Oh yeah, the “having your kids kidnapped out of your house at 2am, paying strange men to rip them out of bed screaming at them and throwing them in a van” thing was so popular when I was a teen. (I’m just a tad younger than Paris Hilton.) It was super mainstream enough that like every trash daytime “talk show” like Maury, Jenny, Montel, and Dr. Phil had all kinds of episodes on it. “Help my teenage is out of control!” was an every week kinda episode. It was literally routine entertainment framed as “these shocking out of control teens have forced their families to have no choice left!!!!!”
I don’t remember the shows staying w/ the kids to show what happened beyond the initial attack stuff though. All I know is that it was a day that ends in Y to see people PAYING violent strangers to literally ambush and. Fucking attack their child, dragging them from bed. In the goddamn middle. Of the night!!!!!
Can you imagine the trauma? Some of these kids are like 12.
I’m sure there were adults outraged by this practice but I didn’t know them and I don’t remember any of that side. What I remember in my teen years in the late 90s and early 00s was that this kind of “tough love!!!!” abuse bullshit was heavily normalized. It used to be even more acceptable than now and to lots of parents they’d say it was even ADMIRABLE behavior and they’d do the same if any of us got that “wild.”