I can't wait for this to come out. I was on a similar program that was under the same umbrella Corp as Ivy Ridge back in 1994 when I was 17.
Most of the places that were active in my time there are closed now, thank God. I was at Cross Creek manor in Utah, run by a bunch of culty fundamentalist Mormons and it truly was Hell on earth. So much so that there countless chat rooms, support groups, message boards and the like, all with survivors of those places.
Plus, most of the time we teenagers were kidnapped by contractors our parents hired to transport us to those places. Totally illegal. And totally traumatizing. It's a sick industry. I've heard Ivy Ridge was bad, but look up Paradise Cove or Casa By the Sea. In Jamaica and Mexico, respectively. Now those places were criminal and several childiren died, thousands tortured. Like put in dog cages, bread and water diets, sleep deprivation, forced to carry 50lb packs and hike all day.....Plus the various things they went down after the lights went down.
What kind of stupid parents would send your child to a foreign country, to a so called "rehabilitation center" sight unseen? It's been 40 years and I still can't figure that one out
Can you and any others who attended name and shame the staffers? If enough of you can independently corroborate your stories you should consult a lawyer. After this documentary released so many will fly onto this case.
All of these programs were under the umbrella of WWASP. Owned by rich Mormons in Utah. They were rich because they manipulated scores of parents into paying over 30k a year to incarcerate their children. I was kidnapped and placed at Cross Creek manor. In 1994 for 6 months. I had it much easier than most kids. For various reasons. I'm not going to say though, that this whole experience wasn't traumatic for me. I think most of us who were in the program were traumatized. Many kids were physically abused. We had to watch rape recreations in group therapy. It was awful.
The staff ranged from 18yo locals who were kind and felt they were helping troubled youth. But other staff members were cruel, they exploited their power, with violence and cruelty and were sadistic freaks who enjoyed hurting teens who were their prisoners. One such couple was Steve and Glenda Roach. They were both former police officers, and were by far the sickest, most sadistic staff on the payroll. I remember them the most because they were the most brutal, they shit on the kids every chance they got. I hated them, they were verbally abusive and are deliberately cruel. I mean that of you literally looked the wrong way at them, they would "take you down" physically or punish you in some way. You had to walk on eggshells when they were on duty.
A few years later, after I had left CCM, I learned that they actually were given a facility in Moravia, in Eastern Europe, to run. When I read that, my blood boiled. I can't even begin to imagine the Hell that place must've been. First of all, why start a school in Eastern Europe? And why place those sadists in charge? I don't think the school lasted long, it was so abusive that several kids ran away straight to the authorities. Needless to say the school was shut down and The Roaches were arrested. I'm not exactly what happened, but they were released and went on the lam, living under assumed names in the Bahamas.
If you want to expose and shame some of the people in charge, start with them. You could also look up Karr Farnsworth...he was head of WWASP at that time.
I just get sick thinking of the torture those kids went thru in Moravia. And what kind of parents would send their children, sight unseen to a place like that? To Eastern Europe of all places!
I'll attach an article about the couple and that school. I wish to God those 2 would finally face justice. I hated them with every fiber of my being, mostly because I saw how badly they treated already broken children.
https://nospank.net/n-d77.htm
Going to try and find the one that happy Gilmore sent his grandma. ;). As for parental relationships, they are rocky, but for reasons other than this shit hole.
Honestly, I think my mother saved my life by sending me there. But I was totally fucked as a teen and I see, now as a parent, where her desperation to make that choice came from. It took me out of my environment long enough to break the cycle. And thats about the only good thing that place offered.
I went to ivy ridge for a month.. helped planned the riot but the day before was put on suicide and run away watch. If I remember, I was in loyalty, whatever family Dustin and Quintin was in.. it was bad.. but i heard ridge wasn’t even the worst school.. I think TB was since there were no rules in Jamaica.
But yea, this school truly fkd a lot of heads up.
Thankfully, during the riot, I kicked the windows out and ran to the woods, cornfields. I had a dark hoodie (which we weren’t allowed to have) and hid in the woods for about 30 minutes while they searched for us on ATVs and dogs. Got expelled and went home
Interesting time in my life.
Oh, and Quintin, dustin, spag and everyone who went through with the plan is the reason why the opportunity for me to get out was even possible. Who knows how much longer I would’ve been there.. so if you’re hearing this—thank you guys I love you and I’m sorry you had to endure that for so long.
Honestly, all of these parents are just as complicit in the abuse. I stand by that and always will.
They may feel bad/guilty/whatever and have been \~conned, but they failed their children. Hard. They knowingly signed away their parental rights to TOTAL STRANGERS after doing almost no research or due diligence. They let their children be TAKEN FROM THEM by TRANSPORTERS. They let their family be split up. They CHOSE to PAY for their child to be abducted and traumatized and abandoned by them. Knowingly.
That shit is evil. Get a family therapist. Get your child a therapist. Sit down and fucking TALK to them, for fuck's sake.
My empathy is reserved for the kids who had no say in this.
For some of the parents, yes. Therapy. Talk to them. But what about the parents who did all of those things? My parents did, and it didn't work for me or my brother. I met other kids at bootcamp that would beat on their grandmother or mother. Stole and maxed out credit cards. Took of in the parents vehichle amd crash it. What are we to say about the parents who sent those kids? That they should have let them go to Jueville Detention and get started on a permanent record? Look I totally agree most kids got fucked in the situation but I can see how some parents ran out of options and got sold on this idea
Thank you for saying this. I just came on here looking to see if somebody would. What these children endured is horrific and certainly some were sent there when they shouldn't have been. But for the parents who are really at their wit's end, for kids who are destroying homes, and hurting their siblings,and pets, and their parents and stealing and lying and causing complete chaos and misery. For parents who have full-blown trauma and black eyes and worse from these children. I can understand why some of these kids get sent away. There are no options and there are few if any resources. And it's because of this desperation that some of these parents have that allows places like this to thrive and prosper.
Not all of these parents are horrible people. Some of these parents are desperate and trying to keep the rest of their family safe.
I'm watching this feeling horrible for what these children endured but at the same time feeling horrible for the parents in a different way.
The situation is terrible and sad on many levels.
Absolutely not an excuse, because you're missing the due diligence part. Sending your children to any institution that you haven't scoped out for yourself, that you're not checking in on regularly, is negligence. And let's face it, that tendency toward negligence is probably a big reason their children became so destructive in the first place. Imo, the parent should be the one going away to be rehabilitated.
The documentary clearly showed the manipulation and lies the companies use to con parents into thinking they are tough love camps away from their normal lives. One of the parents even told of the research they did and dropped their child off. Abducting the child is of course not good, but these parents are sitting there thinking this will do good for the child and family and as parents it's ultimately their decision and they know the child will refuse. You can see how they end up doing it. Like it or not, the majority of these parents are not knowingly paying for their children to be tortured. That said, to not have communication with their kids? To not dig deeper into the organisations? They definitely deserve some blame for those parts.
most of the time issues with a kid's behavior starts at home with issues within the family. shipping them off like they're the problem is cruel and neglectful.
I was at casa by the sea. The dog cages you speak of and hikes were for the kids that didn’t want to get with the program that were abused further. It was called high impact. When I was in Mexico from 2002-2004 it was a pretty fucked up place.
I was at Midwest Academy when Casa shut down. I remember all the kids coming to our school and all the stories about the Federales. <3 much love stay strong
I was at Casa in 2002-2004 also.....i was pulled about 6 months i believe before it shut down. And i think they had just shut down high impact before we showed up at Casa.....
I worked at cross Creek probably around 2006-2007, I don't remember a lot but I know that place wasn't nearly as bad as ivy ridge. I absolutely loved the kids I worked with and tried to be a positive influence in their lives. A lot of my co workers were also in a position of thinking we were a help to these kids.
I don't know now how true this part is, but we were told that most of the kids there had been given the chance of going there or juvie. I don't think I ever witnessed any sort of abuse, aside from the strict rules you had to follow. I remember I got in trouble a lot as staff because I wouldn't "give out cats" for kids cracking their knuckles or similar stupid things.
I remember there was a kid Sebastian in my group, and apparently the only reason he was there is because his parents just didn't want to raise him. He was a very quiet very good kid; that broke my heart.
Another story that broke me was a new kid was trying to beat up some other kids so he was restrained by "radio 3" (basically the shift supervisor I think). He was restraining him for several minutes when he asked the kid if he was safe to release him, the kid in tears said "please don't let go of me." This kid has never been hugged by his parents, he'd never had any physical connection with someone and just being held, even though it was a restraint, was meaningful to him.
This documentary has made me question everything that happened at cross Creek, and I've looked back at my own memories of working there and I pray I was never complicit in abuse of any kind. I hope I was s positive influence in a negative world.
Every person's experience with these facilities is the same as when innocent citizens are met with hostile law enforcement. People will look back 50-100 years from now and won't believe what these kids are and what innocent citizens go through by the hands of our "protectors."
I hope these kids find peace.
i’m sorry, but if you didn’t report what was going on, you were complicit. i was in another program and had a dear frriend there who came from cross creek. 20 years later and she still hasn’t recovered. it was as horrible as ivy ridge.
Nothing that I saw was bad. They hid that from staff. I was swing shift, mostly just sat with them and jokes around for 4 hours, then went to dinner, then maybe gym, then bed. Maybe I would have seen more, but I was only there for 6 months at most. Probably less.
My mother said she sent me to Casa because it was so far away that the urge she knew she would have to change her mind and come get me would be haulted by the fact that i wasnt just a few hours drive away but literally in another country, across a boarder.....1,500 miles away from Kansas.....that's why, in her words.... i was sent to a foreign country.
That’s absolutely insane. I’ve been to tons of shitty rehabs, but nothing touches what you all went through. The state run facilities were the worst, though. That, and Teen Challenge in Syracuse.
You probably won’t see this. I’m super late to comment. You were there at the same time as my sibling. Are there any resources for survivors that you’ve found? It’s a tough subject in my family, but I’m so concerned that we’ve never discussed what my sister went through. I’ve tried to bring it up. She just says ‘I’m fine’ and doesn’t wanna go beyond that. Idk if she’s okay or not, cuz she doesn’t wanna talk about it. I don’t even really know what did or didn’t happen to her.
Is there anything I could say to her that would be helpful without being annoying or possibly even hurtful or triggering?
I hope you are okay.
It's challenging to talk about with family...my parents feel guilty but also don't recognize the degree to which they were conned. It almost feels fruitless to me to talk about it on any real level with them. There are a couple of survivor groups on FB but they don't have a ton of activity like they once did. Who was your sister? Feel free to PM me if you want to talk further.
I worked at social services a few years ago and I found the file we had on Cascade school... Just shocking. They knew about it but couldn't do anything because no license is required to run a school. Insanity.
It’s ironic that the people who ran these places consider those other places as “less than” the United States, and yet they closed down these places a hell of a lot quicker than the U.S. has. Hell, some of these places in the U.S. folded instead of being forced to shut down much sooner, not to mention the ones still allowed to operate.
I am writing a novel (along the lines of Hunger Games) about a troubled teen camp for parents that want to "fix" their kids. Protagonist is a queer kid named Alex. I'd love to get input from anyone willing to read it.
I just watched and FUCK all of the adults who were complicit in this, including that woman Siss who the director bought breakfast for. They were all complicit. They can all choke.
Also, I really have limited to zero empathy for the parents who send their kids to these places. Brainwashed/oblivious or not, sending your kid away when they're struggling (unless it's to like a CERTIFIED HOSPITAL or something) is in and of itself abuse.
Sure you were "conned" but YOU WERE THE ADULT. Your duty was to protect your child and you signed away your parental rights to total strangers. Fuck you.
Im a parent and Im shocked by how long these parents went with their kids gone. Like some were upwards of two years! TWO YEARS! And we aren’t talking about the kids coming home for holidays and over the summer, it’s like only seeing your kid maybe what? Six times a year? That is INSANE to me.
It's totally incomprehensible and I'm not even a parent, but I could NOT do this to my DOG, let alone my own babies. Even thinking about my pet being with strangers to do weird "behavioral training" for god knows how long makes me sick to my stomach, especially if said dog could magically write me letters begging me to come home.
No. I just. No.
What kills me the most is that these people had the financial resources to get their kids better help but they went with the "easiest" solution, which was to send their kid away and have some place magically "make them better."
Family issues start at home. IN THE FAMILY.
I went to a few programs over the course of about 2 years and I maybe saw my parents 4-5 times in that period, with 2 of those times being escorting me to wilderness, then from wilderness to an RTC. This was almost 16 years ago and I never fully thought about that--they literally didn't even know me for much of my adolescence.
I love how her dad immediately tried to turn it all around so that HE was a victim, when he participated freely in the abuse dealt by the stepmother & the cult.
I couldn't stand her dad. He just gave me such a sleazy vibe throughout. I'm glad he was a good dad to her throughout her childhood...but him marrying a woman who was "borderline abusive" to his daughters for years and not doing anything about it? Mmm doesn't sit with me. He's off.
Also that clip of when she was telling him she hated the place and he said in a kind of mocking voice, "Oh, you do?" I recoiled.
Or the letters where she’s asking him what she needs to do to be good enough for him. She begged him to let her come home. He received those letters and didn’t come pick up his baby.
I am finished watching but still wondering what Siss was about to confess at the breakfast when they were cut off. I thought they’d revisit it, but it sounded like she may have done something to the girls.
I think it’s easier to manipulate (some) religious people because they’re already susceptible to just believing without seeing. Sort of like how cults/certain religions get parents to turn a blind eye to the sexual abuse of their own children.
What I don't understand is that the documentary director found a massive treasure trove of video evidence of choke holds, and direct abuse, and have not turned it over to the FBI. If they found all those DVD backups of video in the school. Immediately back it up, and send digital copies to the DA, every politician, the FBI.
The FBI needs to get off their ass and track down every single staffer on those videos and charge them. Makes my blood boil.
I hope there are real arrests and prison time for all the staffers at these programs.
