Alaska State Troopers are charging two juveniles with vehicle theft and criminal mischief after they attempted to run away from a wilderness therapy program on Prince of Wales Island.
Given how "therapy" programs like this are, at best, complete bullshit and, at worst, full of fraud and abuse, I'm leaning on supporting the kids here.
There was a recent case in NC where a 12 y/o was found dead with his underpants off and the camp obstructed the investigation and continues to maintain the death was accidental even after a coroner ruled it was not. It's the second death at that camp as well, previous one was in 2014.
Edit: jesus they are stranded on an island in fucking Alaska. I can only imagine how little oversight there is (which is why it's so isolated) and how much abuse must occur there because of it.
Passages Alaska, founded in 2020. The website is incredibly vague on whom the therapy they use is for. They claim it's for teens who "struggle with anxiety, depression, technology addiction, low self-esteem, and failure to launch" which is, as stated, incredibly vague.
Actual medical anxiety and depression isn't the fault of the person and needs medicine, not "mindfulness therapy". And I have no idea what "technology addiction" is. This sounds like parents who are mad at their kid being on their phone all the time.
It seems to be some New Age-y nonsense with a bunch of meditation and yoga BS.
Going through their website, they seem incredibly bland. The only thing that really started ringing alarm bells is that one of the staff has a degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Liberty University (!!!).
At best that translates to confidence courses, networking with other kids, and learning to disconnect. Which can be great. But if that was the case they'd advertise it. At worst, (and people are trying to escape so ... yeah) it's a crash course in manhood type place where they think Hollywood's version of basic military training is too soft.
We were driving through absolutely middle of nowhere western Washington once, forest everywhere, and started seeing signs like "do not stop for teens" or "don't pick up hitchhiking kids". We figured it was likely a cult or conversion camp since there weren't any jouvies in that area, probably we would have ignored the signs and helped someone out if they asked
I grew up in the same area as this place had no idea it existed. So messed up thinking about what was happening 20 minutes from my house and it ran until like 2011!
In a situation like this, it would be good to hear what they have to say. They are cut off from social media, completely deprived of the ability to communicate with someone to represent their point of view. This is terrible and the place is likely awful for them to have tried to escape like this. I hope one day when they get out of there they let people know if it was a terrible place.