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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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[reporter] Reality TV star Paris Hilton

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embraced the spotlight
on Capitol Hill, Wednesday,

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telling lawmakers about her personal
experiences of trauma and abuse

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while at a behavioral treatment center
in Utah when she was 17 years old.

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I was strangled, slapped across the face,

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watched in the shower by male staff.

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[man] This is happening in our country
to our young people.

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And if it can happen
to Paris Hilton and her family,

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think about all those people
who can't be here today.

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[insects buzzing]

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[woman] I went to sleep thinking
I'd be going to school the next day.

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I was 15.

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The house was dark.
My parents weren't there.

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[dogs barking]

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And I was woken up
by two men standing over my bed.

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They were big.
They looked like mountain men.

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They were like, "Get up. Get dressed.
You're coming with us."

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[tense music playing]

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[woman] They told me if I tried to run,
they would handcuff me.

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They grabbed me
and forcibly removed me from my house.

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[tense music continues]

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-[door slams]
-[engine revs]

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[tense music continues]

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[woman] I was taken to the airport.

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They had hired a private plane.

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When we were on the flight, he's like,
"Do you wanna know where you're going?"

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I'm like, "Nope."

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Because I didn't want them
to know I was afraid.

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[tense music continues]

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[woman] I got in the car with a woman
who called herself "Mad Cat"

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and a guy who called himself "Mad Dog."

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And I remember being like,
"What the fuck is this?"

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[tense music continues]

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[woman] They drove me
into the middle of the desert.

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And then there's a fire in the distance.

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And they handed me a note written
on the back of an empty bill envelope.

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"This is for the best. We love you."

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[tense music continues]

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And that's when I knew that my parents
paid these people to kidnap me

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and take me to the program.

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[music stops]

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[man] Let's go! This is it!

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Come on, let's move!

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Let's go!

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Get out of that truck!

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Let's go! Move!

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Welcome to Challenger
in the southern deserts.

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The next 63 days,
you'll be under my care, my staff's care.

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Do you understand?

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-[teenagers] Yes, sir!
-[man] I can't hear you!

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[teenagers] Yes, sir!

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[choral version
of "Teenage Dirtbag" playing]

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How do you handle it when the child
that you've loved and raised for 16 years

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suddenly rebels and becomes someone
you don't recognize anymore?

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♪ I have a dream about her… ♪

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[man 1] The '80s were a time
when the world was changing.

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There was a deep concern

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that the youth of America
was taking a wrong turn.

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Nancy?

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Thank you.

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Today, there's a drug and alcohol abuse
epidemic in this country,

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and no one is safe from it.

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Not you, not me,
and certainly not our children.

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♪ 'Cause I'm just a teenage dirtbag… ♪

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[reporter 1] The country is facing
a crisis in dealing with its children.

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You know, it was, "What do you do?"

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♪ …baby
Listen to Iron Maiden…♪

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[reporter 2] When nothing else
seems to work,

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some desperate parents
send their troubled teens

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to these so-called
"wilderness therapy camps."

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Designed, supposedly, to kick them out
of their bad habits and rebellious ways.

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[reporter 3] It is a brainchild
of 35-year-old Steve Cartisano,

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a former Air Force sergeant.

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[Steve] So many people
in our society today

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are giving kids excuses.

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Kids need to learn this valuable lesson

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that they are responsible for their lives
and accountable for their actions.

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[man 2] Steve Cartisano was a genius.

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Such a colorful character

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who knew all about
how to fix all the problems in your family

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with just a simple phone call.

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♪ 'Cause I'm just a teenage dirtbag… ♪

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The thing about Steve was
people either loved him or despised him.

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[woman] I think he was ahead of his time.
He had this great idea.

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[reporter] It's called
The Challenger Foundation.

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It claims to transform bad kids
through ordeal.

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And then I think it got too big too quick.

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[reporter] The kids are worn down
until they're good again.

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[man 1] The concept
behind it was excellent,

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and the core of what he did
was quite remarkable.

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That's not what I do or my staff does.
It's Mother Nature, Phil.

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[man 1] It still lives today.

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[woman] This industry has just grown.

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[reporter] The trouble is
some of the teens are not coming back.

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Teenagers find themselves
in brutal conditions

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far beyond the reach of US authorities.

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When is it survival and discipline,
and when is it abuse?

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-It was bad.
-[man 2] Death and abuse.

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His business became a total disaster,

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but he would rise from the ashes,

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like, "Never say die."

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[Phil Donahue] All right, Mr. Cartisano,

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we're talking about
your Challenger Foundation.

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Is your kid talking back to you?

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[audience chuckle]

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Have you got a smart-ass
on your hands at home?

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[audience laugh]

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[Phil] What do you wanna do
with these kids?

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Who can kidnap whom?

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Who is watching these people

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who are presuming
to straighten your children out?

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And how much of this…

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[man 2] Steve Cartisano
launches Challenger in 1988.

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They basically take kids out of their beds
in the middle of the night.

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The parents have signed away
their parental rights.

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Where are the kids' rights in this deal?
There are 16-year-old-kids--

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The kids are having the rights
when they're not going to school,

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and they're using drugs,
and they're being real jerks.

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[applause]

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They're introduced to a big, burly guy
who says, "I own you now,

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and you're gonna go
on a 500-mile forced hike

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across the Utah desert."

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My name is Horsehair.

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Anything and everything your staff
tells you, you will do. No hesitation.

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Is that clear?

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[teenagers] Yes, sir.

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-[Horsehair] Is that clear?
-[teenagers] Yes, sir!

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[Horsehair] Tell me your name,
your age, where you're from.

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April Schmidt, 15.

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-[Horsehair] Speak up.
-Bonney Lake, Washington.

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[louder] April Schmidt, 15.
Bonney Lake, Washington.

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[Chris] That first day, kids would realize
they're in a whole different world

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than where they came from.

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[Horsehair] Better start treating your own
mother better than you have been, right?

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Yes, sir.

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[Horsehair] This is not a temporary thing.

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She sacrificed a lot for you.
Do you understand what that means?

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Yes, sir.

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Too late to cry about it now.

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You should've thought about that
when you were dealing with her, right?

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Yes, sir.

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[Horsehair] You better make it
a permanent fix.

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Is that clear?

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Yes, sir.

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[tense music playing]

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[Horsehair] We broke 'em down.

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But we didn't break 'em down to hurt 'em.
We didn't break 'em down to punish them.

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We were breaking them down
to get rid of all the old crap

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and to rebuild.

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Help them to be a better,
more positive person.

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[tense music continues]

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[Horsehair] Some of the kids
were so scared, they'd almost pass out,

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and that was fine by me

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because I wanted them
to have a little fear.

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Um, a lot of these kids, this was it,
or they were going to jail.

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[tense music continues]

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[Steve] Kids aren't going to be happy
to be here. They're going to be hungry.

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They're going to be tired,
going to be dirty.

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We have to do things that work.

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Talking to 'em and just loving them
won't get them to change their minds.

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Are you all listening to me?

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[teenagers] Yes, sir!

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Steve Cartisano was in the Air Force.
I was in the Air Force.

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So when we met, we had that in common.

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He felt that the youth needed
some sort of different way to help them.

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We were way ahead of our time.

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[tense music continues]

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[Horsehair] It was a 63-day program,

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and we had three different sections.

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We took 'em
to that very bottom level first.

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We gave 'em what they need,
but that wasn't free.

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There was a cost to everything.

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We provided 'em food,
but the food was at a different location.

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They had to travel on foot to get there.

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We weren't punishing anyone.

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There are consequences,
both good and bad, for our actions.

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You determine whether
it's a negative or positive consequence.

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[Steve] We're not talking about kids
that are going to church on Sunday

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or that are going to youth dances
during the middle of the week.

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We're talking about kids,
for the most part,

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that are out of control, that are violent,
that are going to seduce your children,

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give them drugs, and steal your car
and your jewelry if they can.

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They're here because they're manipulators,

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and they've learned
how to work the system.

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[music fades]

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[Nadine] I've always been a rabble-rouser,
black sheep of the family.

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You know, as a kid with no power,
the only power you have is your behavior.

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So I would… Yeah, I would act out a bit.

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Like, I would drink,
and I would go to parties.

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I loved to smoke pot.

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So I was a bit of a stoner.
That could worry someone.

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I had a boyfriend,

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and he was noted
as sort of a troublemaker in town.

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My parents didn't like me dating him,
and my mom didn't like me.

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So, like, she was trying to find a way
to get rid of me since I was 12.

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So I packed my shit and ran away.

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I was at my boyfriend's sister's house,
hiding, when the police came.

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The police sent me home with my parents.

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00:11:07,750 --> 00:11:10,753
Um, but they didn't tell me
where I was going after.

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00:11:11,379 --> 00:11:13,798
-[footsteps thud]
-[engine revs]

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00:11:13,881 --> 00:11:15,883
[bird caws]

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00:11:18,969 --> 00:11:22,932
[Nadine] I slept on the ground,
no tent, nothing. Like, it was rocky.

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[Horsehair] Come on! Get up!

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00:11:26,227 --> 00:11:29,397
This isn't summer camp.
This is it. Come on, let's go!

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[Nadine] In the morning,
there's, like, a bunch of kids.

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I mean, skinny, shirts were ripped,
and a girl came up to me,

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and I was chewing gum,
and she asked if she could have it.

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She wanted the gum that I was chewing.
I'm like, "It has no flavor."

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She's like, "I don't care."
And I'm like, "Okay."

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00:11:52,128 --> 00:11:54,922
And then another kid asked me for my soup,

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00:11:55,840 --> 00:11:57,508
and I was gonna give him my soup.

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And then a girl said,
"Don't give him your soup."

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00:12:01,929 --> 00:12:03,723
"You need your soup." I'm like, "Okay."

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00:12:03,806 --> 00:12:05,808
[tense music playing]

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00:12:13,357 --> 00:12:14,984
[Nadine] It was like 113 degrees,

218
00:12:15,484 --> 00:12:18,154
and I hiked, like,
500 miles in tennis shoes.

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00:12:18,237 --> 00:12:20,030
It was basically just surviving.

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00:12:20,614 --> 00:12:21,824
Keep walking. Here.

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00:12:21,907 --> 00:12:23,826
-Thank you.
-Just keep walking.

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00:12:24,410 --> 00:12:26,203
[tense music continues]

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00:12:26,287 --> 00:12:28,998
At each stage, life got a little better.

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00:12:29,790 --> 00:12:32,293
The second group, we had a handcart,

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00:12:33,043 --> 00:12:37,173
and so they could put all their gear into
the cart, but they all had to push it.

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00:12:39,175 --> 00:12:42,803
And our third group,
we brought a butter churn out to them.

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00:12:42,887 --> 00:12:44,305
We brought a Dutch oven.

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00:12:48,100 --> 00:12:51,562
[Kinney] Given everything that was
going on in my life at that point in time,

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00:12:51,645 --> 00:12:54,857
I didn't mind
that it was hard and dusty and dirty

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00:12:54,940 --> 00:12:58,486
and that we all smelled terrible.
[chuckles]

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00:12:59,069 --> 00:13:02,490
[Horsehair] Here, we've been practicing
the balance of things.

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00:13:04,450 --> 00:13:06,494
There's a spirit in all this that we do.

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00:13:09,789 --> 00:13:12,458
It's always been that way
from the very beginning of time.

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00:13:13,459 --> 00:13:15,127
[Kinney] Living at home was hard.

235
00:13:15,878 --> 00:13:20,382
My mother and I were constantly arguing.
I was not doing well in school.

236
00:13:20,925 --> 00:13:26,222
And then, in the month
after my father passed away,

237
00:13:26,305 --> 00:13:27,932
I did attempt

238
00:13:29,141 --> 00:13:30,392
taking my own life.

239
00:13:32,770 --> 00:13:36,482
[Horsehair] Okay. Everybody, gather around
over here. Make a horseshoe shape.

240
00:13:36,565 --> 00:13:40,277
[Kinney] This felt different. There was
a different energy about the group.

241
00:13:40,820 --> 00:13:45,157
There wasn't a lot of time
to really think about my life.

242
00:13:46,867 --> 00:13:49,787
I was purely in survival mode
at that point in time.

243
00:13:51,914 --> 00:13:53,415
That was comforting for me.

244
00:13:54,834 --> 00:13:58,379
[Horsehair] Our Father in heaven,
we ask you to help us at this time

245
00:13:58,462 --> 00:14:03,759
be mindful of the sacrifice
that this animal is representing to us.

246
00:14:04,343 --> 00:14:06,595
We say this
in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

247
00:14:06,679 --> 00:14:08,639
-[teenager] Oh, amen.
-[all] Amen.

248
00:14:22,027 --> 00:14:23,946
[Kinney] I thrived.

249
00:14:24,029 --> 00:14:28,617
I really… I really enjoyed being there.

250
00:14:29,535 --> 00:14:32,496
[Horsehair] We're going to show you
different ways of cooking.

251
00:14:32,580 --> 00:14:35,541
One is the pit.
We're gonna use the stomach to cook.

252
00:14:38,460 --> 00:14:40,504
Get ready to stir it.
Get the meat in there.

253
00:14:43,299 --> 00:14:46,427
I was asked one time, "How do you know
when they're ready to go home?"

254
00:14:47,177 --> 00:14:49,346
It was their look.
It was their countenance.

255
00:14:49,847 --> 00:14:51,974
They had sparkle in their eye.

256
00:14:52,057 --> 00:14:55,019
They had smiles on their face
that you couldn't take away.

257
00:14:55,603 --> 00:15:01,233
I think… I think most teenagers
should come here and improve yourself,

258
00:15:01,317 --> 00:15:05,654
and this is probably gonna be
the best thing that happened to you.

259
00:15:05,738 --> 00:15:10,659
Steve had a vision
that everyone needs a rite of passage

260
00:15:10,743 --> 00:15:13,746
from childhood to adulthood,

261
00:15:13,829 --> 00:15:15,873
and it usually encompasses…

262
00:15:17,917 --> 00:15:19,418
something that's very difficult.

263
00:15:19,501 --> 00:15:22,254
[girl] Uh, you know, but still, he…
He's the one that…

264
00:15:22,338 --> 00:15:24,173
It just hurts, you know?

265
00:15:25,049 --> 00:15:25,925
I just…

266
00:15:27,760 --> 00:15:30,930
I pushed my mom away,
and I pushed my dad away.

267
00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:35,684
She wrote me this letter telling me
how much she loved me and missed me

268
00:15:35,768 --> 00:15:37,144
and wanted me to come home,

269
00:15:39,021 --> 00:15:40,731
but I need to be here.

270
00:15:42,733 --> 00:15:46,153
If I did go home early,
it wouldn't, you know…

271
00:15:46,737 --> 00:15:50,741
All this effort that… that's gone into…

272
00:15:52,826 --> 00:15:56,455
changing me
would be just a complete waste.

273
00:15:58,582 --> 00:16:03,295
They were going through a rite of passage,
and, um, this was the beginning of that.

