Finished with therapy at Oxbow, Tom is living on is own – unless you count the other three guys that share his apartment. He’s working. And he’s training his new puppy to be a hunting dog. He has new friends and plans for the future.

From the blackness of abuse and abusing, Tom and his family have found the brightness of healing and hope. I am happy for him. So very happy for him. He and his family have worked and fought for this moment. They have struggled and cried and faced all manner of demons with courage, faith, and determination.

I watch as Tom puts the puppy in the truck – one he bought himself – and head off to the day’s adventure. Life is good.

Brita and Tony North, the horse pros at Oxbow let me watch and find out. One at a time the boys enter the corral and slowly approach the mother, who is halter-held by Brita. Tony has his arms around the wobbly baby. Tony, the mother and baby, and the Oxbow student are all almost nose-to-nose as the boy tentatively pats first the mare and then slowly moves to her baby.

Stroking the tiny horse’s velvet nose, then running hands down its neck, softly tickling its belly, and slowly lifting the spindly legs to tap tiny hooves.

Brita is softly talking to the boys, explaining the mare must trust that they will not hurt her baby. Their movements must be slow and careful. If alarmed, she will do whatever she must to protect her foal.

In each boy the reaction is different. Some seem stone faced and unimpressed. Those are often the newest students to arrive at Oxbow. Others are filled with wonder at the foal’s fragile little body. Most ask for a second chance to stroke the little horse again.

Now Brita explains to the boys that as prey animals, it is ultimate act of trust for the mare to allow them close to her baby. And for the baby to allow the boys to temporarily disable it by lifting its legs is the essence of vulnerability. There is no chance to run or escape in that condition.

She asks the boys, “Are you giving your therapist a leg?” An odd question, but one they immediately relate to. Are you being honest? Have you disclosed everything from your past so your healing present can begin? Are you sincere in your work and willingness to turn the horror of your past into the hope of your future?

Brita tells the boys the night the foal was born she went to the corral every two hours to help the mare learn to nurse her baby. Her udder was swollen and sore and the nursing process was painful for the first few tries. Gradually, the swelling subsided and the thristy baby could nurse completely.

She asked the boys, “Do you think it is painful for your parents to help you deal with your sexual issues?” The boys share the reactions of their parents, particularly their mothers, when they disclosed sexual behaviors. “Your parents,” Brita tells them, “are standing by you. It is difficult for them but they are determined to give you the tools you need to succeed.” Her voice drops a notch. “That’s why you’re here,” she says, gently, giving each of them a long look.

Brita continues, “All of you should have had someone to give you appropriate touch the moment you were born. Some of you didn’t. For some of you, that trust was betrayed. Does that mean it’s too late for you?”

Almost in unison the boys shake their heads no. But one student asks, “If the mom didn’t learn imprinting will she turn on her baby? Will she reject her baby?” His question is loaded with concern.

“Will it matter what she does,” Brita responds, “if her baby learns the tools he needs to behave appropriately?”

The boys think about this in silence for a while. Another student asks, “How long do most horses live?” The intention is clear. What he really wants to know is how long does a foal that hasn’t been imprinted have to “get it,” to re-learn the fearlessness of positive touch?

Brita’s answer is simple. “Not nearly as long as you will. You can take these tools and create a happy, safe life.”

Almost on cue the little foal skitters away and the mare moves to a protective stance between baby and boys. Lesson over.

*Visit the video section of our website to see how equine imprinting works.

Teens and Pornography: The Frightening New Addition

*Names have been changed to protect privacy.

            Looking back, *Tom remembers the morning the nightmare began.  It was 5:30 a.m.  Summer vacation meant his 15-year-old son, *Jason, should be sleeping in. Instead, Tom was surprised to find him at the family computer. He was even more stunned when he saw what his son was doing.

           “He was looking at porn,” Tom says. Specifically, Jason was watching child pornography. “It was about as hard-core as you could get.”

            Jason was ashamed and embarrassed and promised his parents he would never do it again. They thought their son was “just curious” and believed him. The family had recently moved and the computer’s filtering system was down.  Tom installed a new blocking program and made sure it was working.

            They were devastated when they discovered their son, on at least two other occasions, had hacked through the system to find porn.

            In the meantime, Jason was spiraling downward at school.  Formerly a straight A student, the teen began failing his accelerated classes. 

            “We suspected drug use,” Tom recalls.  They began drug testing their son and carefully monitoring his behavior and friends. Every drug test turned up negative.

            “He proceeded to get worse until it reached a point where we couldn’t get him to do anything at home. He wouldn’t even take a shower, brush his teeth or get ready for school,” Tom remembers.

            Desperate for help, the family turned to their church and was eventually referred to a counselor who specialized in adolescent therapy.

            After months of therapy Jason revealed he had been looking at Internet porn for at least two years. He had tried to do it in secret at home or at a friend’s house.  But the “secret” had transformed to a demon that was controlling his life.

