Global Teen Challenge is a network of Christian faith-based corporations intended to provide rehabilitation services to people struggling with addiction.
[6] The organization offers rehabilitation programs of a general duration of 12 months to help young people to get out of addictions of all kinds (alcoholism, drugs, crime, prostitution, etc.).
[9] In 1973, Archie Johnston compared results of Teen Challenge with that of a transactional analysis approach at a Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institution therapeutic community, and with a third group who received no treatment.
Aaron Bicknese tracked down 59 former Teen Challenge students in 1995, in order to compare them with a similar group of addicts who had spent one or two months in a hospital rehabilitation program.
His results, part of his PhD dissertation, were published in "The Teen Challenge Drug Treatment Program in Comparative Perspective".
[15] Doug Wever, author of "The Teen Challenge Therapeutic Model", stated, "I would respectfully suggest that the Texas Freedom Network's position here is overstated in that it's not unusual at all for the research design of effectiveness studies to look only at graduates; therefore the outcomes of these independent studies do provide a legitimate and dramatic basis for comparison given the results.
"[16] In 1995, auditors from the Texas Commission for Alcohol and Drug Abuse (TCADA) demanded that Teen Challenge obtain state licensing and employ state-licensed counselors.
As a result, then-Governor George W. Bush publicly defended Teen Challenge and pursued alternative licensing procedures for faith-based organizations.
[21] In October 2021, an article in The New Yorker described how 15-year-old Emma Burris was allegedly forced into Teen Challenge and to surrender her baby for adoption.