KIDS of El Paso County, Inc. was a controversial adolescent treatment facility located in El Paso, Texas during the mid to late 1980's. Over 214 teens from 12 to 23 years of age were admitted from the United States, Canada, and Mexico for the treatment of substance use disorders, eating disorders, and behavioral disorders.
During the Reagan Administration when the American Drug War was at its peak, KIDS of El Paso County, Inc. was marketed as a "tough answer to a tough problem." Drug-related crime along the southwestern border between the United States and Mexico was on the rise and parents were desperate.
KIDS of El Paso County, Inc. was one of many profitable spinoff programs modeled after Synanon, a peer-based rehabilitation cult that started in 1958. Treatment at KIDS of El Paso County, Inc. included an ultra-confrontational type of peer-guided attack therapy in a group setting for 12-16 hours each day. KIDS of El Paso County, Inc. taught the path to abstinence centered around a milieu of recovering teens who used a peer-pressure approach to shift dependence from drugs to the group and the program's condensed version of the 12 steps used in Alcoholics Anonymous. The end result was a Lord of the Flies meets Stanford Prison Experiment that was unregulated, unmonitored, and abusive. In a renovated warehouse near the El Paso airport, the abuse was well hidden from families, the community, and the scrutiny of law.
The community first learned of controversial practices at KIDS of El Paso County, Inc. from escaped teens who exposed practices including adults over the age of 18 held unwillingly, improper floor restraints, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, malnourishment, and more.
As the community started to learn the program, articles were featured in the newspapers daily. Concern for the safety of teens in the program led to a formal investigation by the State of Texas and confidential one-on-one interviews with twenty-seven teens by state investigators. Findings included coercion, abuse, neglect, false imprisonment, and fifty-six other state regulatory violations. The State of Texas waged a very public battle to close the El Paso program that ultimately exhausted the program's financial resources. KIDS of El Paso County, Inc. filed for bankruptcy in 1989.
Additional details regarding the rise and fall of KIDS of El Paso County, Inc. can be found here.
A collection of KIDS of El Paso, County Inc. documents can be found here.
