“I mean, some of how we did things could look abusive… I’m sorry, I might be old school, but human nature is we need parameters.” 

Genre: Horrifying Documentaries 
Release Date: 2023 
Where I Watched: Netflix

Gist: A look at Challenger Camp, led by Steve Cartisano. A camp where parents sent their teens for some outdoor “tough love”, but ended up being abusive and dangerous. And then it got worse. Much, much, MUCH worse.

Gotta say: There are films I review because they’re great. There are films I review because I should. There are films I review because they’re absolute garbage and I need to warn humanity. Then there are documentaries like Camp, where the message is so important, the story so compelling, I can’t not review it. So boom. This doc hit me twice; first, as a gal who grew up in the 80s and had no idea this stuff was going on, and second, as an adult who got absolutely, incandescently angry at what the human waste parading as “responsible adults” got up to in these “camps”. Director Liza Williams created a cinematic Molotov cocktail with this documentary, and it’s a damning look at how we’ve treated – and continue to treat – our “troubled” children.

Cartisano passed away before this documentary was created, so Williams sat down with staff and others who interacted with the teens in these camps. And these interviews are damning. To hear “Horsehair”, the main antagonist – er, counselor – at Challenger, shrug off a child’s death? “Nobody had responsibility over that. It’s something that happened”. Disgusting. Meanwhile, Cartisano’s wife seemed more focused on the inconvenience of the trial and how that affected her (ditto for their now-grown daughter Catie), and Cartisano himself was filmed saying he believed he “always had a gift for working with kids”.

So Cartisano began another camp after the negative publicity shut down Challenger. And then another. All the while pushing abuse, when he wasn’t dishing it out himself, at thousands of dollars a throw. (“16k in 1989” turned into “over 50k” per teen by the early aughts.) Those teens might have had issues, but Camp shows that the truly despicable individuals were the adults. No wonder the combination of inattention, self-righteousness, and abuse turned dangerous. And deadly. 

Camp interview adults who ran the various camps, but also kids who suffered through, families who sent their teens off for “treatment”, law enforcement, as well as a journalist who helped bring Cartisano’s alleged* crimes to light. These interviews are interspersed with television footage of the “teen epidemic” of the 80s and 90s, and news clips about the camp and the abuses found there. Williams delivers these moments with a neutral eye, giving interviewees who were over 21 at the time these camps ran, just enough rope to hang themselves in the court of public opinion. And it’s delightfully subversive. I can imagine a few interviewees feeling ill used…but hey. Nobody has responsibility over that, y’know? 

As a survivor of extreme parental abuse, this documentary freaked the hell out of me. I wanted to scream at the parents whose children died, for sending their kids to their deaths. I wanted to see the folks who ran Challenger behind bars for life, and sued for everything they’ve got. Hell, I still feel that way. There are safe places like Outward Bound, that focus on safe outdoor education as a way to bring out the best in people. But Cartisano’s programs were a death sentence waiting to happen.

While it’s probably going to get other abuse survivors very triggered? This dark look at trying to “fix” teens is a must watch for all who can stomach the horror. Because these camps live on in various incarnations, be they “wilderness therapy”, “conversion”, overly strict “boot camps”, insulting “fat camps”, or trying to “scare straight” troubled kids. There’s still a troubling lack of Federal oversight for youth camps, leading to a whole lot of places led by people who have zero training in the area they’re focused on. But hopefully, with information presented in this and other documentaries? That will change. Kids deserve better. 

Come for: A look at how a “survivalist” program for teens went completely off the rails 
Stay for: Shocking shit that will make you want to slap those adults until you feel better. Hey, they dished it out, surely they can take it? Otherwise, they’d just be worthless pieces of shit. OH WAIT.

[*Gotta say “alleged”, as the dude managed to get off on many of the charges against him. Bonus? His attorney said he never got paid for his work. Cool, cool.]