S24 Ep2: Unsilenced

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Speaker 1 Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses upsetting topics. Season 24 survivors discuss violence that they endured as children, which may be triggering for some listeners.

Speaker 1 As always, please consume with care. For a full content warning, sources, and resources for each episode, please visit the episode notes.

Speaker 1 Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of broken psycho media. All persons are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Speaker 1 Responses to allegations from individual institutions are included within the season.

Speaker 1 Something was wrong and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice.

Speaker 1 Hi, friends. For this episode, I'm honored to interview survivor, advocate, author, and nonprofit founder, Meg Applegate.

Speaker 1 In the early 2000s, Meg spent three and a half years at two different residential programs. The first one she was sent to was Intermountain Hospital in Boise, Idaho.

Speaker 1 After that, Meg went to the therapeutic boarding school, Chrysalis School, Montana.

Speaker 1 Chrysalis, in Eureka, Montana, was founded in 1998 as an independently owned program by married couple Kenny Pannell and Mary Alexine,

Speaker 1 and it is still in operation. In 2013, Chrysalis School, Montana was sold to Interchange.

Speaker 1 Later, in 2018, Interchange became part of the youth behavioral health provider, Embark Behavioral Health. which owns 30 programs across 20 states.

Speaker 1 In 2023, Embark Behavioral Health received a significant investment from the private equity firm Consonance Capital Partners.

Speaker 1 As part of the deal, Consonance Capital Partners took a controlling stake in the company. After years of Meg processing her lived experiences at both facilities, she turned her trauma into action.

Speaker 1 In an attempt to bring awareness, she wrote her memoir, Becoming Unsilenced, Surviving and Fighting the Troubled Teen Industry, and founded founded a leading nonprofit in the child rights advocacy space, Unsilenced.

Speaker 1 Today, you'll hear about Meg's inspiring journey, which led to her healing and supporting other survivors and families within this troubling industry.

Speaker 1 Please note, Kenny and Mary, the original owners of Chrysalis, have never publicly responded to allegations against them.

Speaker 1 They appear to no longer be involved with Chrysalis in Eureka, Montana since its sale to Embark Behavioral Health. Chrysalis originally opened in 1998.

Speaker 1 However, the exact year when Kenny and Mary exactly left is not readily available information.

Speaker 1 I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is Something Was Wrong.

Speaker 22 You think you know me, you don't know me well

Speaker 22 at all,

Speaker 22 at all.

Speaker 23 My name is Meg Applegate. I'm the founder and CEO of Unsilenced, which is a nonprofit organization that aims to stop institutional child abuse, especially within the troubled teen industry.

Speaker 23 The reason why I care so much about tackling this industry is really because when I was 15, I was abducted in the middle of the night by two strangers that told me that we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

Speaker 23 They forced me into the back of an SUV, drove off, and I subsequently spent the next three and a half years in two different facilities in Idaho and Montana.

Speaker 23 I was diagnosed with ADHD probably at age four. My mom, back in the early 90s, she was fighting to figure out answers for me and to find me the best kind of care.

Speaker 23 She was with one of the world-renowned ADHD experts back then and was able to get a diagnosis. And once I was on medication for ADHD, it helped a lot.

Speaker 23 But the doctors never thought that they were able to target everything. I saw a neuropsychiatrist.
I've had spec scans done. My mom went to like the best of the best.

Speaker 23 And they always acknowledge that there's something else going on that isn't being addressed, but they couldn't figure it out. And back then, autism was highly stigmatized.

Speaker 23 It was portrayed to the public that autism looks like those with higher support needs. And that's the only presentation that you can have with autism.

Speaker 23 And so if you're a high masking female, especially, it was extremely ignored. I was not diagnosed with autism until two years ago.

Speaker 1 Do you know what led to your parents sending you to Intermountain Children's Hospital, how they heard about it?

Speaker 23 It's a pretty common bucket of parents to fall into this category. Our kid is going through all these changes.

Speaker 23 They're showing behavioral changes and changes in mood and who they hang out with and pushing back against authority. It's scary to have a teen going through that.

Speaker 23 And they fell into the trap that many parents do, which is hiring a educational consultant.

Speaker 23 Educational consultants, they sound great by name, but really what they are is one of the biggest pipelines of children into this industry.

Speaker 23 And they claim to be experts in alternative placements for youth. But what that means is many times they get kickbacks from these facilities that they send kids to.

Speaker 23 And the more kids you send, the more kickbacks. These parents spend $10,000, $15,000 on an educational consultant and feel like they're going to get answers.

Speaker 23 And that's the most sad thing about this is that parents think they're getting help. And in reality, they're actually on a fast track to putting their kids in harmful situations.

Speaker 23 So that's what happened with me. My parents hired an educational consultant.
I believe I met with her once.

Speaker 23 I had absolutely no idea that I I would be going to any place at all, let alone being kidnapped. That's kind of the point is to catch the kid off guard so that they can't plan to run away beforehand.

Speaker 23 I knew that they weren't happy with a lot of my behaviors and how I was doing in school and things like that, but I had zero understanding of what was really to come.

