Teen Reach - long gone but still haunts people

We found some testimonies on an old Fornits Thread now where Reddit are talking about this program. It was marketed as a rehab for teenagers. Use of corporal punishment let the State of Arizona to conduct an investigation. Here is a former clients testimony:

Well i lived in the teen reach house from age 16-17 and it was freaking unbelievably horrible.

Let me just state that they wouldn't let me talk to my parents while i was there, couldn't have sugur or wear my own clothes or go to the bathroom alone, or listen to music other than christian music. We had to praise god or we would be treated differently and not move up in the company. They had what they would call the demon room in the house. The really screwed up thing is that one of the property locations that they selected to have as a residence for the Christian Girls home was the house where the "sleep walking murder" Steven Steinberg stabbed his wife 26 times with a kitchen knife...so some really unusual things happened in that house but they would try to say that the house was demon possessed and all of those who didn't accept christ would be tortured and even reportedly raped by these demons. Anyway i could go on and on, they took my poetry from me when i was entered into the house and it was burned in front of me as an example of the extremes they would go to to purge me of my sinful ways.

I eventually got out of the house by hitting on the pastors wife, they said i was a pedifile because i was bisexual. (can't have a bisexual girl in a christian girls home) lol. Anyway those were some very traumatising experiences. Just thought i would report that i did in fact live there.

Also an employee wrote:

Been there, was a former employee.......not a cool place, brainwashing to the point of blind following of personal instruction. True Christians cannot stay involved with this leadership, this is a CULT masquerading as a Christian Group. Bobby Torres's direction and word counts far more than God's Word.....but the followers are browbeat, coerced, etc. into being in "spiritual submission", or else held to public group ridicule for being "rebellious", which the Bible states is as the sin of witchcraft!

Who wants to be known as a witch?.. nobody, so followers begin to doubt their own judgement, and eventually let Bobby Torres do all their thinking.....it's so much easier to get along with everyone then! The current games going on are dispicable, and are teaching vulnerable young people that lying, decieving, and ignoring the law is ok when the enemy is the State or anyone but them. Since when did the Ten commandments have "conditions" on them? They treat Bobby Torres's unending edicts like they are the original tablets from Mount Sinai, everything from how long one must pray each day, to what music you can and can't listen to, to what kind of food you can eat. Vegetarianism is not only encouraged, but mandated among staff, and grocery receipts are checked to see if you bought "approved" foods.

Only a short step here to buying large lots of KoolAid and Cyanide.

And finally another student:

I was in that thing for a couple of months, too.......scary. When they encouraged me to disconnect from my family, keep "information" from them (their little program secrets) I smelled a rat, and my family came and moved me home. Now, all the friends I thought I had there won't talk to me and have spread lies about my young daughter to discredit us, I guess, so we look like the whackjobs, not them. Too bad,....there are a lot of people out there that really believe this bunch, and Bob is even an Assemblies of God minister. Isn't that the same outfit that gave a license to Jimmy Swaggart while he was making whoopee with prostitutes?

The program was organized by Bobby Torres. The courts found a number of violations forcing the management to focus on other things.

Sources:

• Another "Christian Based" Program (Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora)
• Any Teen Reach(AZ) survivors here. (Reddit Troubled Teens)
• Teen Reach founder fires back at state (World Corporal Punishment Research)
• Teen Reach loses to DES (East Valley Tribune)
• Troubled teens program probed (The Cincinnati Enquirer)