274
00:16:03,837 --> 00:16:08,676
How many of you were glad to be here
the first minute you got off and arrived?

275
00:16:08,759 --> 00:16:11,929
One, two.
How many of you are glad to be here now?

276
00:16:12,429 --> 00:16:13,263
[teenager] Yeah.

277
00:16:13,764 --> 00:16:16,225
How many of you
have learned something about yourself

278
00:16:16,308 --> 00:16:17,935
that you didn't know when you got here?

279
00:16:19,436 --> 00:16:22,106
And it's hard to explain
to somebody who doesn't understand it.

280
00:16:22,189 --> 00:16:24,233
[uplifting music playing]

281
00:16:29,071 --> 00:16:30,280
I felt accomplished.

282
00:16:30,990 --> 00:16:34,243
At the end of every single day,
I felt accomplished.

283
00:16:36,912 --> 00:16:39,873
[Steve] We're made better
by struggle, trial, and adversity.

284
00:16:40,541 --> 00:16:42,334
It's a simple equation.

285
00:16:43,419 --> 00:16:47,131
We've had over 700 kids in the program.
We've turned around hundreds of lives.

286
00:16:47,214 --> 00:16:50,467
These kids need this.
We're saving so many more lives.

287
00:16:58,017 --> 00:17:01,603
[woman] Matthew would have been
in juvenile detention or dead

288
00:17:02,438 --> 00:17:05,941
if we had not continued
to try to do something.

289
00:17:06,025 --> 00:17:06,859
[animal murmurs]

290
00:17:07,359 --> 00:17:08,193
Sorry.

291
00:17:09,153 --> 00:17:10,320
[teenagers yell]

292
00:17:10,404 --> 00:17:13,157
[Matthew] I drank a lot.
I smoked a lot of pot.

293
00:17:13,240 --> 00:17:14,283
[teenagers yell]

294
00:17:14,366 --> 00:17:17,619
Every so often,
I used to munch a hit of LSD.

295
00:17:17,703 --> 00:17:18,829
[boy] Whoo!

296
00:17:18,912 --> 00:17:21,457
Or I'd smoke a little bit of PCP.

297
00:17:21,540 --> 00:17:22,750
[teenagers yell]

298
00:17:22,833 --> 00:17:24,334
There's a bridge down the street,

299
00:17:24,418 --> 00:17:27,463
and he actually used to go
and jump off onto the trains.

300
00:17:27,546 --> 00:17:29,089
[train whistle blares]

301
00:17:29,173 --> 00:17:30,466
[rock music playing]

302
00:17:30,549 --> 00:17:33,093
[woman] He was running wild.

303
00:17:33,677 --> 00:17:36,138
-[Matthew] I had a good time. [laughs]
-[camera clicking]

304
00:17:36,221 --> 00:17:38,223
[rock music continues]

305
00:17:38,307 --> 00:17:41,351
[Matthew] But at the same time,
I was constantly getting arrested

306
00:17:41,435 --> 00:17:44,396
for drug possession
or something like that.

307
00:17:45,647 --> 00:17:47,733
I believe I was a bit of a nightmare.

308
00:17:47,816 --> 00:17:50,569
At this point, the police
were here a lot with Matthew.

309
00:17:50,652 --> 00:17:53,697
They would pick him up.
Maybe he'd gotten some alcohol somewhere.

310
00:17:54,281 --> 00:17:57,743
Whether it was me, his father,
the school, the police,

311
00:17:57,826 --> 00:18:01,371
whatever the punishment was,
it really just didn't matter.

312
00:18:02,206 --> 00:18:04,416
At that point,
it was think outside the box.

313
00:18:04,500 --> 00:18:07,503
[Steve] We're talking about kids
in a crack house, or they're running away,

314
00:18:07,586 --> 00:18:10,756
they're out of control,
and they are master manipulators.

315
00:18:10,839 --> 00:18:13,258
-They're blaming everybody else--
-[Phil] Master manipulators.

316
00:18:13,342 --> 00:18:17,638
[Steve] When they're 25, all the excuses
of why they quit high school

317
00:18:17,721 --> 00:18:19,973
or why they were doing drugs
aren't gonna matter, Phil.

318
00:18:20,057 --> 00:18:22,059
[applause]

319
00:18:22,142 --> 00:18:24,144
[rock music continues]

320
00:18:24,686 --> 00:18:27,272
I thought, "You know what?
I don't know what else to try,

321
00:18:27,356 --> 00:18:28,232
but this sounds good."

322
00:18:29,858 --> 00:18:31,110
[music stops]

323
00:18:31,193 --> 00:18:32,402
[sighs]

324
00:18:43,163 --> 00:18:46,208
I had only been there…
I had… I had not been there that long,

325
00:18:46,834 --> 00:18:50,045
but I wanted so much
to get back to my McDonald's at home.

326
00:18:50,838 --> 00:18:52,047
And my Oreos.

327
00:18:52,840 --> 00:18:55,801
And my… my Round Top ice cream.

328
00:18:56,593 --> 00:18:57,594
My good stuff.

329
00:19:03,183 --> 00:19:05,561
But the adults
had already made the decision,

330
00:19:05,644 --> 00:19:08,063
so I thought to myself,
"Just face it, man."

331
00:19:08,147 --> 00:19:09,731
"You're here. Do the program."

332
00:19:10,232 --> 00:19:12,484
"Then you'll be out of here
and you can go have a beer."

333
00:19:14,361 --> 00:19:17,865
I was just afraid I would not be able
to get back for a long time,

334
00:19:18,657 --> 00:19:20,200
but I thought, "They can't kill me."

335
00:19:20,993 --> 00:19:23,579
That's exactly what I thought.
"They can't kill me."

336
00:19:25,122 --> 00:19:26,707
[tense music playing]

337
00:19:29,626 --> 00:19:31,253
Tonight, a man who says,

338
00:19:31,336 --> 00:19:33,964
"Stop the coddling
and skip the psychiatrist."

339
00:19:34,047 --> 00:19:36,425
Instead, give teens a simple message.

340
00:19:36,508 --> 00:19:40,512
Shape up. Life's not a picnic.
So take a survival course.

341
00:19:40,596 --> 00:19:42,556
-[camera clicking]
-[woman] Steve's responsibility

342
00:19:42,639 --> 00:19:43,849
was the entire program,

343
00:19:43,932 --> 00:19:48,729
which meant the advertisement,
the sales over the phone,

344
00:19:48,812 --> 00:19:52,941
managing the finances of the company
and the employees of the company.

345
00:19:53,025 --> 00:19:53,942
[drawer slams]

346
00:19:54,026 --> 00:19:56,737
And it grew a lot faster than he expected.

347
00:19:57,404 --> 00:20:01,491
So he was very dependent
on the people in southern Utah

348
00:20:01,575 --> 00:20:03,118
who were running the program there.

349
00:20:03,202 --> 00:20:05,454
[tense music continues]

350
00:20:05,537 --> 00:20:11,126
I thought we got too big too fast,
and I don't think we were ready for it.

351
00:20:11,710 --> 00:20:15,923
[reporter] They have no showers,
no toilets, no bunks or dining hall.

352
00:20:16,006 --> 00:20:19,593
Some of the staff were…
Honestly, they were fillers.

353
00:20:20,302 --> 00:20:23,055
[reporter] Their beds
are blankets on the ground.

354
00:20:23,555 --> 00:20:28,518
They wanted to help, um, but they didn't
have the same understanding as we did.

355
00:20:28,602 --> 00:20:31,313
[reporter] The kids will be
held accountable for their actions.

356
00:20:31,396 --> 00:20:35,025
Share your food with a hungry friend,
you'll both go without.

357
00:20:35,108 --> 00:20:38,487
Steal food, you'll be tied hand and foot.

358
00:20:38,570 --> 00:20:41,406
So the staff were very young,
most of them.

359
00:20:41,490 --> 00:20:44,701
And then there was also Horsehair,
who was the field leader.

360
00:20:44,785 --> 00:20:48,080
The problem is,
he believed in Steve Cartisano.

361
00:20:48,163 --> 00:20:52,292
So Steve Cartisano
called us manipulators, liars.

362
00:20:52,376 --> 00:20:57,256
So that was sort of… What was ingrained
in the staff was to not believe us.

363
00:20:57,339 --> 00:21:00,884
You know, some kids will say,
"I have, uh, you know, a bad back."

364
00:21:00,968 --> 00:21:03,804
And, uh… Or, "My knee hurts."
You look in the medical report.

365
00:21:03,887 --> 00:21:06,473
They've never hurt their knee.
They've never had a bad back.

366
00:21:06,556 --> 00:21:09,810
So whenever you say you're sick,
they call you a liar.

367
00:21:09,893 --> 00:21:12,938
[boy] Man, come on, man.
That hurts. God! [yells]

368
00:21:14,273 --> 00:21:18,110
[Nadine] Basically, they were withholding…
everything from us.

369
00:21:19,403 --> 00:21:21,029
[reporter] If your attitude isn't right,

370
00:21:21,113 --> 00:21:24,825
you'll stay here beyond 63 days
until it is.

371
00:21:24,908 --> 00:21:28,912
The longer we were there,
the more it became like Lord of the Flies.

372
00:21:28,996 --> 00:21:33,250
Like, we would tie our hair up
with tampons 'cause of the string.

373
00:21:33,333 --> 00:21:35,711
Sometimes, kids wouldn't
roll their packs well,

374
00:21:35,794 --> 00:21:37,421
so they'd fall apart on a trail,

375
00:21:37,504 --> 00:21:40,257
and then they'd get a rock
for not packing their pack correctly.

376
00:21:40,340 --> 00:21:43,885
[crying] I could move so much faster
without this stupid rock.

377
00:21:47,514 --> 00:21:50,017
[Nadine] You'd use your T-shirt
as toilet paper,

378
00:21:50,100 --> 00:21:51,935
because you didn't get toilet paper.

379
00:21:52,019 --> 00:21:54,521
Can you imagine if you were
hiking through the desert

380
00:21:54,604 --> 00:21:57,232
and you came upon a bunch of dirty kids
with tampons in their hair?

381
00:21:57,316 --> 00:21:58,817
You'd be like, "What the fuck?"

382
00:21:58,900 --> 00:22:00,902
[tense music playing]

383
00:22:12,873 --> 00:22:13,957
[music fades]

384
00:22:15,584 --> 00:22:17,586
[Matthew] I didn't wanna live
in the desert anymore.

385
00:22:20,922 --> 00:22:23,383
This one morning,
I just refused to get up.

386
00:22:26,887 --> 00:22:29,973
I think the counselors told me
I had to get up.

387
00:22:30,057 --> 00:22:32,768
I said, "No." They said, "Get up!"

388
00:22:33,769 --> 00:22:34,728
I said, "No."

389
00:22:36,521 --> 00:22:38,148
"You're not gonna force me up."

390
00:22:39,733 --> 00:22:41,526
And he hit me.

391
00:22:42,736 --> 00:22:43,987
He literally hit me.

392
00:22:47,532 --> 00:22:49,201
There was another counselor.

393
00:22:49,284 --> 00:22:53,330
That counselor told him
to tie my feet together at the ankles,

394
00:22:53,413 --> 00:22:56,375
and he started dragging me.
And, yep, that hurt.

395
00:22:56,458 --> 00:22:58,001
[footsteps thud]

396
00:22:58,085 --> 00:23:00,087
[tense music playing]

397
00:23:01,630 --> 00:23:04,257
But after only ten feet or so, he stopped.

398
00:23:05,509 --> 00:23:07,010
He said, "Now, are you ready to hike?"

399
00:23:08,845 --> 00:23:10,347
And I… I was in pain.

400
00:23:10,430 --> 00:23:12,808
[tense music continues]

401
00:23:14,476 --> 00:23:16,019
[Matthew] And so he kept dragging me.

402
00:23:17,604 --> 00:23:20,023
The skin was scraped off of my back.

403
00:23:20,816 --> 00:23:24,319
Every 40 or 50 feet, he'd stop
and he'd say, "Are you ready to hike?"

404
00:23:25,028 --> 00:23:26,029
I kept saying, "No."

405
00:23:26,780 --> 00:23:29,116
[footsteps thud]

406
00:23:30,450 --> 00:23:32,285
[Matthew] "You are not
gonna make me hike."

407
00:23:32,369 --> 00:23:34,204
[tense music continues]

408
00:23:37,958 --> 00:23:40,710
[Matthew] Steve Cartisano did come out
the next morning.

409
00:23:42,212 --> 00:23:45,590
He told me to remember
that it was my fault that had happened,

410
00:23:47,551 --> 00:23:48,885
and then he left.

411
00:23:50,137 --> 00:23:51,012
[music fades]

412
00:23:51,847 --> 00:23:53,974
[Matthew] I thought,
"You're supposed to be counselors."

413
00:23:54,057 --> 00:23:58,520
"You're supposed to be my advocates,
and you're beating me like this."

414
00:23:59,688 --> 00:24:00,981
"Who can I trust now?"

415
00:24:05,193 --> 00:24:07,904
[man] I was notified
by state social services

416
00:24:07,988 --> 00:24:12,159
that they had removed a young man
from The Challenger program

417
00:24:12,242 --> 00:24:16,580
and that he had injuries
that I needed to be aware of.

418
00:24:19,249 --> 00:24:24,129
My first encounter with the program was,
I believe, in early 1990.

419
00:24:25,172 --> 00:24:27,799
State officials let us know
that they were taking kids

420
00:24:27,883 --> 00:24:31,344
with all different kinds of problems,

421
00:24:32,095 --> 00:24:35,265
kids that were dealing drugs
and into drugs,

422
00:24:35,348 --> 00:24:40,812
and putting them with kids
who were just sedentary couch potatoes

423
00:24:40,896 --> 00:24:42,981
and put 'em out here in the harsh desert,

424
00:24:43,523 --> 00:24:47,986
and they weren't allowing
law enforcement access to them.

425
00:24:49,738 --> 00:24:52,240
I just kind of locked that away
in my memory

426
00:24:52,324 --> 00:24:55,785
in case I had to deal with the program
in the future myself.

427
00:24:55,869 --> 00:24:57,871
[dramatic music playing]

428
00:25:00,248 --> 00:25:01,917
[Max] I drove up to the hospital,

429
00:25:03,335 --> 00:25:07,714
and went in, was shocked
to see this young man, Matthew,

430
00:25:08,298 --> 00:25:09,716
in the state that he was.

431
00:25:10,217 --> 00:25:12,260
[dramatic music continues]

432
00:25:14,429 --> 00:25:17,599
[Max] He'd been examined
by one of the local doctors.

433
00:25:18,141 --> 00:25:20,727
He said, "This kid's emaciated."

434
00:25:22,312 --> 00:25:25,232
The doctor had counted
over 80 scars, marks, and contusions

435
00:25:25,315 --> 00:25:28,401
on his, uh, back and upper torso

436
00:25:28,485 --> 00:25:31,947
that he had incurred
while being dragged through the desert.

437
00:25:33,490 --> 00:25:37,118
And he told me that the wounds
were in various stages of healing

438
00:25:37,661 --> 00:25:42,999
and, uh, that he was being abused
by staff members of the program.

