In San Louis Obispo, California, four police officers were recently charged with physically and emotionally abusing the children they worked with at the Leadership Empowerment Discipline boot camp, a program for at risk youth.  It’s not surprising at all to learn that abuse was going on in such a place — many (if not most of these troubled teen rehabilitation programs are little more than child abuse packaged as tough love helping, and the horror stories and streams of deaths documented at these types of camps is quite long and tragic. It’s just rare to see anyone get charged with anything.  Even when counselors have literally pushed children to the point where they have collapsed and died, most get off scot free.  Since verbal and emotional abuse is actually more damaging than physical and sexual abuse,  it’s refreshing to see society actually taking it seriously … though and expansion of involvement by the criminal justice system is probably not the best way to do it.