            Shawn Brooks is Executive Director of Oxbow Academy, a residential treatment center, or RTC, that specializes in treating teenage boys with sexual dependencies.  A sexual dependency is a behavior that interferes with a child’s normal behavior or coping ability.

            Located in rural Wales, Utah, Oxbow is one of only a handful of centers that focuses exclusively on adolescent sexual dependencies. Pornography is the common thread.

            “Most parents don’t find out their kids are looking at Internet pornography unless they are able to track their use on the computer,:” he says. “If parents are watching their child’s behavior they may start picking up other cues.”

            Brooks says those cues can include strange behavior regarding the Internet, such as becoming agitated it a parent enters the room while they are on the Net. Some parents report their teens stay up all night to use the computer, making the child unusually tired or irritated. Other times, behavioral issues like Jason’s may appear.

            Dr. Thomas Kimball is Associate Professor and Associate Managing Director for the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. He believes in some teens, viewing pornography can be as addictive as drugs.

            “Behaviors can be just as addictive as substances,” he says. “There’s an experimentation phase, then abusing, depending, and addicting,” Kimball says.

            Brooks agrees.  “Sexual addictions are similar to drug addictions.  Not everybody reacts the same,” he explains. “When a male adolescent sees pornography it releases endorphins similar to heroin.”

            Brooks says just like with drugs, pornography that satisfies the user today will eventually lose its potency – requiring the addict to go for something bigger and better.

           Dr. Kimball adds, “As a clinician, the biggest increase in private practice and couples therapy are couples coming in because one of them is entrenched in porn.  The impact on marriages and families is immense, and it starts when people are teens.”         

            Statistics show most children have their first experience with Internet pornography at age 11 – usually by accident.

            Jason’s Internet search stemmed from an innocent experience he had as a five-year-old with a peer.  Tom says his son was not molested – the children were simply too young to know that what felt good was inappropriate.  At the time, he didn’t even know the incident had occurred. His son revealed the experience during therapy.

When Jason grew older and realized his behavior was wrong he felt a tremendous amount of shame and guilt from the incident and used the Internet as a way to at first try to understand his behavior, then to feed his fantasy.

            “The Internet is the number one feeder of porn addiction,” Shawn Brooks says. “Whatever your fantasy is you can find it. There is so much stimulus to support it.”

            Brooks says the Internet is an especially dangerous pornography source because of the number and variety of images. “An adolescent could spend a year and never see the same picture twice,” he says. He’s aware of cases where teens actually become dehydrated because they are “glued” to the computer screen for hours.

            Tom says when he and his wife learned of Jason’s experience and his Internet pornography addiction, “We really fell apart. That’s when we knew we had a crisis.”

Looking for Help

            The family began looking for treatment programs that could help Jason with his addiction. “We learned there are lots of options for drug and alcohol treatments but not for sexual addictions.” The programs Tom did find did not treat adolescents.

            The Internet that proved a feeding ground for their son’s addiction now became a lifeline in helping him overcome it. “We did a lot of research trying to place Jason in a program,” Tom says.

 Specialized Therapy

Acting on the recommendation of the educational consultant, Jason moved to an RTC which did not specialize in sexual dependencies. Instead, students were suffering from a variety of substance abuse and mental health problems.

After five months in the program, Jason felt comfortable about disclosing his own struggles. When that happened, his father says, “he became the pariah of the program.” Other students teased and tormented him and administrators worried he might be a sexual predator. “They politely asked him to leave,” Tom recalls, “but they didn’t offer any alternative programs.”

Twist of Fate

            It was only by chance the family heard of Oxbow. An administrator at the program Jason was leaving happened to mention the school’s inability to treat sex specific disorders during a professional meeting. An Oxbow official was at the meeting and offered to take Jason.

            “In our facility, Jason’s kind of openness is rewarded,” Brooks explains. “He’s not shunned or in danger because everyone else in the program has similar issues. It’s a safer environment for him and he’s not able to groom other students in order to victimize them.”

            Because the program is sex-specific, Brooks says staff and students are held to higher accountability. “In another program where they’re not aware those tools or behaviors would go unnoticed or be considered horseplay. At Oxbow staff and residents pick them out and hold each other accountable.”

Tom says having a sex specific treatment center has made all the difference in the world. “There’s a trust that’s established between the boys that allows openness and that openness really helps these kids realize, ‘I’m not alone.’ That lets them open up and share, and sharing takes the power away.”

 Is Treatment Necessary?

            Shawn Brooks says there’s always a chance a teen will overcome his addiction without treatment.  But there’s also a danger a child will start acting out when pictures no longer satisfy their sexual cravings.

            “Juveniles are much more amenable to treatment,” Brooks notes. He says statistics show an 80-90% success rate. With adults the outlook is not nearly so positive. “The numbers are almost inverted for adults.”

            Jason’s father hopes his son will be able to come home this summer. By then he will have been in treatment for 15 months.