439
00:25:43,083 --> 00:25:45,085
[dramatic music continues]

440
00:25:45,669 --> 00:25:47,921
[interviewer] How did you feel
when you found out?

441
00:25:48,004 --> 00:25:51,383
I was upset. I was mad,
'cause I told the staff,

442
00:25:51,466 --> 00:25:53,677
"If you hurt a kid
or abuse a kid out here,

443
00:25:54,427 --> 00:25:56,972
you'll have to deal with me.
I'll deal with you."

444
00:25:57,472 --> 00:26:01,726
I mean, some of how we did things
could look abusive.

445
00:26:02,310 --> 00:26:05,146
Better start treating your mother
better than you have been.

446
00:26:05,772 --> 00:26:07,983
There's a fine line in some of it.

447
00:26:08,650 --> 00:26:11,695
I don't think anybody should be beat up,
but I think…

448
00:26:11,778 --> 00:26:17,033
But there is a time and a place and room
for what I consider corporal punishment.

449
00:26:17,117 --> 00:26:22,414
A spanking, you know?
A good spanking sometimes can do wonders.

450
00:26:22,497 --> 00:26:24,749
-[Horsehair] You understand?
-[teenagers] Yes, sir.

451
00:26:24,833 --> 00:26:26,835
-[Horsehair] I can't hear you!
-[teenagers] Yes, sir!

452
00:26:26,918 --> 00:26:33,133
I'm sorry, I might be old school,
but human nature is we need parameters.

453
00:26:33,216 --> 00:26:36,553
Otherwise, we have anarchy,
and anarchy does not work.

454
00:26:37,387 --> 00:26:38,847
Never has, never will.

455
00:26:46,146 --> 00:26:47,439
[Kari] Someone from the program

456
00:26:47,522 --> 00:26:49,816
called me to tell me
they had taken Matthew to the hospital,

457
00:26:49,899 --> 00:26:50,984
and I thought, "Well, he's…

458
00:26:51,067 --> 00:26:55,113
He's in the hospital's care,
so he's okay."

459
00:26:55,196 --> 00:26:59,117
So I flew out.
Some people from Challenger picked me up.

460
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:00,702
They paid for a hotel.

461
00:27:01,202 --> 00:27:02,037
Um…

462
00:27:02,120 --> 00:27:05,665
But once I saw Matthew, that was it.
We were headed home.

463
00:27:08,460 --> 00:27:11,046
[Nadine] I understood
it was an unsafe situation,

464
00:27:11,129 --> 00:27:12,881
like, from the very start.

465
00:27:15,884 --> 00:27:18,303
The hardest thing about being there?

466
00:27:21,765 --> 00:27:23,767
Knowing my parents did it to me.

467
00:27:26,603 --> 00:27:32,359
The program cost my parents
over $16,000 in 1989.

468
00:27:33,068 --> 00:27:35,987
So I don't…
I mean, that's a lot of money in 1989.

469
00:27:36,071 --> 00:27:37,989
[reporter] Over the past three years,

470
00:27:38,073 --> 00:27:41,159
Cartisano says nearly 800 kids
have gone through this program,

471
00:27:41,242 --> 00:27:43,870
which translates into nearly $10 million.

472
00:27:44,829 --> 00:27:48,041
[Horsehair] Steve was smart.
He knew that it took a lot of money.

473
00:27:48,500 --> 00:27:51,753
Why should we fault anybody
that owns a business to make money?

474
00:27:53,046 --> 00:27:54,381
He made a lot of money.

475
00:27:54,464 --> 00:27:57,008
He goes out.
He buys a big, beautiful home.

476
00:27:58,802 --> 00:28:00,387
I got a radio!

477
00:28:00,470 --> 00:28:04,391
He would rent cars.
He rented a Lamborghini at one time.

478
00:28:04,474 --> 00:28:09,521
This goes completely against the grain of,
like, "We're just trying to help kids."

479
00:28:09,604 --> 00:28:10,480
You know?

480
00:28:10,563 --> 00:28:12,315
This was very lavish.

481
00:28:12,941 --> 00:28:14,150
[kids squealing happily]

482
00:28:14,234 --> 00:28:16,319
[Debbie] I wasn't involved
in the finances.

483
00:28:16,820 --> 00:28:18,655
[child yells]

484
00:28:18,738 --> 00:28:21,282
[Debbie] I just know
that we had an adequate income,

485
00:28:21,366 --> 00:28:24,911
uh, and so there was
a lot of money coming in, I think,

486
00:28:24,994 --> 00:28:26,955
but there was also
a lot of money going out.

487
00:28:27,038 --> 00:28:29,708
It was very expensive
to run these programs.

488
00:28:32,419 --> 00:28:34,462
[Debbie] We found this house in Utah.

489
00:28:35,338 --> 00:28:39,300
It was a big house,
about 6,500 square feet.

490
00:28:39,384 --> 00:28:41,094
What do you think, Jen?

491
00:28:41,177 --> 00:28:43,263
[Debbie] I bought a horse,
and I started riding.

492
00:28:45,014 --> 00:28:49,519
So things were really good,
and it seemed to be a great success.

493
00:28:50,687 --> 00:28:53,940
That's where I think
he started losing focus.

494
00:29:01,823 --> 00:29:04,200
That mountain's called
the "Fiftymile Mountain."

495
00:29:05,493 --> 00:29:08,663
It runs 50 miles
all the way to Lake Powell.

496
00:29:09,581 --> 00:29:11,833
It's also the Kaiparowits Plateau.

497
00:29:13,918 --> 00:29:17,797
This was a really bad place
for the kids to be hiking in.

498
00:29:18,465 --> 00:29:22,135
This landscape can turn deadly very fast.

499
00:29:27,182 --> 00:29:28,892
[tense music playing]

500
00:29:32,896 --> 00:29:34,647
[Max] I was driving with another sheriff…

501
00:29:38,318 --> 00:29:40,653
when we got the call
from Richfield dispatch

502
00:29:40,737 --> 00:29:45,283
that a, uh, participant
in the Challenger Foundation, female,

503
00:29:45,366 --> 00:29:48,328
was en route to the Panguitch hospital.

504
00:29:48,411 --> 00:29:50,413
[tense music continues]

505
00:29:59,214 --> 00:30:01,090
[Horsehair] While I was in Provo
at the office,

506
00:30:01,174 --> 00:30:05,804
we got a call from other camps down here
that there was an incident.

507
00:30:07,347 --> 00:30:11,851
So Steve grabbed the phone
to ask what was happening,

508
00:30:12,352 --> 00:30:14,229
and his demeanor changed.

509
00:30:14,312 --> 00:30:16,189
It was pretty serious.

510
00:30:16,272 --> 00:30:17,565
[helicopter whirring]

511
00:30:20,235 --> 00:30:22,695
We immediately dropped everything.

512
00:30:23,363 --> 00:30:24,739
Him and I flew down.

513
00:30:26,699 --> 00:30:28,368
We didn't know how bad she was.

514
00:30:28,451 --> 00:30:31,246
We just knew that it was a serious thing.

515
00:30:31,329 --> 00:30:33,331
[tense music continues]

516
00:30:35,250 --> 00:30:37,919
[Horsehair] And we landed
right in front of an ambulance.

517
00:30:38,002 --> 00:30:40,880
[distant sirens wailing]

518
00:30:43,341 --> 00:30:46,261
They were doing CPR on her,
and they had her hooked up.

519
00:30:47,470 --> 00:30:49,764
A physician assistant, he looked at her,

520
00:30:50,306 --> 00:30:55,562
and it wasn't even 45 seconds,
and he called it. He said, "She's gone."

521
00:30:55,645 --> 00:30:57,272
[somber music playing]

522
00:31:01,359 --> 00:31:03,736
Steve was devastated by that.

523
00:31:06,239 --> 00:31:08,867
He was very devastated by that.

524
00:31:13,580 --> 00:31:16,374
I'm sure there was a part of him
that saw it as his fault

525
00:31:16,457 --> 00:31:18,376
because it was his program,

526
00:31:18,459 --> 00:31:22,463
and, uh, he was the one
bringing children into the program,

527
00:31:23,047 --> 00:31:27,510
but he also knew
that it was beyond his control.

528
00:31:31,222 --> 00:31:35,393
He did not spend that much time
in southern Utah, really, at that point,

529
00:31:35,476 --> 00:31:37,478
you know, so I think he realized

530
00:31:37,562 --> 00:31:41,441
that there was nothing
he could have done, really,

531
00:31:41,524 --> 00:31:43,860
that could have changed the outcome.

532
00:31:46,070 --> 00:31:48,072
[reporter] Kristen Chase
had spent just three days

533
00:31:48,156 --> 00:31:50,033
on the rugged Kaiparowits Plateau.

534
00:31:50,533 --> 00:31:54,203
She collapsed and died
after completing a five-mile day hike.

535
00:31:54,287 --> 00:31:56,164
I want you to meet Sharon Fuqua.

536
00:31:56,247 --> 00:32:00,168
Sharon had decided to send their daughter
Kristen to a wilderness camp

537
00:32:00,251 --> 00:32:04,505
after she was failing the 10th grade
and overdosing on antidepressants.

538
00:32:05,089 --> 00:32:07,133
She was 16 years old at the time.

539
00:32:07,759 --> 00:32:09,886
Sharon, of course, had no way of knowing

540
00:32:09,969 --> 00:32:13,306
that she'd never see
her only daughter alive again.

541
00:32:17,852 --> 00:32:21,731
-[David] She looks mischievous.
-Yes, she was. [laughs]

542
00:32:27,779 --> 00:32:33,368
She was, um,
just really sweet and lovable and…

543
00:32:34,327 --> 00:32:39,332
-She loved dressing up and--
-Yes, she… She did love to do that.

544
00:32:41,417 --> 00:32:46,005
But a little bit later,
um, it just changed.

545
00:32:47,715 --> 00:32:51,386
-[David] She got rebellious.
-[Sharon] Yes, got rebellious. Yeah.

546
00:32:51,469 --> 00:32:53,304
[somber music playing]

547
00:32:53,388 --> 00:32:56,224
She was just having a hard time.

548
00:32:57,141 --> 00:33:01,020
[sniffs] We didn't know,
really, what to do.

549
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:03,564
[sniffs]

550
00:33:03,648 --> 00:33:05,984
On the fourth week,
they go on a four-day solo period.

551
00:33:06,067 --> 00:33:07,986
All the drugs are out of their system.

552
00:33:08,069 --> 00:33:11,030
They wanna go home and be sons
and daughters to their parents again,

553
00:33:11,114 --> 00:33:12,198
and get an education.

554
00:33:14,283 --> 00:33:19,372
[sniffs] It's just, you know…
You think it's gonna help.

555
00:33:19,872 --> 00:33:20,707
[sniffs]

556
00:33:23,292 --> 00:33:27,547
[Max] I grew up in a ranching family
in the harsh desert country here.

557
00:33:29,340 --> 00:33:31,467
People that were raised in this area

558
00:33:31,551 --> 00:33:35,221
know and understand
how harsh the desert can be.

559
00:33:36,514 --> 00:33:40,059
You're out between water holes,
which may be ten miles apart.

560
00:33:40,810 --> 00:33:42,812
The staff didn't have a lot of training.

561
00:33:42,895 --> 00:33:45,523
Some of them
were former Challenger participants.

562
00:33:46,024 --> 00:33:49,610
It became clear to me
that it was a recipe for disaster.

563
00:33:50,778 --> 00:33:53,406
[reporter] Officers from the Kane County
Sheriff's Department

564
00:33:53,489 --> 00:33:55,783
raided the Challenger Foundation's
offices today.

565
00:33:55,867 --> 00:33:58,745
It's those records
officials hope will help them decide

566
00:33:58,828 --> 00:34:00,788
what charges to file
against the foundation.

567
00:34:01,289 --> 00:34:04,625
[Max] At that point in time, I said,
"I'm gonna get to the bottom of this,

568
00:34:04,709 --> 00:34:07,295
and we're gonna do something about this."

569
00:34:09,130 --> 00:34:12,842
[reporter] Max Jackson is the sheriff of
Kane County, where Challenger is located.

570
00:34:12,925 --> 00:34:17,055
He says he's been flooded with complaints
from parents across the country.

571
00:34:17,138 --> 00:34:20,600
This case absolutely took over my life.

572
00:34:21,601 --> 00:34:24,771
As long as they're out there,
law enforcement is gonna stay busy.

573
00:34:26,105 --> 00:34:29,233
[Steve] Kane County officials have just
decided that they're going to destroy me.

574
00:34:29,317 --> 00:34:32,612
If they can't get to me personally,
they're gonna do it through the program.

575
00:34:32,695 --> 00:34:36,115
You send someone out in the desert,
and they fall down,

576
00:34:36,199 --> 00:34:40,078
and they're exhibiting signs
of heat exhaustion, you treat it.

577
00:34:40,161 --> 00:34:42,997
Pioneers not only blaze the trail,
but they get the arrows.

578
00:34:43,081 --> 00:34:44,999
I'm such an outspoken advocate
for these programs.

579
00:34:45,083 --> 00:34:48,878
I've seen so many lives changed,
so many parents that are so grateful,

580
00:34:48,961 --> 00:34:52,131
that I refuse to allow a bunch of petty
bureaucrats to come in and dictate

581
00:34:52,215 --> 00:34:54,467
when they don't even take the time
to come and look around.

582
00:34:54,550 --> 00:34:59,847
There's a great potential out there for,
uh, more abuse and possibly another death.

583
00:34:59,931 --> 00:35:03,643
[reporter] Kane County officials charged
Cartisano and the Challenger Foundation

584
00:35:03,726 --> 00:35:05,144
with negligent homicide.

585
00:35:05,228 --> 00:35:07,230
[somber music playing]

586
00:35:09,941 --> 00:35:11,984
[distant siren wailing]

587
00:35:12,068 --> 00:35:14,028
[man] If Steve got convicted,
he was going to jail.

588
00:35:15,404 --> 00:35:16,948
There was no question about it.

589
00:35:17,490 --> 00:35:22,203
And he… he wasn't gonna do well in jail,
so he was very worried.

590
00:35:22,787 --> 00:35:26,582
Because he knew if he lost the trial,
he would be going to prison

591
00:35:26,666 --> 00:35:29,669
and would be leaving a young mother
with four small children.

592
00:35:30,419 --> 00:35:31,295
How you doing?

593
00:35:32,213 --> 00:35:34,799
We're anticipating a lot of mud
being thrown up against the wall,

594
00:35:34,882 --> 00:35:35,925
and we're ready for it.

595
00:35:36,008 --> 00:35:38,803
They just wanted him toasted.

596
00:35:38,886 --> 00:35:41,472
[reporter 1] Eight other
Challenger children say they were hit,

597
00:35:41,556 --> 00:35:44,350
starved, and tied to trees
by program supervisors.

