Hell Camp: Le cauchemar des colos de redressement

I was in the last group to run-in in Utah before the state of Utah shut them down. I still have scars on my body the whole time I was there. I had sores that I'd have to walk on for four months. I was 13..never did drugs, never drank alcohol, never partied, never had a run-in with the , and was still a virgin, just a normal teenager who didn't pick up her room. My mom thought this would be a way to get me to "be a good girl". The description of "out of control teenagers" is wrong... there were a lot of normal kids there. Kids with parents that just didn't want to be a parent.. or in my case just wanted someone to teach me a lesson.

Parents that had no idea of how to deal with their children, decide it's a good idea to send them out to the middle of the desert, in extreme temperatures, run by a man named Steve Cartisano. This is not a movie, people, I kid you not, this is a true story.

I've said it before, and I'll say again, as a Brit, I find some of the thought processes over in The States, Alien, who on Earth with half a brain cell would think this was a good idea, let's be honest, this happened in recent memory, not the 1800's.

I honestly couldn't believe what I was watching, that said it's a very well made and interesting documentary, although you may find it hard to understand the actions of many people.

Whilst the theory of teaching young people discipline, isn't exactly outrageous, what did they honestly think was going to happen under the circumstances, no law enforcement......there's the red flag right there.

'A gift working with kids,' well clearly not, these occurrences happened on his watch.

That mother?????? I have no words, that poor girl.

Why do people have kids if they don't know how to parent them.

8/10.

I think the piece grants more screen time than required to cover the muddled opinions of Steve Cartisano's family (who sound so full of themselves) and much less on the victims and the tragedies they faced. That could either be an error in judgment on the filmmaker's part or, most likely, a Netflix decision to try to soften the emotional blow until the closing moments. Institutionalized abuse and the resulting trauma are discussed in all their somber detail, in what feels like American parents trying to run behind quick fixes for habitual (and often psychological) issues of their teenagers.

While I'm not surprised that wilderness therapy camps continue to exist in the States, given there are people who willingly sign up for haunted experiences and get tormented (oh, watch that documentary too if you must), what bothers me is how some folks still believe in the ideology of putting teenagers through clearly abusive methods to "teach them a lesson" and "turn them into good people". And if you're you're gonna say "Stuff like this would never happen in 2023", then I guess you're the one living under a rock. Worse things happens today.

A deluded unpleasant person called Steve Cartisano who is basically a fraudster and criminal with no proper qualifications or training runs a Wilderness Camp for teens who need proper help. Instead of giving the children help and guidance his camps are awful places which generally abuses the children at the same time getting big fees from the parents who ought to know better.

Cartisano's family and associates are interviewed, and they came across as deluded and devious as he is.

Shocking how kids can be badly mistreated when it take so long for the authorities to try to take action,. We also learn that Cartisano also committed sexual abuse on at least one of the victims.

He had his own children who were addicts etc.

The producers ought to have been more severe on showing this was totally a criminal enterprise masquerading as doing good:

6/10.

This documentary tells the story of the youth therapy programs that were founded by the now late Steve Cartisano. Really it doesn't take a genius to figure out these things will end up most of the time very badly, you're mixing rebellious teens with the wilderness, with figures of authority that rely on corporal punishment and abuse their power and you've got a recipe for disaster.

The doc was okay but I felt it could've had more of an impact, I would've maybe done less screen time from Steve's family, since they weren't in the camps and what I believe the viewer is looking for was more first person accounts of what happened. I think we could've seen more stories that never made it to the screen. And the ones that did I felt were very rushed. They should've made this into a mini series and divided the stories so that we could've gotten more information and details with that format.

Maybe Steve had good intentions at the beginning but like a famous quote says "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and these kids marched down that road far too many times before anybody put a stop to it.