| Shafter: Hell on Earth |
. to his powerful build, Greg was also very sharp-minded. He knew what you were up to. But he was extremely helpful to those of us who behaved ourselves and chose to act like adults. My advisor, an ex-convict named Randy Witherell, was somewhat incompetent, so on the occasions that I needed a staff member’s approval for something, I’d look up Greg. Unfortunately, for every good guy at Shafter there was an absolute jackass. John Burns, a Herman Munster look-alike from Long Island, drew a type of sadistic pleasure by demeaning others. Burns, a former mental patient and North America’s worst driver, was someone with a huge inferiority complex. The fact that I'm a college graduate was something that galled him; the few times that I wore my Fresno State t-shirt he would always make some half-cocked remark about it. John was one of the many odd individuals who “spoke in tongues” (allegedly the Holy Spirit speaking through someone; in reality, no more than brainless babbling). He would always recite the same jibberish, to which my pal Frank Suljic and I would look at each other and just shake our heads. Larry Ratliff was another escapee on the staff at Shafter, a loose cannon who told us a ridiculous tale about “how he held a .357 to his wife’s head out in the desert.” Sure, and pigs fly, too. Why is it that these pseudo-manly types always have “macho” guns in their fabrications - a .357 or .44 magnum - but never an ordinary pistol? Ratliff also told us a preposterous tale which claimed that "women never menstruated until Eve bit into the apple." Menstruation is a normal biological occurrence in which the uterine lining is shed; menstruation occurs primarily in humans and close evolutionary relatives such as chimpanzees, but try explaining that to Ratliff. His wife, kids and little black dog were all nice, but Larry was on the verge of slobbering at the mouth nearly every time I saw him. An organization like Teen Challenge is nothing more than a cash cow; a cow that is forever hungry and needs feeding. Any task, no matter how unpleasant or unsafe, if it could bring in money, Teen Challenge would accept it. The worst of these was fire camp. Fire camp is when a group of Teen Challenge students, along with a staff member and an intern (someone who has completed the one-year program and is carrying out a four month residency) drive hundreds of miles crammed into a van to a fire area in order to work for a catering service that feeds the hundreds of firefighters. It is easy to fall asleep on these long drives, especially if you’re too hardheaded to share driving time with an intern. Ask the group that went with Larry Ratliff - he fell asleep two or three times while flying low in a fifteen- passenger Ford van (complete with trailer) on the trip home, only to be awakened by the van drifting onto the gravel at the edge of the road, not to mention the screams of his terrified passengers who did not wish to become statistics courtesy of Larry the lunatic. Fire camp sucks. Our group went to John Day, Oregon; it consisted of three guys and one intern from Shafter, along with three very nice ladies from the women’s home in Bakersfield, one intern, and two staff members - a rotund but very pleasant lady named Sharon, and the biggest walking advertisement for birth control in United States history: Christie Luna. Christie Luna was a detestable woman who had all the personality of a rattlesnake with PMS. Her hair a brassy red from a cheap dye job (photo, right, with Kern County director Rod Tidwell, a good guy), she was another one of those individuals who believed that prayer had cured her addiction. Prayer was this bruja’s answer for everything, because, like many "born agains," Luna lacked the ability to come up with a real solution. This was evident in the fact that we had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to help prepare breakfast and frequently worked until 11:30 p.m., and prayer was supposed to make up for our lack of sleep. Prayer! Money talks at Teen Challenge. There is a rule at induction centers: If you leave within the 90-day period, you will have to wait 30 days to come back, and then you must start all over again. Unless, of course, you or someone you know makes a nice cash “donation” to the ministry. One student, a young man from Las Vegas named Mike, went home four times in his 90-day stay, once for six days for cosmetic work on one tooth! How? Easy. Mike’s father has a good job in the casino industry, and made a healthy donation (see bribe) to Teen Challenge. A young man named Sean Wade made a request to return home for two court dates. It was denied, naturally. Alas, Sean’s mother could not afford the cash incentive to allow her son to appear in court, so he had two failures to appear waiting for him when he finished the program. One former student who visited us at both Shafter and Riverside was Joe Sandoval. Joe was a regular guy in his forties from Tehachapi who owns some rental properties, and he told us about when he was at Shafter he “had to go home for a couple of days to take care of a problem with some renters.” I wonder how much that cost him? Besides Dan Cates and Greg Adams, there were some other good people there: Pat Boles, although not the greatest preacher who ever lived, was highly skilled in many phases of construction. He had a good sense of humor. A staff member named Rick King was no slouch with a set of tools, either. He treated us like we mattered, and my buddy Arnoldo Flores enjoyed working with him. Kwame January, a young black man from the Los Angeles area, was a first-rate intern. He went on the fire camp trip with us, and didn’t snore one bit. He was a Dodgers fan, but then nobody’s perfect. A tall, red-headed intern named Steve Bullock kept me up to date on the Giants (something I greatly appreciated), and intern Jerry Baca was someone I enjoyed giving a hard time. I would blame Jerry for just about everything. No matter if it was the miserable weather, the lousy food, or something totally insignificant, it was all Jerry’s fault. And it still is. Teen Challenge needs to be investigated by state and federal authorities. They claim to be exempt from secular law: “As a Christian organization, we are subject only to God’s law” - but the fact is that religious ministries are required to abide by civil rights laws just like any other group. They conveniently disregard the famous quote from Luke 20:25, “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's.” Anyone who has ever spent time at Teen Challenge knows they disregard a good many things. In her 2003 best seller, "Bushwhacked," Molly Ivins devotes several paragraphs to Teen Challenge, including the licensure-inspection report the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse prepared in 1995: "The forty-nine page report documents an almost complete lack of compliance with requirements that fall into ninety-nine categories, from counselor qualifications to staff training in CPR and first aid, on to electrical outlets and gas lines. Even clients looking for Bible-centered drug treatment can benefit from smoke alarms, emergency-exit lights in dorms, and functioning gas lines, all of which the state found lacking at Teen Challenge's San Antonio campus." Gee, guess where that sounds like? You guessed it - Shafter Teen Challenge. Counselor qualifications? All they need is Jesus would be the response you would receive. Staff training in CPR? Nah, they'd just lay hands on you; if you died, it would be "God's will." Electrical outlets? If they worked, they worked, if they didn't, it's because God wanted it that way. Smoke alarms? God is our smoke alarm. Emergency-exit lights in dorms? God is our...yeah, yeah, we know. Nuts. My friend Brandon Sholes was so eaten up by flea bites in his dorm that he had to spend several hours in the emergency room. Sound like a place you'd want to send your loved one to? A wise man once said that he journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. This site is the beginning of my journey. Stay tuned. |
Shafter, California, is a mosquito-infested, blistering hellhole. It also happens to be home to a Teen Challenge induction
center. I have no desire whatsoever to return there.
As wretched as the Shafter center was, I was able to meet a couple of top-notch staff members there. Dan Cates, a guy
who stood about six-five and had a shaved head, was one of the most serene and genuinely helpful individuals that I have
ever had the pleasure to meet. My mom liked Dan; whenever she would visit she always asked about him. Greg Adams, a
black man with the physique of an NFL linebacker, could be one intimidating guy to those who chose to goof off. In addition
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