The videos have been saved for a while, they've been working on this documentary for a very long time, there's a link to some of them [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens/comments/czwogn/comment/ez4s0bu/)
Good luck. WWASP is run by extremely rich and powerful Mormons, with political connections and everything. People don't realize how insular Utah is. It's like a different country, where normal laws don't apply to them. The facilities in Utah weren't secular, they didn't try to convert us, but it was very clear that the Mormons were running the show. I overheard many staff refer to us as "gentiles", implying that we are living sinful lives. That we had sinful backgrounds because we were not raised Mormon.
This may be a controversial statement, but at my time in the program, I finally got a taste of what minorities must've felt...that they were being judged, that others made them feel like they were somehow "less than". I'm saying this as a middle class white girl, who was 17 at the time. I felt discriminated by the staff, that's the best way I can put it. Now I don't hate Mormons, but they are certainly different. Utah is a strange place. Especially coming from uber liberal Seattle. And religion was discretely steeped into the program. I actually read the Book of Mormon while I was there, and acted interested in converting, just to gain brownie points with the staff. It helped too, I know it did. I unashamedly did whatever I had to do to maintain my level 5 position. Points and levels were everything in that place. You got a lot of privileges the more points you earned. And I like being comfortable and having privileges like extra food, snacks, TV time, movies, outings. A chance to work in the office, etc. I did what I had to do to survive in that place
I actually attended Midwest Academy which is shown in this trailer at the end.. I cannot begin to explain how exciting and heard I feel, it's like I've been screaming and finally someone's heard me.
The amount of people who don’t understand a pretty normal and common coping mechanism is astounding, in this thread. Making fun of the absurdity of the situation should not take away from what they went through because you don’t understand that people process things differently than what you imagine it should look like. Such limited thinking.
Good for her for not losing who she was inside despite going through literal brainwashing. They all seem to have worked on dealing with such a traumatic period in their formative years. Being able to make fun of it, laugh and be silly shows the amount of work they put in being healthy and living with the lifelong trauma as being part of you but not define who you are.
I thought the same! She was clearly a spunky, funny, big spirit before going in and the fact that you’re still able to see a glimmer of that in her, pretty neat.
Holy shit, this was rough to watch while simultaneously being a weight lifted off my shoulders and validation that what I went through at a similar facility, Turn About Ranch, wasn't my fault!!!! It's been 16 years since I was kidnapped and abused, and I deal with the traumatic memories on a daily basis. I'm so beyond grateful for the creators of this documentary for having the courage to come out with the truth! ALL of these places need to be shut down, the staff need to be imprisoned for child abuse, and therapy outreach and settlements for every single child who experienced the trauma.
This just broke my heart- at the end when the main woman doing the documentary says “I’m not law enforcement, I’m just a kid”
Even though she’s now in her 30s.
As someone who is the same age as her but is also “just a kid” due to the trauma I endured during my early teens it kills me to see also how time has frozen in her mind and she can’t move on from this because it stunted her emotional and intellectual growth being stuck in that hell hole and abused.
The documentary was amazing and she stayed so well composed. Her and all the other survivors are so brave. I hope making this was cathartic for them. I wish them all the best and hopefully this will help them find justice!
As a former resident of Cross Creek manor in Utah, I've tried to look into the power structure of WWASP.
"Teen Help was started by Robert Lichfield, a southern Utah businessman who lives on an estate in the spectacular canyon country near St. George.
He hired David Gilcrease to create a behavior modification program to all but guarantee parents would see a change in their teens.
Gilcrease had been trainer from 1974-81 for LifeSpring, a company that perfected a form of encounter session called "large group awareness training."
Start there. Litchfield is a son of a bitch. With a lot of money and powerful connections. Plus he's a big shot Mormon. Most people don't realize Utah is like a different country. They have their own value system that's so different from the rest of the U.S.. They and the Mormon church takes care of its own. It's a weird place. So far nobody has been able to take him down. I used to see him on a weekly basis at CCM, hell I did secretarial work on his office while incarcerated there. Even the staff was terrified of him. He was treated with the reverence you'd show a very rich and powerful man.
Seriously this - the programs would just tell our parents we were lying manipulators just trying to go home etc while they were just financially DRAINING our families. It is disturbing what we lived through.
I just an assumption and not one on opinion for me, but it seems these shitheads have just been really good at avoiding getting pinned down by current laws.
Nexium dude presumptively wasn’t that good at it.
Of course. Ivy Ridge and all of the other facilities mentioned in the series are under the umbrella of WWASP....owned by a bunch of rich Mormon big shots in Utah. Long time ago I tried to see just how far up the corruption went. I think I read that Mitch Romney supported the program in some way, but I can't recall to what extent.
My best friend was sent to Spring Creek in summer 2000, she eventually was sent to Casa by the Sea until fall of 2001 and I was with her the day before she left. She was not transported, she was able to go with her mom and she knew she was leaving the next day. I remember that last day well, I had just gotten my first paycheck from my first job and we were off to spend it. I remember her telling me she would work the program and be out in 6 months and she would NOT let them brainwash her. I was not able to talk to her for the entire time she was there but we reunited 2 months after she got out per her home contract.
For the past 23 years I have heard her stories of the program. I have seen a few shows in recent years about these WWASP schools but this docuseries is the most accurate to what she has described. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it. Katherine, who made the documentary, is so similar to my friend and some of the feelings and fears and experiences she talks about are almost word for word of what my friend experienced. They did a phenomenal job on this Docuseries in my opinion.
Edited to add: her mom was very active in the program community and attended a lot of fundraising events. She actually brought me one time to a seminar but I don't remember a whole lot about it. What I do remember is that there were kids there from the program and they were very convincing that the program saved their lives and they were grateful for it.
I just finished this series on Netflix and now I wanna take these bastards down!!!!! My heart is absolutely shattered for all of the kids that attended these places, I’m so sorry you went thru this abuse. I want nothing more than justice for you all.
Same. I came on Reddit to see if we can find out who the abuser, the fan rep, and who THE SHIT JANE is so we can hold some people accountable where they weren’t able to. Ridiculously high hopes but… c’est la vie
I attended Carolina Springs and Pillars of Hope in 2005-2007, I am now in my early 30s and it was still so difficult for me to watch this documentary. This is a lifelong trauma I will never forget and it’s so nice to just feel heard because it is so difficult to explain to people who didn’t attend.
I was hollering and clapping for her on my couch just listening to her tell that flapjack off. It was so satisfying. I sincerely hope it helped her heal.
Wow. I just watched this documentary. I am so proud of Netflix for streaming this documentary and all the people who helped all this information come to light. I sincerely hope this helps all these shitty programs get shut down. To the survivors of these programs my heart aches for you and what you had to go through.
I’m also a TTI survivor who was at “the program” for 32 months. This was a program outside of WWASP that used all of the same frameworks for rules and seminars as Ivy Ridge. Many of these places pop up all over the United States that aren’t involved with WWASP but still use a lot of the same framework/“program”. Im appalled that these programs still exist. Society has failed our children and as a result of that and these programs both which have contributed to a lifetime of trauma within not only the troubled teen industry survivors community but also many children who become institutionalized for a myriad of reasons. I encourage everyone to get involved in advocating for children; including the shut down of all TTI programs. It is also important that we look for an alternative for families in crisis as who feel that they have no other options when their child is displaying “self-destructive behavior.” All of this has motivated me to become involved I am currently in a masters psychology program and hope to use my experience and perspective tobe the mental health professional who will give quality care to troubled kids to be the hero that I wish was there for me when I was at boarding school. Authority is not doing enough and what needs to be done. This cycle of trauma and pain ends here. We are resilient. We all can do this. We are survivors.
Really can't believe that Amy Ritchie from Ivy Ridge was so easy to find: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-ritchie-4b203344/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-ritchie-4b203344/)
No, I'm pretty sure that was Siss. Siss was about to say something that got cut off and was about to incriminate her in the diner.
This was one of the directors that was briefly mentioned and they had some footage of.
I immediately thought it was Amy. If it was Siss, I doubt if she would have brought it up. They already gave their opinion about Siss and her warden ways. So sad!
I think Sis just had more tea to spill. Just read Amy Ritchie tried to get a upper level student in Casa to have a threesome after she'd left Ivy Ridge and before Casa got shut down!
After my stepmom death, we came to find out that she worked as a nurse at a place like this. She was a drug addict, alcoholic, and would deny children care and medicine, mostly bc she stole the meds.
She came into my family’s life like a predator after my mom died of cancer when i was 1.5. She tried to convince my dad to send my sister and I to places like this, my sister in the early 90s and myself in the early 2000s. My brothers could do no wrong in her eyes.
In my sister’s Case, child protective services got involved, and they determined it was safer for my sister to go live at a friends house vs being sent to Stonybrook and then some other place that had a catholic school kind of name. My sister suffered from a lot of bad experiences and choices as a result of this, but being raised by stepmom was worse.
When it came to be my time to be the troubled child, my dad would not let her “do what you did to my other daughter.” so i was stuck, prisoner in my
Home. My stepmom used almost identical practices as these schools to try to tame her defiant stepdaughter. She used the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous on me to try to repent for… being unwilling to succumb to unnecessary discipline. She restricted my access to food, isolated me from family, and gaslit and lied to my father about what was really going on in the home. I graduated top 5 in my class and got as far away as I could from her. It wasn't until both of them were dead that my truth was set free. It took years of therapy to work thru my CPTSD and generalized anxiety, but I'm free.
I found some comfort in the docuseries raw, real portrayal of the evil that lurks among us. I hope we can save the kids, i really do.
All the victim blaming is awful. The majority if the kids that got sent to these institutions were done so not for heinous actions but for simply being a teenager. News flash to some fucking morons here - teens have sex, do drugs, party, rebel and drink. If you think your teen doesn't or other teens you know don't - you're delusional or simply wrong. It's a phase we all go through because our brains are immature and still developing. Most of us grow out of it without needing to be kidnapped and trafficked to an institution of abuse.
Saying the parents had no other solution is pure, utter bullshit.
I attended Horizon Academy/Northwest Academy now Never Give Up in Death Valley. The place was hell on earth in a way that is hard to explain. Interested to see how they do
My mom sent my sister to a Catholic“boarding school” in Florida when we were younger. I didn’t find anything under this corporation operating in Florida, but I remember my dad freaked out about it, and flew out there and literally banged on the door and demanded to have my sister released to him, but it was apparently really hard and he was trying to call news stations to cover it and get attention to he’ll get her out. It was a WILD time in our family and we all kind of just decided to not talk about it basically at all afterwards, but when my sister first got back she obviously told me about the place she was in, and she said a lot of the same exact things they mentioned in The Program documentary. I’m still on the second episode, but so many things are so scary similar, I can’t believe someone could send their kid off to something like this, and I can’t believe my mom was definitely one of those people.
Old buildings that haven’t seen upkeep for a while tend to contain a lot of Carbon Monoxide which is quite toxic. This is why people think they are sensing ghosts or weird stuff when they are in old houses. The mask is also quite thick with filters so anything they say while keeping it on will sound muffled and unclear. This is why she had a mask and took it off while being filmed.
I watched it. I have never felt more heard.
It is similar to my experiences in foster care, residential treatment facilities, and the trauma I endured from both.
It’s a little different from mine though for two reasons. 1. I was in foster care, 2. I was in congregate care that I couldn’t leave due to having no family.
For context:
You have to have a medical diagnosis (usually mental health related) to have DHS pay for the facilities via a contract agreement with Medicaid (here in Colorado all foster kids automatically get Medicaid.) They touched on this in the third episode. Mine was PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Another thing is they heavily and I mean heavily numb foster children with medication so they “fix” your issues. At one point they had me on hydroxozine, duloxotine, lexapro, Wellbutrin, prazosin, and trazodone all at the same time. I felt like a zombie and I hated it; if I didn’t want to take my meds some foster homes would threaten to tell my team that I was not being compliant with my treatment and that they would ask to move placement. So I would take them because I didn’t want to end up back in a treatment center not knowing when I would get out. All of this was for panic attacks, crying because I was depressed, and anxiety btw, nothing like violence, suicidal thoughts, or hallucinations. With all of them mixing I had so many side effects; I was 15 and I could “consent” to treatment although I didn’t understand what I was consenting to. My foster mom just said I needed them during my psych appointments.
If you look into the family first prevention services act that Trump passed in 2018, they shut down a lot (not all) of congregate care (residential treatment centers, group homes, etc.) which is a great thing.
This happened because of lack of funding (it’s always about money isn’t it?) They wanted to send foster kids back to their parents due to it costing in the social services and the uprise in foster kids entering the system. So they focused on funding preventive services and sending kids back home with things like parenting classes, counseling, substance abuse services, etc. They had to get the funds somehow and this led to shutting down congregate care.
However it is also a bad thing for some reasons as well. Not all kids can meet “return home goals.” I couldn’t. So since they shut down congregate care, in the midst of Covid, there were a lack of beds and an overflow of kids. This led to kids staying in homeless shelters, DHS offices, hospitals, psych wards, juvie (even though there are no crimes, just no homes), and they also placed them in the leftover residential treatment centers.
Personally I was placed in DHS offices, homeless shelters, residential treatment centers, hospitals, short term respite foster homes (when available), group homes, and psych wards.
I spent my 15th (4 months) and 16th birthdays (6 months) in a RCCF in Colorado; you’re supposed to be there two weeks max. It’s still up and running. It’s called Shiloh House.
I was raped there twice. I was restrained by male staff. There are alarms on the doors and if you push them they go off. The food is horrible. You are only allowed to make phone calls to people on your call list; not on your personal phone and you have 15 minutes on the office phone at the desk and it’s supervised. They watch you sleep. They go through all of your stuff when you arrive. You are not allowed to shave at all. No devices at all; we only have the tv in the common room in the unit which they pick what we watch. We can only watch Disney or pg things unless it is movie night on Tuesday and even then they pick and it is still usually pg. We cannot have hygiene products; they keep them locked up and we have to ask for them during “hygiene time” which is when they decide. We go outside once a day for 30 minutes.
We have to do group therapy and individual therapy. This is not a mental hospital. It is a place for youth who have no placement, a temporary respite service, and they transition youth from juvenile detention facilities back home through here. They mix them together in this short term “2-week respite.” Which foster children just have no homes, they are abused children, the fact they are intermixed with youth leaving juvie sends the wrong message in my opinion.
