts of emails to her son that she never sent. I was hoping to see people reflecting on what they were experiencing, not just retroactively but in the moment as well.<\/span><\/span><\/a>It’s almost like you’re talking about temporal documentation.<\/span>Yeah. That’s what was so evocative about Emma\u2019s emails to her son. At the beginning, she didn’t really understand that she had been forced to submit to such an injustice. At first she even felt ashamed of herself for what had happened. But those feelings really began to evolve over time.<\/span><\/span>
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\nIt was clear to Brittany that Emma had a long way to go. \u201cWhen she got there, she was loud and defiant, and she just did not want to follow the rules,\u201d Brittany told me. <\/a>Why do you insert yourself into the story in this fashion?<\/span>I like to signal to the reader at least once that a particular person\u2019s quotes are coming from a conversation with me. But for the most part I think of \u2018told me\u2019 and \u2018said\u2019 as almost interchangeable.<\/span><\/span>
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\nFor a week, Emma felt sluggish and sick in the mornings. She asked her Big Sisters for permission to speak, and, when they agreed, she said she was worried that she was pregnant. Her period was two weeks late. They assured her that, owing to the stress of Teen Challenge, everyone\u2019s menstrual cycle got off track. \u201cThey just saw this little blond girl who has never done a drug in her life and looks like this sad little toy,\u201d Emma said. \u201cThey were trained to believe that a Little Sister would lie.\u201d
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\nAfter another week without her period, as Emma walked by a counsellor, she said, \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u2014I know I\u2019m not supposed to talk to anyone\u2014but I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019m pregnant.\u201d The counsellor gave her a pregnancy test, instructing her to leave it on the bathroom sink and return to the classroom. After the school day, the same counsellor pulled Emma aside: the test was positive. \u201cThe first thing out of my mouth was \u2018Can I have an abortion<\/a>?\u2019 \u201d Emma told me. \u201cShe looked shocked, and she said, \u2018That\u2019s not an option.\u2019 \u201d
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\nIn 2001, Teen Challenge had taken over a building in Lakeland occupied by Help Unfortunate Girls, Inc., a home for women pregnant out of wedlock. The counsellor told Emma that the directors of the school\u2014Greg Del Valle, a former Broward County deputy sheriff, and his wife, Essie\u2014had spoken with Emma\u2019s parents and formulated a plan. Like the women who had lived in the maternity home, Emma could carry her pregnancy to term and then give the baby up for adoption. The counsellor told Emma, \u201cBy God\u2019s grace and His strong hand, this program is equipped to have a pregnant teen.\u201d
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\nThe directors instructed Emma to share her news. That night, twenty-eight girls gathered on couches in the living room. \u201cI know I\u2019ve been a lot to deal with,\u201d Emma told everyone. \u201cMy emotions have been all over the place. That\u2019s because I\u2019m pregnant.\u201d The directors allowed the girls a rare reprieve from the rule against touching. The directors\u2019 daughter, who also worked there, embraced Emma. Then the other girls piled around them, and everyone hugged. <\/a>This is such an emotional scene. How were you able to reconstruct it?<\/span>It was a momentous emotional moment for everyone who was there, and I had talked to many of them. I would often ask them, When do you first remember learning Emma was pregnant? And this was the moment that they would describe.<\/span><\/span>
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\nStudents at Teen Challenge are permitted to talk on the phone with their parents once a week, for fifteen minutes. But Emma had lost this privilege, for talking too many times when she was supposed to be silent. The directors handled the communication with Emma\u2019s parents and told Emma that they were committed to the adoption plan. She thought about running away, but didn\u2019t even know what city she was in.
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\nEmma was nearly six months pregnant when her phone privileges were restored, but she couldn\u2019t speak freely. Students prepared for their phone calls with a \u201c3 x 5 card of topics to discuss,\u201d as the student handbook explained. A staff member sat next to them and took notes, to make sure that there was no talk about the \u201cold life.\u201d Conversations had to follow the guidance provided by Ephesians 4:29: \u201cLet no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear.\u201d If the conversation touched on forbidden subjects, the staff member ended the call.
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\nWhen Emma saw that there was no way for her to get an abortion, she began whispering to the other girls that she wanted to keep her baby. Emma had been born when her biological mother, who used drugs, was in jail. Emma had immediately been put in foster care, and she didn\u2019t want her child to grow up with the same sense of abandonment. \u201cWhen anyone would even bring up my biological mother\u2019s name,\u201d Emma told me, \u201cit was, like, \u2018Don\u2019t you dare talk about her to me.\u2019 There was just this oppressive feeling of unwantedness, but I couldn\u2019t identify the feelings for what they were.\u201d
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\nFor talking, Emma and several other girls were placed on \u201cRelationship Restriction.\u201d Pairs of students who display \u201cunhealthy behaviors\u201d are told to act as if the other were dead. They must stay several feet apart, and eye contact is forbidden. Cambrie Elle Hall-Senn, one of Emma\u2019s classmates, told me, \u201cRelationship Restriction was often used to keep girls who were openly gay\u2014or presumed gay\u2014from communicating. It was like their pre\u00ebmptive strike.\u201d McKaila Aguiar, who was sent to the Lakeland Teen Challenge because she\u2019d had a relationship with a girl, said that the directors told her homosexuality was \u201ca detestable sin\u201d that would prevent her from finding love and fulfillment.