Speaker 1 Something I appreciate so much about your memoir, Becoming Unsilenced, is how well you tragically articulate the impact of the transport services that parents sometimes use.

Speaker 1 Could you talk a little bit about the impact it had on you?

Speaker 23 The experience, it was extremely traumatic, more so as time went on versus in the moment, it was just scary.

Speaker 23 Ever since then, I always wake up with a racing heartbeat. I feel like something bad is going to happen.
And that's for the past 20 years.

Speaker 23 My parents, I believe, were told that they were like off-duty police officers, but I don't think they actually identified themselves to me.

Speaker 23 They weren't friendly or like, hey, this is what's going to happen. It felt like I was in a dangerous situation and where are my mom and dad? They're supposed to help me.

Speaker 23 Once I saw my parents standing there and watching, that's when I just didn't understand. And it was this huge betrayal feeling.
My mom was there saying, we're not abandoning you.

Speaker 23 And I remember thinking, yeah, you are. There was that emotional aspect there of something harmful happening.
But then there was the really scary aspect of where am I going?

Speaker 23 Like, who are these people?

Speaker 23 The first place that I went to, Intermountain Hospital in Boise, Idaho, right after arriving, I knew that I didn't belong there.

Speaker 23 And it was because I was seeing all these things I've never seen before, like extreme mood dysregulation and kids being thrown into quiet rooms that were padded and strapped to beds.

Speaker 23 seeing kids with eating disorders, kids screaming at the top of their lungs and getting restrained. I had never even imagined this stuff in my life.
It was like watching a movie.

Speaker 23 I immediately pushed back because I did that when I first got there. They thought I was all about control.
And that's the one thing I remember them preaching: you don't have control.

Speaker 23 And so, all of their treatment plan, if you will, for me was to break me down so that I realized I have no control over my life.

Speaker 23 That's interesting because it was a lot like what autistics feel in the normal world going about our everyday life, only it was like 50 times worse.

Speaker 23 So it's a perfect microcosm of ableism breaking you down and causing trauma. They really focused on making sure you know that you're not okay the way that you are.

Speaker 23 And if you want to function in this world, really, if you want anyone to like you or be accepted, you need to let go of control.

Speaker 1 What are some of the ways that control was asserted over you?

Speaker 23 One of the biggest ones that was really traumatic was it was like a two-part program that they put me on called Desk Space and Random Draw.

Speaker 23 I'd get up for the morning and I'd have to start sitting at the desk writing two-page papers on every one of the 36 thinking errors.

Speaker 23 We had something called programming, and programming is where the kids go to art and then they go to the cafeteria and then they go to therapy and they move around as a group.

Speaker 23 So if I wanted to be able to program, I had to pick from this like biohazard bag that had 10 pieces of paper in it. And there were nine no's and one yes.

Speaker 23 And every time the other kids would program, I'd reach in and pick out one piece of paper.

Speaker 1 If it had yes, I could go.

Speaker 23 And if it was no, I had to stay and continue writing on desk space. That reinforcement schedule caused me to sit at a desk a lot.

Speaker 23 That was basically trying to teach me that I have no control and I need to just give it up and stop expecting things to happen. I was on it for like a month and a half.
So it was a long time.

Speaker 23 It was pretty traumatic. My memory is really bad from the time I arrived because I was on so much medication.
But I do know I never got to speak to my parents without a therapist in the room.

Speaker 23 And I don't think it happened very often. I believe letters were allowed.
I did get to see them. They came to see me as much as they said that they were allowed.

Speaker 23 And I think there were two visits in six months. I don't remember my therapist's name because that's how like insignificant it was to my time there.

Speaker 23 I don't even remember if it was a female or male, to be honest. I think they did have a very high load of cases per therapist, as most of these places do.
I think.

Speaker 23 If I was lucky, I saw them once a week for 30 minutes or something, but I don't remember any therapy that I got at all, except for the session where I was told that I was going to be going to Chrysalis.

Speaker 23 I remember I was in a family call during this time with my therapist and they just said, you know, you're not going to come home.

Speaker 23 You're going to go to this place called Chrysalis and there's a mom and a dad. It's like a family and they have horses and tried to like entice me.

Speaker 23 It was about a month before I thought I was going to go home. I remember being really upset, but I had given up so much control at this point.
Like my life isn't my own. Other people decide it.

Speaker 23 So I reached a place of learned helplessness. I was upset, but also I knew I couldn't be upset.

Speaker 23 What they did to get me to kind of flip and be excited about it is my level would go up and down, so I'd lose privileges and gain privileges, lose privileges, gain privileges.

Speaker 23 If you don't have your level two or one when you leave, you're not going to be able to go to Chrysalis. And so, they started framing it in a different way, making me have a goal of going to Chrysalis.

Speaker 23 Because it was used as a tool, I guess I kind of got excited about it, but that melted away as soon as I got there.

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Speaker 1 Something that is really clear to me in hearing you describe the environment is that they were creating the true definition of trauma bonding.