598
00:35:44,433 --> 00:35:47,103
[reporter 2] Nine counts of child abuse
have now also been leveled

599
00:35:47,186 --> 00:35:50,356
against the Challenger Foundation,
from tying kids to trees

600
00:35:50,439 --> 00:35:53,276
to literally dragging them
across the rocky ground.

601
00:35:53,359 --> 00:35:54,318
Lawsuits.

602
00:35:55,319 --> 00:35:57,864
Lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits
start piling up.

603
00:35:57,947 --> 00:35:59,615
[reporter] The lawsuits have generated

604
00:35:59,699 --> 00:36:02,535
considerable nationwide
negative publicity.

605
00:36:02,618 --> 00:36:06,247
Challenger officials say they have
cost the program millions of dollars.

606
00:36:07,123 --> 00:36:10,626
Challenger cost families up to $16,000.

607
00:36:10,710 --> 00:36:11,586
[camera clicking]

608
00:36:11,669 --> 00:36:15,339
But one of Cartisano's
core funding streams

609
00:36:15,423 --> 00:36:19,552
was billing insurance companies
of the parents

610
00:36:19,635 --> 00:36:21,512
for the kids' "treatment."

611
00:36:22,388 --> 00:36:25,099
Suddenly the insurance companies
are wanting to claw it back

612
00:36:25,183 --> 00:36:29,187
because they're seeing the news coverage,
and they're like, "Wait a sec."

613
00:36:29,270 --> 00:36:32,565
I feel very strongly about it
because I know a lot of other kids

614
00:36:32,648 --> 00:36:35,693
have been abused in the programs.
I don't think it should happen anymore.

615
00:36:35,776 --> 00:36:37,445
The program was shut down.

616
00:36:37,987 --> 00:36:41,532
Uh, we had no income.
I went to work at Sears.

617
00:36:41,616 --> 00:36:45,244
And so then we spent
the next, uh, year and a half to two years

618
00:36:45,328 --> 00:36:47,914
basically fighting the court case.

619
00:36:49,165 --> 00:36:51,459
[reporter] Prosecutors once again
tried to establish

620
00:36:51,542 --> 00:36:53,628
Cartisano was more concerned with profits

621
00:36:53,711 --> 00:36:56,589
than with the safety of the troubled teens
he was supposed to be helping.

622
00:36:56,672 --> 00:36:58,966
These guys have been lying for two years.
They have lied.

623
00:36:59,050 --> 00:37:01,510
They are the most deceitful
group of people I've ever run into.

624
00:37:02,011 --> 00:37:04,889
[Charles] Their case was
Kristen Chase was hiked too hard

625
00:37:04,972 --> 00:37:06,974
and died of exertional heatstroke.

626
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:12,355
The findings of the autopsy

627
00:37:13,814 --> 00:37:16,150
found her internal organs

628
00:37:16,692 --> 00:37:20,238
to be somewhat consistent
with exertional heatstroke,

629
00:37:21,113 --> 00:37:25,576
but it's also consistent
with other causes of death.

630
00:37:26,577 --> 00:37:29,538
And that's all I had to show.
It was not exertional heatstroke.

631
00:37:29,622 --> 00:37:31,540
That would have knocked out
the homicide count.

632
00:37:33,709 --> 00:37:39,006
I'm not a doctor, but, uh,
she was taken up here to the high desert

633
00:37:39,924 --> 00:37:43,010
by 6,000 feet, 100-degree temperature,

634
00:37:43,552 --> 00:37:47,890
out of shape, and forced to march.

635
00:37:49,976 --> 00:37:52,770
I do believe that he was negligent,

636
00:37:53,437 --> 00:37:56,274
and that negligence
led to Kristen Chase's death.

637
00:37:57,733 --> 00:38:00,111
[Horsehair] We were successful
in what we did do.

638
00:38:00,194 --> 00:38:03,739
He made his bed,
I made my bed, and we both are in that.

639
00:38:09,662 --> 00:38:11,998
There are, as I understand it,
Mr. Cartisano,

640
00:38:12,081 --> 00:38:17,628
criminal charges now lodged against you
for negligent homicide.

641
00:38:17,712 --> 00:38:18,713
That's right.

642
00:38:18,796 --> 00:38:24,010
Was your Challenger Foundation responsible
for the death of Kristen Chase?

643
00:38:24,093 --> 00:38:28,055
I didn't know Kristen. I was 500 miles
away when she collapsed, at our office--

644
00:38:28,139 --> 00:38:31,142
But in the case of Kristen,
in the nine cases of child abuse,

645
00:38:31,225 --> 00:38:34,979
in the various lawsuits filed against you,
in the IRS action against you--

646
00:38:35,062 --> 00:38:36,397
There's this inference here--

647
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:38,149
[Geraldo] You have a great calm attitude

648
00:38:38,232 --> 00:38:41,610
for a man that seems to be
facing the world ending on you.

649
00:38:47,908 --> 00:38:49,493
[Chris] On the day of the verdict,

650
00:38:51,078 --> 00:38:53,205
the judge sends the jury out
to deliberate.

651
00:38:58,294 --> 00:39:00,921
It was really not looking good
for Steve Cartisano.

652
00:39:02,006 --> 00:39:03,758
The conditions in which she died

653
00:39:04,467 --> 00:39:09,055
strongly indicated
that she had been forced to hike

654
00:39:09,138 --> 00:39:12,016
without water in blistering heat.

655
00:39:12,099 --> 00:39:14,226
[tense music playing]

656
00:39:14,310 --> 00:39:15,811
[Charles] They went out in the morning,

657
00:39:17,104 --> 00:39:20,232
and they didn't come back with a verdict
until that night.

658
00:39:20,316 --> 00:39:22,318
[tense music continues]

659
00:39:23,611 --> 00:39:25,446
The odds were stacked against him

660
00:39:25,529 --> 00:39:29,408
because he had to prove in court
that that was an accident.

661
00:39:29,492 --> 00:39:31,494
[tense music continues]

662
00:39:33,788 --> 00:39:34,747
Uh…

663
00:39:39,502 --> 00:39:43,005
Jury comes in, and the judge asks,
"How do you find on this count?"

664
00:39:45,716 --> 00:39:48,677
"Not guilty, not guilty,
not guilty, not guilty."

665
00:39:48,761 --> 00:39:51,138
We get out.
You know, it was very, very exciting.

666
00:39:53,849 --> 00:39:56,977
The mistake
that defense lawyers make sometimes

667
00:39:57,478 --> 00:40:03,150
is they try to prove
an alternative theory of the case.

668
00:40:03,234 --> 00:40:04,443
That's a mistake.

669
00:40:04,527 --> 00:40:06,404
You just have to show

670
00:40:06,487 --> 00:40:09,407
that the prosecutor's theory
of the case is wrong.

671
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:13,577
We don't know for sure what she died from.

672
00:40:14,161 --> 00:40:16,455
We speculate it could've been
toxic shock syndrome.

673
00:40:16,539 --> 00:40:18,666
We speculate it could've been
septic shock.

674
00:40:20,209 --> 00:40:22,461
It was not exertional heatstroke,

675
00:40:23,087 --> 00:40:25,673
or at least there is reasonable doubt.

676
00:40:29,468 --> 00:40:31,637
It was just a huge relief.

677
00:40:32,471 --> 00:40:34,849
Relief beyond description.

678
00:40:34,932 --> 00:40:37,601
It had to end, and that's…
And that's what I wanted.

679
00:40:37,685 --> 00:40:41,272
After two years,
this had to stop, and I'm glad it's over.

680
00:40:41,355 --> 00:40:44,150
We felt it was an answer to prayer.

681
00:40:44,984 --> 00:40:45,818
[David sniffles]

682
00:40:50,656 --> 00:40:54,743
Just disbelief. Still. [sniffs]

683
00:40:55,703 --> 00:40:57,746
-What, is it 32 years later?
-Mm-hmm.

684
00:40:59,457 --> 00:41:00,875
[Sharon] We really miss her.

685
00:41:03,377 --> 00:41:04,962
A lot. [cries]

686
00:41:08,966 --> 00:41:09,842
[sniffles]

687
00:41:17,057 --> 00:41:21,479
Nobody had responsibility over that.
It's something that happened.

688
00:41:23,564 --> 00:41:27,526
I don't know if that sounds cold or not,
but it's reality.

689
00:41:29,862 --> 00:41:32,031
[Debbie] We didn't want
any more publicity.

690
00:41:32,114 --> 00:41:34,992
We didn't want
any more of the stress and strain.

691
00:41:35,075 --> 00:41:38,287
I was worried about my children
and its effects on them,

692
00:41:38,370 --> 00:41:41,415
and I wanted him
to quit doing youth programs.

693
00:41:45,836 --> 00:41:49,798
But it was like he really didn't know
what else he could do.

694
00:41:53,928 --> 00:41:56,055
[Steve] I've always had a gift
for working with kids.

695
00:41:57,598 --> 00:41:59,558
I can understand them. I've been there.

696
00:42:00,518 --> 00:42:04,021
They wanna tell me about their problems,
I'll say, "Okay, let's compare, pal."

697
00:42:04,730 --> 00:42:08,025
You wanna talk about a life, a rough life?
Let's go through it.

698
00:42:08,692 --> 00:42:11,403
And I've been able to overcome that.
So can you.

699
00:42:14,240 --> 00:42:17,785
[Debbie] This is Steve when he was
maybe four or five years old.

700
00:42:18,911 --> 00:42:20,246
That's Inez.

701
00:42:20,788 --> 00:42:22,540
[somber string music playing]

702
00:42:25,751 --> 00:42:27,294
[Debbie] When he was a baby,

703
00:42:27,378 --> 00:42:30,965
he was initially given up
by his father and mother,

704
00:42:31,048 --> 00:42:34,969
and he was adopted
by a couple named Troy and Inez.

705
00:42:37,972 --> 00:42:39,598
She was devastated

706
00:42:41,016 --> 00:42:44,979
when his natural mother and father
took him back

707
00:42:45,062 --> 00:42:47,147
at about two years old, I think.

708
00:42:49,358 --> 00:42:52,111
[interviewer] What's your background
and your training for this?

709
00:42:53,487 --> 00:42:54,363
[Steve sighs]

710
00:42:54,947 --> 00:42:58,075
It varies. I'm a graduate of
the School of Hard Knocks mostly,

711
00:42:58,158 --> 00:43:00,035
just where I've come from and my own life.

712
00:43:00,536 --> 00:43:03,789
My mother was a heroin addict,
spent time in prison.

713
00:43:03,872 --> 00:43:05,583
She was killed when I was 17.

714
00:43:06,083 --> 00:43:07,876
My father, he had a pretty hot temper.

715
00:43:08,377 --> 00:43:10,546
His way of handling problems
was to smack you around.

716
00:43:10,629 --> 00:43:12,756
He struggled through junior high
and high school.

717
00:43:14,258 --> 00:43:15,384
It wasn't easy.

718
00:43:16,635 --> 00:43:19,763
He didn't really wanna go
into his dad's concrete business,

719
00:43:19,847 --> 00:43:21,599
so he joined the Air Force.

720
00:43:23,684 --> 00:43:29,481
It changed his life and made him become
the confident person that he became.

721
00:43:32,026 --> 00:43:35,738
The combination of the boot training
and the survival experience

722
00:43:35,821 --> 00:43:38,157
and all the things that he experienced
in the Air Force,

723
00:43:38,240 --> 00:43:43,287
those things helped him mature
and become a more responsible person.

724
00:43:43,370 --> 00:43:45,456
And so he really believed

725
00:43:45,539 --> 00:43:49,001
that it was a good way
to help young people

726
00:43:49,793 --> 00:43:54,089
that would build their self-confidence
and help them make better choices in life.

727
00:43:54,173 --> 00:43:56,175
[somber music continues]

728
00:43:59,637 --> 00:44:01,639
[inaudible speech]

729
00:44:04,141 --> 00:44:07,478
[Debbie] But now that the court case
was over, he'd been acquitted,

730
00:44:09,438 --> 00:44:13,859
I wanted him to find some other way
to help provide for the family.

731
00:44:17,237 --> 00:44:18,739
-[interviewer] And did he?
-[Debbie] No.

732
00:44:19,698 --> 00:44:20,532
No.

733
00:44:22,826 --> 00:44:24,286
[mysterious music playing]

734
00:44:24,370 --> 00:44:29,667
The rate of violent crimes by juveniles
in the United States jumped more than 25%

735
00:44:29,750 --> 00:44:30,918
in the last decade.

736
00:44:31,001 --> 00:44:33,754
[sheriff] I smell marijuana.
My nose don't lie.

737
00:44:36,882 --> 00:44:40,636
Once you got into the '90s,
parents were still struggling with,

738
00:44:41,220 --> 00:44:42,638
"What do I do with this kid?"

739
00:44:42,721 --> 00:44:45,599
It seems to be definitely true.
Kids are smoking a lot of pot.

740
00:44:45,683 --> 00:44:47,976
Maybe as much as they did
back in the old days.

741
00:44:48,060 --> 00:44:50,688
[Debbie] Steve knew
that wilderness programs

742
00:44:50,771 --> 00:44:53,440
could still help so many families,

743
00:44:54,024 --> 00:44:56,402
but everywhere he tried to go,

744
00:44:56,902 --> 00:45:00,197
the social services department
would shut him down.

745
00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:02,032
He has basically been blacklisted.

746
00:45:03,367 --> 00:45:05,911
But Cartisano, I think, took pleasure

747
00:45:05,994 --> 00:45:08,997
from always being able
to outsmart the authorities

748
00:45:09,081 --> 00:45:12,668
and respin it in the next location
where nobody knows his name.

749
00:45:12,751 --> 00:45:15,045
Hi, guys. How ya doing?
I knew you'd be here.

750
00:45:15,129 --> 00:45:18,215
So, eventually,
he went to the Virgin Islands.

751
00:45:18,298 --> 00:45:20,259
I believe on Saint Thomas.

752
00:45:20,342 --> 00:45:22,344
[mysterious music continues]

753
00:45:25,305 --> 00:45:27,933
[Chris] As a reporter, I'm like,
"I'm gonna try to catch you."

754
00:45:28,016 --> 00:45:30,894
"I'm gonna try," because
the courts weren't doing anything.

755
00:45:30,978 --> 00:45:33,522
The only court we had
was the court of public opinion.

756
00:45:34,898 --> 00:45:36,608
You turn one rock over,

757
00:45:36,692 --> 00:45:39,153
there's another rock to turn over
underneath that.

758
00:45:40,863 --> 00:45:44,950
"Stephen Cartisano, whose Challenger Utah
Wilderness Therapy Program was outlawed

759
00:45:45,033 --> 00:45:48,412
after a girl under his care
died in the desert

760
00:45:48,495 --> 00:45:50,205
is back in business."

761
00:45:50,289 --> 00:45:54,418
"Now, he's running a program
known as Health Care America."

762
00:45:54,918 --> 00:45:56,587
He's still doing it.

763
00:46:00,132 --> 00:46:03,552
[Debbie] When we first met,
he was studying film, actually,

764
00:46:05,053 --> 00:46:09,933
so he used his background
to help him make a sales video.

