Dan Webster: Kids survive 500-mile hike across Utah desert, a ‘therapy camp’ gone wrong, in this wild Netflix documentary

Parents with problem children often feel hopeless, frustrated and desperate to find something – anything – that can provide them with help.

Steve Cartisano recognized that problem and figured out a way both to give troubled parents some relief and to make money in the process. And for a while at least, he did make a lot of money. Millions, even.

But as the Netflix documentary “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” makes clear, many of those parents didn’t get what they paid for. And, more important, what they did pay for exposed their children to trauma.

An Air Force veteran with no psychological training but armed with what he categorized as an education provided by the “school of hard knocks,” Cartisano was the brainchild behind what became the Challenger Foundation, a series of so-called wilderness therapy camps for troubled children.

If using the word “camp” brings up images of bucolic nature experiences, the reality of Cartisano’s vision was the polar opposite. Employing hard-core, would-be counselors such as Lance “Horsehair” Jaggar, Cartisano designed more of a military boot-camp process.

As such, Jaggar and other Challenger Foundation employees subjected the program’s teenagers, at least some of whom were literally kidnapped, to a 500-mile hike across the Utah desert. When the death of 16-year-old Kristen Chase brought legal and financial problems, Cartisano shuttered his company.

He then came up with a new name, HealthCare America, moved his unlicensed business out of Utah and began again. In the Caribbean, he continued business as usual, this time forcing children into working for months at a time on a sailboat.

And when that company, too, was forced out of business, Cartisano forged on. In Samoa, campers at the Cartisano-run New Hope Academy were compelled to construct a habitat in insect-ridden jungle until in 1999 it, too, was shut down. Cartisano died in 2019.

To tell the story, director Liza Williams includes interviews with Jaggar, Kristen Chase’s parents, a number of camp survivors, such as Nadine Louise Guerrera, Salt Lake Tribune reporter Chris Smith and even Cartisano’s ex-wife Debbie and daughter Catie. Cartisano himself is seen only in archival footage.

Viewers, however, should take notice: The accounts offered by many of the camp survivors, accompanied by video recorded secretly, include references to physical and sexual abuse.

The irony of Cartisano’s business is that his own children became problem teens, too. His daughter admits that she abused drugs for 12 years, while her brother is serving a prison term.

The weakness of “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” is that director Williams offers no example of the good that some outdoor-themed guidance camps do. All are damned by the Cartisano model. Even worse, she provides no advice to parents about what options do exist to deal with their out-of-control children.

Maybe, though, it’s enough simply to deliver a two-word warning, especially to those wondering how to cope with troubled teens: Buyer beware.