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\nEmma\u2019s pregnancy was almost never acknowledged, though other girls could pray for the baby by touching her belly\u2014an exemption from the no-touching rule. Emma\u2019s roommate Madison Koref, who told me that she had tried to run away on her second day at Teen Challenge and was put on Silence for nearly ten months, told me, <\/a>How can Teen Challenge get away with such abuses?<\/span>No one is overseeing these organizations. And no one believes these children when they say, \u2018I was told not to talk for 10 months.\u2019 It\u2019s easy to discredit their authority, purely on the basis that they were sent to a school for troubled and misbehaving teens. They are not viewed as credible witnesses to their experiences.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cI used to pretend to pray over Emma, just because I wanted to be able to touch someone.\u201d Several students told me that they identified with Offred, the heroine of \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/a>,\u201d who says, \u201cI hunger to commit the act of touch.\u201d
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\nAt meals, the students were disciplined for leaving food on their plates. When Emma complained that certain foods were making her nauseous, a staff member named Izella Walls surreptitiously intervened. \u201cI would walk by, put a napkin right underneath the table, and Emma would slip the food into my hand,\u201d Walls told me. \u201cSometimes, one of the other girls would call the staff to distract them from what Emma and I were trying to do.\u201d
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\nMany of the employees at Teen Challenge have recently graduated from Teen Challenge programs themselves, becoming \u201clifers.\u201d Besides the directors, Walls was one of the few employees who had children. \u201cThey would always tell me, \u2018Take off your mother hat\u2014stop using your mother skills,\u2019 \u201d Walls said. She tried to express her affection to the girls \u201cin subtle ways that wouldn\u2019t offend the staff.\u201d
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\nOn a night shift, Walls brought Emma into a private conference room and pulled out a laptop that was connected to the Internet, which the girls were normally forbidden to access. Online, Emma found a residential Christian program in Fort Lauderdale for single mothers who wanted to go to school or to work while raising a baby. Emma made arrangements for the program to pick her up. All she needed was her parents\u2019 signature, approving the transfer. <\/a>I wondered if Walls was taking a risk helping Emma skirt the rules. Why did she talk to you?<\/span>She was taking a risk. She wasn’t going to openly protest, but she did whatever she could in a private way. She was a meaningful figure for many of the girls I spoke with, and I think she spoke to me because she did want to support her former students. But she also still had associations with Teen Challenge that she didn’t want to disrupt.<\/span><\/span>
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\nWhen Emma was seven months pregnant, she told Essie, the co-director, that she had found a program that would allow her to keep her baby. She said that Essie responded, \u201cGo ahead\u2014run it by your parents.\u201d By the time she talked to her parents, at her scheduled weekly phone call, they had already been informed of the plan. They told Emma that they would not sign the form. They wanted her to get the full benefits of Teen Challenge.
\n
\nLike all the residents\u2019 parents, they had signed a contract unconditionally giving Teen Challenge control of their child. According to a 2020 version of the form, parents agreed \u201cnot to interfere with the custody or management of said minor in any way.\u201d At a recent family orientation for the Lakeland Teen Challenge, which was recorded, the director, a young man who with his wife replaced the Del Valles when they retired, instructed parents not to believe their daughters when they complained about the program. \u201cKnow that, No. 1, that\u2019s a lie,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s all a ploy,\u201d he went on. \u201cIt\u2019s all a tactic to wear you down, to get you to pull them out of the program.\u201d <\/a>Were you able to talk to Emma’s adopted mother?<\/span>Only during the fact-checking process. She wouldn’t talk on the record, but she would confirm or dispute events and facts. We adjusted a few details to match her account, but without quoting her.<\/span><\/span>The New Yorker is famed for its fact checking. How did it work with this story?<\/span>I send them the link to a Google Drive folder with academic papers, medical records, financial records, scanned journals, etc., as well as a Word document with all my notes, so they can find the source.<\/span>
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\n
\nEvery student at Teen Challenge is encouraged to read \u201cThe Cross and the Switchblade<\/a>,\u201d a memoir by David Wilkerson, the organization\u2019s founder. The book, published in 1963, sold millions of copies in its first decade in print and was turned into a Hollywood movie, starring Pat Boone as Wilkerson. A white pastor in rural Pennsylvania, Wilkerson read an article in Life<\/em>, in 1958, about a murder committed by adolescent gang members in Brooklyn. He could not get the story out of his mind. \u201cI was dumbfounded by a thought that sprang suddenly into my head\u2014full-blown,\u201d he wrote. \u201cGo to New York City and help those boys.<\/em>\u201d
\n
\nHe followed the command and drove east. He befriended teen-agers, many of them addicted to heroin, on the streets of Brooklyn and Harlem, sharing his wish for them to \u201cbegin life all over again, with the fresh and innocent personalities of newborn children.\u201d Soon, he decided to move to the city, to become a \u201cfull-time gang preacher,\u201d as he described it. In 1960, he established the first Teen Challenge center a few blocks from Fort Greene Park, in Brooklyn, opening the home to gang members, prostitutes, addicts, and other young outcasts. \u201cWe still get tempted,\u201d a twelve-year-old there explained to a visitor. \u201cBut now when we do we always run into the chapel and pray.\u201d
\n
\nWilkerson took a broad, undifferentiated view of addiction<\/a>\u2014any vice, or even sorrow, constituted grounds for admission. \u201cWe believe in the total cure of the total man!\u201d Wilkerson wrote. \u201cOnly God can grant that kind of cure.\u201d Wilkerson helped pastors and Christian leaders across the country open centers, which were eventually designated by age: there were recovery centers for adults and boarding schools for adolescents. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a franchise,\u201d Wilkerson told the Times<\/em>, in 1972. The newspaper praised Wilkerson for his \u201cabsolute model of simplicity, directness and total non-sophistication,\u201d concluding that the program \u201cworked where programs that were far more advanced and professional and costly often failed.\u201d
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\nIn the nineteen-seventies, Teen Challenge was one of many treatment programs that eschewed a medical approach to addiction, a model that had produced disappointing results. Autocratic in structure, these therapeutic communities\u2014the most famous one was Synanon, in California\u2014emphasized rituals of spiritual cleansing, minimal contact with the outside world, and the exchange of personal stories, which tended to follow a similar arc: they began in sin and ended in redemption. But most of these communities were short-lived. They often took on cultlike dimensions\u2014a shift that was perhaps inevitable, since their purpose was to control behavior and re\u00ebducate people.
