WAS TROUBLED SON KIDNAPPED OR RESCUED?

Judge to rule whether parents had right to force him to Jamaican `tough
love' camp

OAKLAND -- Two strangers stepped inside David Van Blarigan's bedroom at
midnight two months ago as the teenager's father shook him awake. ``He kind
of barked at me, `Leave me alone,' '' James Van Blarigan remembered of the
night he paid two burly men to take his son -- against his will -- to a
yearlong exile at a Jamaican reform school whose practices are outlawed in
California.

``I said, David, you're going to a new school.''

As prearranged, the 16-year-old boy's parents, who had signed papers giving
school officials the right to use pepper spray, Mace, restraints or stun
guns against their son if necessary, left the room. The strangers took
over, threatening to handcuff David if he didn't comply. They allowed him
to go to the bathroom before they packed him into a rented car, dressed in
the sweatsuit he slept in, for a 700-mile drive to a Utah mental hospital
and, two weeks later, a flight to the Caribbean school.

Was their choice an extreme, illegal punishment for a normal, rebellious
teenager? Or did his parents, frightened by their son's downward slide, do
the right thing in a last-ditch effort to put a wayward boy on the straight
and narrow?

Because David was left alone long enough at a Jamaican airport to call a
sympathetic neighbor, who alerted authorities, the matter is now in court.

An Alameda County Superior Court judge is expected to rule Tuesday whether
the Oakland high school freshman should be ordered back to California in a
potentially precedent-setting clash of parental and children's rights. The
courtroom drama is being watched across the nation by those in the
burgeoning field of specialty schools, the kind of strict, no-nonsense --
and some say loosely regulated and occasionally brutal -- camps designed to
exorcise the behavioral demons from defiant or drug-addicted boys and
girls.

``This industry is very lucrative, growing like wildfire, and nobody is
really watching what's going on,'' said Catherine Sutton, whose daughter,
15-year-old Michelle, died of dehydration in 1990 while enrolled in a
wilderness camp for troubled youths. ``They really need federal
regulation.''

Believing in `tough love'

But other parents, such as Tim Flood, who leads a support group of 125 Bay
Area families enrolled in similar programs, have become apostles of ``tough
love.'' ``We realize we only had a few months until he was 18, to basically
try to save his life,'' Flood says of his son Jacob, now drug-free and
living at the family's Peninsula home.

No one knows how many of these programs exist, but they are spreading as a
get-tough attitude sweeps the nation, parents worry about teen suicide and
violence, and entrepreneurs realize the money to be made.

Despairing parents -- at least those well-heeled enough to afford it --
learn about these schools of last resort through word of mouth, educational
consultants or advertisements in publications such as Sunset magazine.
``Attitudes adjusted here,'' reads one ad. ``Is your teen turning your life
upside down?'' asks another.

The programs are usually run by private, for-profit organizations, and they
vary widely in techniques used to tame a nightmare child. Tuition ranges
from $30,000 to $70,000, and most students stay six to 12 months. To foot
the bill, some parents must mortgage their homes, borrow from relatives or
deplete their child's college fund. Some swear it's worth every cent.

``This isn't Jonestown; this is Boys Town,'' said Daniel Koller, a San
Diego attorney defending the Van Blarigans, referring to a camp in Western
Samoa where he shipped his own son. The boy, who will turn 18 next month,
``became a crystal meth addict'' and was headed for jail or death had he
not gone to the camp. Now he thanks his father, Koller said.

The camp, Paradise Cove, gives teenagers ``the tools to work, self-esteem,
accountability for their conduct. And this is a safe place,'' Koller said.

To some, David Van Blarigan hardly seems the kind of hardened youth who
needs a dose of tough love. Hindered by attention deficit disorder, he had
a so-so academic record but never did drugs, drank alcohol or got into
trouble with the law. ``He was like a grandchild to me,'' said Neil
Aschemeyer, an administrative law judge and neighbor of the Van Blarigans
who has taken up the boy's cause. ``He is extremely bright, very
articulate. . . . He was a joyful kid, full of energy.''

