COUNTLESS programs exist aimed at combatting "troubled teens," but the multi-billion dollar industry's controversial tactics often hurt more adolescents than they help.
Established by Steve Cartisano in the late 1980s, the Challenger Foundation was a wilderness therapy camp geared towards teenagers labeled as rebellious, delinquent, or worse.
What was the Challenger Foundation?
In 1988, Steve Cartisano created the Challenger Foundation.
The organization centered around a wilderness survival program for troubled teens and adolescents.
As part of the Challenger program, teenagers were taken out of their beds in the middle of the night, and transported to the wilderness of Utah.
While it sounds like a kidnapping, the teen's parents were not only privy to the experience, but they also shelled out big bucks to pay for it.
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The average cost of the program was upwards of $15,900.
Parents would temporarily sign away their parental rights to their "troubled" teen, allowing Challenger staff members to come into their homes and whisk their child away for 63 days.
As described in the Netflix documentary, Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare, the Challenger Foundation was founded to "transform bad kids through ordeal."
Teenagers would face "brutal conditions" during the camp, which claimed that "the kids are worn down until they're good again."
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While some called "the concept" behind the Challenger Foundation "remarkable," others questioned the legality and morality of taking children through such a traumatic experience "far beyond the reach of US authorities."
The ultimate goal of the Challenger Foundation was to use harsh techniques, like strenuous, manual labor, and discipline teens into submission, obedience, and "goodness."
The boot camp-style approach combined physical and mental training that many, if not all, of the teens were ill-equipped to handle.
The camp employed a myriad of techniques to encourage kids into compliance, including strip searches and military haircuts.
Many of the teenagers were allegedly starved, and food was regularly withheld as "punishment" for bad behavior or non-compliance.
Teenagers were forced to hike for dozens of miles in the rocky, outdoor terrain, often in freezing temperatures and carrying heavy gear.
What started as a legitimate, therapeutic tool quickly turned to controversy, as many former "students" alleged that they were physically and mentally abused during the duration of the camp.
The majority of these claims were directed at the Challenger Foundation's unruly staff, and the organization's founder, Steve Cartisano.
Who was Steve Cartisano?
Steve Cartisano was born on August 15, 1955, in Modesto, California.
Before creating the Challenger Foundation, he worked as an Air Force instructor and a military special forces officer.
In 1978, he married Deborah Lee Carr.
The couple would go on to have four children together.
In 1988, Cartisano created the Challenger Foundation, intending to help troubled teens and adolescents overcome their struggles with substance abuse, mental health issues, and behavioral disorders.
According to High Country News, Cartisano's philosophy behind the Challenger Foundation was to "break the kids down and build them back up."
Using his military background, Cartisano would operate as the camp's "drill sergeant," forcing the camp's participants into listening to him and abiding by his rules – or else.
While some heralded Cartisano as a genius, the teenagers he "helped" would say otherwise.
As the camp's popularity (and profits) grew, Cartisano had to take on more and more staff.
These "camp counselors" were unfit or ill-equipped to deal with the teens they were trying to help, resulting in negligence, misconduct, and downright abuse.
By the early 1990s, the Challenger Foundation was forced to shut down and declare bankruptcy as a result of constant and consistent legal battles between Cartisano and the camp's staff, and the camp's former campers and their parents.
While Cartisano ended up being banned from operating any type of "treatment" programs in Utah, he did try and replicate the Challenger Foundation in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.
None of the programs were ever licensed.
In the 2000s, Cartisano reportedly worked a dormitory supervisor on a reservation in Oklahoma.
When a Bureau of Indian Affairs officer found out about Cartisano's past, he fired him on the spot.
On May 4, 2019, Cartisano died at his home in Durant, Oklahoma, at the age of 63.
While he had reportedly been battling colon cancer for a few years before his death, he ultimately passed away from an unexpected heart attack.
Cartisano is survived by his wife, Deborah, their four children, and two grandchildren.
What happened to the victims of the camp?
In the 2023 documentary, Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare, former participants of the Challenger Foundation recount their experiences with the program.
Some of the students described being tied to trees for misbehaving, while others say they were forcibly "dragged" through the woods when stopping for a break on a hike.
As reported by Dexerto, in one of the documentary's key moments, a witness recalls seeing the teens firsthand: “They were emaciated, they were dirty. You couldn’t even tell that they were kids.”
Another witness remembers a doctor who reportedly “counted over 80 scars, marks, and contusions” on one of the camp's attendees after they completed the 63-day program.
Despite dozens of similar accounts of manipulation, starvation, and even torture, the camp went on, garnering more and more participants.
Even the nation's wealthiest families were sending their misbehaving teens to the camp, hoping it would change their ways.
The camp's customers included the Winthrop Rockefeller family, who placed their daughter and son in the program.
In 1990, however, one camp participant managed to change everything – and shut down the camp for good.
Sharon Fuqua had sent her teenage daughter, Kristen Chase, to take part in the Challenger Foundation's wilderness camp.
Just a few days into her stay, Kristen went on a hike on Utah's Kaiparowits Plateau.
She reportedly began complaining that she had a headache, before stumbling and collapsing to the ground.
The staff reportedly tried to revive her, but Chase fell into a hallucinatory state, and fell down again.
According to authorities, it took over two hours for medical help to arrive.
By then, it was too late: Chase, just 16 years old, had died.
The autopsy report ruled her death as "exertional heat stroke."
At the time, Fuqua didn't blame Cartisano or the Challenger Foundation for her daughter's death.
In a July 3, 1990 interview with Deseret News, Fuqua said: “We’re not condemning Challenger. I’ve never met any more dedicated, loving people striving to help children,” she said.
“What we did for our daughter was the best thing we could have ever done," she added.
"We felt this was the answer. I truly feel it would have been if she’d been able to complete it.”
Still, Cartisano and the Challenger Foundation were charged with negligent homicide and nine misdemeanor counts of child abuse.
As reported by AP News, during the trial, Cartisano said: ″It was a terrible tragedy but nothing could have been done," referring to Chase's death.
Prosecutor Jim Scarth alleged that Cartisano had previously told his camp counselors that if they encountered any problems with the teens, to "take them behind a rock and thump on them," adding that it was the counselors' words "against" the campers'.
In 1992, Cartisano was acquitted of all criminal charges in Chase's death.
However, the national publicity from the case resulted in dozens more civil suits filed against Cartisano and his company.
According to High Country News, former campers turned out in droves, alleging "negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, and breach of contract."
All cases were settled out of court.
In Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare, many of the former campers share a surprisingly similar sentiment about their time at the camp.
While they acknowledge that what Cartisano, the camp's counselors, and the camp did were wrong, traumatizing, and often times illegal, they also refuse to blame them entirely.
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As one former camper put it, "the hardest thing about being there, [was] knowing my parents did it to me."
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