Therapy or abuse? Controversial treatments may sink Cascade

"They say we incite these kids? They are already there," she says. "I can count on one hand the number of times Larry had to physically restrain my child. Yeah, you see the emotion, but you're seeing it every single day of your life, and it's uncontrolled."

"It's emotion that does no good," VanBloem says. "We try to channel it."

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Risenmay puts down her bills and leans across her daughter; VanBloem places the heel of his hand on the child's stomach and begins pressing.

"It's time to get your mad out," Risenmay says.

"I'm scared," the girl says flatly.

VanBloem places his hand on her forehead, trying to maintain eye contact.

"Stay with me," he says.

VanBloem asks her to recall a traumatic episode of abuse in vivid detail. She refuses at first but complies with prodding below her ribs. Hutchings, who is watching the session, leans over and whispers: "He's trying to help her release her anger, because emotions are stored in the organs."

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VanBloem says he was trained to practice a more intrusive form of therapy than the kind he now administers. In a CBS "48 Hours" special on the therapy, therapists at a treatment center where VanBloem worked are shown lying on top of children, yelling at them inches from their face. The boy in the video, who has since said holding therapy helped him, appears terrified.

The state's Division of Occupational Licensing, which monitors licensed therapists in Utah, began investigating Cascade in 1997, according to VanBloem, when a former client, Johanna Everett, complained of abuse at Cascade. That set off an investigation that culminated in September 2002 with a petition filed by the state Attorney General's Office seeking to revoke VanBloem's license.

The petition, which was based on interviews with former Cascade clients, detailed five cases in which VanBloem and another therapist, Jennie Gwilliam, lay on top of children face-to-face to induce "belly breathing." VanBloem and other therapists would then restrain the child by "methods including sitting on the child's legs or wrapping the child in a blanket," the petition states.

The state alleged that VanBloem then used his hands and knuckles to press into the child's abdomen and ribs, causing pain. One mother of an 8-year-old patient reported finding bruises on her daughter after therapy sessions.

Since the petition was filed, VanBloem and his supporters have vehemently disputed it. VanBloem has videotaped testimony from eight parents who say state investigators have twisted their words, that Cascade never abused their children and that holding therapy was an effective treatment.