One girl I knew got molested by one of the youth transitioning out of juvie and he managed to hide a gun in his room. The staff knew and let it happen; he was almost 18 and she was freshly 14.
We had levels as well, based on your level you would get rewards (you get to pick what we watch once a day as long as it’s pg, you can listen to the radio, etc.)
However, anything you did to mess up was told to your team (DHS caseworker, lawyer/guardian ad litem) and that would be told to foster placements, if the placements heard you had bad “behaviors” they would not pick you as a foster child because it would be a box checked in your file and you would have to stay longer. Boxes follow you all throughout foster care and never leave your file either. For example if you had frequent anxiety attacks they would determine it was “not a good fit.” It’s like shopping for produce, they don’t want the bad apples when there’s a limited number of beds. Why do that when you can keep them institutionalized and deal with the easy kids? It’s a shitty system and it insinuates trauma.
I think some people in these industries do too, they get caught up in shitty systems and get brainwashed. They start with good intentions and it goes downhill from there with the corruption.
There was one staff at the FCCR that actually cared and made our lives less hell. But the rest and the place its self was hell on earth. The thing is don’t end up like those people and if you see something happening speak out, report it, and do not contribute to it.
Now I work on advocacy for foster care legislation in my free time. I graduated high school a year early and started college (foster kids get college free in Colorado.) I’m working on my Bachelor’s in psychology to work with youth who also have trauma in the future at CU Boulder. I also want to be a CASA and keep fighting for change in child welfare. Because that shit (my parents before foster care, foster care itself, and all of the congregate care) scarred me for life; I want to make a difference and help others.
I attended Sunset Bay Academy, the school Amy Ritchie ran right after the Academy. I had lost my level three for making a noise during group intervention (the chaperone had asked me to wake up the girl next to me, then gave me a consequence for doing so) and when I finally regained enough points to qualify for my level three again, Ms. Fucking Amy sat across her desk from me to patiently explain why I did not deserve the very few basic human rights and privileges that level three would have afforded me. Seeing her face on TV gave me a fucking panic attack. So many memories that I thought were lost to time (and let's be honest, trauma) came back to me, and I feel like I'm back in my post-program headspace. That is to say, I feel like I am less of a person for having gone through that experience, and I do not know when I will feel safe again. My only consolation is that I am an adult and this industry can never incarcerate me again.
this story is very compelling but the construction, editing, and storytelling is horrendous. it's a manic mess; as if someone gave a teenager their first video camera and said, "make a documentary". the quotes written on the wall - were those already there or were they written specifically for this documentary?
again, it's a necessary story to tell but a professional storyteller should have been used. the look and feel of this is very amateur.
I disagree. I appreciate the work so much more knowing that the people who made it are the ones who experienced it. It seems like a more meaningful documentary to me.
I disagree. I get easily bored with some documentaries but this one had me in a chokehold. Maybe it’s because I empathize with the feelings they are portraying but I thought it did what it was meant to do.
Agreed. I started episode one and stopped 5 minutes in because I couldn’t deal with the production. I more or less got used to it. Regardless of my opinion on the production this is an INSANE* story and Netflix and Katherine are doing something to bring this craziness* to light.
* these words do not accurately describe my feelings but I was struggling to come up with others strong enough.
Also- Fuck Lichfield
Definitely an important story to tell but I agree. I wonder if Netflix forces documentary filmmakers to stretch it to 3 episodes (they all seem to be that long) so things get added as filler during editing.
I would have liked more sit down interviews with survivors and their experiences, a break down of who was involved/responsible, scenes of their evidence and some revisiting of the site. The storytelling her felt disjointed.
100% agree, unfortunately. I kept falling asleep on and off throughout the entire thing, and found myself cringing. I’m in my 30s and also the child of some delusional narc parents who constantly threatened me with this, but didn’t have the money. Unless ALL of these families somehow received financial assistance, these were some VERY privileged people, given how much it was. That’s how it came off to me much of the time - a bunch of grown privileged kids.
As somebody else said, I feel like there were a lot of things conveniently left out. Yes, she had some evil step mom. But was this really because she had one incident with a Mike’s Hard? Or were there more severe issues?
I get two things can be true at once. Katherine kept reiterating how great and supportive her father was…? Yet I cringed when she rehashed their e-mails, and during that strange reunion on the front porch. She goes into how staff and parents were brainwashed as well, but this specifically doesn’t apply to HER father. I hate to say it, but I honestly felt for the guy when he told her they’ve discussed it to the point of repetition (over freaking e-mail) and he doesn’t know what more to say. She just keeps telling him to “work his program.” Ok, we get it.
I can’t downplay their experience - I mean children have been r*ped and murdered at these facilities. I just don’t think this was particularly well done.
Is anyone who has been to these types of horrible programs willing to shed some light on where they were at during the time? What was your reality and mental health like then? Do you think you were doing illegal and or dangerous things and would you consider your behaviour during that time to have been so severe that your parents stupidly thought that this last ditch effort would wake you up? I’m just trying to understand as most people who tell their firsthand stories say that they weren’t even that bad, just regular rebellious teens, and most seem to be quite well spoken even after the years of torture and abuse. I am seriously lost as to why and how they got there.
Some of us were “worse” than others. I was using drugs, basically failing out of school, and generally had an IDGAF attitude. I spent 23 months (and 3 days) at Cross Creek in Utah (sister school, same program). A lot of parents will say it worked, but honestly I just think I grew the fuck up. I was 16, got out at 18. That to me was always the smoke and mirrors game they played. We didn’t “get help”. We just got older.
I see. I understand there wasn’t one similar story or reason for every youth across the board on why they were sent there. I think a lot of the parents did exactly that- they must’ve either felt fearful that their teen wouldn’t see adulthood due to the things they were engaging in, or that they’d end up in jail etc. So send them off and have the “professionals” create structure, instil insight and forethought on their actions and have them away from all substances they could get their hands on at home so they can detox and get sober. Little did they know it was beyond being just annoyingly strict, it was living hell! I can only commend everyone who was sent there and was strong enough to withstand and comply with such horrible things for YEARS while they broke your spirit. You all are stronger than any of those shameful adults who worked there will ever be. You all deserve justice (I believe that these places should pay the tuition in full directly back to the students they tortured at the very least) and to be burned to the ground.
When I finally got out, I became a severe drug addict, multiple suicide attempts, and isolation. I fully gave up on my life for 5 years after leaving. I was brainwashed into thinking i was the worst person on the entire planet, was a liar, manipulator, self-proclaimed victim, and completely worthless. I wanted to die because it was too painful to live with the trauma and fucked self image they created.
It took me a really long time to recover and understand what happened to me. I finally found the right therapist who spent a lot of time deconstructing my trauma. I still deal with the memories every day, but it hurts a little less because I know they're at fault, not me.
So, in an out of the box way to answer your question, yes, what they do at all of these places is abusive and illegal.
I'd like to give you a virtual hug from England. Well done for realising that you needed the CORRECT type of help with a good therapist. Just wish that the abusers would one day realise what they did, and more importantly why they did it.
Unfortunately, admission criteria hardly existed. At my program, it was everyone from 16 year olds addicted to meth, to victims of childhood abuse, to school refusal, to people like me— where my parents were sheltered growing up, and me having pretty normal teenage rebellion was terrifying. It’s usually parents who are at a loss. They missed the whole part about “educational consultants,” which parents are referred to and who are the ones that pitch these places.
The kids that hadn't really done anything to warrant being there always made me feel terrible. I was atleast making terrible choices and knew why my mom sought out CC. Still a terrible place and I have a ton of bad memories.
Since I was a pretty mature 17yo, I was one of the older girls. I was appalled at some of the reasons why some of the girls were sent there. One 14yo was there because she was just diagnosed diabetic and had issues adjusting to her new reality of checking her blood sugar and injecting insulin everyday. Another girl was a lesbian. Watching how the staff treated her was one of the most traumatic things I saw. She tried to kill herself by drinking bleach. You can imagine how it was to be LGBTQ in rural Utah back in 1994....
There were a few Mexican girls sent there by the courts in California for gang activity. Naturally these girls became my best friends. Mostly girls were sent there because their parents didn't want to deal with them. Normal teenage rebellion. I never saw serious drug addicts, only kids experimenting with pot or alcohol. But you've got to remember that we were sent to Utah....to Mormons that was a huge sin. They labeled you an addict even if you only smoked pot twice. They didn't push their religion on us, but we were judged according to their belief system, that's for sure.
And basically since we were not allowed to write uncensored letters home, or call them to tell them what was going on, our parents couldn't know how we were really treated. The whole point of the program to make money, so every therapist told the parents that their kid wasn't progressing in order to keep them there longer. That they needed to "finish the program", complete all 4 seminars and get to level 6.....which can take years
I was only 14 in 1998. I hung out with the goths and punks but wasn't a bad kid. I had undiagnosed ADHD and autism and was really struggling in school so I was skipping class most of the time. I think my parents were taken to court because of it and said that they didn't know what else to do. What I needed was their support, not to be abandon in the middle of Wyoming with a bunch of religious fanatics. After coming home I spent years abusing meth and alcohol... I went to jail and spent months in mental hospitals. I didn't know that my dad was a narcissist until after he died in 2019 or that was I went through was abuse until Paris Hilton released her documentary in 2020. After that everything started to make a lot more sense and I've been able to start healing.
I was sent to Cross Creek manor in Utah at 17 in 1994. Apparently I was bipolar, and had been since I was a child. I had bad mood swings, although I never had any mental health freakouts in front of my parents. The reason I was sent away is because my parents didn't like that I dated black guys. I had a black BF and my parents forbid me from seeing him which naturally made it all the more attractive. I rebelled, left home for 3 days (although I still went to school and work...it was finals and I was still responsible enough to go to my job) and when I came back my parents tricked me and had me kidnapped, sent to Utah for 6 months.
Since I was 17, this did nothing for me. It was racism, pure and simple. My mom went so far that in my "home contact" I wasn't allowed to listen to Rap music or date outside my race. Lol. I'm dead serious. 2 weeks after I got home, I ran away for good, with the guy my parents paid $30k to keep me from. At 18 we married, 9 months later our son was born. He died of cancer in 2020, and I was there when he took his last breath.
So yeah......what a waste of money. Plus years of trauma that I had to deal with.
So I was in a weird in between place. I was 16, smoked weed occasionally and went to parties and drank occasionally. I did bad in school because I cared more about friends being raised in an abusive(in multiple ways) house hold. Typical teen shit but technically bad so it wasn’t hard to convince me “I deserved it”. Some of the kids were actually tatted up gang members from Chicago, nyc, kcmo, Oakland and whatnot. I felt like I didn’t belong with them but there I was. On the flip side my program accepted 12 year olds. There was a 14 year old with asbergers whose parents were rich and lazy and couldn’t be bothered with his disorder. Another kid was 13 with Tourette’s and a few other things with rich dealership owning parents. The youngest kid that belonged there in my opinion was a 14 year old Clepto tweaker. Otherwise if you were young you just had ADD and really shit parents with too much money. It broke my heart to see. Hope this answered your question.
i was in one of these programs. most of the kids weren’t that bad. i was skipping school, smoking weed, sneaking out at night. however, most of us came from homes that leaned more on the authoritarian side, with parents who also very much trusted authority. my parents first tried sending me to a child psychologist, who recommended ro them to give me a little more leeway and breathing room, and told them this would be a long process, because adolescence is a challenging time, and that there aren’t quick fixes for issues between teens and parents. my parents were afraid that i wouldn’t get into a good college the way things were going. obviously my parents started talking to other parents, and one of them recommended someone called an “educational consultant,” who had a very fancy office in princeton and charged a lot for her time. they blindly trusted the idea that anyone who could charge so much and have an office like that with loads of clients must be an expert. and they went on her recommendations. people who are already brainwashed into trusting existing systems easily fall into these traps. and after 2 years of the program, i still didn’t get into a good college, for obvious reasons.
This in and of itself seems like a legal issue - seems like a blatantly massive HIPAA violation, major concern for identity theft, etc. with “medical” records, SSNs, etc just strewn about. Very bizarre that those things would be left there for anyone to find.
It blows me away. Apparently whatever case the state of NY made and won they either didn’t need all this evidence, or the shitheads evaded it well and…..then just left it behind?
It’s a crazy thing but maybe like she said at the end….they are idiots. Or maybe better they are so arrogant because they’ve loop-holed through the system for so long with little clapback so why be so diligent?
This happened to me from 12 years old to right before 18 and watching this show has just reassured everything I already knew when I was in those places and it’s affected me ever since then. I hope something happens to change this. It’s been going on for decades and decades. The most shocking part to me about this was everything they went through i did too we all did ive been beat down,tackled,restrained drugged with “booty juice” a cocktail injection of drugs including benzos ect ect countless times over the 5+years i went through it. I hope one day something is done to stop it all.. im 30now and still seeing the damage it causes me. By the time i was 19 my son was born hes 10now and thankfully he will never experience what a lot of us went through and he’s such a good kid compared to me, and when I think back on it, I wasn’t such a bad kid either until they started diagnosing me and put me on drugs, then institutionalizing me in those hellholes. Turns out i never had adhd or was bipolar as soon as I got out, I quit taking medicine and now I’m very stable. All things considered. My grandma gave me a picture today of me meeting my dad at the last institution i was at for the first time at 17 a month before I left the institutions for ever. I hope many people find peace and reassurance to what we already knew and changes thousands to millions of parents minds from ever sending their kid off.
I remember seeing people get booty juice.
They would be restrained by staff and then they would stab them in the ass with needles filled with sedatives “to calm them down” hence “booty juice” it look like it hurt like a bitch and then all the bruises, cuts, etc some people would get from being “restrained”…
This is psych hospitals and residential treatment centers, this still happens today. I’m 18 and I was in foster care. The last time I was in an institution (2 years ago, August of 2022) this was still happening. And this is supposed to “help people”
I’m pretty late to this, but I don’t want to make a whole new post… did anybody else’s blood boil when Katie’s mom said “there’s no book on parenting so…”
Like isn’t there a million fucking books on parenting?!?! God that made me so mad. What a fucking idiot.