Speaker 1 A lot of times, especially on social media, people use the term trauma bonding as like, we're bonded together because we went through trauma together.

Speaker 1 The more traditional clinical definition of trauma bonding is in the domestic violence setting or an abuse setting, meaning they create the harm and then they're the ones to save you.

Speaker 1 Can you talk a little bit about how you saw that pattern within your own experience there?

Speaker 23 Yeah, I mean, I give this example in my book of what I envision a trauma bond to be because it's hard to understand. I like to think about it as you get bitten by a snake and it's extremely poisonous.

Speaker 23 And instead of

Speaker 23 going to the doctor and getting anti-venom immediately so that you can save yourself, you turn around and you try to convince the snake that it never should have bit you.

Speaker 23 You're a good person and they need to treat you better. That's the effect of trauma bond.
And that's what Chrysalis did to us.

Speaker 23 They break you down to a point where you need them, but they're abusing you. So you're needing the abuse.
And what that creates is this vicious cycle.

Speaker 23 Their form of group therapy, which is called circle, was extremely abusive, in my opinion, which is basically where you sit in a circle and one person will be in the hotspot and they'll hear everything that they did wrong that week, and everyone's holding you accountable.

Speaker 23 So you'll sit there and you'll hear for hours sometimes everything that you've done wrong, and you'll just break down inside and you can't do anything.

Speaker 23 You can't respond really because you'll be called defensive. You can't roll your eyes.
That's defensive. You just have to sit there and take it.

Speaker 23 And what that does to your morale and your psyche is absolutely crazy. So that's one of the ways that they make sure that you don't have too much confidence.

Speaker 23 There were girls that had a lot of confidence and they got more circles about them. That was me.
I had many, many, many circles about me.

Speaker 23 You'd sit there and the people who say that they love you are hurting you. And in order to get better, you go to them.
And then it rebuilds itself.

Speaker 23 So it's the cyclical love bombing, then it shifts into abuse. And then there's the feeling of everything's going to be okay.
And then it just kind of goes round and round and round.

Speaker 23 So it's very complicated. I'm also a survivor of domestic violence.
And it's also hard to describe that. The survivors of DV out there will understand that when people say, like, why didn't you leave?

Speaker 23 It's hard because of that trauma bond.

Speaker 1 It sounds like Chrysalis had this cult-like abuse and deliberate control.

Speaker 1 Can you talk about how listeners might relate to the abuse that you experienced to cultic abuse that they may have heard of in the past?

Speaker 23 When you talk about cults, one of the first things you have to do is be able to break down their internal structures that they have to be able to acquiesce to the group think, to the good of the group, the morality of the leader.

Speaker 23 One of the ways that they do that is through circle.

Speaker 23 Another really common tactic is using forced labor, making sure that as a consequence for things, you work your butt off, whether that's hauling wheelbarrows full of gravel just from one side of the parking lot all the way over to the other for no reason, or washing logs, or mowing all the lawn or cutting wood, you name it.

Speaker 23 We were put to work constantly. We cooked all the meals.
We did all the chores. We washed all the cars.
We mowed the lawn.

Speaker 23 We did the bailing of the hay, we fed the animals, we cleaned the entire house, we did everything.

Speaker 23 That was one of their values is work hard, but it also took time away from our school and things like that.

Speaker 23 If you were to compare and contrast the prison industrial complex to the TTI, they have more rights than we did.

Speaker 23 I'm pretty sure that if you're in prison, you have a right to use the phone and contact people or yard time. Many times it's mandated that you have to have certain outside time.

Speaker 23 Many of these programs don't have that. There were many times that my nutritional needs weren't met.

Speaker 23 And a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was an extremely picky eater and I was forced to eat food that I textually hated. I can't help that.
A lot of the nutrition was not up to par.

Speaker 23 There were quite a few kids with like eating disorders that came into chrysalis. Let's say you were struggling with anorexia.
They would force you to have seconds, which is super traumatic.

Speaker 1 It's alarming how much attack therapy and forced labor is mentioned by survivors that we've spoken with and the horrific impact it has on them. It makes me wonder who was running these programs.

Speaker 1 Can you talk about the owners of Chrysalis, Kenny, and Mary?

Speaker 23 Mary and Kenny were my therapists, and they told us they loved us all the time. and did stuff that therapists should never do.

Speaker 23 We thought about them as like mom and dad and we called each other Chrysalis family. So your whole world becomes these people and you want to please them so bad.
You want them to just be happy.

Speaker 23 That's your biggest calling while you're there is to make them proud and be Kenny's favorite. And everyone wants to be Kenny's favorite girl and get the attention of Kenny.

Speaker 23 It was very toxic to be around that. Kenny was very outwardly confident, big presence in the room.
Mary was a very strong woman. She's more quiet, but there's a lot going on in the brain.

Speaker 23 She wasn't as extremely direct. I have very complicated feelings about Mary.
She was my number one therapist. So she was the one that did the most amount of work with me.

Speaker 23 On one hand, she was supportive in the times when I was really broken down, but I was also broken down from the stuff stuff mostly from her husband doing it to me or enabling peers to do it to me.