765
00:46:11,393 --> 00:46:15,856
[Chris] He created a really nice,
well-produced video with actors.

766
00:46:17,149 --> 00:46:19,777
[woman] Usually, the kind of rebellion
you get the first few days

767
00:46:19,860 --> 00:46:22,112
is a real subtle rebellion, if you will.

768
00:46:22,196 --> 00:46:24,615
They're, uh, just kind of slow.

769
00:46:24,698 --> 00:46:27,659
They drag their feet.
They just don't wanna make it go smoothly.

770
00:46:27,743 --> 00:46:32,331
Instead of hiking, this was putting kids
on boats, I remember?

771
00:46:32,414 --> 00:46:33,832
Right? That's what it was.

772
00:46:33,916 --> 00:46:35,334
[boy] Hey, what are you doing?

773
00:46:35,834 --> 00:46:37,669
-Hey, calm down, Dan.
-You take the ****.

774
00:46:37,753 --> 00:46:39,296
-What are you doing? Huh?
-Dan!

775
00:46:40,464 --> 00:46:41,590
I was like, "Wait."

776
00:46:41,673 --> 00:46:45,969
Undeterred from the fact
he just got acquitted

777
00:46:46,053 --> 00:46:51,016
for negligent homicide
of a 16-year-old girl in his care,

778
00:46:51,725 --> 00:46:54,228
he did what? You're kidding, right?

779
00:46:54,311 --> 00:46:55,145
[man] Dan!

780
00:46:55,229 --> 00:46:57,231
[woman] Naturally,
in a program of this nature,

781
00:46:57,314 --> 00:46:59,817
there are gonna be kids
that are more aggressive than others.

782
00:46:59,900 --> 00:47:02,820
Dan, in particular,
was one that was very aggressive.

783
00:47:02,903 --> 00:47:07,616
Steve just takes it to the next level
and says, "I'm gonna charge even more."

784
00:47:07,699 --> 00:47:11,495
The concept had morphed
from the stark Utah desert

785
00:47:11,578 --> 00:47:13,831
and learning survival skills

786
00:47:13,914 --> 00:47:20,087
to a little more like a pleasure cruise
in the Caribbean.

787
00:47:20,170 --> 00:47:23,298
[Steve] I'll watch ya. I'll help ya.
But I'm not gonna do it for ya.

788
00:47:23,799 --> 00:47:26,426
If you don't put it together right,
you have to suffer with it.

789
00:47:27,427 --> 00:47:30,681
[Chris] They may land
and anchor somewhere,

790
00:47:30,764 --> 00:47:32,850
and they get off the boat a little bit,

791
00:47:32,933 --> 00:47:35,727
but nine times out of ten,
it's nobody else around.

792
00:47:35,811 --> 00:47:37,729
You know the rules. We hike together--

793
00:47:37,813 --> 00:47:40,858
-[boy] We don't need them to eat.
-We eat together. Yes, that's the rules.

794
00:47:40,941 --> 00:47:46,947
He was able to attract some of the most
affluent families in American history.

795
00:47:47,030 --> 00:47:48,240
The Rockefellers.

796
00:47:48,323 --> 00:47:51,118
The grandson
of the late governor of Arkansas,

797
00:47:51,201 --> 00:47:52,536
they sent him there.

798
00:47:52,619 --> 00:47:56,832
All believing that
this was a legitimate, credible program

799
00:47:56,915 --> 00:47:58,709
that helped kids get centered,

800
00:47:58,792 --> 00:48:02,212
they came back respectful
and as good as new.

801
00:48:02,296 --> 00:48:05,757
We just had to deal with it in a very
straightforward and controlled fashion.

802
00:48:06,425 --> 00:48:08,135
It's almost something
we had to go through.

803
00:48:08,802 --> 00:48:11,805
And it turned out all right.
We ended up becoming very close.

804
00:48:15,225 --> 00:48:19,438
I was seeing a doctor,
and he brought it up to my…

805
00:48:19,521 --> 00:48:20,981
I think it was my mom.

806
00:48:21,773 --> 00:48:22,608
Um…

807
00:48:23,650 --> 00:48:27,779
And we ended up
getting the Health Care America video.

808
00:48:27,863 --> 00:48:29,615
[Steve] What do you think
you really wanna do?

809
00:48:30,741 --> 00:48:32,951
I don't know.
I just want some freedom or something.

810
00:48:33,994 --> 00:48:36,955
[Steve] The key to therapy
with a young person is relationship,

811
00:48:37,039 --> 00:48:38,916
and unless they have that relationship…

812
00:48:38,999 --> 00:48:41,126
[man] The movie itself
was very persuasive.

813
00:48:41,209 --> 00:48:43,003
[Steve] …achieve
all that they might otherwise.

814
00:48:43,921 --> 00:48:47,507
[man] During his teenage years,
Adam was just totally out of control.

815
00:48:47,591 --> 00:48:49,760
He couldn't stand dealing with his mother.

816
00:48:49,843 --> 00:48:52,346
I think a couple of times,
he threw some knives at her.

817
00:48:52,429 --> 00:48:53,263
I remember that.

818
00:48:55,682 --> 00:48:57,517
[Adam] I was an angry kid,

819
00:48:57,601 --> 00:49:01,897
and I think I used being adopted
as an excuse to be that way.

820
00:49:02,606 --> 00:49:05,108
We were basically desperate
and had to do something.

821
00:49:05,609 --> 00:49:07,778
All of you, I think, know why you're here.

822
00:49:07,861 --> 00:49:10,489
You haven't been taking responsibility
for your own actions.

823
00:49:10,572 --> 00:49:12,240
Now it's time that you learn that.

824
00:49:12,824 --> 00:49:17,371
I needed some kind of guidance in my life,
'cause I really had none.

825
00:49:17,454 --> 00:49:18,956
My dad worked all the time.

826
00:49:19,039 --> 00:49:21,041
[somber music playing]

827
00:49:23,210 --> 00:49:25,170
[Adam] So I flew into Saint Thomas.

828
00:49:28,548 --> 00:49:31,134
I was ready for something different.

829
00:49:31,635 --> 00:49:36,598
I was ready to be better,
to work on myself.

830
00:49:39,893 --> 00:49:44,523
For the next six and a half months,
the program was definitely a game changer.

831
00:49:46,024 --> 00:49:47,776
It pretty much changed everything.

832
00:49:52,364 --> 00:49:55,909
[Larry] First time I actually met Steve
was when I went to Costa Rica.

833
00:49:55,993 --> 00:49:57,703
Adam, he'd been down there a while.

834
00:49:57,786 --> 00:50:01,248
We hadn't seen him, and they thought
it may be good to come visit him.

835
00:50:04,042 --> 00:50:06,586
[Steve] What would you say to your dad
if he were here right now?

836
00:50:06,670 --> 00:50:07,963
[Adam] I'd give him a big hug.

837
00:50:08,046 --> 00:50:10,507
-[Steve] Better turn around.
-[Larry] Turn around. I'm here.

838
00:50:15,262 --> 00:50:16,346
[indistinct speech]

839
00:50:18,015 --> 00:50:19,391
[Adam crying]

840
00:50:24,312 --> 00:50:27,774
[Adam sobs]

841
00:50:29,651 --> 00:50:31,486
I mean, it's very emotional.

842
00:50:33,071 --> 00:50:34,156
[crying on video]

843
00:50:34,865 --> 00:50:40,162
I'm… I'm not a real emotional person,
but that… that really got my emotions.

844
00:50:41,413 --> 00:50:42,748
[Adam cries]

845
00:50:43,498 --> 00:50:44,958
Thought I'd come for a visit.

846
00:50:53,842 --> 00:50:55,844
[somber music playing]

847
00:51:02,726 --> 00:51:05,937
[Nadine] Most people I talk to
who've been through these experiences…

848
00:51:06,021 --> 00:51:07,481
[Adam sobs]

849
00:51:09,524 --> 00:51:14,446
[Nadine] …you can't talk about it
where you're not re-traumatized by it

850
00:51:15,947 --> 00:51:18,408
for at least five years.

851
00:51:23,622 --> 00:51:24,873
[Adam cries]

852
00:51:24,956 --> 00:51:28,126
Yeah, you might be a spoiled kid
complaining, but nobody cares.

853
00:51:28,210 --> 00:51:30,837
If your own parent doesn't care about you,

854
00:51:31,630 --> 00:51:32,589
nobody cares.

855
00:51:33,632 --> 00:51:36,885
Like, who sends their kid
to something like that?

856
00:51:40,889 --> 00:51:43,058
I mean, my parents came to pick me up,

857
00:51:43,141 --> 00:51:46,520
and my mother didn't wanna get close to me
'cause I smelled.

858
00:51:46,603 --> 00:51:47,479
We got in the car.

859
00:51:47,562 --> 00:51:50,565
She rolled the window down,
like, "Oh, she stinks."

860
00:51:50,649 --> 00:51:53,568
You know, it was just like,
"What the fuck?"

861
00:51:53,652 --> 00:51:55,570
Like, "What is wrong with you people?"

862
00:51:56,113 --> 00:51:58,532
[Larry] I'll never forget
when you graduated from that program.

863
00:51:58,615 --> 00:52:01,326
You had been clean for a period of time.

864
00:52:02,244 --> 00:52:03,078
Yeah.

865
00:52:03,161 --> 00:52:05,580
Got back to Atlanta,
and it just, you know…

866
00:52:05,664 --> 00:52:08,166
You know, it took about a week
before it started all over.

867
00:52:08,250 --> 00:52:12,921
No, I… I think it was about a month,
and then I… I went back to my old ways.

868
00:52:13,004 --> 00:52:15,090
Yeah, so not a lot changed.

869
00:52:16,299 --> 00:52:19,761
Quite frankly, I probably should have
left you there for the rest of your life.

870
00:52:19,845 --> 00:52:20,971
It was, you know--

871
00:52:21,054 --> 00:52:23,765
-For the rest of my life?
-[Larry] Yes, in the jungles.

872
00:52:27,394 --> 00:52:29,437
[Adam sobs]

873
00:52:39,739 --> 00:52:44,369
[Chris] My first lead was
hearing from a research station

874
00:52:44,452 --> 00:52:45,912
on the island of Saint John.

875
00:52:48,707 --> 00:52:54,087
What they told me is that a bunch of kids
and a few adults came up on a boat

876
00:52:54,588 --> 00:52:58,133
and had told them they were there
to do some training

877
00:52:58,216 --> 00:53:02,179
for an organization
called Health Care America.

878
00:53:03,889 --> 00:53:08,143
But then they started noticing
that the kids were very disheveled,

879
00:53:08,226 --> 00:53:11,438
and there didn't seem
to be any structure there.

880
00:53:12,606 --> 00:53:14,566
So the head of the research station there

881
00:53:14,649 --> 00:53:18,862
called the US Virgin Islands
bureau of business licensing,

882
00:53:19,738 --> 00:53:22,407
and there was no such thing
as Health Care America

883
00:53:22,991 --> 00:53:25,744
licensed to do business
in the US Virgin Islands.

884
00:53:28,747 --> 00:53:33,126
This was a completely covert operation.
There were no permits issued.

885
00:53:33,210 --> 00:53:35,837
There was
no law enforcement acknowledgment.

886
00:53:35,921 --> 00:53:38,965
There was no public health inspections
going on.

887
00:53:39,049 --> 00:53:42,302
They just kinda came in, out of the blue,

888
00:53:42,385 --> 00:53:47,682
dropped anchor, and started doing
"wilderness therapy" in the tropics.

889
00:53:47,766 --> 00:53:49,142
[tense music playing]

890
00:53:49,226 --> 00:53:52,646
[Chris] And so,
as the authorities start closing in,

891
00:53:53,188 --> 00:53:55,440
Cartisano decides
it's time to make an exit.

892
00:53:56,358 --> 00:53:58,360
[tense music continues]

893
00:53:59,486 --> 00:54:02,739
[Chris] The captain sails
from Saint John to another island

894
00:54:02,822 --> 00:54:04,950
that's pretty much almost uninhabited.

895
00:54:06,785 --> 00:54:10,413
These kids,
they don't really know what's going on.

896
00:54:10,497 --> 00:54:15,835
They truly are like these prisoners
on this floating therapy camp

897
00:54:15,919 --> 00:54:17,545
that has zero therapy.

898
00:54:19,214 --> 00:54:23,385
And they're out there in the ocean
for months at a time.

899
00:54:23,969 --> 00:54:24,928
Hi, Dad. We love you.

900
00:54:25,011 --> 00:54:28,014
It won't be the same at Christmastime
without you here.

901
00:54:28,098 --> 00:54:29,140
We miss you very much.

902
00:54:29,224 --> 00:54:31,226
-[kid] Bye, Dad!
-Bye! Bye!

903
00:54:31,309 --> 00:54:33,061
[tense music continues]

904
00:54:34,271 --> 00:54:36,690
[Ashley] I was in Health Care America
for nine months.

905
00:54:37,190 --> 00:54:39,067
We never had any idea where we were going

906
00:54:39,150 --> 00:54:42,612
or how long we were going to be there
or what the plan was.

907
00:54:44,072 --> 00:54:46,866
And it seemed like we were always trying
to get somewhere

908
00:54:46,950 --> 00:54:49,452
just going from island to island to island

909
00:54:49,536 --> 00:54:53,039
and, you know, just staying long enough
to get essentials.

910
00:54:55,250 --> 00:54:59,587
We went from the Virgin Islands
to Puerto Rico, Mona Island,

911
00:54:59,671 --> 00:55:01,298
[camera clicking]

912
00:55:01,381 --> 00:55:02,882
Dominican Republic,

913
00:55:04,718 --> 00:55:07,220
Haiti, and then we went to Jamaica.

914
00:55:07,721 --> 00:55:11,558
And then we went to Venezuela
and Cartagena, Colombia.

915
00:55:13,101 --> 00:55:16,521
[Chris] These are not places
that are close together.

916
00:55:16,604 --> 00:55:19,357
They're literally all over the Caribbean.

917
00:55:24,237 --> 00:55:26,531
[Ashley] I was just scared
of what was going to happen.

918
00:55:28,033 --> 00:55:30,118
I just… It's really hard to explain.

919
00:55:34,372 --> 00:55:36,875
Never knowing when you're going home. Um…

920
00:55:37,709 --> 00:55:40,086
Just feeling it was going on forever.

921
00:55:43,089 --> 00:55:44,007
[sniffs]

922
00:55:45,675 --> 00:55:50,347
Just feeling like you're never going to be
good enough to go home.

923
00:55:56,144 --> 00:56:00,440
[Chris] I end up finding out
that the program is down to just five kids

924
00:56:00,523 --> 00:56:03,526
on a catamaran.

925
00:56:03,610 --> 00:56:08,073
And after several weeks,
they're within landfall of Puerto Rico.

926
00:56:10,408 --> 00:56:13,411
Several of the kids decide,
"We gotta get out of this."