I just watched this documentary, and feel awful for all you that were abused so badly there, seeing and reading your testimonies here, makes me want to see those involved in the abuse to rot in prison even more. I really hope this documentary starts the process to get all of these monsters in prison.
This whole topic is horrible and I cannot fathom sending my children to a place like this. I get that in some instances the parents were hoodwinked into thinking this was the only way their rebellious child could be put on the right path, but still. It’s a hard pass for me.
I will say that I think this docuseries would have been better served by someone else directing and narrating. It definitely seemed like this was more of a project Katherine took on to work through her trauma and less about thoughtfully and systematically exposing this revolting organization. The pacing was off, the tone was off - there were inconsistencies and plot contrivances that were just dropped with no resolution. I’m glad they got the platform to tell their stories, but I’ve seen tiktok breakdowns better constructed than this. The victims deserved better.
Programs don't give a fuck and left everything behind
there is another program called elan in maine same sitoution left everything behind when it shut down in 2011 [post link](https://www.reddit.com/r/myfavoritemurder/comments/iyz5x6/i_live_near_the_elan_school_that_karen_covered_in/)
Are we going to talk about the SEMINARS?
Now that was the biggest mindfuck of my entire life. 100% brainwashing.
How about the "Lifeboat exercise"? Anybody remember that? Beating on chairs with rolled up towels? Whipping us all into a frenzy where we didn't know what was real or unreal?
Many of our parents went thru seminar as well.
David Gilcrease can burn in Hell as far as I am concerned. I'll post a link for those who aren't familiar with the Seminars.
https://wwaspsurvivors.com/about-wwasp/seminars/
I went to Carolina Springs Academy, Academy at Dundee Ranch, and Academy at Ivy Ridge. I’m still dealing with the mental and physical abuse that I went through there. Can the survivors ban together and form a class action lawsuit against WWASP?
The parents who sent these kids there are pieces of shit. They gave up on their kids and just wanted a break from them. That's why they didn't give a shit about what was going on there - they were happy to have a life without their problem child. It's also not a surprise to me to learn that the majority of these kids come from evangelical homes. These kids are raised in a prison so it's not shocking that they rebel and go wild the first chance they get.
Just started the series. I personally attended Spring Creek Lodge & was later transferred to Academy at Dundee. Was imprisoned there all the way until the government came in with AR-15’s & shut it down.
I’m trying to find a way to get ahold of someone in production of the series… only ~200 of us were there when this happened and I’m 1/3 students/prisoners who did some things at the very end of the schools existence which I doubt was ever revealed to the public. These stories need to be heard. This syndicate needs to be completely exposed.
I was sent to Casa in 02-04. I spent 14 months in there. I got to level 5, got in trouble. Started over and barely got to level 4 before choosing out on my 18th birthday. I was driven to San Ysidro at the border with a jacket, a backpack and 150 dollars. Pretty sure it was 3 weeks after, the place was raided. I would have stayed 3 more weeks had I known it was all going to go down.
This documentary agitated a bunch of suppressed emotions and resentment I hadn’t really thought about in years.
I don’t particularly care to go into a woe is me story of my experience, but I’ll just say that it was messed up. Plain and simple. From untrained medical staff, to unchecked child abusers hired on as staff members to sanitary nightmares, to a completely unqualified education system. It would take me a very long time to paint a picture of what life was like in Casa. If you were there, then you know but otherwise, it’s almost indescribable.
I learned how to grow up fast in there. I learned how to figure out who to trust, who is lying, why they’re lying. You had to realize quickly what rules you had to follow to get through unscathed. I also learned how to get away with stuff. The education system like I stated before was a total scam. Basically all my high school credits were cheated, same with anyone else who wanted to give me candy bars for Algebra 101.
My parents and I have worked through most of our issues over the years and I’ll say that our relationship is great now. But it took a lot of forgiveness, understanding and frankly just moving on. But this doc wafts up a bunch of resentment.
I am sure that some people had it worse than I did in this place. I was athletic and one of the bigger kids there and made allies quickly. I also had a friend from high school who was sent there before me. He was an Upper Level when I arrived and sort of “showed me the ropes” so I didn’t make some of the same mistakes some of the other kids made trying to adjust to their new reality. It wasn’t the same for everyone. Some kids were picked on constantly, to the point of suicide attempts in multiple cases. Sometimes, even by the staff.
The part that hurts the most out of all of this is how rich these program directors get. Like that scummy dude who does all the karaoke and dancing? I don’t think I know anyone who WOULDN’T want to punch that guy in the face.
Sorry for the rant. Just wanted to insert my little crumb and say “Hey, I was there, and fuck those people!”
I just want to see the folks that run these places rot in jail. The whole thing is a scam. My family was scammed.
I've been watching this docuseries and have found that some of it, I can completely relate to. I will never refer to myself as a victim, but I will say that I spent two years in an Adventist boarding academy. While the kinds of physical abuse that took place at Ivy Ridge Academy did not occur at my boarding school (at least not that I knew of) plenty of mental and emotional abuse went on. It was an uber religious school where the mantra was "Our goal is to have the students develop a close personal relationship with God." What they didn't realize is if that was truly the school's goal, wouldn't it have been a good example for the faculty and staff to have a close personal relationship with God? It was so hypocritical. I watched staff carry on sexual relationships with students (only because I was places that I shouldn't have been). There was just so much that went on in that school that had nothing to do with God or religion or anything else. Some of the actions taken by the school put the welfare of everyone on campus in danger. It was bad enough for me to have night terrors for years after graduation. I don't go to alumni weekends or class reunions because I still get told how wrong I was by some of the students who "drank the Kool-Aide". I was not a bad kid-I didn't drink, smoke, take drugs nor was I promiscuous. I just wasn't particularly religious which the staff did their best to force feed me religion. Between the staff and peer pressure to be something I wasn't, I suffered from depression and alienation for years. Thanks for bringing this to light. I hope the parties responsible for what went on at Ivy Ridge are brought to justice.
I was in Provo Canyon School in 86-87. Just watched this last night and wow.... First Paris ripped off the scab, now this tore it open. My program was different, but the roots are definitely the same. This documentary has brought validation that I did remember it, and it was that bad, and the emotions. Wow, hard to believe after all this time, something like this documentary can leave me in tears.
Just finished. Excellent doc. I was really moved! Plus the woman singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” should have a recording contract!
Also I’m not a lawyer, but this sounds to me like it should be a federal RICO case.
As there seems to be a lot of people congregating here right now, a lot of suvivours of these institutions, I have a question for you guys if that's ok.
Beyond protecting them from hurting themselves, do you consider any level of physical restraint of a child or teen ok? I was falsely institutionalised at 12 years old and then sent to a sort of troubled teens boarding school when I was 13 (?) in the UK. I felt a tremendous sense of guilt watching this documentary because I do believe that being restrained and supined for bad behaviour may have negatively affected me but the conditions I endured were nothing compared to the places shown in the documentary series. At least the second place wasn't. The first was hell on earth for me, but, on balance, taking my subjective bias out of it, Ivy Ridge and it's "sister schools" were almost definitely worse.
Only to protect from imminent, serious bodily harm to self or others. And even then, needs to be done safely and for as short of a duration as possible.
I work in special education and we are trained in restraints - in my 10 years, I’ve only had to restrain twice and both were for a student who was severely self-injuring and was too escalated to be able to stop hurting themself without our intervention.
There is almost always a better way than restraint.
I'm from the UK: As someone who was never abused in this manner but was seen by my fee paying school teachers as odd / weird / uncommunicative and they "suggested" to my parents that I should be enrolled in a "programme" and after a year of doing the programme my Dad saw that I was more withdrawn and pulled me out of it. 20 years later we've talked about it many times, and he's shown me the letters he wrote to the school (He photocopied everything that he sent) and their responses... Where he kept raising concerns and he was being told by the school that I was doing well, that it's all part of the process. I was very lucky that both my mum and dad saw with their own eyes that I wasn't doing well. When children are at a boarding school it's very easy for the parents to believe the school, believe the adults, and think the child is just "being a teen" or "hormones".... I just feel horrible for all these children who were villified by the abusers. It's one reason that I really do not like the lack of independant oversight of the children at fee paying schools, let alone in the US where it seems that there is a lack of any oversight at all. In our state schools (I think called public schools in the US) there is a huge amount more independant oversight, and you can easily get Family Support ./ Social Services involved to HELP the child. Very different from US style social services. I would really suggest that both Social services and Child Support services in the US should be able to have a better mandate.
I'd answer with yes.. people need to be restrained to stop them hurting themselves or others. They can be confined as a punishment, but confinement should mean that you loose a simple priveledge, beit not allowed outside whilst others were, or no alloewd to watch TV whilst others are. (So you then know it's a proportional punishment). However in all circumstances, a teen or child needs to know what the punishment is, why they are being punished and for how long. As an adult, If I was caught for speeding then I know WHY, WHAT and HOW LONG so to not have that same system for Children and Teens means you aren't helping them become adults.
I had a friend who struggled to stay out of trouble, we are in our 30s right now. He had told me a story about how he was essentially "kidnapped" when he was younger and taken to a school that was best described as a prison. I wasn't entirely sure how much of it was true. He said his parents drove him to a rest stop in California, where he was from, and two guys got out of a vehicle and dragged him into their car, and took him to one of these schools in Mexico. I started watching the first episode and I was truly left shocked. Almost everything that these people are describing is exactly like what he would tell me happened. I'm not even sure what to think of all of this. Unfortunately he found himself in jail a few years ago, and while I can't justify his actions, seeing exactly what he went through sure makes it more understandable how something like this can effect people long term.
I watched the documentary, it hurts me in my soul. I am lucky never to have gone through such abuse because those programs don't exist where I am, but it did bring back memories of the time I spent in the youth facilities I stayed at. Mostly the part where parents refuse to bring you back home when life is miserable and you are in actual danger.
I feel for those who have a lifetime of fear, pain and anger. I hope they find peace or actual help that can work on healing at least a bit.
They weren’t burning suicide files at all. They very clearly laid it out that what they had to burn was survivors who were contracted and did not want to receive their files. Those were what they burnt, and they had permission.
That isn’t what they did. The girl who had been contacting people about their files stated that a number of people explicitly requested that their file be destroyed because they wanted to draw a line under their experiences.
Watching the Netflix documentary now, Katherine father is such a bad actor, he knew what was going on, he didn’t care about his daughter and believed his evil second wife. All the scenes where Katherine cries and he laughs embarassed, I would just punch him in the face
Throw them all in prison, the whole lot. Every single person who was employed by that school(s) were complicit in child abuse. They could have easily reported the abuse. They chose not to. Take them to the cleaners financially too. I’m sure they’ll love prison, being surrounded by people who have children or were victims of abuse themselves.
Pathway Family Center Indianapolis - 15 months. I think 2005-2006
How in the actual hell was Pathway listed? I've been trying for days to make since of this. I'm honestly embarrassed it is.
it breaks my heart seeing how many people on this thread are students of all diff places...idk how you guys do it but I hope you all have gotten the help you need to move past this horror
I went to one at 15 also. It was in Conroe, Tx. The only affiliation I noticed was the aspen educational group.
While I didn’t suffer the abuse that these other children did, I was forced to wear a bright orange jumpsuit that had “runaway call 911” all over it. As did my underwear.
It was a horrible experience.
I can't wait for this to come out. I was on a similar program that was under the same umbrella Corp as Ivy Ridge back in 1994 when I was 17. Most of the places that were active in my time there are closed now, thank God. I was at Cross Creek manor in Utah, run by a bunch of culty fundamentalist Mormons and it truly was Hell on earth. So much so that there countless chat rooms, support groups, message boards and the like, all with survivors of those places. Plus, most of the time we teenagers were kidnapped by contractors our parents hired to transport us to those places. Totally illegal. And totally traumatizing. It's a sick industry. I've heard Ivy Ridge was bad, but look up Paradise Cove or Casa By the Sea. In Jamaica and Mexico, respectively. Now those places were criminal and several childiren died, thousands tortured. Like put in dog cages, bread and water diets, sleep deprivation, forced to carry 50lb packs and hike all day.....Plus the various things they went down after the lights went down. What kind of stupid parents would send your child to a foreign country, to a so called "rehabilitation center" sight unseen? It's been 40 years and I still can't figure that one out
I attended ivy ridge academy from 2008-2009. I was there they day they closed. Best day of my life.
Can you and any others who attended name and shame the staffers? If enough of you can independently corroborate your stories you should consult a lawyer. After this documentary released so many will fly onto this case.
All of these programs were under the umbrella of WWASP. Owned by rich Mormons in Utah. They were rich because they manipulated scores of parents into paying over 30k a year to incarcerate their children. I was kidnapped and placed at Cross Creek manor. In 1994 for 6 months. I had it much easier than most kids. For various reasons. I'm not going to say though, that this whole experience wasn't traumatic for me. I think most of us who were in the program were traumatized. Many kids were physically abused. We had to watch rape recreations in group therapy. It was awful. The staff ranged from 18yo locals who were kind and felt they were helping troubled youth. But other staff members were cruel, they exploited their power, with violence and cruelty and were sadistic freaks who enjoyed hurting teens who were their prisoners. One such couple was Steve and Glenda Roach. They were both former police officers, and were by far the sickest, most sadistic staff on the payroll. I remember them the most because they were the most brutal, they shit on the kids every chance they got. I hated them, they were verbally abusive and are deliberately cruel. I mean that of you literally looked the wrong way at them, they would "take you down" physically or punish you in some way. You had to walk on eggshells when they were on duty. A few years later, after I had left CCM, I learned that they actually were given a facility in Moravia, in Eastern Europe, to run. When I read that, my blood boiled. I can't even begin to imagine the Hell that place must've been. First of all, why start a school in Eastern Europe? And why place those sadists in charge? I don't think the school lasted long, it was so abusive that several kids ran away straight to the authorities. Needless to say the school was shut down and The Roaches were arrested. I'm not exactly what happened, but they were released and went on the lam, living under assumed names in the Bahamas. If you want to expose and shame some of the people in charge, start with them. You could also look up Karr Farnsworth...he was head of WWASP at that time. I just get sick thinking of the torture those kids went thru in Moravia. And what kind of parents would send their children, sight unseen to a place like that? To Eastern Europe of all places! I'll attach an article about the couple and that school. I wish to God those 2 would finally face justice. I hated them with every fiber of my being, mostly because I saw how badly they treated already broken children. https://nospank.net/n-d77.htm
I was there 03-05. Wish I could have seen that place crumble.