Speaker 23 I was telling her about abuse I was experiencing from Kenny. I would say, like, Kenny called me a pig and she wouldn't address it.

Speaker 23 A lot of the relationship dynamics between me and her were inappropriate. We had to write in a journal every single day.
And so she would read my journal, everyone's for that matter.

Speaker 23 and would respond to your thoughts in your journal. Some kind of joke I made was like in bad taste and it hurt her feelings.

Speaker 23 And I remember apologizing in my journal, and she responded, I don't feel like you see me.

Speaker 23 And I read back that and I'm like, it's not my job to see you. I should not be apologizing to my therapist and having you make me feel more shameful.
That's ridiculous.

Speaker 23 A lot of stuff that you would expect in an actual family, but you're not a family, so it should not be happening in a therapeutic relationship. So that line was definitely crossed.

Speaker 23 I just remember very toxic dynamics. Kenny used to wrestle us.
It was so weird. Like we used to have wrestling competitions and he would just watch.

Speaker 23 I didn't even like look at that back then and think, hmm, red flag. And then all of a sudden we couldn't wrestle anymore.

Speaker 23 I think one of the girls asked Kenny about it, like, why can't we wrestle anymore? And I believe his response was. So and so had to go and ruin fun or something like that.

Speaker 23 And I remember he was very angry about the topic.

Speaker 23 There is not a compliant bone in my body. I have always been very authentic.
And I think that that can come off as

Speaker 23 they said that I was prickly and abrasive because I'm direct and I say what I feel and I show my emotions on my sleeve. That was an issue, especially for Kenny.
He did not like that.

Speaker 23 It was very hard for me to move up the levels. People would come after me and they'd get their level two way before I did.
And it's because I just had a hard time learning how to mask.

Speaker 23 I wasn't changing. I think it took like six or nine months to be able to get level two.
I had to build a personality that they would approve of.

Speaker 23 It took a while to figure out which move I had to make that wouldn't get consequences. What face do I make during confrontations? And how do I confront people so I'm not too abrasive?

Speaker 23 I just had to learn how to act. I wasn't being myself.
They allowed us to have these video cameras back when the handheld video cameras were big.

Speaker 23 And I have videos of myself and I'm acting in a way I'm like, that's not me. It's strange to look at.
I mean, they told me this all the time, who I was was not okay.

Speaker 23 And I would never be loved or accepted in society unless I changed. When you hear that when you're 16 years old, 15 years old, it's scary.

Speaker 23 And you also are being told that your parents think that too, because they put you here. It's amazing what that can influence.

Speaker 1 Do you know if your parents' medical medical insurance covered any of this?

Speaker 23 I've actually never asked them. Back then, I'm not sure if it was covered or not.
Before the 2008 financial crisis, a lot of these were private pay.

Speaker 23 And then it kind of moved to finding new structures, like through school districts more often and through insurance companies.

Speaker 1 What did communication with your parents look like while you were at Chrysalis?

Speaker 23 Once I got to level three, I could talk to them without the therapist. They're being told, I'm doing great, I'm progressing.

Speaker 23 They didn't get told any of the stuff that was actually like happening unless it was about forward movement in my quote treatment plan.

Speaker 23 So they never knew that I was not being taken to the doctor when I needed to go to the doctor. It was encouraged to be strong and not be affected by things.

Speaker 23 So like if I got hurt, I would pretend I wasn't. I viewed that as a strength.
All the girls experienced it. So it wasn't something that was just me.
Otherwise, I would have seen it as not fair.

Speaker 23 My parents only found out about it once I woke up when I was like 33, 34.

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Speaker 32 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.

Speaker 37 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.

Speaker 40 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.

Speaker 42 Every story begins somewhere.

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Speaker 1 How in your mind did you see Chrysalis before that awakening? How effective was the brainwashing, basically?

Speaker 23 I have to actively not be brainwashed even today. Mary and Kenny were invited to my wedding.
I viewed them as a second mom and dad.

Speaker 23 And thank God Chrysalis came into my life or otherwise I wouldn't have been successful. And that's how it's phrased.

Speaker 23 Your parents and everyone view Chrysalis as the place that helped them, but they don't know what your life would have looked like if Chrysalis hadn't have happened.

Speaker 23 So it's then put on a pedestal as the reason for your success if you succeed.

Speaker 23 The fact that I left Chrysalis, I graduated honors in college and then get into nonprofit work and entrepreneur, owned a franchise, doing all this stuff, thanks to Chrysalis.

Speaker 23 No one would have known if I would have been capable of that had I not gone to Chrysalis and I would have, but it's credited for all of your success and there's nothing you can do about it.

Speaker 23 That's a lot of the reasons why a lot of survivors parents have a hard time seeing it as trauma.

Speaker 23 The wake-up period came in like multiple stages. The first phase was when one of my Chrysalis sisters passed away.
And when I found out that she was really dealing with trauma, it was like trauma.