927
00:56:14,162 --> 00:56:17,457
They were trying to find somebody
to believe them, to talk to,

928
00:56:17,540 --> 00:56:20,460
like, "Hey, we just escaped. Help us!"

929
00:56:21,711 --> 00:56:25,715
The captain is so tired
of these kids escaping

930
00:56:26,925 --> 00:56:30,845
that he decides,
"I'm gonna tie these kids up in a car,

931
00:56:30,929 --> 00:56:32,639
put nooses around their neck,

932
00:56:32,722 --> 00:56:35,475
and tie the rope to the car
so the kids don't get away."

933
00:56:35,558 --> 00:56:37,811
[sirens wailing]

934
00:56:37,894 --> 00:56:40,355
The Puerto Rican authorities
come swooping in,

935
00:56:40,855 --> 00:56:45,985
thinking that it's some sort of,
like, organized crime, you know, hit.

936
00:56:48,196 --> 00:56:50,573
The kids went back home
and started telling their parents,

937
00:56:50,657 --> 00:56:52,450
"Do you know what you just sent me to?"

938
00:56:54,577 --> 00:56:57,747
The authorities get involved,
the Puerto Rican Public Health.

939
00:56:57,831 --> 00:57:02,127
Bottom line, no permit,
no authorization to do what they're doing,

940
00:57:02,210 --> 00:57:05,839
and Cartisano has done his usual
"tough love 'em and leave 'em."

941
00:57:05,922 --> 00:57:06,965
Nowhere in the picture.

942
00:57:08,591 --> 00:57:12,470
So from a reporting standpoint,
everybody thinks he's gonna go dark.

943
00:57:12,554 --> 00:57:14,389
He's gonna find another vocation.

944
00:57:14,472 --> 00:57:16,474
[somber music playing]

945
00:57:18,101 --> 00:57:19,602
[Debbie] We'd lost everything.

946
00:57:20,145 --> 00:57:22,397
Money that was coming to him
for the program

947
00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:24,190
that he was using for the program,

948
00:57:25,150 --> 00:57:27,861
you know, I don't recall seeing any of it.

949
00:57:28,403 --> 00:57:32,115
I knew that things were getting
pretty bad financially.

950
00:57:32,615 --> 00:57:36,411
Um, you know, "We can't buy that.
We can't do this. We can't do that."

951
00:57:36,494 --> 00:57:39,164
And at the time,
I didn't understand as much.

952
00:57:39,247 --> 00:57:41,583
Yeah, we… we… we had nothing.

953
00:57:42,792 --> 00:57:44,002
My dad was brilliant.

954
00:57:44,085 --> 00:57:47,088
He's literally the smartest person
I've ever met.

955
00:57:47,172 --> 00:57:49,591
Um, he could've done so many things.

956
00:57:50,800 --> 00:57:56,222
So I was just like, "Dad,
please, like, do something different."

957
00:57:58,892 --> 00:58:01,811
I was angry at him because I wanted him
to do something else

958
00:58:01,895 --> 00:58:03,313
so we could have a normal life.

959
00:58:03,396 --> 00:58:05,565
I just wanted our family to be normal.

960
00:58:09,777 --> 00:58:11,112
[Debbie] That's real good.

961
00:58:12,489 --> 00:58:13,740
Yeah. Hi.

962
00:58:14,908 --> 00:58:16,784
-Hi.
-Hi.

963
00:58:16,868 --> 00:58:19,078
[Debbie] Can you look at the dinosaur
for me up there?

964
00:58:19,954 --> 00:58:21,039
Yeah, that's good.

965
00:58:21,122 --> 00:58:23,750
[Debbie] When David was in second grade,
he was shy.

966
00:58:24,542 --> 00:58:26,753
[Debbie] Can you turn around
and face the wall? Over here.

967
00:58:26,836 --> 00:58:29,839
[Debbie] But then, when he turned 12,
he started hanging out

968
00:58:29,923 --> 00:58:33,801
with kids that liked to drink and party
and smoke marijuana and stuff,

969
00:58:34,552 --> 00:58:35,720
and he quickly…

970
00:58:35,803 --> 00:58:40,099
I think he discovered
that his shyness would go away.

971
00:58:43,603 --> 00:58:47,232
[Catie] He started using
really, really heavily. Um…

972
00:58:48,525 --> 00:58:50,860
He didn't have, like, a stopping…

973
00:58:52,070 --> 00:58:54,906
There was… There was no threshold
for Dave, right?

974
00:58:54,989 --> 00:58:59,077
Like, he wanted to do as much
as he could all the time, no matter what.

975
00:59:00,912 --> 00:59:04,207
[Debbie] It just spiraled down.
He got heavily into drugs.

976
00:59:05,250 --> 00:59:08,920
Oh, it was really hard.
I was working full-time.

977
00:59:09,003 --> 00:59:12,423
Uh, Steve was doing odd jobs
here and there.

978
00:59:14,509 --> 00:59:17,428
[Chris] Steve Cartisano
was still convinced

979
00:59:17,512 --> 00:59:21,432
that wilderness therapy
was a good business.

980
00:59:21,975 --> 00:59:24,769
So Steve connects
with some of these businessmen

981
00:59:24,852 --> 00:59:28,106
who want to start a program in Samoa.

982
00:59:29,399 --> 00:59:31,818
Steve has become a consultant.

983
00:59:32,402 --> 00:59:36,447
However, the legacy of Steve Cartisano
was catching up with Steve Cartisano,

984
00:59:36,531 --> 00:59:41,160
so he would introduce himself to parents
as Steve Michaels.

985
00:59:44,497 --> 00:59:49,168
Steve was able to get
the program in Samoa up and going.

986
00:59:49,252 --> 00:59:53,464
So we made the determination
that we needed to send David.

987
00:59:55,883 --> 00:59:59,012
So we actually sent two men down there
to kidnap him,

988
00:59:59,095 --> 01:00:03,099
just like we had other students,
and we sent him to Samoa.

989
01:00:03,182 --> 01:00:05,685
-[dogs barking]
-[engine revs]

990
01:00:08,313 --> 01:00:10,148
[man 1] What is this?
This is the entrance?

991
01:00:10,231 --> 01:00:13,026
[man 2] This is
the quote, unquote "guard."

992
01:00:14,193 --> 01:00:17,280
Makes sure no people come in
that aren't supposed to.

993
01:00:18,740 --> 01:00:20,033
There's a big sign up there.

994
01:00:20,950 --> 01:00:23,703
[man 1] That's right. That's the sign.
"Pacific Coast Academy."

995
01:00:23,786 --> 01:00:27,081
A far cry different than what the brochure
would lead you to believe.

996
01:00:29,042 --> 01:00:32,545
[man] It was sold to my mom in a brochure.
It was a really nice, beautiful brochure.

997
01:00:32,629 --> 01:00:34,130
It looks like you're going on vacation.

998
01:00:34,631 --> 01:00:38,217
It was about 25 to 30,000 dollars,
depending on the kid.

999
01:00:39,093 --> 01:00:40,803
[interviewer] How did your mom afford it?

1000
01:00:40,887 --> 01:00:45,808
Uh, she sold our house that we lived in,
so pretty major transformation for us.

1001
01:00:48,061 --> 01:00:49,729
[interviewer] What were
the other kids like?

1002
01:00:49,812 --> 01:00:53,107
[Kurt] Uh, I actually knew one of 'em
when I was there. Amber.

1003
01:00:53,191 --> 01:00:56,903
She was, uh, somebody
that I knew from Costa Mesa.

1004
01:00:56,986 --> 01:00:59,572
We had mutual friends together,
and we were on good terms.

1005
01:00:59,656 --> 01:01:03,451
We looked at each other and were like,
"Holy shit! How did this happen?"

1006
01:01:03,534 --> 01:01:09,165
"How did somebody that I knew from home
end up here in Samoa of all places?"

1007
01:01:10,667 --> 01:01:13,628
I was happy. It was a relief.

1008
01:01:16,214 --> 01:01:18,091
[interviewer] Did you ever
meet Steve Cartisano?

1009
01:01:19,759 --> 01:01:20,593
Once.

1010
01:01:22,679 --> 01:01:25,682
He just made a pop-up to check on his kid,

1011
01:01:25,765 --> 01:01:27,517
which is strange

1012
01:01:27,600 --> 01:01:30,103
that he was sending his own kid
to one of his camps.

1013
01:01:31,813 --> 01:01:33,231
[Kurt] Steve Cartisano was like,

1014
01:01:33,314 --> 01:01:35,983
"You should help other kids
by teaching them what you know,"

1015
01:01:36,067 --> 01:01:38,486
and I was like,
"You mean like junior staff?"

1016
01:01:38,569 --> 01:01:41,030
He's like, "Yeah."
Everyone wants to be junior staff.

1017
01:01:41,114 --> 01:01:44,826
You're at the top of it.
You get better treatment, better food.

1018
01:01:44,909 --> 01:01:47,161
I'd be the one delegating what to do, and…

1019
01:01:49,205 --> 01:01:51,165
forcing people to do it
if they didn't wanna do it.

1020
01:01:53,751 --> 01:01:58,214
This man was straight-up offering me
an easier time. "Yeah, I'll… I'll do it."

1021
01:02:00,216 --> 01:02:02,468
My dad was super, super hopeful.

1022
01:02:03,010 --> 01:02:04,637
Dave was doing really well.

1023
01:02:04,721 --> 01:02:07,140
My dad was working,
and it was more consistent.

1024
01:02:08,850 --> 01:02:12,437
Things were really good, and then,
of course, just like always, things went…

1025
01:02:12,520 --> 01:02:13,521
[mimics explosion]

1026
01:02:20,069 --> 01:02:23,281
[Chris] I got contacted by an attorney

1027
01:02:23,364 --> 01:02:25,116
who had a videotape

1028
01:02:25,199 --> 01:02:28,578
made by a father
and a son who was in the program

1029
01:02:28,661 --> 01:02:30,079
that they wanted me to see.

1030
01:02:32,457 --> 01:02:37,211
So I went and visited the attorney
in her office.

1031
01:02:38,171 --> 01:02:42,508
They dim the lights,
and the TV kinda flickers on,

1032
01:02:42,592 --> 01:02:44,927
and it's a really poor quality videotape,

1033
01:02:45,011 --> 01:02:47,472
but it was obvious
it was shot in the jungle.

1034
01:02:48,097 --> 01:02:53,186
And I think my first impression was

1035
01:02:54,020 --> 01:02:59,901
it was like something you would
maybe see for a Vietnamese POW camp.

1036
01:03:02,069 --> 01:03:06,949
Oh, yeah, I spent a month and a half
in isolation for being a bad influence.

1037
01:03:07,033 --> 01:03:08,868
They can't compare. I got the record.

1038
01:03:08,951 --> 01:03:11,412
Three and a half months, baby.
Three and a half months.

1039
01:03:11,496 --> 01:03:13,289
You couldn't even tell
that they were kids.

1040
01:03:13,372 --> 01:03:15,249
They were emaciated. They were dirty.

1041
01:03:15,750 --> 01:03:20,129
They were covered head to toe
with insect bites.

1042
01:03:23,049 --> 01:03:26,135
No matter how bad I am,
I don't deserve to get beat.

1043
01:03:26,219 --> 01:03:27,261
Yes, me too.

1044
01:03:27,970 --> 01:03:30,723
They were really, literally,
living like animals.

1045
01:03:31,516 --> 01:03:33,935
Um, I've been here about almost a year.

1046
01:03:34,018 --> 01:03:37,438
I've been hit about seven…
I've been hit about seven times here.

1047
01:03:38,231 --> 01:03:41,567
-Mom, Dad, I wanna come home. Thank you.
-[interviewer] You're 18?

1048
01:03:41,651 --> 01:03:44,779
I'm 18. It's Illegal for them to keep me
here, but they refuse to let me go.

1049
01:03:44,862 --> 01:03:47,281
[tense music playing]

1050
01:03:48,574 --> 01:03:50,701
This is my bed, and this is Brandon's bed.

1051
01:03:51,744 --> 01:03:55,456
This is rocks and a little bit of hay.

1052
01:03:55,540 --> 01:03:59,126
The place was nothing when I got there.
It was a clearing in the jungle.

1053
01:03:59,210 --> 01:04:02,338
So the place was being built
by the other kids.

1054
01:04:02,421 --> 01:04:06,467
So we were building roads.
We were digging ditches to put in pipes.

1055
01:04:06,551 --> 01:04:08,302
We were putting in the sewers.

1056
01:04:08,386 --> 01:04:11,556
We were putting everything,
all the general infrastructure needed

1057
01:04:11,639 --> 01:04:15,226
in order for it to become something
that'll make the landowners money.

1058
01:04:15,309 --> 01:04:16,811
It's a forced labor camp.

1059
01:04:16,894 --> 01:04:18,980
[interviewer] When you ran away,
what happened?

1060
01:04:19,063 --> 01:04:22,900
They beat the crap out of us and made us
stay up all night on our hands…

1061
01:04:22,984 --> 01:04:25,236
Or on our knees
with our hands above our head.

1062
01:04:27,238 --> 01:04:29,740
[Chris] The thing that struck me
after seeing that video

1063
01:04:29,824 --> 01:04:35,246
was that this was the darkest chapter of
the whole Cartisano saga that I remember.

1064
01:04:35,997 --> 01:04:38,666
It was a much more sinister kinda feeling.

1065
01:04:38,749 --> 01:04:44,463
The abuse, the situation,
the conditions… seemed a lot worse.

1066
01:04:47,550 --> 01:04:49,260
Hi. I'm Amber Michelle.

1067
01:04:49,343 --> 01:04:51,637
Um… Do you want them to know
how long I've been here?

1068
01:04:52,138 --> 01:04:55,057
-[interviewer] Yeah.
-I've been here for almost 16 months.

1069
01:04:55,766 --> 01:04:58,060
Uh, about… Around this time last year,

1070
01:04:58,144 --> 01:05:01,230
I was hog-tied,

1071
01:05:02,732 --> 01:05:04,609
slammed down, and…

1072
01:05:04,692 --> 01:05:08,029
Shit! Staff's listening.
They're gonna come here right now.

1073
01:05:08,112 --> 01:05:09,113
[interviewer] Don't worry.

1074
01:05:12,450 --> 01:05:14,452
[Amber] So we were cleaning tables.

1075
01:05:15,077 --> 01:05:17,538
I made it very clear that I was done.

1076
01:05:18,539 --> 01:05:23,878
And I was then called
into the head guy of the camp

1077
01:05:23,961 --> 01:05:25,171
at that particular time.

1078
01:05:25,254 --> 01:05:28,424
He told me I was going to iso,
to isolation.

1079
01:05:28,507 --> 01:05:32,428
And I looked at him flat-out and said,
"No, I'm not. That's not…"

1080
01:05:32,511 --> 01:05:35,139
I was like, "I've done nothing wrong.
I'm not going."

1081
01:05:35,222 --> 01:05:39,518
So, all of a sudden,
there was four of the students.

1082
01:05:41,020 --> 01:05:44,106
They flipped me over
to where I was face down.