\n
\nTeen Challenge survived, possibly because it was working within an established spiritual tradition. It also benefitted from the support of conservative politicians, who embraced Wilkerson\u2019s view of addiction as stemming from individual culpability, rather than from structural forces, such as unemployment, discrimination, and poverty. Ronald Reagan<\/a> said, \u201cI speak from more than twenty years of knowledge of the organization when I tell you that the Teen Challenge program works.\u201d He added, \u201cThe government can\u2019t do it alone, no matter how hard it tries.\u201d In 1984, as part of her \u201cJust Say No\u201d campaign, Nancy Reagan visited a Teen Challenge center in Tennessee and posed for pictures with the residents.
\n
\nA decade later, when a Texas regulatory agency threatened to shut down a Teen Challenge program in San Antonio because it did not comply with the state\u2019s licensing and training requirements, George W. Bush, then the governor, sided with Teen Challenge, creating an exemption for faith-based programs. At Teen Challenge, adult residents often have to work at least forty hours a week, unpaid, which the organization says is training, to prepare them for the job market. Some work at thrift stores operated by the organization. Others do landscaping, wash cars, or work at warehouses or call centers. \u201cIf you don\u2019t work, you don\u2019t eat,\u201d Bush said. \u201cThis is demanding love, a severe mercy.\u201d Shane Thompson, Emma\u2019s transporter, had once been the director of the Teen Challenge Men\u2019s Center in Jacksonville, Florida, but he told me he was asked to leave after he expressed his disapproval over the residents\u2019 being forced to work for free. \u201cIt sickened me, the way the men were being used as cheap labor\u2014doing car washes, getting contracts to work with different companies,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt was labor trafficking.\u201d <\/a>This is a damning description of Teen Challenge in at least one center. Why do you think Thompson revealed his criticism to you?<\/span>I was expecting a brief phone call where he confirmed or denied the things that Emma said. I had no idea that he had become an advocate on his own. He wasn’t looking for a forum to share those complaints. But I think when that forum came to him, he wasn’t going to stop himself from expressing his deep concerns.<\/span><\/span>
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\nWhen Bush became President, he appointed Henry Lozano, who had been the director of Teen Challenge in California for about a decade, to be one of his deputy assistants. He also made a hundred million dollars available for faith-based drug-treatment programs. \u201cFor the first time,\u201d a White House press release announced, in 2004, \u201cindividuals seeking drug treatment can choose programs like Teen Challenge.\u201d <\/a>It seems here you’re pulling away from Emma’s story for a history lesson. How did you decide where to place it in the narrative?<\/span>I’m always trying to think about the point at which readers are curious enough about the narrative and the people I’m writing about to tolerate and absorb the broader picture in a more expository section.<\/span><\/span><\/a>Do you try to anticipate readers’ reactions as you go along?<\/span>Definitely. I think about myself as a reader and what it is that keeps me in a story. I know the things that might cause me to put a piece down.<\/span><\/span>
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\nMany of the students at Teen Challenge adolescent centers are not addicted to drugs. Some have never even tried them. These teens are what Joseph Spillane, a professor at the University of Florida who studies addiction history, describes as \u201cpre-delinquent.\u201d Wilkerson was a pioneer in his decision to apply the model of the therapeutic community to a new population: \u201csuburban white kids who are not addicts in any real sense of the word,\u201d Spillane said. \u201cTeen Challenge does not get enough credit, if that\u2019s the word, for really developing the foundations of the troubled-teen industry.\u201d
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\nEach year, some fifty thousand adolescents in the U.S. are sent to a constellation of residential centers\u2014wilderness programs, boot camps, behavior-modification facilities, and religious treatment courses\u2014that promise to combat a broad array of unwanted behaviors. There are no federal laws or agencies regulating these centers. <\/a>Why isn\u2019t this information higher?<\/span>I guess I could have put it higher. But I hadn’t even introduced the concept of the troubled teen industry, so I wanted to wait until that point.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>In 2007, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that, in the previous seventeen years, there had been thousands of allegations of abuse in the troubled-teen industry, and warned that it could not find \u201ca single Web site, federal agency, or other entity that collects comprehensive nationwide data.\u201d The next year, George Miller, a member of Congress from California, championed the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act, which tried to create national safety standards and a system for investigating reports of abuse and neglect at the schools. But the law never passed the Senate. \u201cSome schools are fraudulent in the kind of data they present to state agencies that theoretically have control over them,\u201d Miller told me, \u201cand they are fraudulent to parents about the level of punishment they impose.\u201d There is a dearth of long-term mental-health-care facilities for youth, and, he said, the industry \u201coff-loads a problem that the public system can\u2019t manage.\u201d
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\nVersions of Miller\u2019s bill have been introduced in Congress eight more times, but the legislation has never passed, and the basic problems with the industry remain largely unchanged. Malcolm Harsch, an attorney who is co\u00f6rdinating an American Bar Association committee devoted to reforming the industry, told me, \u201cWhen programs get shut down because of allegations of abuse, they tend to disappear and then pop up again with new names, as if they were new facilities.\u201d
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\nSome Teen Challenge youth centers advertise themselves as places for students struggling with depression, eating disorders, and suicidal thoughts, among other ailments, but students told me they seldom had access to trained mental-health counsellors. A student named Megan, who didn\u2019t want me to use her last name, because she feared retaliation from Teen Challenge, told me that, in 2020, her parents drove her from a psychiatric hospital directly to a Teen Challenge in Lebanon, Indiana. She had to wear an ankle monitor for two weeks. \u201cI asked every person I met, \u2018What is this place called?\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201cCan somebody please explain this to me?\u201d In a journal that she kept throughout her time there, she described meeting an adviser she\u2019d been assigned. \u201cI was asking what my treatment plan is and she laughed and said \u2018That\u2019s not how we work here, you cooperate with the program,\u2019 \u201d Megan wrote. In frustration, she threw a water bottle across the room. As punishment, she was put on Talking Fast for a week, during which time she tried to kill herself. She began tallying the number of times students tried to cut or harm themselves. \u201cSince I\u2019ve been here,\u201d she wrote, \u201cI\u2019ve witnessed 13 suicide attempts not including my own.\u201d <\/a>How did you persuade teens, traditionally a laconic developmental time, to cooperate with you?<\/span>I think that’s why it took so many interviews for me to find the people I ended up writing about. That may also have been why I ended up writing about people for whom some time had passed, as opposed to ones who just graduated; they needed time and space to figure out what it was that had happened to him.<\/span><\/span>
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\nSome students told me that they were sent to Teen Challenge because their parents worried that they were gay. One girl said she was sent to a Teen Challenge in Disney, Oklahoma, because her family disapproved of her dating a boy who wasn\u2019t white. Others were sent for forms of rebellion or distress that arose from childhood traumas. At a Teen Challenge in Kansas City, students were given self-improvement \u201cprojects.\u201d A student with depression was told to carry a backpack with rocks in it for several days, so that she could feel how burdened she was by the past. Another, accused of being addicted to sex, was made to wear a belt attached to a soft weight, shaped like a belly, so that she\u2019d know what pregnancy felt like. Quade Pike, a former student at the Teen Challenge in Disney, told me that nearly a quarter of the students in his program had been adopted from foreign countries. \u201cWhat I saw was a bunch of A.D.H.D. boys who didn\u2019t receive love from their parents,\u201d he said.