Speaker 23 Wait, what? And then I found out she had the same chronic illnesses that I did too. Then I spoke to one of my good friends from Chrysalis and I was like, do you think Chrysalis was like abusive?

Speaker 23 And she was like, yep. And I was like, why didn't you tell me? And she was like, you weren't ready.
And so that was like the first one.

Speaker 23 But even though I was able to say abusive stuff happened, it had not settled in my body yet. I wouldn't have said at that point I was abused in childhood or I went to abusive programs.

Speaker 23 It hadn't gotten to that level. And then the second wake-up period was when Paris Hilton's documentary came out.
This is Paris.

Speaker 23 I was pregnant with my youngest, and we were sitting there, my husband and I in the pandemic, very pregnant, watching this, This Is Paris documentary. And I remember bawling my eyes out.

Speaker 23 I was so small-minded at that point that I thought Chrysalis existed, and that's it. And then I found out, oh my gosh, it's an industry.

Speaker 23 This is a huge network of facilities doing this to kids all over the world.

Speaker 23 And my brain kind of exploded. I remember like hyperventilating, crying with this trauma spiral.
I didn't know what was going on.

Speaker 23 And then the last one was when my husband had to go to an inpatient treatment for his recovery. He called me and he was like, I'm being abused.
I got in the car. I sped to the facility.

Speaker 23 And during that, time period of 30 minutes in the drive, I remember thinking, I was at a facility. I needed help.
I didn't get to make this kind of phone call.

Speaker 23 This is how I would have wanted someone to respond to me. And that's when I realized that I wanted to do what I do.
I wanted to be the person that would have saved me when I was 15.

Speaker 23 And that's when I truly, truly woke up. I don't think I ever would have fully woken up if I wouldn't have had kids and became a mom, because that allowed me a new lens to look at things.

Speaker 23 If this was happening to one of my kids, how would I feel?

Speaker 1 It's so alarming that there's still so many children being put into these programs today. Can you talk about Unsilenced and how that came about?

Speaker 23 Yeah, I mean, reporting makes it really hard to count, but we estimate about 120,000 to 200,000 youth are funneled in these programs.

Speaker 23 And I think that that's really what caused me to be like, all right, I need to do something about this.

Speaker 23 Back in the end of 2021, after I did an extensive amount of EMDR therapy and biofeedback and things I needed to do to regulate my emotions and being able to handle triggers and being at a place where I knew that if I heard about abuse all day, that I'd be able to handle it.

Speaker 23 That's when Unsilenced was born. It's really born out of a grassroots movement.

Speaker 23 Hashtag breaking code silence started many years ago at this point, but we took it a step further to we are unsilenced and it's grown pretty big.

Speaker 23 And we've really focused a lot on a few core principles. Our main mission is to stop institutional child abuse, but the way that we do that has kind of shifted.

Speaker 23 One thing we believe in heavily is transparency. And we think transparency is almost impossible within this industry.

Speaker 23 We believe it's our job to make sure that information makes it back into the decision makers' hands.

Speaker 23 People in school districts, therapists, parents, caregivers, foster care facilitators, juvenile justice, court systems, you name it.

Speaker 23 So what we do is on our program archive, which is on our website, we've got over 100,000 documents and information on over 3,500 different programs.

Speaker 23 We make sure that lawsuits, abuse allegations, DCHS reports are on there so that people can see them.

Speaker 23 Otherwise, every single person out there would have to do record requests to all the states, all the agencies to see a lot of this information.

Speaker 1 What What you're doing is incredible. Even the website, the way it's all put together, everything is so organized.
You have so much program information in there.

Speaker 23 Thank you. I have to give it to Katie McNamara.
She did so much work on that. It's changing lives.
We're really thankful to have that.

Speaker 23 And that led into realizing where we shine, which is in our legal advocacy. About two years ago, there was a death in a facility, Diamond Ranch Academy in Utah.
Taylor Goodridge passed away.

Speaker 23 She was 17 years old. And after that happened, a couple really unique things happened.
I did a TikTok and it ended up going viral.

Speaker 22 By now, I'm sure you all have heard about the recent death of Taylor Goodridge.

Speaker 23 And we've really heard a lot of details that are pretty upsetting. So I wanted to take a second to talk about who she is.
Taylor Goodridge was a native kid from Washington.

Speaker 23 And she was part of the Stilaguamish tribe and was actually the first girl born in 50 years.

Speaker 23 She loved doing makeup and hair and nails.

Speaker 1 And she loved animals, especially her dogs.

Speaker 23 And reaching Taylor's family, they reached out and they said, can we get your help? We don't know what to do.

Speaker 23 And at that point, I connected them with Senator McKell in Utah and subsequently went to Alan Mortensen, which ended up being their attorney.

Speaker 23 Through our work in the Taylor Goodridge case, we were able to find whistleblowers and witnesses for what happened.

Speaker 23 We got incredible amounts of information and we realized that our work within these legal cases is instrumental.

Speaker 23 And also, being like a safe place for whistleblowers and former staff to come to and say, I think I might have more information, or even an anonymous tip, being able to get information and make sure it's facilitated and disseminated to those who can use it, whether it's investigations going on or lawsuits.

