Camp Meeting

Her message hit home, stunning her audience into silence.

This teenage girl, who once defiantly walked around with a temper that could blow at any moment, stood weeping without embarrassment in front of a hotel ballroom packed with strangers.

Less than a year ago, Christine, 16, had hit rock bottom while serving 17 months at Camp Scott, an all-girls camp for juvenile offenders in Saugus.

She had been in and out of trouble so many times she was not intimidated by the revolving doors of Juvenile Hall. But the door at Camp Scott would stay shut. She had never lost her freedom like this. And in losing her freedom, she may have found it.

She is now the emotional rock at the center of a performance group of anti-crime teenagers called the Camp Afflerbaugh Honors Drama Ensemble. Their mission: to turn other teenagers away from the life Christine and others like her led for so long.

“I don’t understand,” Christine told the crowd at the Airport Westin Hotel in Los Angeles, “why we have to shoot one another over a color, whether it’s red or blue. When you really think about it, we all come from the same place. We are killing our own sisters and brothers. It shouldn’t go down like that.”

But it does. And in their own small--but enthusiastic--way, members of the ensemble are trying to do something about it.

In an appeal heavily overlaid with gospel fervor, the group combines personal testimonies, raps and even chants: “Love, Patience, Peace.”

The group is one of the county’s few teenage outreach organizations composed completely of juvenile offenders whose gritty commentaries blend their streetwise experiences and religious zeal.

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The ensemble started in 1993 after Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Gregory James noticed two boys crying on their bunks after a morning church service at Camp Afflerbaugh, a juvenile facility in La Verne. With some prodding, he found that the pair felt dejected because their friends had ridiculed them for their religious beliefs.

James pressed the boys to find a way to address their problem. In two days, they came up with a plan for a youth group that dramatically uses religion as a way for young people to rise above their fascination with crime. And they opened the group to youngsters serving time in other juvenile camps.

Since then, the ensemble has averaged three performances a month and has taken its 30-minute show to audiences totaling more than 7,000 people, mostly teenagers, in the Los Angeles area, said James, who serves as a mentor for the group.

About seven of the ensemble’s 20 members are on probation but back in school. Twelve of them volunteered to perform at the national convention of Men Against Destruction Defending Against Drugs and Social Disorder.

Shortly before they began their recent show for the convention at the Airport Westin, James told the audience about the “message of change” they were about to witness:

“Everything that you will hear, everything that you will see, was written by them,” he said. “The deputies had nothing to do with it. In fact, the separation of church and state prohibits me from teaching them about God. But you need to listen to what’s going on.”

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Gospel music producer Kirk Franklin’s hit song “Stomp” then began throbbing through the house speakers. The ensemble--some still in custody, others on probation--began its rhythmic entrance with a side-to-side slide step.

The performers carried chains and handcuffs. With the audience clapping and singing along with Franklin’s infectious call-and-response anthem, the teenagers glided to the front of the room like a cool squadron of young soldiers.

The music stopped. A compact, cleanshaven 16-year-old named Jimmy stepped forward, pointing to the handcuffs the teenagers were all holding.

“These chains,” he said with a stone face, “represent bonds--bonds like drugs and gang violence. We need to cut all that out and take back the real human bond that we have.”

Jimmy jumped back in line and the group yelled together: “DE-nounce drugs. DE-nounce gangs. DE-nounce violence. Drop bondage.”

In unison, they raised the chains and handcuffs above their heads and threw them to the carpet. The audience roared with shouts of approval, pumping fists into the air.

The spectators were clearly moved--even when silently enthralled--as ensemble members told how they have dedicated themselves to changing their lives, and how other teenagers must do the same.

One of two girls in the group, Christine remembered feeling unable to stop violating probation and getting picked up by the police. She hungered for things her parents couldn’t afford. Soon she turned to petty crimes. And before long, Christine was arrested for stealing a car.

“I was crying out for help,” she said after the performance. “But I was crying the wrong way. I wanted the kind of help I wanted. I wanted cars and money, and I couldn’t get that.”

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She’s been out of custody and back on the streets for more than a month, but Christine said she feels little desire to return to her old habits. After performing with the ensemble for the past five months, she said, she has found the spiritual family and unconditional support group she always dreamed of having while making her way through the overcrowded, but lonely, juvenile justice system.

The ensemble is no walk in the park, she said. James practices tough love.

“Mr. James is real with me,” she said, describing the deputy’s attitude as: “If you are gonna represent our name, then you gotta make the change.”

“So I made that change and turned my life around,” she said. “I had troubles in camps, like girls wanting to fight me. But I’m a determined person, and once I am focused on something, I go after it.”

Ensemble members say they know the difficulties of using religion to reach teenagers who almost automatically tune out any talk about God. About the only time teenagers in trouble invoke divine providence is when they are pleading for mercy from a judge or trying to earn early release from jail, members of the group say.

Christine has overcome any difficulties she had talking about her convictions.

“I learned that people go through the same things that you go through--just not at the same time,” she said. “People have been in your shoes before. And when they see me up there, they think: ‘If she can do it, I can do it.’ ”

At times, changes in some young people are immediate.

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After one performance at Bonita High School in La Verne, then-Principal Greg Franklin said a few students later pulled him aside to talk about “overcoming hardships, mending relationships and having the strength to make appropriate choices.”

“I think it’s really key that they see hip kids they can look up to and admire who are doing the right things,” said Franklin, who is now principal of Fullerton High School in Orange County.

Ensemble member Damien, 17, of Hawthorne said he is a teenager who has made just such a decision. He said he started selling drugs to put food on the table for his sister and him after his mother became addicted to crack.

Sweating and beaming after the ensemble’s energetic show at the Westin, Damien, who is on probation, said that just as he threw the chains and handcuffs to the floor during the performance, he is now free of nagging mental chains. At last, he said, he can concentrate on his future.

“The homies made me do so many negative things that I felt like I wasn’t capable of anything else,” he said. “Now I can turn that negative energy around. I don’t have to watch my back all the time. Performing makes me feel good about myself.”