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\nParents have wide legal latitude to raise their children as they please, and students at Teen Challenge have the same rights as they would have in their homes. But they are deprived of the kind of routine interactions with teachers, neighbors, doctors, and relatives who, when encountering signs of abuse, might intervene. Shane Thompson had rare access to these closed worlds, and he told me that, during the ten years he spent transporting teens to programs throughout the country, he became increasingly concerned about where he was taking his clients. He did two or three transports a week, and he began asking for tours of the facilities. \u201cIf I saw a juvenile in a sling or a cast\u2014if it looked like they\u2019d been tackled by somebody\u2014I would file a grievance,\u201d he told me. He filed an average of one grievance a week with the state agency responsible for children\u2019s welfare.
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\nSince 1984, Florida has allowed religious schools and day cares to apply for exemption from government regulation. These facilities are instead overseen by the Florida Association of Christian Child Caring Agencies, a private body whose leadership is filled with people who run Christian schools. Only when there are allegations of abuse or neglect at these schools does Florida\u2019s Department of Children and Families have the authority to intervene. In the past thirteen years, the agency has conducted five investigations into the Lakeland Teen Challenge, after allegations of abuse including \u201cbizarre punishment,\u201d \u201cmental injury,\u201d and \u201cphysical injury, asphyxiation.\u201d In the mental-injury incident, the department referred the case to the Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office, but, after interviewing two students on school premises, the sheriff\u2019s office said it found \u201cno evidence to support the claim.\u201d
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\nWhen Thompson learned that Emma was pregnant (after doing another transport to the Lakeland Teen Challenge), he reported his concern to the Department of Children and Families. \u201cI knew that program was not suitable for a pregnant lady,\u201d he told me. Thompson assumed that the agency would interview Emma, but she never heard from it, and there is no record of an investigation. Thompson said that, when the directors of the Lakeland Teen Challenge began suspecting him of filing complaints, they stopped letting him come inside.
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\n
\nIn her seventh month of pregnancy, Emma was cast as Mary in the school\u2019s Nativity play. \u201cThey really leaned into me playing the role, because I was the physical manifestation of all that she had been through,\u201d Emma told me.
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\nThe girls often went to different churches, to tell their stories and ask for money for Teen Challenge. The tuition at the time was roughly thirty thousand dollars a year, but some students received scholarships, either from the state\u2014the school has encouraged families to apply to a Florida program that funds the education of students with disabilities\u2014or from donations. At these events, Emma felt like a celebrity. \u201cThey would parade me around,\u201d she said. \u201cI was the prodigal child, the whore. I felt used for my story, but I also liked the attention. I was, like, \u2018I don\u2019t care\u2014I will wear that crown.\u2019 \u201d When going to church, she had to wear a T-shirt that read \u201cTeen Challenge Runaway,\u201d with the telephone number for the center printed on the back, as a preventive measure. (At other centers, students thought to be at risk of escape are required to wear orange jumpsuits.) <\/a>This is awful. How did you deal with your own emotions while reporting and writing the story?<\/span>I\u2019ve been asked this question before, and I never really know how to answer, maybe because I feel like my emotional experience is sort of beside the point. I would compare my emotional experience in these moments to the response I have when a friend tells me something really upsetting about her life.<\/span><\/span>
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\nDuring one church event, a pastor walked up to Emma and, unprompted, told her the Bible story of the judgment of Solomon, about two women arguing over a baby that they both claimed was their own. King Solomon suggested that they split the baby in two, and, when one of the women instead offered to give the baby up, he declared her the rightful mother. \u201cThe pastor told me, \u2018I see a spirit of Solomon over you,\u2019 \u201d Emma said. \u201c \u2018You will not keep this child. You will give him away.\u2019 \u201d After the encounter, she said that the directors \u201crode on that wave. They would say, \u2018Who are you going to be in the story?\u2019 \u201d
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\nA lawyer named Deborah Carroll, who now works for the Building Families Adoption Agency, in Lakeland, guided Emma through the adoption process. Emma chose a family whom her parents knew indirectly and who she believed would agree to an open adoption, allowing her to see her child. She assumed that Carroll was her personal attorney, advocating on her behalf. But Carroll told me that she \u201cdoes not and has never represented any birth mother in an adoption.\u201d
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\nOne night, Emma dreamed that Jesus sat on a rock beside her and told her he was using her, just as he had used Mary, to bring a child into the world. She woke up feeling vulnerable and afraid. When she saw Essie, the co-director, in the hallway, she told her about the dream. \u201cEssie told me I had the gift of dreams, and God was using my gifts to communicate his purpose to me,\u201d Emma said. That night, when all the girls gathered in the living room, Emma shared her dream with everyone, at Essie\u2019s instruction. \u201cIt was like I spoke the idea into existence,\u201d she said. \u201cThey made me feel I had so much power that I had no other option. It got to the point that I felt that, because I had this dream from God, I had to give my child to another family.\u201d
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\nMadison Koref, Emma\u2019s roommate, said that she was so moved by Emma\u2019s public expressions of faith that, after resisting Jesus for several months, she decided to try believing, too. \u201cWhen you have a child, you want your partner there, holding your hand,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause Emma didn\u2019t have that, she felt better thinking, Well, Jesus is my partner. He will be there.\u201d
