Skydiving With A Silver Spoon In Your Mouth

Forget rehab, the Via finishing school in New Zealand is where little rich girls really get fixed

By Frances Morton
Published: Dec 01, 2007

If there is one place Lindsey Lohan belongs, apart from perhaps jail, you’d think this would be it – an exclusive finishing school at the end of the earth designed to knock the edges off the most spoiled heiress with a program that rivals secret agent training. Students chopper into isolated territory, abseil cliff faces, horse trek and report for vigorous physical as well as mental training. But tough luck, says the school’s founder and CEO Sue McCarty. Access denied.

“I wouldn’t want [someone like] those hollywood girls. I’d want someone with a bit of promise,” says McCarty. “We wouldn’t take her because of all their issues.”

McCarty launched Via, a school for “trust fund babies” in New Zealand in 2004. Since then, daughters of supermodels, granddaughters of lords and members of the Saudi royal family are signing up for Via, designed to assist young women aged 16 to 22 bridge the gap from childhood to adulthood. The 12-week retreat in scenic New Zealand is one part adventure tourism and one part luxury vacation with a hefty dose life coaching thrown in.

“At Via we’re creating life experiences for them to learn from,” says McCarty, the Julie Andrews figure in all of this. McCarty is a glamorous middle-aged blonde who can deliver a piercing character analysis and wrap you up in a motherly hug in the same breath. Unlike her privileged wards, McCarty is from a humble working class background in working class England.

In an era when finishing schools of the rich and famous are shutting up shop, such as Institut Alpin Videmanette in Switzerland, where Princess Diana went, McCarty is rewriting the rulebook. “This is where finishing schools should be but they didn’t reinvent themselves and they died,” says McCarty.

Like the genteel finishing schools of eras past, girls attending Via do still have cordon bleu cooking and etiquette lessons, but some of Via’s methods are less than traditional. Clients can go skydiving, fly helicopters and abseil off waterfalls as well as doing volunteer work with children, elderly or mentally handicapped people. These experiences provide the building blocks for students to get to know their own abilities, because apparently growing up with every wish fulfilled can leave you sadly lacking.

“It’s very easy for them to fall into a materialistic world and lose sight of social responsibility and core values,” says McCarty.

It was hurtling towards the ground in a freefall that gave Susannah Marks her wake-up call. When the daughter of Lord and Lady Marks of Broughton, of the Marks and Spencer dynasty, arrived at Via, McCarty described her as “a handful” and “absolutely spoiled rotten” with no career ambitions. McCarty doesn’t admit clients with major behavioral issues, abuse issues or eating disorders because, she says, “we want people who actually want to make a difference in their lives to come on the retreat,” hence the Paris denial.

At Marks’s entry interview, McCarty discovered just what an easy ride she had been given. Marks claimed to be a flunk at school, but McCarty pointed out she was a straight A grade student. McCarty says the first step at Via was to teach Marks to like herself. “If you can like yourself and respect yourself it’s far easier to turn that out onto others.” Another key lesson was listening.

During the course, Marks decided to train as a chef and has since attended a top cooking school in South Africa. Marks’s parents were so impressed by her transformation they now offer a scholarship for others to attend the program, worth NZ$30,500.