S24 Ep1: Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

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Hey friends, before we get into this next season, I wanted to share a brief update with you.

As some of you may have seen on the podcast's Instagram, Something Was Wrong has left Wondery slash Amazon Music.

For those who are a little confused, Wondery was bought by Amazon in December of 2020.

Our contract with them ended midnight on July 1st, 2025.

And we are not re-signing.

While I am extremely thankful to Wondery and all of their hardworking employees, it was never my goal to partner with a Bezos-owned network.

And prior to Wondery, things happened in 2020 to 2022 that I had no control over at a previous network.

I was forced to re-home the show for three years, give that previous network a huge piece, even though they had breached the contract and paid me late throughout, or lose everything.

This was one of the most difficult and stressful times of my life.

I was terrified of losing something was wrong, which means so much to me and our community.

I was forced to sign a $4 million NDA or lose everything.

I had no access, no control, and my options were literally move the show or lose it forever.

But now, we're going back to our independent roots.

We are betting on ourselves.

Turning down money in this economy and the state of the world is a massive risk, but I believe in the broken cycle media team and myself.

Something Was Wrong will still be available on all the same platforms this season, with the exception of the Wondery Plus app.

And great news.

As part of this transition, we're getting rid of the early release model.

So now all of our listeners can access new episodes at the same time.

We are working on a more inclusive and less expensive subscription offer in the future, and we will bring you more information on that soon.

Again, I want to thank Wondery and their staff for being amazing partners.

Thank you to you and our community who have supported us and gave me the benefit of the doubt when I couldn't speak out yet.

More soon.

Thank you so much.

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.

As always, please consume with care.

For a full content warning, sources, and resources for each episode, please visit the episode notes.

Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of broken cycle media.

All persons are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

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

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

This season, we're amplifying the voices of survivors of institutional child abuse, often referred to as the troubled teen industry.

describing private institutions that are marketed towards parents of troubled youth.

These are private institutions that arguably operate as private prisons for children.

There's no exact number of centers or children who are placed in these institutions because of the discrepancies in the definition of what a therapeutic program is and a lack of regulatory oversight, according to the survivor-led nonprofit Unsilenced.

However, Unsilenced estimates that over 120,000 children are kept in over 5,000 centers around the United States and abroad at any given time.

Other organizations like the American Bar Association estimate between 120 to 200,000 young people reside in these types of facilities.

These institutions go by many names, wilderness therapy, residential treatment facilities, therapeutic boarding schools, behavior modification schools, among others.

Survivors of these institutions allege abuses such as strip searches, being kidnapped from bed without warning or explanation, being handcuffed, non-stop monitoring, food and water deprivation, control over bathroom use, their ability to speak, look, or move without staff permission, unable to contact parents or authorities for help, attack therapy, forced labor, and emotional, physical, and sexual violence.

These reported tactics not only traumatize children further, they're breeding grounds for PTSD, trauma, disordered eating, addiction, and suicidal ideation due to their dehumanizing tactics.

Parents, survivors, and experts we spoke with reported fraudulent, unethical, and exploitative marketing tactics.

These institutions market themselves to often desperate caregivers as as top-tier therapeutic behavior modification centers that can treat nearly every disordered behavior such as drug addiction, eating disorders, and other kinds of mental health needs.

These so-called programs often offer the same treatment plan to every child who is enrolled, despite their personal needs or disabilities.

The term troubled teen industry places blame on the child when really the trouble is these institutions.

Parents shared with us that they were often unaware that most of these programs offer cash bonuses to education consultants and other parents, which offer financial incentives to recruit new children.

They often shared they were unaware of the abusive nature of these programs prior to their experiences.

However, it's important to acknowledge that some survivors who experienced childhood abuse prior to their placement in these institutions felt that their parents were aware of the abuse that they would likely be subjected to and chose to send them anyway.

Though many survivors you'll hear from this season attended similar institutions from around the world, each of their experiences are unique and deserve space and support.

The amount of horrific abuse survivors, parents, and experts have shared with us is devastating, infuriating, and alarming.

Despite efforts by many survivors, nonprofits, celebrities, and documentaries that have aired over the years, very little legislative progress has been made.

In spite of awareness, far too many abusive institutions stay open.

When discussing the realities of these disturbing programs, it becomes clear that the real problem lies within the institutions themselves.

Profit over purpose, and cruel, inhumane treatment with the goal of manipulation, shame, and reprogramming runs rampant.

It's common for these programs to pathologize normal teenage behavior such as talking back, breaking rules at home, and internet addiction, according to Unsilenced.

These institutions' clear disregard for children's healthy development show that these places operate with no intention of genuine, positive reform.

If the true intention of these programs were to help in any meaningful way, they would provide proper mental health diagnoses and guidance from licensed professionals with individualized treatment plans rather than using verbal, mental, and physical abuse tactics that are not even allowed in adult prisons or sometimes amidst even warfare.

How is it that these caregivers can sign their parental rights over to these facilities and they can essentially do whatever harm they desire and And these children have absolutely no say.

Furthermore, parents and survivors alike spoke with us about the financial strain these programs also caused their families.

Unsilenced states the staggering cost of these programs ranges from $5,000 to $30,000 a month, often with an indefinite timeframe.

