Global Teen Challenge is a network of Christian faith-based corporations intended to provide rehabilitation services to people struggling with addiction. It was founded by David Wilkerson in 1960. The global headquarters is in Columbus, Georgia, United States. There is little public record of what goes on in Teen Challenge facilities. Questions have been raised about whether the practices of the organization are abusive and cult-like. In the United States, there are no federal laws or agencies that regulate organizations like Teen Challenge. History Teen Challenge was founded in 1961 by David Wilkerson, an Assemblies of God pastor who left a rural Pennsylvania church to work on the street among teenage gang members and socially marginalized people in New York City and who, perhaps, is best known for later authoring The Cross and the Switchblade and founding Times Square Church. Teen Challenge started its first residential program in December 1962, in a house in Brooklyn, New York. In 1973, 12 years after the ministry began, Teen Challenge established a national headquarters. In 1995, Global Teen Challenge was founded to assist the growing number of Teen Challenges starting up outside the US, but struggling to acquire the necessary resources and training. In 2022, Global Teen Challenge had more than 1,400 accommodation centers in 129 countries around the world. Programs 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.). In the past it forced participants to sign ‘civil rights waivers’ under duress, and to this day requires parents/guardians to sign waivers giving over unconditional control of their child, and stating they will not “interfere with the custody and management of said minor in any way.” The centres use practices such as enforced silence and banning communication (verbal and visual) between participants for perceived infractions, or on suspicion that the participant is gay - sometimes for months; monitoring and censoring all phone conversations with people outside of the programme (eg parents). Studies of program effectiveness 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. While the numbers of subjects was small (17 in each group), he found evidence to support his recommendation that, while Teen Challenge was an "effective"