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\nA week after Emma played Mary in the Nativity play, she asked if she could skip gym class. She was eight months pregnant and exhausted. But she was informed that if she didn\u2019t participate she would have to go back to bed, and, if she did that, an extra day would be added to her program\u2014the policy at that time. Molly Fitzpatrick, who worked at the Lakeland Teen Challenge until 2020, told me, \u201cWhen students have medical needs, the staff see it as malingering. They think the girls are just trying to get out of their day-to-day life.\u201d
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\nEmma joined the gym class; when the other girls ran, she walked. That evening, the girls were allowed to watch a G-rated movie. Brittany said, \u201cThere was a spot of blood on the couch, and I went to the staff and said, \u2018Emma needs to go to the hospital. She\u2019s bleeding. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s normal.\u2019 But their response was, basically, \u2018You need to stop talking or you\u2019re going to get in trouble.\u2019 \u201d Emma moved to the floor so that she wouldn\u2019t stain the couch. The next day, a staff member took Emma to the doctor. Emma\u2019s blood pressure was elevated. When the doctor asked Emma if she was anxious, she shook her head. \u201cI just said everything they wanted me to say,\u201d Emma told me. \u201cI never got a moment alone with a nurse to say, \u2018Hey, this isn\u2019t what I want. I don\u2019t want to give my baby away.\u2019 \u201d
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\nAfter a diagnosis of severe gestational hypertension, Emma was given medication to induce labor. But when her contractions began she didn\u2019t feel she had the energy to endure the pain. She had not received any lessons about how to give birth. \u201cI was pretty much emotionally dead,\u201d she said. \u201cI remember lying there, dripping in sweat, and I finally said, \u2018I don\u2019t care what it takes\u2014I just want this to be over with.\u2019 \u201d The doctor offered her a Cesarean section, and, at ten-fifteen the next morning, she gave birth to a boy. <\/a>How do you know the exact time of the baby\u2019s birth?<\/span>From the medical records.<\/span><\/span>
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\nAccording to Florida law, birth mothers must wait forty-eight hours before formally consenting to an adoption. Emma was allowed to spend those two days with her son. \u201cI don\u2019t even want to say that motherly bond was there\u2014because I don\u2019t really know what that is,\u201d Emma told me. \u201cIt was an estranged love. I felt unworthy, like I was loving someone who wasn\u2019t mine to love.\u201d
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\nThe Teen Challenge house had a small unoccupied room for staff, and Emma hoped she might be able to bring her son back and live with him there. But, whenever she hinted that she wanted to bring up her baby, she said, Essie told her, \u201cThink about your calling. Think about this family. Think about why God chose you to bless them.\u201d
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\nTwo days after the birth, two lawyers with the adoption agency arrived at the hospital with a contract for Emma to sign, surrendering her parental rights. She began communicating in a baby voice. \u201cWhenever someone would talk to me, I would give a goofy grin and a half-witted response,\u201d she said. \u201cI was giddy and dissociated from the severity of the situation.\u201d She had never done drugs, but she imagined that this was what it was like to be high. \u201cI was clearly in shock and traumatized, but no one was looking at that.\u201d (The Del Valles did not return numerous messages and calls asking for comment.)
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\nThe meeting with the lawyers was delayed a few hours so that Emma could regain her composure. Then, in a conference room at the hospital, she sat at a table with her parents, the directors of Teen Challenge, and the two lawyers. One of the lawyers turned on an audio recorder and asked Emma if she was being blackmailed or placed under duress, a standard question. Emma shook her head, sobbing. She cried for the entire meeting. She said that Essie told her, \u201cThis is the same pain that God felt when he gave us His son. We are reaping so many rewards from this sacrifice.\u201d <\/a>Were you able to listen to the recording of this meeting?<\/span>No, I wish.\u00a0 She didn’t have that recording. The description is from Emma. We we ran it by the lawyer and her adoptive mother.<\/span><\/span>
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\nEmma returned to Teen Challenge two days later. All the girls there had been put on Reflection. Walls, the counsellor, said, \u201cWe told the entire house, \u2018Don\u2019t ask her any questions. If we see a mouth moving, you just broke a rule.\u2019 \u201d If students wanted to show Emma their concern, Walls said, they had the option of smiling, waving, or giving a thumbs-up. Some of the girls had made a \u201cWelcome Home\u201d banner for Emma, but a staff member took it away, because she was on Relationship Restriction with a few of the students who had signed it.
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\nEmma had to be silent, too. She was told to sleep on a couch in the living room that night, presumably to give her some privacy. But she felt as if she had been banished. She spent the night sobbing. Madison said, \u201cI remember lying in bed and just listening to her wailing, \u2018I want my baby!\u2019 \u201d Madison was so shaken that, in the following days, she began seeing ghosts of pregnant girls in the hallway. \u201cI told one of the staff members, and she said, \u2018Oh, well, this used to be a home for mothers, so that probably explains what you\u2019re seeing.\u2019 \u201d
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\nA few days later, the directors told Emma that she needed to start the program over again. Katy Prince, a staff member who was then twenty-four, said, \u201cThe reasoning was that she hadn\u2019t been able to do the program appropriately when she was pregnant, so now she needed to redo the whole thing. I didn\u2019t agree with it, but at that time I was very timid.\u201d Emma felt as if the past nine months had been erased, as if she\u2019d never had a child at all.
