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“Matthew would have been in juvenile detention or dead if we had not continued to try to do something,” a mother says during her interview in ‘Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare.’ It’s a Netflix documentary that traces the origins, rise, and fall of the “Challenger Foundation,” a wilderness program founded by Steve Cartisano, which promised parents to transform their rebellious, troubled teenagers. But soon, the program was mired in controversy, after several participants complained of inhuman conditions and abuse.
Directed by Liza Williams, the ‘Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare’ starts with the interview of a woman who was kidnapped from her home in the middle of the night in 1989 and flown to a desert in the middle of nowhere to take part in a two month long camp meant for delinquent kids. Her parents had paid good money to have their own child kidnapped, taken to the middle of nowhere (in the burning trails of Utah to be precise), to be trained in a survival camp which didn’t seem to have adequate safety measures in place for the children. “It was like ‘Lord of the Flies’ out there,” says the woman who was scarred by the experience.
The documentary includes several photos and video recordings from the camp. One clip features an 18-year-old breaking down into harrowing sobs of relief when his father comes to pay him a visit. Based on the experiences of the teens who attended the camp, it sounds like a juvenile detention experience out in the wild. However, there are other participants who admit their time at the camp helped them and perhaps even changed the course of their lives for the better. Sixty days in the harsh sun, with little food and water, should scare most average teens into a spiritual awakening, making them extra thankful when they get back to a life of easy food and comforts.
What stands out in the documentary is the evident fact that Steve Cartisano’s “Challenger Foundation” was a haphazard program that met with considerable success but became “too big, too fast,” and he didn’t know how to run it in an organized manner anymore. So, what started as perhaps a genuine attempt to reform problem teens eventually turned into just another money-making enterprise, where the well-being of the participants was the least of anybody’s concern. This meant some kids ended up getting hurt, abused, hospitalized, or, in one tragic case, dead.
Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare’ might be an interesting look at extreme summer camps meant to reform teens, but it’s also very selectively subjective, with close to no real figures about such camps or even just “Challenger Foundation.” In an old clip, Steve Cartisano says his camps had over 700 participants during its run. But how many official police cases were filed against him? How many kids leveled allegations of physical abuse or torture? How many had to be hospitalized? How many went back to a life of drugs? How many went on to become convicted criminals? There are no numbers or answers.
The documentary has about seven interviewees who had been sent by their parents to these camps, and their ordeals were traumatic, to say the least. But seven out of 700 is just about one percent. Some of the parents also tell their side of the story, and one father still insists he should’ve just left his son at the camp for the rest of his life. Steve Cartisano’s own son David struggled with drugs as a teen and was serving jail time when this documentary was being shot, while his daughter Catherine, who agreed to come on camera, admits to battling serious addiction and overdosing multiple times. This, even after David attended one of his father’s camps when he was younger. And that’s all there is you need to know as viewers: two months of camp is not going to change much if one is failing to fulfill their duty as parents for the rest of the year.
Stream the documentary on Netflix.
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