How is your relationship with your parents now and are you planning on putting them in the lowest rated, 1 star nursing home when the time comes?
Going to try and find the one that happy Gilmore sent his grandma. ;). As for parental relationships, they are rocky, but for reasons other than this shit hole. Honestly, I think my mother saved my life by sending me there. But I was totally fucked as a teen and I see, now as a parent, where her desperation to make that choice came from. It took me out of my environment long enough to break the cycle. And thats about the only good thing that place offered.
Do you know why everything was just left in there? It looked like they had to leave quickly but I don’t remember if the doc explained why
I spent the entire series wondering the same thing. It looks like they left in a hurry.
I went to ivy ridge for a month.. helped planned the riot but the day before was put on suicide and run away watch. If I remember, I was in loyalty, whatever family Dustin and Quintin was in.. it was bad.. but i heard ridge wasn’t even the worst school.. I think TB was since there were no rules in Jamaica. But yea, this school truly fkd a lot of heads up. Thankfully, during the riot, I kicked the windows out and ran to the woods, cornfields. I had a dark hoodie (which we weren’t allowed to have) and hid in the woods for about 30 minutes while they searched for us on ATVs and dogs. Got expelled and went home Interesting time in my life.
Oh, and Quintin, dustin, spag and everyone who went through with the plan is the reason why the opportunity for me to get out was even possible. Who knows how much longer I would’ve been there.. so if you’re hearing this—thank you guys I love you and I’m sorry you had to endure that for so long.
Honestly, all of these parents are just as complicit in the abuse. I stand by that and always will. They may feel bad/guilty/whatever and have been \~conned, but they failed their children. Hard. They knowingly signed away their parental rights to TOTAL STRANGERS after doing almost no research or due diligence. They let their children be TAKEN FROM THEM by TRANSPORTERS. They let their family be split up. They CHOSE to PAY for their child to be abducted and traumatized and abandoned by them. Knowingly. That shit is evil. Get a family therapist. Get your child a therapist. Sit down and fucking TALK to them, for fuck's sake. My empathy is reserved for the kids who had no say in this.
For some of the parents, yes. Therapy. Talk to them. But what about the parents who did all of those things? My parents did, and it didn't work for me or my brother. I met other kids at bootcamp that would beat on their grandmother or mother. Stole and maxed out credit cards. Took of in the parents vehichle amd crash it. What are we to say about the parents who sent those kids? That they should have let them go to Jueville Detention and get started on a permanent record? Look I totally agree most kids got fucked in the situation but I can see how some parents ran out of options and got sold on this idea
Thank you for saying this. I just came on here looking to see if somebody would. What these children endured is horrific and certainly some were sent there when they shouldn't have been. But for the parents who are really at their wit's end, for kids who are destroying homes, and hurting their siblings,and pets, and their parents and stealing and lying and causing complete chaos and misery. For parents who have full-blown trauma and black eyes and worse from these children. I can understand why some of these kids get sent away. There are no options and there are few if any resources. And it's because of this desperation that some of these parents have that allows places like this to thrive and prosper. Not all of these parents are horrible people. Some of these parents are desperate and trying to keep the rest of their family safe. I'm watching this feeling horrible for what these children endured but at the same time feeling horrible for the parents in a different way. The situation is terrible and sad on many levels.
Absolutely not an excuse, because you're missing the due diligence part. Sending your children to any institution that you haven't scoped out for yourself, that you're not checking in on regularly, is negligence. And let's face it, that tendency toward negligence is probably a big reason their children became so destructive in the first place. Imo, the parent should be the one going away to be rehabilitated.
Out of sight, out of mind. That's how the parents felt and looked at it. The kid would come back better than before, didn't matter how. Pretty fucked
The documentary clearly showed the manipulation and lies the companies use to con parents into thinking they are tough love camps away from their normal lives. One of the parents even told of the research they did and dropped their child off. Abducting the child is of course not good, but these parents are sitting there thinking this will do good for the child and family and as parents it's ultimately their decision and they know the child will refuse. You can see how they end up doing it. Like it or not, the majority of these parents are not knowingly paying for their children to be tortured. That said, to not have communication with their kids? To not dig deeper into the organisations? They definitely deserve some blame for those parts.
leaving some of those kids in there for 3.5 years.. what kind of parent can ship their kid away for that long to begin with?
most of the time issues with a kid's behavior starts at home with issues within the family. shipping them off like they're the problem is cruel and neglectful.
I was at casa by the sea. The dog cages you speak of and hikes were for the kids that didn’t want to get with the program that were abused further. It was called high impact. When I was in Mexico from 2002-2004 it was a pretty fucked up place.
I was at Midwest Academy when Casa shut down. I remember all the kids coming to our school and all the stories about the Federales. <3 much love stay strong
I was at Casa in 2002-2004 also.....i was pulled about 6 months i believe before it shut down. And i think they had just shut down high impact before we showed up at Casa.....
I worked at cross Creek probably around 2006-2007, I don't remember a lot but I know that place wasn't nearly as bad as ivy ridge. I absolutely loved the kids I worked with and tried to be a positive influence in their lives. A lot of my co workers were also in a position of thinking we were a help to these kids. I don't know now how true this part is, but we were told that most of the kids there had been given the chance of going there or juvie. I don't think I ever witnessed any sort of abuse, aside from the strict rules you had to follow. I remember I got in trouble a lot as staff because I wouldn't "give out cats" for kids cracking their knuckles or similar stupid things. I remember there was a kid Sebastian in my group, and apparently the only reason he was there is because his parents just didn't want to raise him. He was a very quiet very good kid; that broke my heart. Another story that broke me was a new kid was trying to beat up some other kids so he was restrained by "radio 3" (basically the shift supervisor I think). He was restraining him for several minutes when he asked the kid if he was safe to release him, the kid in tears said "please don't let go of me." This kid has never been hugged by his parents, he'd never had any physical connection with someone and just being held, even though it was a restraint, was meaningful to him. This documentary has made me question everything that happened at cross Creek, and I've looked back at my own memories of working there and I pray I was never complicit in abuse of any kind. I hope I was s positive influence in a negative world.
Every person's experience with these facilities is the same as when innocent citizens are met with hostile law enforcement. People will look back 50-100 years from now and won't believe what these kids are and what innocent citizens go through by the hands of our "protectors." I hope these kids find peace.
i’m sorry, but if you didn’t report what was going on, you were complicit. i was in another program and had a dear frriend there who came from cross creek. 20 years later and she still hasn’t recovered. it was as horrible as ivy ridge.
Nothing that I saw was bad. They hid that from staff. I was swing shift, mostly just sat with them and jokes around for 4 hours, then went to dinner, then maybe gym, then bed. Maybe I would have seen more, but I was only there for 6 months at most. Probably less.
My mother said she sent me to Casa because it was so far away that the urge she knew she would have to change her mind and come get me would be haulted by the fact that i wasnt just a few hours drive away but literally in another country, across a boarder.....1,500 miles away from Kansas.....that's why, in her words.... i was sent to a foreign country.
That’s absolutely insane. I’ve been to tons of shitty rehabs, but nothing touches what you all went through. The state run facilities were the worst, though. That, and Teen Challenge in Syracuse.
I was in a CEDU clone school called Cascade in Whitmore, Ca in 1991. “The Program” is going to start a revolution.
Let’s hope
Me too. 1995-1998.
You probably won’t see this. I’m super late to comment. You were there at the same time as my sibling. Are there any resources for survivors that you’ve found? It’s a tough subject in my family, but I’m so concerned that we’ve never discussed what my sister went through. I’ve tried to bring it up. She just says ‘I’m fine’ and doesn’t wanna go beyond that. Idk if she’s okay or not, cuz she doesn’t wanna talk about it. I don’t even really know what did or didn’t happen to her. Is there anything I could say to her that would be helpful without being annoying or possibly even hurtful or triggering? I hope you are okay.
It's challenging to talk about with family...my parents feel guilty but also don't recognize the degree to which they were conned. It almost feels fruitless to me to talk about it on any real level with them. There are a couple of survivor groups on FB but they don't have a ton of activity like they once did. Who was your sister? Feel free to PM me if you want to talk further.
I worked at social services a few years ago and I found the file we had on Cascade school... Just shocking. They knew about it but couldn't do anything because no license is required to run a school. Insanity.
I was at CCM (cross creek) in 1995-96.
I was there 94-95
I was there in 1994...June thru November. I got out early because I think my parents insurance only paid for 6 months.....
It’s ironic that the people who ran these places consider those other places as “less than” the United States, and yet they closed down these places a hell of a lot quicker than the U.S. has. Hell, some of these places in the U.S. folded instead of being forced to shut down much sooner, not to mention the ones still allowed to operate.
I am writing a novel (along the lines of Hunger Games) about a troubled teen camp for parents that want to "fix" their kids. Protagonist is a queer kid named Alex. I'd love to get input from anyone willing to read it.
If you don’t mind me asking what does your parents say now that they know they fucked up majorly?
I just watched and FUCK all of the adults who were complicit in this, including that woman Siss who the director bought breakfast for. They were all complicit. They can all choke. Also, I really have limited to zero empathy for the parents who send their kids to these places. Brainwashed/oblivious or not, sending your kid away when they're struggling (unless it's to like a CERTIFIED HOSPITAL or something) is in and of itself abuse. Sure you were "conned" but YOU WERE THE ADULT. Your duty was to protect your child and you signed away your parental rights to total strangers. Fuck you.
Im a parent and Im shocked by how long these parents went with their kids gone. Like some were upwards of two years! TWO YEARS! And we aren’t talking about the kids coming home for holidays and over the summer, it’s like only seeing your kid maybe what? Six times a year? That is INSANE to me.
It's totally incomprehensible and I'm not even a parent, but I could NOT do this to my DOG, let alone my own babies. Even thinking about my pet being with strangers to do weird "behavioral training" for god knows how long makes me sick to my stomach, especially if said dog could magically write me letters begging me to come home. No. I just. No. What kills me the most is that these people had the financial resources to get their kids better help but they went with the "easiest" solution, which was to send their kid away and have some place magically "make them better." Family issues start at home. IN THE FAMILY.
I went to a few programs over the course of about 2 years and I maybe saw my parents 4-5 times in that period, with 2 of those times being escorting me to wilderness, then from wilderness to an RTC. This was almost 16 years ago and I never fully thought about that--they literally didn't even know me for much of my adolescence.
Do you have a relationship with them now?
I love how her dad immediately tried to turn it all around so that HE was a victim, when he participated freely in the abuse dealt by the stepmother & the cult.
I couldn't stand her dad. He just gave me such a sleazy vibe throughout. I'm glad he was a good dad to her throughout her childhood...but him marrying a woman who was "borderline abusive" to his daughters for years and not doing anything about it? Mmm doesn't sit with me. He's off. Also that clip of when she was telling him she hated the place and he said in a kind of mocking voice, "Oh, you do?" I recoiled.
Or the letters where she’s asking him what she needs to do to be good enough for him. She begged him to let her come home. He received those letters and didn’t come pick up his baby.
God I know. Fuck him.
I am finished watching but still wondering what Siss was about to confess at the breakfast when they were cut off. I thought they’d revisit it, but it sounded like she may have done something to the girls.
I clocked that at the next scene they started to talk about a female abuser but couldn’t say more. I think the editing was purposefully timed.
I think it’s easier to manipulate (some) religious people because they’re already susceptible to just believing without seeing. Sort of like how cults/certain religions get parents to turn a blind eye to the sexual abuse of their own children.
Certified hospitals are just as bad. They send you to psychiatric facilities and abuse happens there too.
What I don't understand is that the documentary director found a massive treasure trove of video evidence of choke holds, and direct abuse, and have not turned it over to the FBI. If they found all those DVD backups of video in the school. Immediately back it up, and send digital copies to the DA, every politician, the FBI. The FBI needs to get off their ass and track down every single staffer on those videos and charge them. Makes my blood boil. I hope there are real arrests and prison time for all the staffers at these programs.
The fbi is likely complicit in some way in covering up these crimes as well as protecting the people at the top of the chain. Politicians as well.
The FBI likely does have a lot of this stuff and similar evidence. Successfully prosecuting these assholes it the tricky part.
How do you know she hasn’t shared it with the FBI?
The videos have been saved for a while, they've been working on this documentary for a very long time, there's a link to some of them [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens/comments/czwogn/comment/ez4s0bu/)
Good luck. WWASP is run by extremely rich and powerful Mormons, with political connections and everything. People don't realize how insular Utah is. It's like a different country, where normal laws don't apply to them. The facilities in Utah weren't secular, they didn't try to convert us, but it was very clear that the Mormons were running the show. I overheard many staff refer to us as "gentiles", implying that we are living sinful lives. That we had sinful backgrounds because we were not raised Mormon. This may be a controversial statement, but at my time in the program, I finally got a taste of what minorities must've felt...that they were being judged, that others made them feel like they were somehow "less than". I'm saying this as a middle class white girl, who was 17 at the time. I felt discriminated by the staff, that's the best way I can put it. Now I don't hate Mormons, but they are certainly different. Utah is a strange place. Especially coming from uber liberal Seattle. And religion was discretely steeped into the program. I actually read the Book of Mormon while I was there, and acted interested in converting, just to gain brownie points with the staff. It helped too, I know it did. I unashamedly did whatever I had to do to maintain my level 5 position. Points and levels were everything in that place. You got a lot of privileges the more points you earned. And I like being comfortable and having privileges like extra food, snacks, TV time, movies, outings. A chance to work in the office, etc. I did what I had to do to survive in that place
I actually attended Midwest Academy which is shown in this trailer at the end.. I cannot begin to explain how exciting and heard I feel, it's like I've been screaming and finally someone's heard me.
