The Business of Abducting Children

Labi won a 2005 Casey Medal (magazine) for this story.

"Want Your Kid to Disappear?" explores the secret world of "transporters," quasi-security officers hired by parents to abduct their children and deliver them to remote private reform schools using any means necessary. In the fall of 2003, I spoke to an attorney who was pursuing a lawsuit on behalf of a teen who had been taken against her will to a reform school in Missouri. (That school has since shut down under pressure.) He told me that the escort hired by the teen's parents had "busted in one morning, shackled her, and informed her at the airport that she was a prisoner." He added that this practice was common and that the people who do it advertised themselves as "escorts." I was skeptical -- he was an advocate who might be exaggerating the facts for effect. Still, I asked him for the names of the companies that did these transports. I had to look no farther than the Internet to confirm the lawyer's story. I discovered many companies offering to accompany troubled teens to private reform schools.

I found glowing testimonials from parents who had used Strawn Support Services, one of the companies the lawyer had mentioned, and called them to ask them about their experiences. The parents were reluctant to talk with me at first, but they uniformly praised Rick Strawn, emphasizing that he had "saved" their children from taking the wrong path in life. Strawn was proud that one of the teens he had transported years earlier had matured to become an upstanding citizen. I was intrigued with both the transport industry and Rick Strawn. Was he an abusive hired gun or an unlikely savior?

After doing preliminary research, I called Strawn and started a conversation that would carry on for much of the next year. He told me when we first talked that he was a recovering alcoholic. It soon became clear that he believed with missionary zeal that he was saving the kids he transported, whom he saw as reflections of his former troubled self. I asked Strawn to let me accompany him on some of his escorts. He said I might, if I went as his assistant while we transported a girl. I told him that wasn't an option, and that I wanted only to observe. In the end, Strawn agreed to let me come along with no strings attached, provided, of course, the parents consented. After a number of aborted efforts, I was able to go on two trips, one transporting a 14-year-old girl from Virginia to Carolina Springs Academy in South Carolina and the other transporting a 16-year-old boy from Florida to Casa by the Sea in Mexico.

 If Strawn is decent and likeable, he will also go to almost any length to get his charges to do what their parents want. He has chased kids down. He has dragged teens to the car in their underwear. He has used a choke hold, a technique he learned as a cop, to render a few others unconscious. He has taken suicidal kids from hospital treatment to reform school. Most of Strawn's clients are genuinely concerned about their children's welfare. They believe their children are at risk and want to save them. But these parents also revel in forcing their kids to sit up, pay attention, and do what they're told. 

Strawn's willingness to use force differentiates him from other escorts. While no one tracks the teen transport industry, those in the business estimate that more than 20 companies nationwide take kids to behavior modification schools, residential treatment centers and boot camps. But I learned that some of the bigger companies are more selective than Strawn about the techniques they’ll use and where they’ll transport the kids.

I was concerned from the start about the ethical implications of what I was embarking upon. The parents of these kids had consented to have me present, but the kids didn't. I told Strawn that I wanted to tell them at the outset who I was, and ask whether they were comfortable with my being there. He insisted that I wait until after the initial abduction, warning me that the situation at that moment would be so delicate that my added presence could increase the chance for violence. That seemed reasonable to me -- I didn't want to put the teens at greater risk than they already were -- so I agreed to wait until the situation had "calmed down" before telling them who I was.  

There were other negotiations along the way. Strawn took pride in the professionalism of his operation; he said he was the only company he knew of that required his escorts to wear uniforms. He wanted me to wear the blue t-shirt with the company logo. I refused. During the second escort, as we sat talking to the parents of the teen in Strawn's usual fashion, he staked his partner outside (in case the 16-year-old tried to jump through the window) and asked me to stand by the front door to alert the partner when Strawn had entered the room and "the coast was clear." I refused.

I told both of the teens during the trip who I was. I sat on the plane next to the 16-year-old I wrote about, and we were some distance from Strawn. I didn't, however, tell him where he was going or what he should expect. I wanted to limit my role to observation as much as was humanly possible. I remained in that role from the time we entered his house until we dropped him off at Casa by the Sea, a so-called "behavior modification school" for troubled teens run by the Worldwide Association of Specialty Schools.

In the meantime, I began investigating Rick Strawn's background. I obtained his file from the police department where he had worked in Gwinnett County, Atlanta. I discovered that Strawn was not only an alcoholic, as he had told me, but that he also had a history of child molestation, which he had not disclosed. I felt chilled when I thought of our first journey, when we had entered the bedroom of the 14-year-old girl who was half-unclothed. Strawn had taken along a female escort, as he always did when he was transporting the girls, and he had turned his back while the girl dressed. But should he have been allowed in the room in the first place?

I did extensive research on the transport industry and its legality. I looked into cases of students who had been forcibly taken to reform schools, interviewed escorts from companies throughout the U.S., and spoke to staff at the reform schools. I discovered that with virtually no regulation over the industry, Strawn's prior arrests for family violence, reckless conduct and battery would not bar his continued involvement in the industry. I also found that the child transport industry remains nearly untouched by legislation, despite the fact that many of the schools to which the youths are taken have been investigated by the U.S. State Department as a result of "credible charges of abuse."

Instead of operating by rules, the escort industry runs on trust -- the trust that parents will make the best decisions for their children. But there is no trust between parents and kids in the households that Strawn enters. It has broken down so completely that parents think it's okay, and even courageous, to send a stranger into their child's bedroom. Strawn makes his living from that judgment and he is willing to mislead a child for what he sees as the greater goal of reform. 

As I neared the end of my reporting, I confronted Strawn about his record. Had he molested his stepdaughter and niece, as he had told police? When I pressed, he said, "Bottom line, I don't know. It's against everything that I believe in. I have a problem with believing that anything would have happened in that area." He had too much pride to ask me not to print what happened, but his wife called me on the phone in tears, begging me not to publish what had happened in the past. She said that if I did, I might put them out of business. I felt awful, but I told her that I felt that information had to be included, especially because her husband markets himself to parents by telling a story of personal redemption. I reminded her that I had told them at the outset that I couldn't promise them a positive story. Why, knowing about his past, had they agreed to let me into their lives? She said, "We didn't think you'd find out." 

The Mexican government shut down Casa by the Sea and three other reform schools like it in Baja, Calif., shortly after my story was published.

The Strawns remain in business.

Nadya Labi is a currently a freelance writer based in New York City.