His parents, devout, Bible-believing Christians and volunteer marriage
counselors in their San Leandro congregation, said he suffered from ``anger
turning to rage'' and believed the nighttime maneuvers were their only
answer. ``It was with very heavy hearts that we sent David away for a
year,'' Susan Van Blarigan said at her home Friday, in her first newspaper
interview. ``Although we deeply miss him, we know this program will give
him the skills that will allow him to succeed (in life).''

Confrontations

His mother said the Skyline High School student was suspended once for
threatening a teacher and once also ran away from home overnight but
returned on his own. Another time, not wanting to talk to his mother and
holed up in the elaborate three-story tree house he built, he threatened to
douse her with water if she climbed up. She did; and he soaked her.

But more than that, his parents say, was the rage that would fulminate at
home, although never with physical violence. ``We saw some deep, deep
problems,'' Susan Van Blarigan said. ``When he looked in my eyes and said
the things he said, I was scared for me and I was scared for him.''

He eventually resisted going to church, she said, in order to hurt them
because they loved it so. An ad in the back of Sunset magazine sent them on
a journey that led to Tranquility Bay. On the night of Nov. 10, after
committing themselves to expenses of about $38,000, they handed two men a
suitcase that Susan Van Blarigan had secretly packed and let them into
David's room.

He was dropped off at Brightway Adolescent Hospital in southern Utah, a
clearinghouse for boys and girls on their way to the discipline schools.
The hospital, according to two sources, is operating on a conditional
license for violations of state regulations. The director of Brightway did
not return several calls seeking comment.

On Nov. 23, he was flown to Jamaica's Montego Bay but slipped away to a pay
phone -- breaking a no-contact rule -- and called his neighbor, Aschemeyer.
``He said, `I want to get out of here,' '' the judge recounted. `` `This
place is like a prison.' ''

In his call to Aschemeyer, David said the attendants at Brightway would
knock down a teenager who talked back or would drug him with a hypodermic
needle. School officials would not allow David to talk to reporters.

Aschemeyer set about finding help and eventually contacted Robert Hutchins,
a former Air Force pilot nicknamed ``Swoop'' who is the expert on
child-abduction cases for the Alameda County District Attorney's Office.

At issue, both sides contend, is where parental rights end and a child's
begin and where the state must step in to protect a juvenile.

In a similar case in 1993, a Santa Clara prosecutor filed criminal charges
against a parent and the man and woman she hired to spirit her daughter
away from a Palo Alto high school to a New Mexico camp, where she claimed
abuse. But the case -- the only one in the state that ever sought criminal
sanctions against a parent for hiring so-called kidnappers -- was
dismissed.

Civil, not criminal, suit

Hutchins is taking a different legal tack. His action is a civil proceeding
- -- which carries a lower burden of proof than criminal complaints -- that
accuses the Van Blarigans of aiding and abetting the kidnappers but only
demands that they return their son to California to ask him if he wants to
stay or return. At this point, Susan Van Blarigan says, she thinks she
knows the answer: ``I think he would feel he could work on these problems
at home.''

Judge Ken M. Kawaichi is being asked to decide whether, as Hutchins
contends, the Van Blarigans illegally delegated their right to custody to
``insensitive and uncaring corporations,'' as Hutchins argues in one
impassioned court pleading.

``David stands alone in a foreign land,'' Hutchins wrote, ``stripped of his
civil rights . . . immersed in a snake pit of very troubled and possibly
dangerous teenagers, and ignorant of whom he can go to for independent help
in the event he is being abused or mistreated.''

But Koller, the Van Blarigans' attorney, counters that the couple have ``in
no way relinquished their parental rights over (David). To the contrary,
the couple has spent, and continues to spend, large amounts of time, money
and emotional energy to educate, discipline, rehabilitate and care for
their son.''

Flood, a project manager at Stanford University's information systems,
found his son's redemption in a similar way, at a cost of about $40,000.
Flood's boy smoked pot, dabbled with harder drugs, stole from the family
and flouted house rules. Last year, he shipped the boy off to Paradise
Cove, which is affiliated with Tranquility Bay.

Like the Van Blarigans, he arranged for the escorts to come in the still of
night, when the teenager would be groggy, less likely to run or fight. ``I
said, `I love you with all my heart, but you're going to have to go with
these people.' He was very angry.''

