When the first series of Brat Camp was aired in 2004, James Fonfe and his five fellow campers were billed as being abusive, arrogant, foul-mouthed and ill-disciplined. Four years later, Fonfe is holding down a full-time job, has given up drugs and become teetotal. Was the ‘Redcliffe Ascent’ experience responsible for this transformation, or has James got other theories about what put him back on the right track?

James is candid about his initial reactions to the idea of attending a ‘wilderness programme’ in Utah. ‘My mum said to fill out this survey – I knew it was for a TV programme. I had regular arguments with my mum at the time – I thought I’ll just fill out something and that will keep her quiet for a while. I was told I was going to be there for four or five weeks max. I thought it would be a bit like camping. I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to smoke so I took 200 cigarettes with me. They let me have one outside and then they just took all my bags off me and that was it.’

Each brat came into the programme with his or her own label: the violent one, the thief, the binge drinker, the drug addict. The leaders at Redcliffe handle the teenagers according to their perceived problems. Once the brats have completed the course, which comprises written work and physical tasks, and have shown a marked behavioural improvement, they are allowed to leave. Although James acknowledges that without the programme he would have had a more difficult time quitting his drug habit, he is sceptical about the efficacy of the counselling that was offered. ‘They work out what your different issues supposedly are according to them. But I went there with a plan. My plan was: right, this’ll give me four or five weeks in the middle of nowhere. I can get clean because I’m going to run out of drugs, there’s nothing there, no temptation and then I’ll get home and the rest is just willpower. What’s the point in having therapy sessions when you don’t actually learn anything from the therapy? I’ve been to anger management and stuff like that before, but I didn’t actually learn anything from them. The way that the place works, in my opinion, is that it will only work if you want it to.’

According to James, the counsellor on the course, known as Doc Dan, had suggested to James’s mother that he had a very high chance of getting back into drugs when he returned. On this subject, James is indignant. ‘He tried to get me to go to this boarding school in the States, The Discovery Academy, which is owned by the same company (as Redcliffe). He tried to persuade my parents to get me sent there. And it’s like a proper lock-down there, like a mini-juvie. Girls are not allowed to talk to boys, boys are not allowed to talk to girls. It’s completely segregated and really strict.’ The Discovery Academy bills itself as ‘a clinical boarding school whose mission is to inspire each student to a quest for excellence in all areas of life’. It recommends itself as an ideal transition from a wilderness school – a sort of half-way house – back to real life for students.

One of the brats, Rachel, took longer than the others to complete the course. James suggests that there was a secondary reason that she came back when she did. ‘It was because her visa expired. That’s what nobody knows – nobody worked that out. You have a 90-day visa to go to the States. We didn’t realise. I only worked it out after I left – I thought “hang on a minute”, I never clocked it until then. It was when we were leaving and I was looking through my passport and I thought “Shit, it says 90 days.” I could have just done nothing and sat there saying, “Yeah, I’m not doing it” and gone home in 90 days.’ Considering their initial behaviour, it is lucky that none of the brats had the foresight to see this caveat in the supposedly strict rule that no child may go home until they have completed the course. To their credit, the course leaders – with names like Stone Bear, Black Hawk, Dancing Bear and White Winds – seemed to show tremendous patience with their young charges. While James is fairly cynical about the process, he does mention these leaders with respect and freely admits that he stills thinks about Utah and the people he met there frequently. ‘It’s a bit like a game when you are there. To graduate it’s a bit like you have to follow this game. If I was to redo it, and I wanted to get out as quickly as I could, I’d be as bad as I could for the first week and then slowly just even out the balance.’ It’s obvious that the more perceptive among the teenagers figure this trick out quickly.