1083
01:05:45,566 --> 01:05:48,361
Then they pulled my arms back
and tied my arms.

1084
01:05:49,195 --> 01:05:52,657
They just decided to go ahead
and tie 'em to my feet too.

1085
01:05:55,618 --> 01:05:58,579
They didn't have staff doing it
because they knew it was child abuse,

1086
01:05:59,080 --> 01:06:00,581
so they had students do it.

1087
01:06:03,876 --> 01:06:06,253
[interviewer] When you say "they,"
who do you mean?

1088
01:06:13,386 --> 01:06:14,220
Kurt.

1089
01:06:19,100 --> 01:06:23,145
I remember tying her up
to the pole in the hut.

1090
01:06:24,855 --> 01:06:27,817
I wasn't part of the initial hog-tie part.

1091
01:06:27,900 --> 01:06:30,486
I was with her for many hours,

1092
01:06:30,569 --> 01:06:32,446
and her hands
were turning purple and blue,

1093
01:06:32,530 --> 01:06:34,907
so when it was my turn,
I let her go, you know?

1094
01:06:34,991 --> 01:06:38,452
I released her a little bit,
gave her a bit of motion in her hands,

1095
01:06:38,536 --> 01:06:42,581
and then it got nighttime,
and not a lot of sleep.

1096
01:06:42,665 --> 01:06:44,166
So what are we supposed to do?

1097
01:06:44,250 --> 01:06:47,211
And the staff said, "Throw water on her."

1098
01:06:47,294 --> 01:06:50,131
It started off
with just little mugs of water.

1099
01:06:50,881 --> 01:06:52,425
Then it went to pitchers of water.

1100
01:06:52,508 --> 01:06:54,969
Then it went to five gallons of water
at one time.

1101
01:06:55,594 --> 01:06:59,265
They wouldn't let me breathe
when they were doing it.

1102
01:06:59,348 --> 01:07:00,599
I took no pleasure in that.

1103
01:07:00,683 --> 01:07:04,687
I don't want to do that to somebody,
but we would not have done it

1104
01:07:04,770 --> 01:07:07,857
without somebody
of extremely high position in the staff

1105
01:07:07,940 --> 01:07:09,316
had instructed us to do it.

1106
01:07:09,900 --> 01:07:12,194
When she was tied up,
I was explaining it to her.

1107
01:07:12,278 --> 01:07:15,197
I was like, "This place is full of shit.
It's an absolute scam."

1108
01:07:15,281 --> 01:07:19,076
This should not happen anywhere,
and she knew I wasn't in charge of that,

1109
01:07:19,160 --> 01:07:23,414
so I don't think she personally held
any negative feelings to me.

1110
01:07:24,665 --> 01:07:27,168
[interviewer] How did you feel
towards Kurt for doing that?

1111
01:07:34,467 --> 01:07:35,301
Betrayed.

1112
01:07:38,888 --> 01:07:41,390
Like, how… How could you not tell them no?

1113
01:07:43,392 --> 01:07:48,272
After the two days that I was tied up,
they took me to an isolation place

1114
01:07:48,355 --> 01:07:49,815
called "The Vow."

1115
01:07:49,899 --> 01:07:52,651
It's on the other side of the island,
and when I was there…

1116
01:07:53,152 --> 01:07:56,530
-[interviewer] Did you get beat there?
-I was sexually abused there.

1117
01:08:12,379 --> 01:08:14,840
I already know
that he doesn't wanna hear it, so…

1118
01:08:17,885 --> 01:08:19,762
[sniffs] Um…

1119
01:08:22,973 --> 01:08:26,644
Girls weren't ever sent to this village.
I was the first one.

1120
01:08:28,729 --> 01:08:30,856
So where they had us stay was, uh…

1121
01:08:32,108 --> 01:08:34,443
It was the chief of the village.
Chief Tui.

1122
01:08:37,279 --> 01:08:41,742
One day, when all his family
was gone at church and working,

1123
01:08:42,952 --> 01:08:44,328
it was just me and him there,

1124
01:08:44,411 --> 01:08:46,539
and I didn't have to work
'cause it was Sunday.

1125
01:08:48,582 --> 01:08:49,416
And…

1126
01:08:52,795 --> 01:08:54,421
he started to sexually abuse me.

1127
01:08:54,505 --> 01:08:56,549
[tense pulse beating]

1128
01:08:56,632 --> 01:08:58,134
[Amber] I remember I was sitting.

1129
01:08:59,301 --> 01:09:02,972
He… started to…

1130
01:09:03,556 --> 01:09:08,519
Like, he had his hand on my back
and on my arm, and then started to…

1131
01:09:14,191 --> 01:09:15,651
He started to f…

1132
01:09:18,279 --> 01:09:20,614
Fondling on me, and…

1133
01:09:23,117 --> 01:09:23,951
I…

1134
01:09:26,328 --> 01:09:27,663
I didn't know what to do.

1135
01:09:29,582 --> 01:09:32,126
You know, you… you push away,

1136
01:09:32,209 --> 01:09:34,837
and he's the chief… chief of the village,

1137
01:09:34,920 --> 01:09:38,257
so it's like, you know,
he's got the power.

1138
01:09:49,393 --> 01:09:53,814
A few days later,
I told the head guy of the camp.

1139
01:09:54,982 --> 01:09:59,445
He kind of made it… He made it seem as if
I was blowing things out of proportion.

1140
01:10:00,863 --> 01:10:07,286
And how could I accuse Tui of such acts?

1141
01:10:08,412 --> 01:10:13,000
So much so
that he left me there for longer.

1142
01:10:20,925 --> 01:10:25,721
[Chris] Obviously, the last thing
that Pacific Coast Academy wanted

1143
01:10:25,804 --> 01:10:29,308
was to have a videotape like this taken

1144
01:10:30,434 --> 01:10:32,311
outside of their possession,

1145
01:10:32,394 --> 01:10:34,396
'cause they knew how damning it was.

1146
01:10:36,982 --> 01:10:41,445
And so the parent who made the videotape

1147
01:10:41,528 --> 01:10:43,322
contacted the US Embassy,

1148
01:10:44,240 --> 01:10:47,785
and he told them he needed
to get out of the country with his son

1149
01:10:47,868 --> 01:10:52,790
before the, um, staff at PCA
knew what had happened.

1150
01:10:53,707 --> 01:10:58,545
And the embassy realized
this is bad stuff. This is criminal.

1151
01:10:58,629 --> 01:11:00,714
[dramatic music playing]

1152
01:11:01,465 --> 01:11:03,717
[Chris] So he headed immediately
to the airport,

1153
01:11:03,801 --> 01:11:07,596
and with them was a staff member
from the US Embassy

1154
01:11:07,680 --> 01:11:12,226
who had the videotape
hidden in a briefcase.

1155
01:11:13,560 --> 01:11:15,562
[dramatic music continues]

1156
01:11:17,356 --> 01:11:21,777
The Pacific Coast Academy had contacted
the Samoan authorities at the airport,

1157
01:11:21,860 --> 01:11:24,738
saying, "Don't let him leave
with this videotape."

1158
01:11:24,822 --> 01:11:27,866
They knew
it would not only hurt their business,

1159
01:11:27,950 --> 01:11:30,160
but they told the Samoan authorities

1160
01:11:30,244 --> 01:11:33,664
if this videotape got out,
it would hurt tourism.

1161
01:11:33,747 --> 01:11:35,749
[dramatic music continues]

1162
01:11:36,750 --> 01:11:40,379
[Chris] The Samoan authorities
questioned the father

1163
01:11:41,297 --> 01:11:45,592
and asked him and asked him and asked him
where the tape was.

1164
01:11:46,593 --> 01:11:49,972
And he said, "I already mailed it
to the United States."

1165
01:11:52,182 --> 01:11:53,767
So he gets through security.

1166
01:11:54,476 --> 01:11:57,521
He gets the tape
from the US Embassy official,

1167
01:11:58,022 --> 01:11:59,857
and he makes it out of Samoa.

1168
01:12:03,152 --> 01:12:06,655
[Catie] That's when the news cameras came,
and it kind of got outta hand.

1169
01:12:08,365 --> 01:12:12,786
I remember there being a news helicopter
circling around our house in California.

1170
01:12:12,870 --> 01:12:14,371
Like, right above.

1171
01:12:15,372 --> 01:12:16,749
It was just constant.

1172
01:12:16,832 --> 01:12:18,834
[dramatic music continues]

1173
01:12:27,092 --> 01:12:32,348
His name is attached to something
that he wasn't even a… Like…

1174
01:12:34,767 --> 01:12:36,685
Just pisses me off. Honestly.

1175
01:12:37,936 --> 01:12:41,899
Like, he was barely there. I mean,
he was basically out at that point.

1176
01:12:42,775 --> 01:12:45,444
That's when, I guess,
they went in and got the kids out.

1177
01:12:45,527 --> 01:12:47,529
[dramatic music continues]

1178
01:12:56,830 --> 01:13:00,501
[woman] I was working at the US Embassy
in New Zealand at the time,

1179
01:13:00,584 --> 01:13:02,503
where officials had advised me

1180
01:13:02,586 --> 01:13:05,422
that they had this, um, problem
out at the camp,

1181
01:13:06,006 --> 01:13:10,177
and we need to go
and find out what is going on.

1182
01:13:10,677 --> 01:13:13,055
[dramatic music continues]

1183
01:13:14,848 --> 01:13:18,227
[Mary-Lou] These kids couldn't be left
in that situation.

1184
01:13:20,270 --> 01:13:21,355
[music fades]

1185
01:13:26,193 --> 01:13:28,654
[Mary-Lou] We managed
to gain entry to the camp.

1186
01:13:29,613 --> 01:13:31,448
It was very sparse.

1187
01:13:32,199 --> 01:13:35,619
It was basically just us there,

1188
01:13:35,702 --> 01:13:38,205
and all the children had been removed.

1189
01:13:40,040 --> 01:13:42,751
There was obviously something going on.

1190
01:13:46,755 --> 01:13:52,094
We walked around the perimeter,
and then we heard this noise.

1191
01:13:55,639 --> 01:13:58,308
We went down,
and we found one of the children there.

1192
01:13:58,851 --> 01:14:00,352
He was quite sick,

1193
01:14:01,019 --> 01:14:04,398
and he was very reluctant initially,

1194
01:14:04,481 --> 01:14:08,193
um, probably for fear of retribution,
to say anything to us.

1195
01:14:08,277 --> 01:14:10,028
But then, finally, he told us

1196
01:14:10,112 --> 01:14:13,323
that they had all been
deliberately moved off the camp.

1197
01:14:14,450 --> 01:14:18,495
But we didn't know where.
We had no idea where they could have gone.

1198
01:14:26,420 --> 01:14:30,090
[Amber] It was most definitely a really
weird day from the very beginning.

1199
01:14:32,843 --> 01:14:34,470
Uh, they were nice to us.

1200
01:14:35,095 --> 01:14:37,139
Nicer than… You know, it was strange.

1201
01:14:37,222 --> 01:14:39,349
They sent us to a beach.

1202
01:14:54,698 --> 01:14:57,534
[Mary-Lou] I do remember just going
through the middle of the jungle,

1203
01:14:57,618 --> 01:15:01,705
still not really knowing what
we were going to find when we got there.

1204
01:15:02,498 --> 01:15:05,626
Thinking, "How did they get these kids
through here?"

1205
01:15:09,838 --> 01:15:12,466
[Amber] We were only supposed to be there
for a short period of time.

1206
01:15:14,635 --> 01:15:15,969
And then, all of a sudden…

1207
01:15:18,722 --> 01:15:23,810
black SUVs with blacked-out windows,

1208
01:15:24,603 --> 01:15:26,438
one after the other, just came…

1209
01:15:28,649 --> 01:15:30,567
barreling through where we were.

1210
01:15:33,695 --> 01:15:35,155
I don't know where they came from.

1211
01:15:35,239 --> 01:15:37,449
I just remember
they were there barreling through.

1212
01:15:41,870 --> 01:15:44,206
[Mary-Lou] The children
were down on the beach.

1213
01:15:45,999 --> 01:15:49,836
I remember just looking at them
and thinking, "Oh my goodness."

1214
01:15:55,217 --> 01:15:58,470
[Amber] And somebody popped…
popped out of the van…

1215
01:16:01,765 --> 01:16:04,893
and said that they were
with the American Embassy.

1216
01:16:07,604 --> 01:16:08,689
It had to be fake.

1217
01:16:11,024 --> 01:16:14,611
There's no way that somebody cared enough.

1218
01:16:15,988 --> 01:16:19,491
Especially about me.
That's… There's no way.

1219
01:16:43,640 --> 01:16:48,228
[Chris] This videotape
became the basis for legal action.

1220
01:16:49,521 --> 01:16:50,856
[kids playing]

1221
01:16:50,939 --> 01:16:53,066
[Chris] A grand jury took testimony

1222
01:16:53,150 --> 01:16:55,944
from the kids
who were in Pacific Coast Academy

1223
01:16:56,028 --> 01:16:56,987
and the parents.

1224
01:16:58,780 --> 01:17:03,452
And what's fascinating is
the guy who got the videotape out,

1225
01:17:03,994 --> 01:17:09,041
they ask him, "How could you be so stupid
to send your kid to a program like this?"

1226
01:17:10,208 --> 01:17:15,380
And he pulls out the Pacific Coast Academy
brochure that Steve wrote,

1227
01:17:15,464 --> 01:17:21,970
and he reads what kind of a kid
Pacific Coast Academy is created for.

1228
01:17:22,054 --> 01:17:23,889
And he sets it down, and he says,

1229
01:17:24,723 --> 01:17:28,143
"They just described my son.
That's why I chose it."

1230
01:17:28,977 --> 01:17:32,939
Cartisano knew the emotional touchpoints

1231
01:17:33,023 --> 01:17:37,986
for parents in crisis who literally felt,
"I don't have a choice."

1232
01:17:38,070 --> 01:17:38,987
[camera clicking]

1233
01:17:39,780 --> 01:17:43,825
But Steve was never really
held accountable

1234
01:17:44,785 --> 01:17:46,036
because the world switched,

1235
01:17:46,119 --> 01:17:48,455
9/11 happened, priorities went elsewhere.

1236
01:17:49,373 --> 01:17:53,543
And Steve Cartisano,
despite everything he did,

1237
01:17:53,627 --> 01:17:56,338
he was not really
a national security threat.

1238
01:17:56,421 --> 01:17:57,297
[camera clicking]

1239
01:17:59,675 --> 01:18:03,345
Shortly after Dave got back from Samoa,

1240
01:18:03,428 --> 01:18:06,014
that's when I kind of started
to get out of control.

1241
01:18:06,556 --> 01:18:07,516
Um…

1242
01:18:07,599 --> 01:18:11,228
I mean, I was becoming a wild teenager
at that point.

1243
01:18:12,437 --> 01:18:14,606
I started hanging out
with my brother's friends,

1244
01:18:14,690 --> 01:18:18,193
and then they started using
pretty shortly after, and I followed suit.