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\nIn the mornings and evenings, the staff often dimmed the lights in the living room and played Christian music. Emma found herself letting go of her inhibitions. \u201cI\u2019d be on my knees, bawling, and then the other girls would start doing it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was presented as if we were becoming vulnerable to God\u2014I was told I had a gift for worship\u2014but I think it was actually all of us feeling overwhelmed and oppressed and stuck. It was a collective cry session.\u201d Sometimes Emma would speak in tongues, a practice encouraged by the Assemblies of God. \u201cIt made me feel free and powerful, but I also knew that I was being watched,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was, like, \u2018Please see this. Please validate that I am experiencing God, and He is real.\u2019 \u201d
\n
\nEvery week, at different churches, Emma was asked to give her testimony, the story of her son\u2019s adoption, in the form of a poem. She told the story so many times that the plot points no longer seemed connected to her. \u201cTo give him the best life, adoption is the only way,\u201d she recited. \u201cI was the one who was the prodigal daughter \/ But I turned right around and went straight to my Father.\u201d After her performance, a collection plate was passed, the proceeds of which went to Teen Challenge. Other students selected to share their stories typically had personal histories involving rape, murder, or dramatic abandonment. Shea Vassar, one of Emma\u2019s classmates, told me that she was rarely asked to give her testimony. \u201cI was just some depressed kid who didn\u2019t want to go to school,\u201d she said.
\n
\n
\nIn the past decade, there have been several lawsuits against Teen Challenge. One mother sued for negligence, because her son was abruptly discharged from a Teen Challenge, in Jacksonville, for breaking a rule, and died of an overdose that night. This year, a student named Amaya Rasheed filed a lawsuit against Teen Challenge of Oklahoma, alleging that she was \u201cphysically restrained against her will\u201d until she couldn\u2019t breathe, and was denied medical care. (The director of Rasheed\u2019s center said, \u201cWe remain confident that our actions are consistent with our First Amendment rights to honor our Lord and our legal obligations under Oklahoma and Federal law.\u201d) Former employees have sued, too: a staff member in Georgia alleged that he was fired after he revealed that he had been hospitalized for depression; an employee in Oregon sued because she was terminated, on the ground of \u201cmoral failure,\u201d for getting pregnant out of wedlock. <\/a>How did you learn about these lawsuits?<\/span>Going through the federal court system and looking through online court records for each state that had Teen Challenges in it.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n
\nBut these lawsuits almost never go to trial, because staff and residents (or their parents) sign a contract waiving the \u201cright to file a lawsuit in any civil court.\u201d Instead, the contract says that their \u201csole remedy\u201d for any dispute will be \u201cBiblically based mediation\u201d or Christian conciliation, a type of legal arbitration. A Times<\/em> investigation in 2015 found that religious-arbitration clauses, like the one used at Teen Challenge, have created \u201can alternate system of justice\u201d that is often \u201cimpervious to legal challenges\u201d and obstructs families not only from suing but from gathering facts.
\n
\nTeen Challenge has been in operation for more than sixty years, but there is little public record of what occurs in its facilities. A kind of collective amnesia is fostered not only by the contract but by the culture. Once students leave some programs, their friends are not allowed to refer to them by name. Jasmine Smith, who worked at the Lakeland Teen Challenge until last winter, told me, \u201cWe had to refer to people who left the program as \u2018a past student\u2019 or \u2018a past staff.\u2019 \u201d Fitzpatrick, the former staff member, said that she was forbidden to communicate with employees who had resigned or been fired. She had to unfriend them on Facebook. Fitzpatrick worries that Teen Challenge will prevent her from getting new jobs, and she told me, \u201cEven doing this interview, I\u2019m shaking\u2014I didn\u2019t realize the fear.\u201d
\n
\nIn May, 2020, Naomi Wood, a student at the Lakeland Teen Challenge, died. She had been throwing up, almost constantly, for more than twenty-four hours. On the last day of her life, Naomi, who was born in Liberia and adopted by a family in Vermont, stayed in bed, and the staff left her alone for long stretches without checking on her, according to students and staff I interviewed. She was found in her bed, having fallen into what appeared to be a coma. A staff member called an ambulance, but on the way to the hospital she died after having a seizure, though it\u2019s still unclear what led to it. \u201cMedical evaluation is consistent with delay in seeking care and medical neglect,\u201d a report by the Florida Department of Children and Families read. After Naomi\u2019s death, her closest friends said, they were put on Relationship Restriction. Fitzpatrick, the former staff member, told me, \u201cWe weren\u2019t allowed to have memorials for her, because they didn\u2019t want the girls reflecting on the past.\u201d Smith said, \u201cIt felt as if her passing was swept under the rug.\u201d (A lawyer for Teen Challenge denied that students were discouraged from discussing the past, that Naomi\u2019s friends were put on Relationship Restriction, and that employees couldn\u2019t communicate with former staff members. He also said that Teen Challenge doesn\u2019t restrict students\u2019 eye contact, or their distance from one another, and that the Florida centers do \u201cnot use this concept of \u2018Silence.\u2019 \u201d) <\/a>Did you believe him, given what your exhaustive reporting uncovered?<\/span>Sometimes he would deny things that were literally written in the guidelines that were given to parents or students. I felt the lawyer didn’t put in much effort researching the claims I was making; it felt like he was giving blanket denials, even when there was overwhelming, clear evidence that the thing he was denying had been printed by the organization he was representing.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nThe Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office investigated Naomi\u2019s death, but no charges were brought. The current directors of the center, a young couple, Dan and Holly Williams, who had taken over after the Del Valles left, responded to the death by creating the position of medical co\u00f6rdinator, which Holly, who graduated from a program that prepares people for leadership positions at Teen Challenge, is filling. Dan Williams had no comment on the finding of medical neglect. Naomi\u2019s death was \u201can inexplicable tragedy,\u201d he told me, adding that he encouraged students to talk about it during counselling sessions. \u201cOur hearts are encouraged that she had a relationship with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,\u201d he said. \u201cEven though her time on this earth ended prematurely, our hearts are filled with gratitude for the time we did have with her.\u201d
\n
\n
\nWhen I first began speaking with Emma, last spring, she assumed that she was the only student at Teen Challenge who had been forced to give a child up for adoption. But, in my interviews with more than sixty former students and staff, it became clear that her story was not unique. <\/a>That\u2019s an impressive number of interviews. How did you consider them adding to the story\u2019s authority, even when you didn\u2019t attribute them directly?<\/span>There were little moments where something would be happening to Emma and I would remember something that happened to some kid I\u2019d spoken to who was at a school in Kansas. By adding that little bit, I think the story gained more texture and gravity\u2013because it wasn\u2019t just her experience, there was a whole cast of people with similar stories.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>Help Unfortunate Girls, Inc., had been run by a Republican socialite who, according to a 1995 article in the Tampa Tribune<\/em>, had often boasted about \u201chow many babies they had \u2018saved.\u2019 \u201d When Teen Challenge took over the property, it seems to have continued the mission. (The lawyer representing Teen Challenge said, \u201cThe program has no records\u201d of Emma\u2019s being forced to give up her child for adoption, adding, \u201cTeen Challenge does not provide counsel regarding adoption. Any concerns related to youth pregnancy are handled by the parents with their child.\u201d)
\n
\nDeanna Doucette was the first pregnant girl to attend the home after Teen Challenge took over. She arrived in 2001, when she was fourteen. A few weeks from her due date, she snuck out of a window and ran away to a gas station, where she called her boyfriend, the father of her child. But before help arrived the police showed up and returned her to Teen Challenge. In the car, she told the officers, \u201cDon\u2019t take me back\u2014they\u2019re forcing me to give away my baby.\u201d Five months were added to her program at Teen Challenge, for running away.