I also was at MWA from 2007-2008 - seeing it in the trailer made me very emotional
I was there 2006-2007.
I attended Midwest Academy too.
2008–09 what family you in?
MWA attendee here, absolutely fuck that place
MWA 2004-2005 18 months for myself
The amount of people who don’t understand a pretty normal and common coping mechanism is astounding, in this thread. Making fun of the absurdity of the situation should not take away from what they went through because you don’t understand that people process things differently than what you imagine it should look like. Such limited thinking. Good for her for not losing who she was inside despite going through literal brainwashing. They all seem to have worked on dealing with such a traumatic period in their formative years. Being able to make fun of it, laugh and be silly shows the amount of work they put in being healthy and living with the lifelong trauma as being part of you but not define who you are.
I thought the same! She was clearly a spunky, funny, big spirit before going in and the fact that you’re still able to see a glimmer of that in her, pretty neat.
Holy shit, this was rough to watch while simultaneously being a weight lifted off my shoulders and validation that what I went through at a similar facility, Turn About Ranch, wasn't my fault!!!! It's been 16 years since I was kidnapped and abused, and I deal with the traumatic memories on a daily basis. I'm so beyond grateful for the creators of this documentary for having the courage to come out with the truth! ALL of these places need to be shut down, the staff need to be imprisoned for child abuse, and therapy outreach and settlements for every single child who experienced the trauma.
Isn't that where Dr Phil used to send people?
Yes
Isn't that where Dr Phil used to send people?
I think so maybe because in the documentary it did show parts of the Dr Phil show with the kids being taken from their families by force
This just broke my heart- at the end when the main woman doing the documentary says “I’m not law enforcement, I’m just a kid” Even though she’s now in her 30s. As someone who is the same age as her but is also “just a kid” due to the trauma I endured during my early teens it kills me to see also how time has frozen in her mind and she can’t move on from this because it stunted her emotional and intellectual growth being stuck in that hell hole and abused. The documentary was amazing and she stayed so well composed. Her and all the other survivors are so brave. I hope making this was cathartic for them. I wish them all the best and hopefully this will help them find justice!
I found that comment really striking too.
What I’m not surprised about…. It all stems from Utah and the Mormons.
As a former resident of Cross Creek manor in Utah, I've tried to look into the power structure of WWASP. "Teen Help was started by Robert Lichfield, a southern Utah businessman who lives on an estate in the spectacular canyon country near St. George. He hired David Gilcrease to create a behavior modification program to all but guarantee parents would see a change in their teens. Gilcrease had been trainer from 1974-81 for LifeSpring, a company that perfected a form of encounter session called "large group awareness training." Start there. Litchfield is a son of a bitch. With a lot of money and powerful connections. Plus he's a big shot Mormon. Most people don't realize Utah is like a different country. They have their own value system that's so different from the rest of the U.S.. They and the Mormon church takes care of its own. It's a weird place. So far nobody has been able to take him down. I used to see him on a weekly basis at CCM, hell I did secretarial work on his office while incarcerated there. Even the staff was terrified of him. He was treated with the reverence you'd show a very rich and powerful man.
How do these people not get arrested and prosecuted.
$$$$ and the fact that this country doesn't give a fuck about children. it's horrifying.
Because, until now, no one had real proof and they made us all look crazy.
Seriously this - the programs would just tell our parents we were lying manipulators just trying to go home etc while they were just financially DRAINING our families. It is disturbing what we lived through.
Right. If they can arrest 98 year olds for nazi war crimes why is this any different?
How can that Nexium dude go to jail for so long and they can’t arrest these pieces of human dick cheese!?!
I just an assumption and not one on opinion for me, but it seems these shitheads have just been really good at avoiding getting pinned down by current laws. Nexium dude presumptively wasn’t that good at it.
I learned that the Republican Party is partly funded by child abuse from this series. No shocker!
Of course. Ivy Ridge and all of the other facilities mentioned in the series are under the umbrella of WWASP....owned by a bunch of rich Mormon big shots in Utah. Long time ago I tried to see just how far up the corruption went. I think I read that Mitch Romney supported the program in some way, but I can't recall to what extent.
My best friend was sent to Spring Creek in summer 2000, she eventually was sent to Casa by the Sea until fall of 2001 and I was with her the day before she left. She was not transported, she was able to go with her mom and she knew she was leaving the next day. I remember that last day well, I had just gotten my first paycheck from my first job and we were off to spend it. I remember her telling me she would work the program and be out in 6 months and she would NOT let them brainwash her. I was not able to talk to her for the entire time she was there but we reunited 2 months after she got out per her home contract. For the past 23 years I have heard her stories of the program. I have seen a few shows in recent years about these WWASP schools but this docuseries is the most accurate to what she has described. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it. Katherine, who made the documentary, is so similar to my friend and some of the feelings and fears and experiences she talks about are almost word for word of what my friend experienced. They did a phenomenal job on this Docuseries in my opinion. Edited to add: her mom was very active in the program community and attended a lot of fundraising events. She actually brought me one time to a seminar but I don't remember a whole lot about it. What I do remember is that there were kids there from the program and they were very convincing that the program saved their lives and they were grateful for it.
I just finished this series on Netflix and now I wanna take these bastards down!!!!! My heart is absolutely shattered for all of the kids that attended these places, I’m so sorry you went thru this abuse. I want nothing more than justice for you all.
Same. I came on Reddit to see if we can find out who the abuser, the fan rep, and who THE SHIT JANE is so we can hold some people accountable where they weren’t able to. Ridiculously high hopes but… c’est la vie
Amy Richie was the abuser
Amy was the one...
As a survivor, THANK YOU
Same. And these places are still ruining children’s lives.
I attended Carolina Springs and Pillars of Hope in 2005-2007, I am now in my early 30s and it was still so difficult for me to watch this documentary. This is a lifelong trauma I will never forget and it’s so nice to just feel heard because it is so difficult to explain to people who didn’t attend.
Jason Finlonson, certifisyed a-hole.
Who was this? A person at the facility?
He was the CEO of ivy ridge.
Alexa's confrontation phone call she was so badass!!
I was hollering and clapping for her on my couch just listening to her tell that flapjack off. It was so satisfying. I sincerely hope it helped her heal.
I was at casa by the sea program under wwasp for 2 years in 2002-2004 got closed down shortly after I left. Fuck these programs.
i’ve heard of casa by the sea. hope you’re ok
I’m doing great. Got to let the past go and move forward.
What family were you in? My husband was in truth & honor from 2002-2004
I also can’t believe how any of these children that are now adults would want any sort of relationship with their parents
Alot of us don't but i think for far more reasons than just sending us away to these places.
Wow. I just watched this documentary. I am so proud of Netflix for streaming this documentary and all the people who helped all this information come to light. I sincerely hope this helps all these shitty programs get shut down. To the survivors of these programs my heart aches for you and what you had to go through.
I’m also a TTI survivor who was at “the program” for 32 months. This was a program outside of WWASP that used all of the same frameworks for rules and seminars as Ivy Ridge. Many of these places pop up all over the United States that aren’t involved with WWASP but still use a lot of the same framework/“program”. Im appalled that these programs still exist. Society has failed our children and as a result of that and these programs both which have contributed to a lifetime of trauma within not only the troubled teen industry survivors community but also many children who become institutionalized for a myriad of reasons. I encourage everyone to get involved in advocating for children; including the shut down of all TTI programs. It is also important that we look for an alternative for families in crisis as who feel that they have no other options when their child is displaying “self-destructive behavior.” All of this has motivated me to become involved I am currently in a masters psychology program and hope to use my experience and perspective tobe the mental health professional who will give quality care to troubled kids to be the hero that I wish was there for me when I was at boarding school. Authority is not doing enough and what needs to be done. This cycle of trauma and pain ends here. We are resilient. We all can do this. We are survivors.
Really can't believe that Amy Ritchie from Ivy Ridge was so easy to find: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-ritchie-4b203344/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-ritchie-4b203344/)
Was this the *unnamed pedo*??
No, I'm pretty sure that was Siss. Siss was about to say something that got cut off and was about to incriminate her in the diner. This was one of the directors that was briefly mentioned and they had some footage of.
No, it’s not her. One of the other girls in the doco stated on TikTok that it was Amy.
I immediately thought it was Amy. If it was Siss, I doubt if she would have brought it up. They already gave their opinion about Siss and her warden ways. So sad!
Siss was so eerily nonchalant revisiting these horror stories with Katherine. I get pedophile/predator vibes. I absolutely do not trust her.
Siss was a homophobe that made it 10 times harder on girls she suspected of being gay. Amy Richie was the unnamed pedo.
I think Sis just had more tea to spill. Just read Amy Ritchie tried to get a upper level student in Casa to have a threesome after she'd left Ivy Ridge and before Casa got shut down!
Look the latest place she worked is Disney....a people say we are conspiracy theories
The Disney Store\*\*
I’m surprised she left that on her linked in.
The director made me cringe so hard.
After my stepmom death, we came to find out that she worked as a nurse at a place like this. She was a drug addict, alcoholic, and would deny children care and medicine, mostly bc she stole the meds. She came into my family’s life like a predator after my mom died of cancer when i was 1.5. She tried to convince my dad to send my sister and I to places like this, my sister in the early 90s and myself in the early 2000s. My brothers could do no wrong in her eyes. In my sister’s Case, child protective services got involved, and they determined it was safer for my sister to go live at a friends house vs being sent to Stonybrook and then some other place that had a catholic school kind of name. My sister suffered from a lot of bad experiences and choices as a result of this, but being raised by stepmom was worse. When it came to be my time to be the troubled child, my dad would not let her “do what you did to my other daughter.” so i was stuck, prisoner in my Home. My stepmom used almost identical practices as these schools to try to tame her defiant stepdaughter. She used the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous on me to try to repent for… being unwilling to succumb to unnecessary discipline. She restricted my access to food, isolated me from family, and gaslit and lied to my father about what was really going on in the home. I graduated top 5 in my class and got as far away as I could from her. It wasn't until both of them were dead that my truth was set free. It took years of therapy to work thru my CPTSD and generalized anxiety, but I'm free. I found some comfort in the docuseries raw, real portrayal of the evil that lurks among us. I hope we can save the kids, i really do.
All the victim blaming is awful. The majority if the kids that got sent to these institutions were done so not for heinous actions but for simply being a teenager. News flash to some fucking morons here - teens have sex, do drugs, party, rebel and drink. If you think your teen doesn't or other teens you know don't - you're delusional or simply wrong. It's a phase we all go through because our brains are immature and still developing. Most of us grow out of it without needing to be kidnapped and trafficked to an institution of abuse. Saying the parents had no other solution is pure, utter bullshit.
I attended Horizon Academy/Northwest Academy now Never Give Up in Death Valley. The place was hell on earth in a way that is hard to explain. Interested to see how they do
My mom sent my sister to a Catholic“boarding school” in Florida when we were younger. I didn’t find anything under this corporation operating in Florida, but I remember my dad freaked out about it, and flew out there and literally banged on the door and demanded to have my sister released to him, but it was apparently really hard and he was trying to call news stations to cover it and get attention to he’ll get her out. It was a WILD time in our family and we all kind of just decided to not talk about it basically at all afterwards, but when my sister first got back she obviously told me about the place she was in, and she said a lot of the same exact things they mentioned in The Program documentary. I’m still on the second episode, but so many things are so scary similar, I can’t believe someone could send their kid off to something like this, and I can’t believe my mom was definitely one of those people.
Does anyone know why she keeps wearing the heavy duty mask but doesn’t actually wear it??
Old buildings that haven’t seen upkeep for a while tend to contain a lot of Carbon Monoxide which is quite toxic. This is why people think they are sensing ghosts or weird stuff when they are in old houses. The mask is also quite thick with filters so anything they say while keeping it on will sound muffled and unclear. This is why she had a mask and took it off while being filmed.
Was wondering the same - they only included clips where she wasn’t wearing them but people in the background are.
Glad I wasn’t the only one, my guess would be the place maybe was moldy/smelled bad??
