(Click here to watch the show on the fifth estate website)What could possibly be wrong with a rehab centre for addicted youth that boasts an 80 per cent recovery rate? A lot, according to critics of the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC).
The world of teenaged addiction is a frightening and bewildering place for any parent to navigate. Most rehabilitation programs claim a 30 to 40 per cent success rate. Dean Vause, AARC’s founder, says the facility works with “the worst of the worst” among addicted teens – yet it claims an 80 per cent recovery rate of those that come through its doors.
In Powerless, Gillian Findlay of the fifth estate investigates the Centre’s claims of their success rate, as well as its controversial treatment program – including confrontational therapies and using teenagers, some still going through the AARC program, to counsel other teens. The roots of this treatment can be found in an American teenage addiction center that has been shut down.
Despite criticisms of the Centre, some former clients claim AARC works miracles. The fifth estate talks to one family that credits AARC with saving their son. That young man, Jordan Remple, says that AARC’s tough program was worth what he got from it, sobriety. “…from what I’ve seen, what it’s done for my life, what it’s done for my friends’ life, what it’s done for my family’s life, I have no complaints about it whatsoever.”
But, Findlay also speaks with former clients who have another kind of story to tell – experiences that include being held against their will, treatment therapies they describe as abusive and even incidents of sexual abuse.
Former resident, Rachel O’Neill, wants someone to know that for all of AARC’s promises of success, bad things do happen there and attention, she believes, must be paid. “If somebody commits a crime they can go to jail for it but you can’t randomly incarcerate teenagers just because you want to and it offends my sense of justice and my sense of what it is to be Canadian that AARC is still doing what they do.”
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