Three-minute showers, rationed toilet paper and hours spent facing the wall - The i Paper reports on a multi-billion-dollar industry now under the spotlightMelanie was just 17 and “getting into trouble at home” when a missionary couple from the US visiting her church in Wales offered to take her home with them. She jumped at the chance to attend New Beginnings Girls Academy, in La Russell, Missouri, for what she thought would be a wholesome Christian summer camp in 2008.
how she flew back to the US with the couple and was dropped at a petrol station, where she met a girl who was to be her “responsible”, who she must stick with at all times. At first, she enjoyed “relatively normal” Thanksgiving celebrations. But when she got on a bus to visit what would be her home for the next year “everything changed.”“I’m a talker so I carried on talking. I didn’t understand. You’re not allowed to talk. Nobody was allowed to tell me you’re not allowed to talk. A lot of the rules felt like you just learn as you go.”. Children were told to keep silent, not stand too close to one another and make their beds a certain way. Showers were restricted to three minutes and going to the bathroom meant asking for sheets of toilet paper. Breaching these rules meant time “on discipline” – wearing a red shirt and standing for hours on end facing the wall, she said. The church-based institution is one strand of America’s $50bn “troubled teen” industry, where facilities proclaim they can “fix” behaviour with a range of cures – from tough love to bible study, medication or outdoor pursuits. For Melanie, who was 17 and had finished her schooling in the UK, it meant sitting for hours or helping with laundry and cooking. “As much as I hated those jobs it was much better than sitting there doing absolutely nothing. My parents paid for me to be there but I was working for them as well. My mum and dad had to remortgage their house to pay,” she sai
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