1245
01:18:19,403 --> 01:18:22,906
I would literally come home from work,
and my TV would be gone,

1246
01:18:22,989 --> 01:18:24,825
and my VCR would be gone,

1247
01:18:24,908 --> 01:18:28,829
and the snowblower would be missing
out of the garage,

1248
01:18:28,912 --> 01:18:31,415
because they were stealing,

1249
01:18:31,498 --> 01:18:36,128
and, um, you know,
they would take things from the house

1250
01:18:36,211 --> 01:18:38,130
and hock it to pay for their drugs.

1251
01:18:38,213 --> 01:18:41,967
And so now I had two children
heavily using heroin.

1252
01:18:42,050 --> 01:18:45,929
We're talking about kids in a crack house,
or they're running away, out of control.

1253
01:18:46,012 --> 01:18:50,142
And when they're 25, all the excuses
of why they quit high school

1254
01:18:50,225 --> 01:18:52,477
or why they were doing drugs
aren't gonna matter.

1255
01:18:53,061 --> 01:18:55,439
I overdosed in Seattle multiple times.

1256
01:18:56,606 --> 01:18:57,482
Um…

1257
01:18:58,817 --> 01:19:01,236
And then I got
in a really bad car accident

1258
01:19:01,319 --> 01:19:02,821
and got arrested.

1259
01:19:05,282 --> 01:19:07,868
We bailed David out of jail
a couple of times

1260
01:19:07,951 --> 01:19:10,287
and learned the hard way
that that was a bad idea.

1261
01:19:10,370 --> 01:19:15,542
So, eventually, when Catie got arrested,
we left her in jail.

1262
01:19:15,625 --> 01:19:17,127
Kids need to learn this lesson.

1263
01:19:17,210 --> 01:19:20,464
They are responsible for their own lives
and accountable for their own actions.

1264
01:19:21,381 --> 01:19:22,716
I was so mad.

1265
01:19:26,136 --> 01:19:29,723
We both felt guilt.
We… We… You always question.

1266
01:19:29,806 --> 01:19:33,977
"Should I have done something differently?
Could I have done something differently?"

1267
01:19:34,770 --> 01:19:37,939
I realized what my life was gonna be
if I didn't do anything different,

1268
01:19:38,023 --> 01:19:41,860
so I just got, uh, heavily involved
in the recovery community,

1269
01:19:41,943 --> 01:19:44,738
and then, here we are 13 years later.

1270
01:19:44,821 --> 01:19:47,157
On the fourth week,
they go on a four-day solo period.

1271
01:19:47,240 --> 01:19:49,242
So all the drugs are out of their system.

1272
01:19:49,326 --> 01:19:52,370
They wanna go home and be sons
and daughters to their parents again

1273
01:19:52,454 --> 01:19:53,955
and get an education.

1274
01:19:54,039 --> 01:19:56,333
[Debbie] David has continued to struggle.

1275
01:19:57,667 --> 01:19:59,044
[interviewer] Where is David now?

1276
01:19:59,127 --> 01:20:03,965
He's in prison, and, uh, he'll be there
for about three more years.

1277
01:20:04,716 --> 01:20:07,803
[Debbie] Can you turn around,
face the wall? Over here. Come back.

1278
01:20:07,886 --> 01:20:08,845
[Catie] Yeah.

1279
01:20:09,346 --> 01:20:11,056
And that's Dad and Dave.

1280
01:20:11,139 --> 01:20:13,141
[somber music playing]

1281
01:20:15,101 --> 01:20:19,231
It was hard. Right when I got out of rehab
is when my dad got diagnosed with cancer.

1282
01:20:20,232 --> 01:20:26,404
Cancer that had progressed to grade four,
I believe it was. Colon cancer.

1283
01:20:27,489 --> 01:20:29,991
He battled it for six or seven years.

1284
01:20:30,075 --> 01:20:33,912
Eventually was still fighting it
and died of a heart attack,

1285
01:20:33,995 --> 01:20:35,705
is what they told us.

1286
01:20:36,331 --> 01:20:38,834
And that was, I think,
three years ago now.

1287
01:20:38,917 --> 01:20:40,460
[somber music continues]

1288
01:20:50,470 --> 01:20:51,555
[music fades]

1289
01:20:53,557 --> 01:20:55,809
[Horsehair] I don't think
Steve was a bad guy.

1290
01:20:56,309 --> 01:21:02,607
Um, I think he lost his way
for a period of time, um, is how I see it.

1291
01:21:02,691 --> 01:21:05,360
I don't think he was a bad human being
at his core.

1292
01:21:06,069 --> 01:21:09,114
Um, he was probably
a good person to his core.

1293
01:21:09,823 --> 01:21:13,201
The part of the story
that has always got under my skin is,

1294
01:21:14,327 --> 01:21:17,372
even though we got him acquitted,
he stiffed me.

1295
01:21:17,914 --> 01:21:21,918
Never paid me the balance,
and that just pissed me off.

1296
01:21:22,544 --> 01:21:23,795
I never heard from him again.

1297
01:21:23,879 --> 01:21:26,506
In fact, until I heard
from your production company,

1298
01:21:26,590 --> 01:21:28,258
I didn't even know what happened to him.

1299
01:21:28,341 --> 01:21:31,052
I liked Steve.

1300
01:21:31,136 --> 01:21:36,308
Uh, uh… I really did until I realized…

1301
01:21:38,935 --> 01:21:40,687
everything that he'd been doing.

1302
01:21:41,271 --> 01:21:43,481
I mean, he probably took 50 grand off you.

1303
01:21:44,691 --> 01:21:45,650
Probably.

1304
01:22:01,750 --> 01:22:02,834
[Kinney] Several years ago,

1305
01:22:02,918 --> 01:22:05,879
I put in a Google search
for "Challenger Foundation."

1306
01:22:05,962 --> 01:22:10,133
I wanted to connect with the other people
who had been on the survival trips.

1307
01:22:14,137 --> 01:22:16,181
That's when I saw his obituary.

1308
01:22:19,809 --> 01:22:26,358
It was an extreme mixture
of feeling… shock and sadness…

1309
01:22:28,401 --> 01:22:29,486
to anger.

1310
01:22:29,569 --> 01:22:31,571
[tense music playing]

1311
01:22:32,906 --> 01:22:36,159
It was the catalyst
for me finally speaking up

1312
01:22:36,242 --> 01:22:38,119
about what had happened to me.

1313
01:22:38,203 --> 01:22:40,205
[tense music continues]

1314
01:22:53,009 --> 01:22:57,681
[Kinney] The first program I went on
was in Hawaii.

1315
01:22:59,516 --> 01:23:01,351
There's a section called Solo.

1316
01:23:01,434 --> 01:23:06,314
Solo was an opportunity
to learn that you can survive on your own,

1317
01:23:06,398 --> 01:23:09,275
that you can, um…

1318
01:23:09,359 --> 01:23:11,736
You… You can get through hard things.

1319
01:23:11,820 --> 01:23:15,448
And Steve made me
what was called "the runner,"

1320
01:23:15,991 --> 01:23:18,034
and I had a walkie-talkie.

1321
01:23:20,578 --> 01:23:21,871
I was terrified,

1322
01:23:22,706 --> 01:23:25,250
and so Steve said, "If you need me,"

1323
01:23:25,834 --> 01:23:27,877
you know, "If you are scared,
and you need me,

1324
01:23:27,961 --> 01:23:30,922
just press the talk button,
and I'll come to you."

1325
01:23:32,007 --> 01:23:36,261
I was 13 years old and, um, alone.

1326
01:23:38,263 --> 01:23:40,015
And so he came, and…

1327
01:23:41,141 --> 01:23:42,976
And he said, "Do you need anything?"

1328
01:23:43,059 --> 01:23:47,272
And I said, "Yes, I would be so grateful
if you could bring me lotion."

1329
01:23:47,355 --> 01:23:48,773
My skin was so dry.

1330
01:23:49,524 --> 01:23:50,358
Um…

1331
01:23:52,610 --> 01:23:54,487
[voice breaking] Sorry,
gotta give me a second.

1332
01:23:58,908 --> 01:24:00,618
And so he brought this lotion,

1333
01:24:01,161 --> 01:24:03,538
and he offered to put some on my back.

1334
01:24:03,621 --> 01:24:06,332
And I wasn't entirely comfortable,

1335
01:24:06,416 --> 01:24:09,794
but it wasn't so outside
of the range of abnormal.

1336
01:24:11,379 --> 01:24:13,298
Um, he asked me to lay on my stomach,

1337
01:24:14,257 --> 01:24:15,633
kind of straddled me,

1338
01:24:15,717 --> 01:24:19,637
and, um, was putting it on my back
and massaging my back.

1339
01:24:21,473 --> 01:24:23,266
And then he asked me to flip over.

1340
01:24:24,559 --> 01:24:25,393
And I…

1341
01:24:27,479 --> 01:24:30,356
I did not want to, and I froze.

1342
01:24:31,316 --> 01:24:35,445
And he said, "It's not a big deal.
Just… Just turn over." [sniffs]

1343
01:24:37,655 --> 01:24:38,740
And he…

1344
01:24:41,076 --> 01:24:45,288
began to put lotion
on my shoulders and my chest.

1345
01:24:47,373 --> 01:24:51,419
And, um… And then he moved his hands down…

1346
01:24:55,882 --> 01:25:01,179
to my breasts, and I tried
to push his hands away. [sniffs]

1347
01:25:02,889 --> 01:25:07,560
And he said, "It's not a big deal.
Just think of me like your father."

1348
01:25:08,520 --> 01:25:12,232
And all I could think was, "My father
would never touch me like this."

1349
01:25:17,654 --> 01:25:18,488
[sniffs]

1350
01:25:21,074 --> 01:25:23,034
It's funny. It dawned on me recently…

1351
01:25:25,411 --> 01:25:26,579
as I looked back…

1352
01:25:27,163 --> 01:25:29,833
Actually, I was talking with a friend,

1353
01:25:29,916 --> 01:25:31,876
and I realized that all the things

1354
01:25:31,960 --> 01:25:34,629
that I thought were so lovely
and so nice about Steve,

1355
01:25:36,172 --> 01:25:37,966
it was just that he was grooming me.

1356
01:25:38,466 --> 01:25:40,552
I didn't know it at the time.
I didn't even…

1357
01:25:40,635 --> 01:25:43,429
It didn't even dawn on me
until recently. [sniffs]

1358
01:25:48,309 --> 01:25:50,728
Couple of years after, I told my mother.

1359
01:25:52,230 --> 01:25:53,857
Not in detail, for sure.

1360
01:25:54,440 --> 01:25:59,904
But I did tell her that he had touched me
and that he had, uh, been sexual with me.

1361
01:26:00,780 --> 01:26:03,658
[interviewer] And did she do anything?
Did she report it?

1362
01:26:04,909 --> 01:26:05,910
No.

1363
01:26:06,494 --> 01:26:09,831
The reason why she didn't
was she thought that…

1364
01:26:10,373 --> 01:26:13,251
That he was doing
something good for the kids.

1365
01:26:14,252 --> 01:26:18,089
And that she didn't want to,
in her own words, "upset the apple cart."

1366
01:26:23,428 --> 01:26:29,517
It struck me
how often he used the word "manipulative."

1367
01:26:29,601 --> 01:26:33,897
[Steve] These kids come in with all sorts
of little ways of trying to manipulate.

1368
01:26:33,980 --> 01:26:39,986
Or how often he described the children
as master manipulators.

1369
01:26:40,069 --> 01:26:43,406
They are master manipulators.
Blaming everybody else for their problems.

1370
01:26:44,032 --> 01:26:45,867
And as an adult watching that,

1371
01:26:46,492 --> 01:26:52,457
realizing that he was the most masterful
manipulator of them all.

1372
01:26:52,540 --> 01:26:55,710
[reporter] That's certainly
a convenient out, isn't it?

1373
01:26:55,793 --> 01:26:58,004
Being able to attack
the credibility of the kids,

1374
01:26:58,087 --> 01:27:00,173
knowing that they're troubled kids
to begin with.

1375
01:27:00,965 --> 01:27:03,218
Well, it's not an out.
It's… It's the facts.

1376
01:27:05,011 --> 01:27:09,515
[Chris] This is still a thriving industry.
There's lots of copycats now running.

1377
01:27:09,599 --> 01:27:12,727
When I was 16, my parents sent me
to a wilderness therapy program

1378
01:27:12,810 --> 01:27:14,896
very similar to the one
that Paris Hilton went to,

1379
01:27:14,979 --> 01:27:16,356
and let me tell you how that went.

1380
01:27:16,439 --> 01:27:22,070
Steve Cartisano marketed trauma
as a means to a cure.

1381
01:27:22,153 --> 01:27:26,449
So the copycats
then turn this into a huge industry.

1382
01:27:26,532 --> 01:27:29,786
And at night, they would take my shoes
and wrap me up in a tarp

1383
01:27:29,869 --> 01:27:32,747
and lay on the end
to restrict me from moving.

1384
01:27:32,830 --> 01:27:37,710
There's many people, I think, who will
today feel like, "It did change my life,

1385
01:27:37,794 --> 01:27:39,504
but maybe not for the best."

1386
01:27:40,421 --> 01:27:43,675
It has definitely made me who I am today.
Well, it's played a big role.

1387
01:27:43,758 --> 01:27:45,009
I was the drug addict

1388
01:27:45,093 --> 01:27:47,804
pushing the shopping cart
down the street, homeless.

1389
01:27:49,889 --> 01:27:52,809
And I survived only because

1390
01:27:54,143 --> 01:27:57,230
I knew how to live
with very little to nothing.

1391
01:27:57,897 --> 01:28:02,110
I've spent most of my life…
just trying to survive,

1392
01:28:02,193 --> 01:28:07,323
and then I put myself in situations
where I have to survive,

1393
01:28:07,407 --> 01:28:10,785
you know, because that's what I know.
That's where I'm comfortable.

1394
01:28:10,868 --> 01:28:15,581
I still have bad dreams about that place,
and I can't get it out of my head.

1395
01:28:15,665 --> 01:28:17,250
It's been with me my whole life.

1396
01:28:17,333 --> 01:28:21,170
[man] If it can happen
to Paris Hilton and her family,

1397
01:28:21,963 --> 01:28:24,257
think about all those people
who can't be here today.

1398
01:28:24,340 --> 01:28:28,678
Teenagers aren't just these kids
we have in our homes.

1399
01:28:28,761 --> 01:28:31,639
They are people who trust us.

1400
01:28:31,723 --> 01:28:32,682
This happened to me.

1401
01:28:32,765 --> 01:28:37,729
I've been screaming about it for 20 years,
and it didn't have any impact.

1402
01:28:37,812 --> 01:28:39,981
This industry has just grown.

1403
01:28:40,064 --> 01:28:42,066
[unsettling music playing]

1404
01:29:01,377 --> 01:29:02,879
[music fades]

1405
01:29:12,263 --> 01:29:14,265
[dramatic music playing]

1406
01:29:43,252 --> 01:29:44,504
[music fades]