\n
\nSeveral months after giving up her child, Deanna was assigned a Little Sister, Amber Foster, who was seventeen and pregnant. Amber had been ordered to the Lakeland Teen Challenge by a court, for \u201crunaway behavior.\u201d She was aware that her Big Sister had given up her child for adoption, but, she told me, \u201cI never knew what her intention had been, because there was no conversation about it, even in the whispers of the night.\u201d Amber was determined to keep her baby, but she said that the directors at that time\u2014they are now the directors of a Teen Challenge in Seale, Alabama\u2014told her, \u201cJust like Mary gave up her son, you\u2019re making this ultimate sacrifice.\u201d <\/a>How much time did you spend reporting the story?<\/span>I did initial reporting in 2019. Then I worked on other things and I had a baby and I didn’t think about it that much. And then in February of 2020 I returned to the subject. I was interviewing a lot of people, but I just couldn’t make it work. So I worked on something else. I wrote a story about a scandal in the German foster care system<\/a>, and then returned to Teen Challenge after that.<\/span><\/span><\/a>And how much time to write?<\/span>The writing process has definitely become quicker as I\u2019ve gotten older, or more experienced. Much of my time is spent coming up with the idea and how to tell the story it\u2013and then reporting it. The writing is a comparatively small part of that whole process.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nAs soon as Amber surrendered her son, she tried to withdraw her consent for the adoption. But her movements were so controlled that she was unable to mail a form that allowed her to revoke her consent up to five days after relinquishing her rights. Seven weeks later, she left Teen Challenge\u2014she had turned eighteen, and the juvenile court no longer had jurisdiction over her case. She immediately tried to file a petition with the circuit court that had handled her adoption, saying that she had given up her son \u201cunder duress\u201d and \u201cby means of deception.\u201d By the time her petition was received, though, the window for challenging the legitimacy of the adoption had closed. \u201cI still think about it every day,\u201d she told me. \u201cMy child was stolen from me.\u201d
\n
\nFive years later, Samantha Oscar, a student at the Lakeland Teen Challenge, watched her best friend go through the same experience. She is still haunted by the way her friend sobbed after returning from the hospital without her child. \u201cThey had told her, \u2018If you don\u2019t give up your child, you are bringing shame on yourself,\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201cOnce she did, they just tried to act like it didn\u2019t happen. It was, like, \u2018Move on, forget your daughter. She\u2019s not yours.\u2019 \u201d<\/a>The narrative takes an abrupt turn from Emma\u2019s story to describe Naomi\u2019s death and Amber and Samantha\u2019s heartbreaking stories. Then you return to Emma for the close.<\/span>I wasn\u2019t sure how to solve that structurally. At some point I did wonder why I wasn\u2019t just writing the whole story about Naomi because that was more recent. But I realized I was more committed to telling Emma\u2019s story, for various reasons, so I had to look for a way to connect these two different events. I tried to frame it as: What happens when an institution has no consequences for their behavior and when its culture encourages amnesia? The culture during Emma\u2019s time \u2014 the years of silence \u2014 produced the conditions of Naomi\u2019s death.<\/span><\/span><\/a>How do you organize all your reporting materials?<\/span>I use Scrivener<\/a>, so I put all my notes from interviews in one document; notes from documents and records in another; and notes about academic research in a third. Before I write, I\u2019ll spend a few days, or however long it takes, reading through the whole thing, pasting the relevant quotes or bits of information into another Scrivener document, which is divided into numerous sections that I\u2019ve arranged according to the chronology\/structure of the piece as I\u2019m imagining it at the time. That gives me something to work off so that when I start writing the first section I have a pre-selected material to draw from, rather than having to scan through a 100,000-word document of notes.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n
\nEvery year, Emma writes an e-mail to her son on his birthday. She isn\u2019t allowed to contact him\u2014his adoptive parents did not end up permitting a relationship, as she had hoped\u2014but she has created a Gmail address to which she sends her letters. After her son becomes a legal adult, she plans to give him the password to the account, so he can read all the messages. In the e-mails, she expresses her love, reminisces about how he responded to her voice when he was in the womb, and jokes about which subjects in school (writing, not math) she might be able to help him with. When he was four years old she wrote, \u201cI wish I could describe to you what it\u2019s like to miss someone you\u2019ve known only for a brief moment.\u201d
\n
\nAs soon as Emma graduated from Teen Challenge, she joined a church affiliated with the Assemblies of God, becoming a worship leader. \u201cI was stuck in this mind-set of doing whatever Teen Challenge thought was the right thing,\u201d she said. She repeatedly applied for jobs at Teen Challenge, but she was never hired. Instead, she supported herself by working as a florist and at a call center. She and another leader at church got married and, in 2015, when she was nineteen, she discovered that she was pregnant. She contemplated an abortion, but, when she told her friends from church that she didn\u2019t feel equipped to raise a child yet, they told her, \u201cWell, no one is ready to have a kid.\u201d
\n
\nAfter she gave birth, to a daughter, she fell into a suicidal depression. \u201cMy daughter was the sweetest, smartest, fieriest little thing, but I didn\u2019t feel a bond with her,\u201d she told me. \u201cI had gone through this experience of completely extinguishing all my maternal feelings, and I felt like I was incapable of love.\u201d In a letter to her son, she wrote, \u201cI don\u2019t think there is a single soul I know that understands how I feel. Caged, incapable, silenced.\u201d