Not all experiences have been so benign. Stan Goold, now 17 and living in
Fremont, says he was kidnapped from his mother's home in Lake County and
sent to Paradise Cove after a stopover in Brightway in Utah.

`I heard screams'

In Paradise Cove, Stan claimed, some kids were beaten. ``I saw kids after
it happened,'' he claims. ``I heard screams.'' He said a scant, poor diet
led him to malnutrition and an outbreak of boils, which he says have left
purple scars on his knees. His father was finally able to get him out of
the camp, against which they are planning to file a lawsuit alleging abuse.

Paradise Cove officials could not be reached, but Koller said his son had
not been abused.

Such institutions are often in rural outposts in places like Samoa, Utah
and Jamaica, where land and labor costs are cheap and oversight minimal.

Although the schools are not required to obtain accreditation, many do and
use it as a marketing device. Parents should be aware, however, that such
seals of approval refer only to the educational program and not the
techniques for treating unruly behavior, experts say.

Tranquility Bay in Jamaica has been accredited by the Northwest Association
of Schools and Colleges, one of six regional accrediting bodies in the
United States. But the team that visits each school looks only at classroom
activities such as curriculum, textbooks and teacher credentials. It does
not have jurisdiction over the behavior modification program.

``There's nobody to deal with the interaction between kids and adults as
far as treatment goes,'' said Dave Steadman, executive director of the
association. ``That's unfortunate.'' Many states, including California,
restrict what can occur in such programs. California bans corporal and
``humiliating'' punishment. Children cannot be placed in restraints or
locked in time-out rooms, and they have guaranteed personal rights,
including communicating with their family, said Larry Bolton, chief counsel
for the California Department of Social Services.

Little oversight

Utah, on the other hand, has few regulations, which accounts for the
proliferation of programs in that state, experts say. Connie Love,
education specialist for the Utah state office of education, worries about
the lack of oversight for such programs. ``Very few standards are placed on
the counseling component. It's quite alarming,'' she said.

Administrators who run such programs deny that they located in Jamaica,
Samoa or Utah to avoid regulation. They argue that putting a child in a
tranquil rural setting -- far from their peers and the fast-paced urban
lifestyle -- can be effective in changing behavior. It also reduces the
chance that a child will try to run away.

And they downplay the language in contracts, such as the one the Van
Blarigans had to sign, that acknowledges lower standards than in the United
States for ``water, electricity, food, health standards, building codes,
space requirements, etc.'' The contract also approves the use of pepper
spray, Mace, an ``electrical disabler,'' mechanical restraints or
handcuffs, if needed.

Jay Kay, director of Tranquility Bay, said the camp has no stun guns or
so-called electronic disablers but is allowed under its contracts ``to
leave our options open.'' He said workers at the camp, which has only been
open a year, last used pepper spray five months ago to subdue a student
attacking a school worker.

Kay and others say the full-day, six-days-a-week schedule of classes,
physical fitness, chores and group time -- along with discipline and
earning privileges such as calling their parents on the phone, something
often not allowed in the first couple of months -- often turns bad kids
into good ones. But others think there's another way.

Carl Thoresen, a professor of education, psychology and psychiatry at
Stanford University, said parents should consider sending their kids to
such camps only as a last resort.

``In our Silicon Valley, hurry-up culture, I worry that parents are being
too quick to jump the gun and seek an outside solution,'' said Thoresen,
who is not familiar with the Van Blarigan case. ``Shipping them off to
another country is a very dramatic move. It conveys to the child that the
parents no longer have confidence in them. That should not be taken
lightly.''

He argued that parents should first explore local help that is available,
including meeting with a child psychologist to assess changes parents could
make to help resolve the problem. After all other alternatives are
exhausted, Thoresen added, providing a change of venue for children and
removing them from their peer group can sometimes be effective.

Susan Van Blarigan said her family had exhausted other routes, and even
though uneasy about signing away some of her parental rights, she felt it
was for the best.

``If your child is going to go to the streets and get killed,'' she said,
``it's not such a big thing to sign away those rights.''