Speaker 23 Through that, we have taken off. We now have an attorney directory on our website, and we have law firms across the country that we have partnered with, that we trust.

Speaker 23 So it allows survivors to go to our website when they feel like they have been mistreated in these facilities and choose an attorney that we know are going to be able to handle institutional abuse cases.

Speaker 23 Through that work, in probably the last year, we've had a hand in 135 cases.

Speaker 23 So we believe that making justice more accessible for survivors is not just important for survivors' healing and being able to change the narrative and validate the fact that they were mistreated, but it also changes the systems.

Speaker 23 The accountability that you can bring through a lawsuit can close a program faster than through abuse allegations and DCHS and law enforcement.

Speaker 1 I'm curious what your relationship and healing journey has been like with your parents in adulthood.

Speaker 23 I've always been really close with my parents.

Speaker 23 There was a period of time where they'd get a little defensive, but then all I did was just let them know more about the facts and said, look, these are the reasons why I'm comfortable with saying it was abusive.

Speaker 23 And these are the things that they did. And they were astonished.
They just had no idea. And that's not their fault.
They weren't told all this information.

Speaker 23 And so they had to go through their own wake-up period. When I first announced I was going to to be writing a book, they were like, oh, shit.

Speaker 23 They would never for a second, like, tell me no or anything. But I think that there was a feeling of, let's do this wake-up period a little at a time.
Give us some time to adjust.

Speaker 23 I was understanding in that they had a different timeframe of healing than I did. And that's totally fine.
And by the time the book was released, they were ready and they thought it was amazing.

Speaker 23 They're huge supporters of Unsilenced. My dad is the chair of the board.
They're donors. They are really, really

Speaker 23 big activists now, which is really cool. Like my dad will bring up stuff and random board meetings for stuff that has nothing to do with child rights.
He'll talk about the trouble teen industry.

Speaker 23 And it goes to show that the people that are out there that potentially have that cognitive dissonance or have yet to be able to own that you sent your kid to a place.

Speaker 23 One of the ways to really like help heal that is by being activists, trying to make sure other kids don't have to go through that. The thought process around parenting has changed a lot too.

Speaker 23 The parenting of boomers is a lot different than that of millennials.

Speaker 23 I believe that millennials are doing a lot of work to get rid of that generational trauma in general because we have more informed parenting techniques. The war on drugs dare.

Speaker 23 This led into let's fix your teen. Troubled teen, we'll fix them.

Speaker 23 They use that deceptive marketing to apply to all of these different issues that teens are having, but they fail to tell the parents that those are super expected behaviors and actually really normal when you're a teenager.

Speaker 23 And I think something that people don't understand is these are not just small businesses, they're big businesses. Like $23 billion of public funds go toward this industry.

Speaker 23 So chances are that if you're invested in a publicly traded company, you might find one of these private equity backed companies that is supporting one of these facilities and they make a lot of money.

Speaker 23 It really does affect everyone. Chrysalis didn't used to be like that.

Speaker 23 They're owned by NBARC Behavioral Health now, but back then it was just a little private Marion Kenny program, but they sold it to Interchange and Interchange became NBARC Behavioral Health.

Speaker 1 During this season, we're also speaking with survivors of wilderness programs. What would you say is unique about those experiences versus therapeutic boarding schools?

Speaker 23 Wilderness is especially egregious because there's really no home base. There's no feeling like you have true shelter.
Even if it's chrysalis, at least it's a roof over your head.

Speaker 23 Many wilderness programs that I've come in contact with have repeated allegations of not having clean water, having bugs in food.

Speaker 23 extreme overexertion and exercise to a point of losing too much weight, being malnourished, getting parasites.

Speaker 23 You know, at Trails Carolina, they do the burrito, which is where they would wrap the kid really tight into a sleeping bag, and then they'd put like a tarp over them and wrap it.

Speaker 23 And then a staff member would lay on top of it so that they couldn't move. Almost every survivor I've spoken to has said that they just feel like they can't breathe all night.

Speaker 23 They had to do it the first three nights so you don't run away. There's those kind of techniques that I've heard of.

Speaker 23 Most wilderness programs in my head look like the wilderness programs that you're going to expect. But as you get out out of the country, especially, there aren't regulations.

Speaker 23 I think that in general, it's more traumatic because you're dealing with all the same things that other programs are, where you're like feeling abandoned and you're feeling unsafe.

Speaker 23 But then you add in that you're out in the cold or in the heat and you don't feel like you have enough water or food. It's just way more extreme.

Speaker 23 In my opinion, that I have seen, there is no legitimate research to show that wilderness therapy is effective.

Speaker 23 Between therapeutic boarding school and residential treatment center, sometimes they can look similar in terms of space, but residential treatment centers many times are going to be more locked down, so more restrictions and more enforcement over certain things, like you might not be able to have things that could potentially be used to self-harm or something like that.

Speaker 23 Whereas as therapeutic boarding schools, they might have doors that you can open and you could go outside if you wanted to. I'd say in general, they might look more lax.