\n
\nA therapist who was trained as a Christian counsellor recommended that she tackle her depression by going to an adult Teen Challenge, in Davie, Florida. Emma called Brittany Hotte, her closest friend from Teen Challenge, and asked if she could borrow money for the program. Brittany told her, \u201cFor the love of God, you absolutely cannot do that.\u201d A few years earlier, Brittany had graduated from a Teen Challenge leadership program, but she had become disillusioned by the cultlike aspects of the organization. When she eventually left, she realized that she had no formal education or training, and, because she felt shunned for her decision to exit Teen Challenge, she couldn\u2019t even ask her former teachers for a job reference. She felt that she had been a \u201cpawn in their industry,\u201d she said. But, she added, \u201cat Teen Challenge, I had very vivid experiences where I felt I encountered God, and that\u2019s been the most complicated part\u2014untangling what I actually believe.\u201d
\n
\nEmma met with Greg and Essie Del Valle, the directors of Teen Challenge when she was there, and asked for their advice. \u201cGreg put his hand on my shoulder and said, \u2018I equipped you to leave a warrior. Why are you being defeated right now?\u2019 \u201d she told me. She felt as if she was being blamed for her depression. \u201cI walked away from that meeting feeling like I knew nothing,\u201d she said. \u201cI was doing everything they wanted me to, and I was still miserable. That was the start of feeling like, These people don\u2019t care.\u201d
\n
\nShe drifted away from her church community. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like I belong anywhere,\u201d she wrote in her journal. \u201cNot with the mothers . . . not with the church.\u201d She tried to see her life in new terms, without the lurking fear of eternal punishment. \u201cLiterally, my fear was bursting in flames and being left behind in the Rapture,\u201d she said. She moved out of her husband\u2019s house\u2014he kept custody of their daughter, but Emma still visited\u2014and into an apartment with her best friend and her friend\u2019s boyfriend. For the first time in years, she told her son in a letter, she was \u201csurrounded by people who love me.\u201d
\n
\nOn her son\u2019s ninth birthday, in 2020, she wrote, \u201cI have finally started talking about it . . . about the pain of giving you away against my will.\u201d She found herself feeling sympathy for her biological mother, who had gone through periods of incarceration and homelessness and was so removed from any medical support system that, Emma assumed, abortion would not have felt like an option. Emma tried to search for her, even hiring a private investigator, but her mother had left few traces. \u201cWhat kind of softened my heart to her was seeing the parallels in our stories,\u201d Emma told me. \u201cWe were two generations of women who were, in some form or fashion, limited in our freedom to decide to be mothers.\u201d \u2666 <\/a>Why did you close the story with this quote from Emma?<\/span>I was thinking about the ways that reproductive freedom can be limited, and the way that the trauma \u2014 that loss of agency \u2014\u00a0can be passed between generations. I also thought it was very powerful and generous of Emma to find compassion for her mother, despite having felt abandoned by her. I was very moved by her recognition of some of the parallels in their lives.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nThis article has been updated to obscure identifying details.<\/em>
\n
\n<\/a>I asked above about the influence fiction and “The Handmaid’s Tales.” Were there other specific stories, books or writers that you looked to for inspiration as you worked on this piece?<\/span>I find that there are two different kinds of writing for a story: One is is about gathering knowledge, context, history, etc. For that, two books really stand out: \u201cThe Child Catchers,\u201d<\/a> by Kathryn Joyce, about the way that adoption has been incorporated into Christian theology, and the other is \u201cThe Girls Who Went Away,\u201d<\/a> by Ann Fessler, an oral history of American women who were pressured to give up their babies for an adoption. I also read a lot about the history of addiction treatment. Emily Dufton<\/a> and \u200b\u200bNancy Campbell<\/a> were two scholars whose work I was drawn to. I also like to read literature that might inform my writing in a more atmospheric kind of way. Maybe that\u2019s just an excuse to read a novel and to pretend to myself that I am doing \u201cwork.\u201d In that category, I enjoyed \u201cSweet Days of Discipline,\u201d<\/a> by Fleur Jaeggy, about an all-girl\u2019s school. And, yes, I read \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale.\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a>Any particular writers you look to for inspiration?<\/span>Two of the nonfiction writers who have been most important to me are Adrian Nicole LeBlanc<\/a> and Janet Malcolm<\/a>. I\u2019ve always loved Katherine Boo<\/a>. And in the last few years Emmanuel Carr\u00e8re<\/a>.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n
\n***
\n
\nChip Scanlan<\/strong> is an award-winning reporter who taught at The Poynter Institute from 1994-2009.He lives and writes in St. Petersburg, Florida, and publishes Chip’s Writing Lessons,<\/a> a newsletter of tips and inspiration. His new book, “Writers on Writing,”<\/a> is available on Amazon.<\/em>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aviv scoured court records, social media and personal journals to reveal the abuses of a system of unregulated Christian boarding schools<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[419],"topics":[],"authors":[13],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-2232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-annotation-tuesday","tag-new-yorker","authors-chip-scanlan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Rachel Aviv of The New Yorker exposed the "troubled teen industry" - Nieman Storyboard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/01\/06\/how-rachel-aviv-of-the-new-yorker-exposed-the-troubled-teen-industry\/\" \/>\n<meta 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