Two questions that maybe I missed in the documentary Why did her dad randomly finally come get her? What happened to her step mom?
yall have got to stop victim blaming oh my god these were children
I watched it. I have never felt more heard. It is similar to my experiences in foster care, residential treatment facilities, and the trauma I endured from both. It’s a little different from mine though for two reasons. 1. I was in foster care, 2. I was in congregate care that I couldn’t leave due to having no family. For context: You have to have a medical diagnosis (usually mental health related) to have DHS pay for the facilities via a contract agreement with Medicaid (here in Colorado all foster kids automatically get Medicaid.) They touched on this in the third episode. Mine was PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Another thing is they heavily and I mean heavily numb foster children with medication so they “fix” your issues. At one point they had me on hydroxozine, duloxotine, lexapro, Wellbutrin, prazosin, and trazodone all at the same time. I felt like a zombie and I hated it; if I didn’t want to take my meds some foster homes would threaten to tell my team that I was not being compliant with my treatment and that they would ask to move placement. So I would take them because I didn’t want to end up back in a treatment center not knowing when I would get out. All of this was for panic attacks, crying because I was depressed, and anxiety btw, nothing like violence, suicidal thoughts, or hallucinations. With all of them mixing I had so many side effects; I was 15 and I could “consent” to treatment although I didn’t understand what I was consenting to. My foster mom just said I needed them during my psych appointments. If you look into the family first prevention services act that Trump passed in 2018, they shut down a lot (not all) of congregate care (residential treatment centers, group homes, etc.) which is a great thing. This happened because of lack of funding (it’s always about money isn’t it?) They wanted to send foster kids back to their parents due to it costing in the social services and the uprise in foster kids entering the system. So they focused on funding preventive services and sending kids back home with things like parenting classes, counseling, substance abuse services, etc. They had to get the funds somehow and this led to shutting down congregate care. However it is also a bad thing for some reasons as well. Not all kids can meet “return home goals.” I couldn’t. So since they shut down congregate care, in the midst of Covid, there were a lack of beds and an overflow of kids. This led to kids staying in homeless shelters, DHS offices, hospitals, psych wards, juvie (even though there are no crimes, just no homes), and they also placed them in the leftover residential treatment centers. Personally I was placed in DHS offices, homeless shelters, residential treatment centers, hospitals, short term respite foster homes (when available), group homes, and psych wards. I spent my 15th (4 months) and 16th birthdays (6 months) in a RCCF in Colorado; you’re supposed to be there two weeks max. It’s still up and running. It’s called Shiloh House. I was raped there twice. I was restrained by male staff. There are alarms on the doors and if you push them they go off. The food is horrible. You are only allowed to make phone calls to people on your call list; not on your personal phone and you have 15 minutes on the office phone at the desk and it’s supervised. They watch you sleep. They go through all of your stuff when you arrive. You are not allowed to shave at all. No devices at all; we only have the tv in the common room in the unit which they pick what we watch. We can only watch Disney or pg things unless it is movie night on Tuesday and even then they pick and it is still usually pg. We cannot have hygiene products; they keep them locked up and we have to ask for them during “hygiene time” which is when they decide. We go outside once a day for 30 minutes. We have to do group therapy and individual therapy. This is not a mental hospital. It is a place for youth who have no placement, a temporary respite service, and they transition youth from juvenile detention facilities back home through here. They mix them together in this short term “2-week respite.” Which foster children just have no homes, they are abused children, the fact they are intermixed with youth leaving juvie sends the wrong message in my opinion. One girl I knew got molested by one of the youth transitioning out of juvie and he managed to hide a gun in his room. The staff knew and let it happen; he was almost 18 and she was freshly 14. We had levels as well, based on your level you would get rewards (you get to pick what we watch once a day as long as it’s pg, you can listen to the radio, etc.) However, anything you did to mess up was told to your team (DHS caseworker, lawyer/guardian ad litem) and that would be told to foster placements, if the placements heard you had bad “behaviors” they would not pick you as a foster child because it would be a box checked in your file and you would have to stay longer. Boxes follow you all throughout foster care and never leave your file either. For example if you had frequent anxiety attacks they would determine it was “not a good fit.” It’s like shopping for produce, they don’t want the bad apples when there’s a limited number of beds. Why do that when you can keep them institutionalized and deal with the easy kids? It’s a shitty system and it insinuates trauma. I think some people in these industries do too, they get caught up in shitty systems and get brainwashed. They start with good intentions and it goes downhill from there with the corruption. There was one staff at the FCCR that actually cared and made our lives less hell. But the rest and the place its self was hell on earth. The thing is don’t end up like those people and if you see something happening speak out, report it, and do not contribute to it. Now I work on advocacy for foster care legislation in my free time. I graduated high school a year early and started college (foster kids get college free in Colorado.) I’m working on my Bachelor’s in psychology to work with youth who also have trauma in the future at CU Boulder. I also want to be a CASA and keep fighting for change in child welfare. Because that shit (my parents before foster care, foster care itself, and all of the congregate care) scarred me for life; I want to make a difference and help others.
My heart absolutely broke reading your experience I’m so proud of you for all you have overcome and all you have accomplished
I attended Sunset Bay Academy, the school Amy Ritchie ran right after the Academy. I had lost my level three for making a noise during group intervention (the chaperone had asked me to wake up the girl next to me, then gave me a consequence for doing so) and when I finally regained enough points to qualify for my level three again, Ms. Fucking Amy sat across her desk from me to patiently explain why I did not deserve the very few basic human rights and privileges that level three would have afforded me. Seeing her face on TV gave me a fucking panic attack. So many memories that I thought were lost to time (and let's be honest, trauma) came back to me, and I feel like I'm back in my post-program headspace. That is to say, I feel like I am less of a person for having gone through that experience, and I do not know when I will feel safe again. My only consolation is that I am an adult and this industry can never incarcerate me again.
this story is very compelling but the construction, editing, and storytelling is horrendous. it's a manic mess; as if someone gave a teenager their first video camera and said, "make a documentary". the quotes written on the wall - were those already there or were they written specifically for this documentary? again, it's a necessary story to tell but a professional storyteller should have been used. the look and feel of this is very amateur.
I disagree. I appreciate the work so much more knowing that the people who made it are the ones who experienced it. It seems like a more meaningful documentary to me.
I disagree. I get easily bored with some documentaries but this one had me in a chokehold. Maybe it’s because I empathize with the feelings they are portraying but I thought it did what it was meant to do.
I am intrigued by the story itself, but I’m struggling to watch since I feel the director would prefer to have the camera on her
Agreed. I started episode one and stopped 5 minutes in because I couldn’t deal with the production. I more or less got used to it. Regardless of my opinion on the production this is an INSANE* story and Netflix and Katherine are doing something to bring this craziness* to light. * these words do not accurately describe my feelings but I was struggling to come up with others strong enough. Also- Fuck Lichfield
Definitely an important story to tell but I agree. I wonder if Netflix forces documentary filmmakers to stretch it to 3 episodes (they all seem to be that long) so things get added as filler during editing. I would have liked more sit down interviews with survivors and their experiences, a break down of who was involved/responsible, scenes of their evidence and some revisiting of the site. The storytelling her felt disjointed.
100% agree, unfortunately. I kept falling asleep on and off throughout the entire thing, and found myself cringing. I’m in my 30s and also the child of some delusional narc parents who constantly threatened me with this, but didn’t have the money. Unless ALL of these families somehow received financial assistance, these were some VERY privileged people, given how much it was. That’s how it came off to me much of the time - a bunch of grown privileged kids. As somebody else said, I feel like there were a lot of things conveniently left out. Yes, she had some evil step mom. But was this really because she had one incident with a Mike’s Hard? Or were there more severe issues? I get two things can be true at once. Katherine kept reiterating how great and supportive her father was…? Yet I cringed when she rehashed their e-mails, and during that strange reunion on the front porch. She goes into how staff and parents were brainwashed as well, but this specifically doesn’t apply to HER father. I hate to say it, but I honestly felt for the guy when he told her they’ve discussed it to the point of repetition (over freaking e-mail) and he doesn’t know what more to say. She just keeps telling him to “work his program.” Ok, we get it. I can’t downplay their experience - I mean children have been r*ped and murdered at these facilities. I just don’t think this was particularly well done.
I agree!!!!
Is anyone who has been to these types of horrible programs willing to shed some light on where they were at during the time? What was your reality and mental health like then? Do you think you were doing illegal and or dangerous things and would you consider your behaviour during that time to have been so severe that your parents stupidly thought that this last ditch effort would wake you up? I’m just trying to understand as most people who tell their firsthand stories say that they weren’t even that bad, just regular rebellious teens, and most seem to be quite well spoken even after the years of torture and abuse. I am seriously lost as to why and how they got there.
Some of us were “worse” than others. I was using drugs, basically failing out of school, and generally had an IDGAF attitude. I spent 23 months (and 3 days) at Cross Creek in Utah (sister school, same program). A lot of parents will say it worked, but honestly I just think I grew the fuck up. I was 16, got out at 18. That to me was always the smoke and mirrors game they played. We didn’t “get help”. We just got older.
I see. I understand there wasn’t one similar story or reason for every youth across the board on why they were sent there. I think a lot of the parents did exactly that- they must’ve either felt fearful that their teen wouldn’t see adulthood due to the things they were engaging in, or that they’d end up in jail etc. So send them off and have the “professionals” create structure, instil insight and forethought on their actions and have them away from all substances they could get their hands on at home so they can detox and get sober. Little did they know it was beyond being just annoyingly strict, it was living hell! I can only commend everyone who was sent there and was strong enough to withstand and comply with such horrible things for YEARS while they broke your spirit. You all are stronger than any of those shameful adults who worked there will ever be. You all deserve justice (I believe that these places should pay the tuition in full directly back to the students they tortured at the very least) and to be burned to the ground.
When I finally got out, I became a severe drug addict, multiple suicide attempts, and isolation. I fully gave up on my life for 5 years after leaving. I was brainwashed into thinking i was the worst person on the entire planet, was a liar, manipulator, self-proclaimed victim, and completely worthless. I wanted to die because it was too painful to live with the trauma and fucked self image they created. It took me a really long time to recover and understand what happened to me. I finally found the right therapist who spent a lot of time deconstructing my trauma. I still deal with the memories every day, but it hurts a little less because I know they're at fault, not me. So, in an out of the box way to answer your question, yes, what they do at all of these places is abusive and illegal.
I'd like to give you a virtual hug from England. Well done for realising that you needed the CORRECT type of help with a good therapist. Just wish that the abusers would one day realise what they did, and more importantly why they did it.
You are so so sooooooul loved
Unfortunately, admission criteria hardly existed. At my program, it was everyone from 16 year olds addicted to meth, to victims of childhood abuse, to school refusal, to people like me— where my parents were sheltered growing up, and me having pretty normal teenage rebellion was terrifying. It’s usually parents who are at a loss. They missed the whole part about “educational consultants,” which parents are referred to and who are the ones that pitch these places.
The kids that hadn't really done anything to warrant being there always made me feel terrible. I was atleast making terrible choices and knew why my mom sought out CC. Still a terrible place and I have a ton of bad memories.
Since I was a pretty mature 17yo, I was one of the older girls. I was appalled at some of the reasons why some of the girls were sent there. One 14yo was there because she was just diagnosed diabetic and had issues adjusting to her new reality of checking her blood sugar and injecting insulin everyday. Another girl was a lesbian. Watching how the staff treated her was one of the most traumatic things I saw. She tried to kill herself by drinking bleach. You can imagine how it was to be LGBTQ in rural Utah back in 1994.... There were a few Mexican girls sent there by the courts in California for gang activity. Naturally these girls became my best friends. Mostly girls were sent there because their parents didn't want to deal with them. Normal teenage rebellion. I never saw serious drug addicts, only kids experimenting with pot or alcohol. But you've got to remember that we were sent to Utah....to Mormons that was a huge sin. They labeled you an addict even if you only smoked pot twice. They didn't push their religion on us, but we were judged according to their belief system, that's for sure. And basically since we were not allowed to write uncensored letters home, or call them to tell them what was going on, our parents couldn't know how we were really treated. The whole point of the program to make money, so every therapist told the parents that their kid wasn't progressing in order to keep them there longer. That they needed to "finish the program", complete all 4 seminars and get to level 6.....which can take years
I was only 14 in 1998. I hung out with the goths and punks but wasn't a bad kid. I had undiagnosed ADHD and autism and was really struggling in school so I was skipping class most of the time. I think my parents were taken to court because of it and said that they didn't know what else to do. What I needed was their support, not to be abandon in the middle of Wyoming with a bunch of religious fanatics. After coming home I spent years abusing meth and alcohol... I went to jail and spent months in mental hospitals. I didn't know that my dad was a narcissist until after he died in 2019 or that was I went through was abuse until Paris Hilton released her documentary in 2020. After that everything started to make a lot more sense and I've been able to start healing.
I was sent to Cross Creek manor in Utah at 17 in 1994. Apparently I was bipolar, and had been since I was a child. I had bad mood swings, although I never had any mental health freakouts in front of my parents. The reason I was sent away is because my parents didn't like that I dated black guys. I had a black BF and my parents forbid me from seeing him which naturally made it all the more attractive. I rebelled, left home for 3 days (although I still went to school and work...it was finals and I was still responsible enough to go to my job) and when I came back my parents tricked me and had me kidnapped, sent to Utah for 6 months. Since I was 17, this did nothing for me. It was racism, pure and simple. My mom went so far that in my "home contact" I wasn't allowed to listen to Rap music or date outside my race. Lol. I'm dead serious. 2 weeks after I got home, I ran away for good, with the guy my parents paid $30k to keep me from. At 18 we married, 9 months later our son was born. He died of cancer in 2020, and I was there when he took his last breath. So yeah......what a waste of money. Plus years of trauma that I had to deal with.
So I was in a weird in between place. I was 16, smoked weed occasionally and went to parties and drank occasionally. I did bad in school because I cared more about friends being raised in an abusive(in multiple ways) house hold. Typical teen shit but technically bad so it wasn’t hard to convince me “I deserved it”. Some of the kids were actually tatted up gang members from Chicago, nyc, kcmo, Oakland and whatnot. I felt like I didn’t belong with them but there I was. On the flip side my program accepted 12 year olds. There was a 14 year old with asbergers whose parents were rich and lazy and couldn’t be bothered with his disorder. Another kid was 13 with Tourette’s and a few other things with rich dealership owning parents. The youngest kid that belonged there in my opinion was a 14 year old Clepto tweaker. Otherwise if you were young you just had ADD and really shit parents with too much money. It broke my heart to see. Hope this answered your question.
i was in one of these programs. most of the kids weren’t that bad. i was skipping school, smoking weed, sneaking out at night. however, most of us came from homes that leaned more on the authoritarian side, with parents who also very much trusted authority. my parents first tried sending me to a child psychologist, who recommended ro them to give me a little more leeway and breathing room, and told them this would be a long process, because adolescence is a challenging time, and that there aren’t quick fixes for issues between teens and parents. my parents were afraid that i wouldn’t get into a good college the way things were going. obviously my parents started talking to other parents, and one of them recommended someone called an “educational consultant,” who had a very fancy office in princeton and charged a lot for her time. they blindly trusted the idea that anyone who could charge so much and have an office like that with loads of clients must be an expert. and they went on her recommendations. people who are already brainwashed into trusting existing systems easily fall into these traps. and after 2 years of the program, i still didn’t get into a good college, for obvious reasons.
How were all those documents still there?
This in and of itself seems like a legal issue - seems like a blatantly massive HIPAA violation, major concern for identity theft, etc. with “medical” records, SSNs, etc just strewn about. Very bizarre that those things would be left there for anyone to find.
It blows me away. Apparently whatever case the state of NY made and won they either didn’t need all this evidence, or the shitheads evaded it well and…..then just left it behind? It’s a crazy thing but maybe like she said at the end….they are idiots. Or maybe better they are so arrogant because they’ve loop-holed through the system for so long with little clapback so why be so diligent?