Speaker 23 Some of these places go by these names, like the word academy, but they are not like that at all. Usually here in the United States, many of the states make you be a licensed facility.

Speaker 23 In order to get licensing, there's different forms and categories of licensing, and that is going to be based on your name.

Speaker 23 So if you have therapeutic boarding school, you are likely going to be in a therapeutic residential facility type of licensure. And it's common to try to skirt that.
That's what we try to figure out.

Speaker 23 Is this the wrong license? Are they doing this? But in other countries, whether or not they regulate or have to have licensure is one thing I'm not certain of. Casa by the Sea, which was in Mexico.

Speaker 23 If a program is being shut down by the federales, that shows that there were some pretty egregious things going on. And that's why they go to other countries.

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Speaker 1 There have been tragically so many cases in the news lately. What are some that stand out to you for those who are following the legislative path and victories for survivors?

Speaker 23 The tragic one that I'm working on right now is Baruch Silvers, who died at Discovery Ranch in Utah. I work with his parents very closely.

Speaker 23 I've helped since the very beginning and trying to raise awareness. I can't even tell you how frustrating it is that his parents and I are trying to fight to get it in the news.

Speaker 23 It's beyond wild to me that this isn't breaking news nationally.

Speaker 1 In May of 2025, the parents of 17-year-old Baruch Silvers sued Discovery Ranch Academy, a Utah teen treatment center, after he died by suicide there in November 2024.

Speaker 1 The lawsuit alleges that staff members ignored his mental health warnings, left him unsupervised with means to harm himself, and failed to follow safety protocols.

Speaker 1 State licensors confirmed multiple violations on Discovery Ranch's behalf, including improper supervision and neglect of his care plan.

Speaker 23 These are facilities that school districts are paying for to send kids to. I don't think people understand this.
This isn't just, oh, maybe it's the parents that made this decision.

Speaker 23 Like, no, we're talking about juvenile justice paying money. We're talking about foster care paying money, public funds as well.

Speaker 23 So we need to highlight the cases of death and abuse and neglect and get to the decision makers that are in charge of regulations and reporting and policy.

Speaker 23 That's how we get to change is by creating awareness. Luckily, Baruch's mom and dad worked so hard to put his name out there and fight against this industry.

Speaker 23 They lost their son and they're using that pain to make sure no other kids can have that happen to them, and no more parents hopefully have to go through what they're going through.

Speaker 23 That's one of the best things you can do is engage with our accounts who are constantly lifting up these kids and these families and spread awareness.

Speaker 1 If you could help design a bill to get passed to address some of these issues, what would that include from your perspective?

Speaker 23 For a perfect world talking about legislation, there would be federal legislation that gives kids a Bill of Rights, mandating that children or youth that go into any facilities are given a literal handout of all of their rights.

Speaker 23 The fact that they're taking away the ability to communicate with the outside world is a huge red flag. So mandating that communication is not cut off from the world.

Speaker 23 And that goes for communication with parents, being able to speak to your... parents on a regular basis and being able to speak to an advocate anytime.

Speaker 23 I get contacted by kids that are still in facilities. Every kid in a facility should be able to be like, I want to call Meg Appligate.
She's an advocate for youth.

Speaker 23 They should be able to contact an attorney. Communication is a big thing.

Speaker 23 Being able to be free in contacting whoever you want, not only whenever you want, but to do so without any kind of recorded line or anyone listening in is extremely important for being able to report abuse.

Speaker 23 On top of that, unannounced visits. from whatever agency is overseeing it in that state.
In my perfect world, we're talking about like eight a year.

Speaker 23 And you can have some that are planned, but I would say three quarters of them should be unannounced because the planned ones are always rehearsed and I've seen it happen.

Speaker 23 On top of that, really defining what abuse is.

Speaker 23 And by defining it, we're talking about no restraints, not laying your hands on kids. I do not believe that locked doors should be allowed.

Speaker 23 I also think that all staff should not only be background checked, but should have relevant education. Let's say there's a place that has licensed therapists.
That's wonderful.

Speaker 23 But what they don't realize is that those therapists spend maximum one hour a week with the kids. The majority, the 24-7 supervision is by the everyday staff.

Speaker 23 Those people are usually like 18 to 25 years old. and many times don't have college degrees and certainly not experts in kids with behavioral issues.

Speaker 23 So mandating the qualifications that you would need to have to be able to work in an everyday capacity. And that includes making sure they're not on the sex offenders list.
That's so common.

Speaker 23 How many sexual predators end up in these programs, female and male. Also, information sharing and information availability.
I think that there needs to be a national database.

Speaker 23 It has to be available where every state has has all of the facilities that operate in the state. And if there are any 911 calls, any allegations of abuse, it shows up on there.

Speaker 23 Lawsuits are tracked on there.

Speaker 1 Anybody who's looking to suppress real data, I feel like that's a huge red flag.

Speaker 23 Yep. I can't tell you how frustrating it is, especially with Baruch Silver's case.