            “The earlier you make an intervention, the better your chances of healing,” Dr. Kimball states. “There’s a lot of hope with the right kinds of intervention and family support.”

            Brooks adds, “The only way we can track whether or not treatment is working is recidivism rate.  Do they go back to those same behaviors after treatment? To say they are cured is almost like saying an alcoholic no longer has the urge to drink anymore.  We help them build interventions against urges.  They may always feel the urge but they don’t act on it.”

            “I’m worried,” Tom admits.  “I think there’s always the fear of what could go wrong.” He adds, “But I actually think Jason seems much stronger and more aware of his emotions now than a typical adolescent his age.”

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

            When he thinks of his son’s future, Tom is hopeful.  He wishes he’d talked more frankly about sex and relationships with his boy, wishes he’d known about the experience that sent his son to the Internet to begin with.  “I think that had we been able to assure him that the experience that happened at age five was something that was just curiosity based. It wasn’t as deviant and shameful as he held it to be.”

Dr. Kimball says those kinds of conversations are exactly what help children develop healthy sexuality. “There needs to be open, age appropriate conversations about sex,” he says. “These talks have to start as soon as kids become verbal with appropriate names of body parts and answering questions. Be close to your children. Know them and how they are. Then you can gage if something’s not right.”

Brooks says parents should restrict Internet use and make sure they have filtering devices installed. Even then, be prepared for children to try to get around them. “These kids are amazing at what they can do.” 

Tom says he was amazed to discover that most of Jason’s friends had unrestricted access to pornography on the Internet. “I think some parents think they are doing everything right,” he says. “But these kids are so sophisticated. They can put it on a jump drive, burn it to a CD and pass it around at school. There are so many ways for their kids to access that kind of information.”

His experience with Jason has made him a lot more aware of the dangers and the need for discussion.  “I feel like I’m a lot more open with my other children,” he says.

His advice? “Don’t assume your child is any different from mine.”

Paint the Pony

A cold breeze and a skiff of snow on the ground couldn’t keep Oxbow students from their First Annual Paint the Ponies activity.

What started as a Halloween event in 2008 continued this year as an opportunity for students to express their history and their hopes for the future.

Equine directors Brita and Tony North provided each student with a variety of poster paints and instructions to paint their story on one side of a horse.       

“Native Americans used to paint their ponies before important battles or hunts,” Brita explained. “Their ponies became a sort of resume and each symbol had special meaning.”           

Using that model, the boys developed their own symbols of important events in their lives during class time earlier in the week. Then it was off to the corral to paint the horses with the symbols they created.

Brita explains, “The therapeutic quality is the fact they get to experience it and get to do it and get to live it. And if you live something you’re more likely to engrain it in yourself rather than just talk about it.”

    More than just jumping in the van and hitting the highway, Oxbow students had to be meeting their goals in residential, clinical, and academic areas. They also had to be independent level. And of course, there was that little matter of parental permission.

      The mountain bikers toured Utah’s spectacular red rock country for some slick rock riding. They put in more than 20 miles their first day out and 12 miles the second day. It’s an adventure travelers from all over the world come to experience.

    The San Rafael trip was a horseback adventure. Not only did students participating have to be level appropriate, they also had to demonstrate their ability to navigate a horse through an obstacle course as part of their horsemanship requirement.

  The riders saw coral canyons and Native American pictographs that are thousands of years old.

    Both groups combined their day activities with camping out for two nights on the Thursday through Sunday adventures.

     Besides seeing the spectacular scenery and having a great time, Bill says, “It’s all teaching moments – how to deal with all kinds of situations and be proactive. It’s about finding the positive every day.”

      But to Oxbow students, these are “vision boards,” tangible reminders of their personal mission statements. It is a picture of what they hope to achieve in the future.

         “The vision board serves two purposes,” says Executive Director Shawn Brooks. “It helps the student who is struggling to have a visual representation of his mission statement and it helps him believe in what he is saying.”

           These vision boards are also helping therapists and staff tune in to what a boy is really feeling.

           “In his mission statement we might have a boy who talks about being a loving family member but there are no pictures of his family on his vision board,” Shawn explains.

           “There’s a conflict there. He stands up and says it but he’s not visualizing himself as part of that family.  You start to get quite a bit more insight on how a boy is thinking.”

           He says students who have internalized their mission statements and are sincere about them have been excited about creating their vision boards.

           Boys who are just “going through the motions” with their mission statements are finding the vision boards a much tougher assignment.

           That, too, has a therapeutic benefit, Shawn says. Some boys begin to re-examine their mission statements, changing them to reflect ideas they truly believe.

           Each boy hangs his vision board near his bed and is required to spend about 30 seconds looking at it right after waking each morning.

           In addition, the boys must bring their vision boards to their phase review. They must explain their board and the meaning of the pictures they selected.

           “No one completes the next phase until the vision board is completed,” Shawn says.

           He adds, “Therapeutically, we’re always looking for a multi-dimensional approach. We’re hoping if the boys can visualize it they can believe it.”