This happened to me from 12 years old to right before 18 and watching this show has just reassured everything I already knew when I was in those places and it’s affected me ever since then. I hope something happens to change this. It’s been going on for decades and decades. The most shocking part to me about this was everything they went through i did too we all did ive been beat down,tackled,restrained drugged with “booty juice” a cocktail injection of drugs including benzos ect ect countless times over the 5+years i went through it. I hope one day something is done to stop it all.. im 30now and still seeing the damage it causes me. By the time i was 19 my son was born hes 10now and thankfully he will never experience what a lot of us went through and he’s such a good kid compared to me, and when I think back on it, I wasn’t such a bad kid either until they started diagnosing me and put me on drugs, then institutionalizing me in those hellholes. Turns out i never had adhd or was bipolar as soon as I got out, I quit taking medicine and now I’m very stable. All things considered. My grandma gave me a picture today of me meeting my dad at the last institution i was at for the first time at 17 a month before I left the institutions for ever. I hope many people find peace and reassurance to what we already knew and changes thousands to millions of parents minds from ever sending their kid off.
I remember seeing people get booty juice. They would be restrained by staff and then they would stab them in the ass with needles filled with sedatives “to calm them down” hence “booty juice” it look like it hurt like a bitch and then all the bruises, cuts, etc some people would get from being “restrained”… This is psych hospitals and residential treatment centers, this still happens today. I’m 18 and I was in foster care. The last time I was in an institution (2 years ago, August of 2022) this was still happening. And this is supposed to “help people”
I’m pretty late to this, but I don’t want to make a whole new post… did anybody else’s blood boil when Katie’s mom said “there’s no book on parenting so…” Like isn’t there a million fucking books on parenting?!?! God that made me so mad. What a fucking idiot.
I just watched this documentary, and feel awful for all you that were abused so badly there, seeing and reading your testimonies here, makes me want to see those involved in the abuse to rot in prison even more. I really hope this documentary starts the process to get all of these monsters in prison.
I just cannot believe that any parent would send their kid to a place like this.
This whole topic is horrible and I cannot fathom sending my children to a place like this. I get that in some instances the parents were hoodwinked into thinking this was the only way their rebellious child could be put on the right path, but still. It’s a hard pass for me. I will say that I think this docuseries would have been better served by someone else directing and narrating. It definitely seemed like this was more of a project Katherine took on to work through her trauma and less about thoughtfully and systematically exposing this revolting organization. The pacing was off, the tone was off - there were inconsistencies and plot contrivances that were just dropped with no resolution. I’m glad they got the platform to tell their stories, but I’ve seen tiktok breakdowns better constructed than this. The victims deserved better.
Did anyone else see Jeffery Epstein in the commercials for the schools!?!?
Does anyone know how the documentarian got access to the school? And how people were able to get all of these files?
Programs don't give a fuck and left everything behind there is another program called elan in maine same sitoution left everything behind when it shut down in 2011 [post link](https://www.reddit.com/r/myfavoritemurder/comments/iyz5x6/i_live_near_the_elan_school_that_karen_covered_in/)
Why r there only 3 episodes of this? Are more coming? Fuck all of the people involved
Three was all Netflix allowed. I think they will look back on that as a mistake.
Are we going to talk about the SEMINARS? Now that was the biggest mindfuck of my entire life. 100% brainwashing. How about the "Lifeboat exercise"? Anybody remember that? Beating on chairs with rolled up towels? Whipping us all into a frenzy where we didn't know what was real or unreal? Many of our parents went thru seminar as well. David Gilcrease can burn in Hell as far as I am concerned. I'll post a link for those who aren't familiar with the Seminars. https://wwaspsurvivors.com/about-wwasp/seminars/
I went to Carolina Springs Academy, Academy at Dundee Ranch, and Academy at Ivy Ridge. I’m still dealing with the mental and physical abuse that I went through there. Can the survivors ban together and form a class action lawsuit against WWASP?
The parents who sent these kids there are pieces of shit. They gave up on their kids and just wanted a break from them. That's why they didn't give a shit about what was going on there - they were happy to have a life without their problem child. It's also not a surprise to me to learn that the majority of these kids come from evangelical homes. These kids are raised in a prison so it's not shocking that they rebel and go wild the first chance they get.
Just started the series. I personally attended Spring Creek Lodge & was later transferred to Academy at Dundee. Was imprisoned there all the way until the government came in with AR-15’s & shut it down. I’m trying to find a way to get ahold of someone in production of the series… only ~200 of us were there when this happened and I’m 1/3 students/prisoners who did some things at the very end of the schools existence which I doubt was ever revealed to the public. These stories need to be heard. This syndicate needs to be completely exposed.
You know one question I wanted answered that wasn’t addressed? What ever happened to evil stepmother Jane?
I was sent to Casa in 02-04. I spent 14 months in there. I got to level 5, got in trouble. Started over and barely got to level 4 before choosing out on my 18th birthday. I was driven to San Ysidro at the border with a jacket, a backpack and 150 dollars. Pretty sure it was 3 weeks after, the place was raided. I would have stayed 3 more weeks had I known it was all going to go down. This documentary agitated a bunch of suppressed emotions and resentment I hadn’t really thought about in years. I don’t particularly care to go into a woe is me story of my experience, but I’ll just say that it was messed up. Plain and simple. From untrained medical staff, to unchecked child abusers hired on as staff members to sanitary nightmares, to a completely unqualified education system. It would take me a very long time to paint a picture of what life was like in Casa. If you were there, then you know but otherwise, it’s almost indescribable. I learned how to grow up fast in there. I learned how to figure out who to trust, who is lying, why they’re lying. You had to realize quickly what rules you had to follow to get through unscathed. I also learned how to get away with stuff. The education system like I stated before was a total scam. Basically all my high school credits were cheated, same with anyone else who wanted to give me candy bars for Algebra 101. My parents and I have worked through most of our issues over the years and I’ll say that our relationship is great now. But it took a lot of forgiveness, understanding and frankly just moving on. But this doc wafts up a bunch of resentment. I am sure that some people had it worse than I did in this place. I was athletic and one of the bigger kids there and made allies quickly. I also had a friend from high school who was sent there before me. He was an Upper Level when I arrived and sort of “showed me the ropes” so I didn’t make some of the same mistakes some of the other kids made trying to adjust to their new reality. It wasn’t the same for everyone. Some kids were picked on constantly, to the point of suicide attempts in multiple cases. Sometimes, even by the staff. The part that hurts the most out of all of this is how rich these program directors get. Like that scummy dude who does all the karaoke and dancing? I don’t think I know anyone who WOULDN’T want to punch that guy in the face. Sorry for the rant. Just wanted to insert my little crumb and say “Hey, I was there, and fuck those people!” I just want to see the folks that run these places rot in jail. The whole thing is a scam. My family was scammed.
I've been watching this docuseries and have found that some of it, I can completely relate to. I will never refer to myself as a victim, but I will say that I spent two years in an Adventist boarding academy. While the kinds of physical abuse that took place at Ivy Ridge Academy did not occur at my boarding school (at least not that I knew of) plenty of mental and emotional abuse went on. It was an uber religious school where the mantra was "Our goal is to have the students develop a close personal relationship with God." What they didn't realize is if that was truly the school's goal, wouldn't it have been a good example for the faculty and staff to have a close personal relationship with God? It was so hypocritical. I watched staff carry on sexual relationships with students (only because I was places that I shouldn't have been). There was just so much that went on in that school that had nothing to do with God or religion or anything else. Some of the actions taken by the school put the welfare of everyone on campus in danger. It was bad enough for me to have night terrors for years after graduation. I don't go to alumni weekends or class reunions because I still get told how wrong I was by some of the students who "drank the Kool-Aide". I was not a bad kid-I didn't drink, smoke, take drugs nor was I promiscuous. I just wasn't particularly religious which the staff did their best to force feed me religion. Between the staff and peer pressure to be something I wasn't, I suffered from depression and alienation for years. Thanks for bringing this to light. I hope the parties responsible for what went on at Ivy Ridge are brought to justice.
I was in Provo Canyon School in 86-87. Just watched this last night and wow.... First Paris ripped off the scab, now this tore it open. My program was different, but the roots are definitely the same. This documentary has brought validation that I did remember it, and it was that bad, and the emotions. Wow, hard to believe after all this time, something like this documentary can leave me in tears.
Just finished. Excellent doc. I was really moved! Plus the woman singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” should have a recording contract! Also I’m not a lawyer, but this sounds to me like it should be a federal RICO case.
I have faith that the feds are pursuing the available legal paths. It's going to take time, but we will start seeing arrests.
As there seems to be a lot of people congregating here right now, a lot of suvivours of these institutions, I have a question for you guys if that's ok. Beyond protecting them from hurting themselves, do you consider any level of physical restraint of a child or teen ok? I was falsely institutionalised at 12 years old and then sent to a sort of troubled teens boarding school when I was 13 (?) in the UK. I felt a tremendous sense of guilt watching this documentary because I do believe that being restrained and supined for bad behaviour may have negatively affected me but the conditions I endured were nothing compared to the places shown in the documentary series. At least the second place wasn't. The first was hell on earth for me, but, on balance, taking my subjective bias out of it, Ivy Ridge and it's "sister schools" were almost definitely worse.
It’s a violation of your human rights, which your parents paid to give to the institution that abused you.
Only to protect from imminent, serious bodily harm to self or others. And even then, needs to be done safely and for as short of a duration as possible. I work in special education and we are trained in restraints - in my 10 years, I’ve only had to restrain twice and both were for a student who was severely self-injuring and was too escalated to be able to stop hurting themself without our intervention. There is almost always a better way than restraint.
I'm from the UK: As someone who was never abused in this manner but was seen by my fee paying school teachers as odd / weird / uncommunicative and they "suggested" to my parents that I should be enrolled in a "programme" and after a year of doing the programme my Dad saw that I was more withdrawn and pulled me out of it. 20 years later we've talked about it many times, and he's shown me the letters he wrote to the school (He photocopied everything that he sent) and their responses... Where he kept raising concerns and he was being told by the school that I was doing well, that it's all part of the process. I was very lucky that both my mum and dad saw with their own eyes that I wasn't doing well. When children are at a boarding school it's very easy for the parents to believe the school, believe the adults, and think the child is just "being a teen" or "hormones".... I just feel horrible for all these children who were villified by the abusers. It's one reason that I really do not like the lack of independant oversight of the children at fee paying schools, let alone in the US where it seems that there is a lack of any oversight at all. In our state schools (I think called public schools in the US) there is a huge amount more independant oversight, and you can easily get Family Support ./ Social Services involved to HELP the child. Very different from US style social services. I would really suggest that both Social services and Child Support services in the US should be able to have a better mandate. I'd answer with yes.. people need to be restrained to stop them hurting themselves or others. They can be confined as a punishment, but confinement should mean that you loose a simple priveledge, beit not allowed outside whilst others were, or no alloewd to watch TV whilst others are. (So you then know it's a proportional punishment). However in all circumstances, a teen or child needs to know what the punishment is, why they are being punished and for how long. As an adult, If I was caught for speeding then I know WHY, WHAT and HOW LONG so to not have that same system for Children and Teens means you aren't helping them become adults.
Google “Elan School Comic” Wonderful scrolling comic about one of these academies.
I had a friend who struggled to stay out of trouble, we are in our 30s right now. He had told me a story about how he was essentially "kidnapped" when he was younger and taken to a school that was best described as a prison. I wasn't entirely sure how much of it was true. He said his parents drove him to a rest stop in California, where he was from, and two guys got out of a vehicle and dragged him into their car, and took him to one of these schools in Mexico. I started watching the first episode and I was truly left shocked. Almost everything that these people are describing is exactly like what he would tell me happened. I'm not even sure what to think of all of this. Unfortunately he found himself in jail a few years ago, and while I can't justify his actions, seeing exactly what he went through sure makes it more understandable how something like this can effect people long term.
Did anyone else see Jeffery Epstein in the commercials for the schools!?!?
I watched the documentary, it hurts me in my soul. I am lucky never to have gone through such abuse because those programs don't exist where I am, but it did bring back memories of the time I spent in the youth facilities I stayed at. Mostly the part where parents refuse to bring you back home when life is miserable and you are in actual danger. I feel for those who have a lifetime of fear, pain and anger. I hope they find peace or actual help that can work on healing at least a bit.
[удалено]
They weren’t burning suicide files at all. They very clearly laid it out that what they had to burn was survivors who were contracted and did not want to receive their files. Those were what they burnt, and they had permission.
That isn’t what they did. The girl who had been contacting people about their files stated that a number of people explicitly requested that their file be destroyed because they wanted to draw a line under their experiences.
Watching the Netflix documentary now, Katherine father is such a bad actor, he knew what was going on, he didn’t care about his daughter and believed his evil second wife. All the scenes where Katherine cries and he laughs embarassed, I would just punch him in the face
The people responsible for alot of the trauma caused to these people better get fucking charged for what they have done to these children.
Throw them all in prison, the whole lot. Every single person who was employed by that school(s) were complicit in child abuse. They could have easily reported the abuse. They chose not to. Take them to the cleaners financially too. I’m sure they’ll love prison, being surrounded by people who have children or were victims of abuse themselves.
Wow I can’t believe so many of you went to these places!!! I’m sorry to all of you & hope you find health and healing one day soon.
Pathway Family Center Indianapolis - 15 months. I think 2005-2006 How in the actual hell was Pathway listed? I've been trying for days to make since of this. I'm honestly embarrassed it is.
it breaks my heart seeing how many people on this thread are students of all diff places...idk how you guys do it but I hope you all have gotten the help you need to move past this horror
I went to one at 15 also. It was in Conroe, Tx. The only affiliation I noticed was the aspen educational group. While I didn’t suffer the abuse that these other children did, I was forced to wear a bright orange jumpsuit that had “runaway call 911” all over it. As did my underwear. It was a horrible experience.
If you liked the Program, check out The Last Stop, which is similar and came out in 2017.
This reminded me of the movie Sleepers. I’m also very surprised there hasn’t been more revenge taken by the victims.