Speaker 23 I'll make a post about Baruch Silver's, and so many people are commenting saying it's the parents' fault or it's a great program.

Speaker 23 Information would also help that to show all of the different abuse allegations that have been going on. If we had a database, we'd be able to say, look at all of this that's happened.

Speaker 23 Then it wouldn't be about survivors versus other people. Some people are just not understanding that multiple things can be true at once.
One kid could go to a program and think it was amazing.

Speaker 23 And another kid could go to the same program at the same time and be absolutely traumatized. Those two can exist at the same time.

Speaker 23 Until we can make sure that every single person coming out of a health facility is not traumatized, it's not regulated enough.

Speaker 23 The troubled teen industry, even though it is part of healthcare, it's being covered by health insurances, but it is not driven by data.

Speaker 1 It seems like survivors of institutional child abuse have higher rates of chronic health conditions, addiction, and suicide. Can you share some data that reflects these trends?

Speaker 23 I do know that the best data that we have has to do with ACEs or adverse childhood experiences?

Speaker 23 ACEs are potentially traumatic experiences that happen before a child reaches the age of 18 that can have detrimental effects on the rest of their life.

Speaker 23 The more ACEs you have, the more likely you are to be in a domestic violence situation. This is not just institutional abuse.
We're talking about all trauma.

Speaker 23 If trauma goes unaddressed, especially if it's not responded to by a caregiver, it leads to toxic stress, and toxic stress is what can lead toward this happening.

Speaker 1 According to a landmark CDC Kaiser Permanente ACE study, people with four or more adverse childhood experiences, things such as childhood abuse, neglect, or household challenges, are four to 12 times greater increased risk for substance use disorder, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Speaker 1 In another ACE study conducted by Cornelius Van Neeland and his colleagues, they found compared with persons with an A score of zero, those with an A score of four or more were twice as likely to be smokers, 12 times more likely to have attempted suicide, and 7 to 10% more likely to have a substance use disorder.

Speaker 1 Is there anything else that you feel like would be important for listeners to keep in mind when they're listening to survivors' stories?

Speaker 23 I think just understand that just because someone has a completely different experience, even if at the same facility, does not negate the other experiences and vice versa.

Speaker 23 I think that's really important to be able to hold space for the people who have trauma and the people that may not have trauma, or maybe they haven't decided that it is trauma yet.

Speaker 23 Listen with compassion. Most of the survivors that I talk to are very open to telling more about it.

Speaker 23 So asking more questions is something they're usually pretty willing to do because they know how important awareness is.

Speaker 23 And if you're listening to this and you're not around a survivor, use their narrative, talk about it in the community or talk about the podcast with someone else in your family and discuss it because awareness is key.

Speaker 23 And I'd say that every survivor I've talked to, their number one goal is to make sure no other kids get hurt.

Speaker 1 I can tell you're so passionate. I can hear it in your voice.
And I think after living through what you've gone through, it has to, I imagine, be healing in a way to do this work.

Speaker 1 How can we support the work that you're doing?

Speaker 23 We need donations. We're a nonprofit, 501c3.
We rely on our generous donors to be able to do all this work that we do. We need more attorneys on our attorney directory.

Speaker 23 We rely on attorneys that are usually personal injury. Another part of what we do is teaching.
We really like to educate professionals.

Speaker 23 on the troubled teen industry, how these cases are different, how working with survivors of institutional abuse are different.

Speaker 23 Beyond that, you can download the Unsilenced Impact app and be a part of our community of over a thousand survivors.

Speaker 23 Following us on our social media and really trying to highlight and help us raise awareness about this industry, go out today and tell someone about the trouble teen industry.

Speaker 23 Because chances are with how common this is, with how many kids are going into these facilities, they'll know someone that has been to it.

Speaker 23 That validation that can come from it and the awareness that can stem from it is extremely important in bringing these issues to the forefront.

Speaker 1 We will definitely link to unsilenced.org and Meg's incredible book, Becoming Unsilenced. It is not only available in print, but in audio format.
We'll make sure to link to both.

Speaker 1 I hope you'll join us in donating to Unsilenced. Thank you so much.

Speaker 23 Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 next time on something was wrong

Speaker 1 she made it sound tolerable like i would come out of this program a stronger and healthier productive kid

Speaker 1 she sold me on a lie

Speaker 1 i didn't know that until i got there though

Speaker 1 something was wrong is a broken cycle media production Created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Reese, associate producers Amy B.

Speaker 1 Chessler and Lily Rowe, with audio editing and music design by Becca High.

Speaker 1 Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist, and Marissen Travis from WME.

Speaker 1 Thank you endlessly to every survivor who has ever trusted us with their stories. And thank you, each and every listener, for making our show possible with your support and listenership.

Speaker 1 The theme song this season is You Think You by Gladrags from their album Wonder Under.

Speaker 1 To hear more music from them, follow the link in our episode notes or search for them on your favorite music streaming app.

Speaker 1 Speaking of episode notes, there you'll always find episode-specific content warnings, sources, and resources. Thank you so much for your support.
Until next time, stay safe, friends.

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