Also deeply unsettling is the fact that industry revenue from public funds is estimated to be about $23 billion annually, meaning local, state, and federal tax dollars are funding a large portion of this industry in the United States.

However, this industry took decades to hone its business model.

The roots of the so-called troubled teen industry date back to the 1900s.

Then, a significant shift occurred in the industry during the 1960s due to the growth and impact of a cult called Synanon.

Many experts cite the cult Synanon as a major influence in the recent history of these types of institutions.

In 1958, Charles E.

Diedrich started Cynanon in Santa Monica, California, which claimed to be a drug rehabilitation program.

What began as an out-of-the-box recovery model for adults struggling with addiction evolved into an authoritarian commune that implemented aggressive confrontational tactics, often referred to now as attack therapy.

According to the Westport Museum of History and Culture, the program first began as a small community supporting one another, but morphed into a non-profit with 1,300 members and more than 30 million in assets, including property in Santa Monica, ownership of a chain of gas stations, and even an airstrip in 1976.

Cinanon also introduced the game, a form of attack therapy where participants were verbally assaulted under the guise of emotional growth.

These outrageous methods had a profound influence on the future of therapeutic programs.

And as Cinanon's tactics grew more extreme, it implemented forced child separations and violent retaliation against critics.

Cinanon was officially dismantled in the early 1990s after lawsuits, criminal convictions, the loss of its tax-exempt nonprofit status, and was ordered by the IRS to pay $17 million in IRS penalties.

Further investigations alleged forced sterilizations, child abuse, and financial fraud.

Although Cinanon was no longer in existence, the industry continued to grow.

Notably, the industry surged again in the 1980s during the Reagan administration, fueled in part by the Just Say No campaign and broader fears surrounding youth delinquency and drug use.

As public mental health resources declined, private residential programs flourished, offering parents strict, discipline-based alternatives to psychiatric care.

During Reagan's presidency in the United States, deregulation became a central policy goal, weakening federal involvement in mental health care and allowing private behavioral programs to proliferate unchecked.

Many of these programs adopted confrontational tactics rooted in Synanon's methods, prioritizing control and submission over genuine therapeutic support.

One of the earliest and most influential was Cedew Educational Services Inc, founded in 1967 by Mel and Brigitte Wasserman.

CIDU was a network of behavior modification schools modeled after Cinanon, which Mel admired.

The CIDU program rejected traditional therapy and medication methods, instead using methods such as isolation, difficult labor, and attack therapy.

Although CIDU officially closed in 2005, its offshoots, started by former staff members and sometimes students, continue to operate using similar techniques.

Similar to CDU and Cinanon, the Worldwide Association of Specialty Programs, often referred to as WASP, was an organization founded in 1998 by Robert Litchfield, which managed a network of teen residential programs across the world.

WASP became known for perpetuating attack therapy methods, shaming and victim-blaming children and their families, using sleep and food deprivation tactics, and applying pressure to children for false confessions.

Since its origins, many allegations of abuse, neglect, and human rights violations have become publicly shared by WASP survivors.

Following former students' claims, Several investigations and lawsuits ensued, resulting in many WASP programs shutting down or rebranding.

Although WASP is no longer an active organization, officially ceasing operations around 2010, the dark realities of these and other so-called troubled teen industry programs truly started coming to light in the 1990s.

when an increase of reported deaths of children in these programs occurred, such as 16-year-old Kristen Chase, who died from heat stroke at the Challenger Foundation Youth Wilderness Program in Utah in 1990.

As a result of her death, the program's owner was charged with negligent homicide, which is a Class A misdemeanor and child abuse.

However, he was acquitted and found not guilty on all five charges.

Another tragic loss occurred in 1994 when 16-year-old Aaron Bacon died from acute peritonitis at North Star Expeditions Inc.

in Utah.

Although the death was medically considered natural causes, it was a result of negligence and lack of medical attention.

Several staff members at Northstar, including owners Lance Jagger and William Henry, were charged with abuse and neglect after Aaron's death.

Jagger, Henry, and staff member Georgette Costigan pled guilty to negligent homicide.

Another staffer, Craig Fisher, was found guilty of felony abuse or neglect of a disabled child and sentenced to a year in jail and 36 months probation.

Despite increased coverage of cases such as these in the 1990s and 2000s, these institutions prevailed.

The industry has remained essentially unregulated for decades, thanks in part to political and financial forces that helped shield these programs from oversight.

In more recent decades, individuals like Robert Litchfield, the founder of WASP, operated controversial teen facilities while also serving as co-chairman of Mitt Romney's Utah Finance Committee.

And as the IRS website explains, quote, under the Internal Revenue Code, all Section 501C3 organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for elective public office.

End quote.

It's important to note that although WASP was incorporated in Utah as a nonprofit corporation, it was never registered as such with the IRS.

Additionally, GOP mega donors Richard and Elizabeth Eulen, through Restoration PAC and related efforts, have donated millions of dollars in campaigns backing anti-regulation and pro-parents' rights candidates throughout the 2010s and 2020s.

Through significant funding to groups like the American Principles Project, which advocates for expanded parental control over education and opposes strict government regulation, Their influence supports policies that can create favorable conditions for programs to operate with minimal oversight.

These financial and ideological relationships have enabled the industry to evade meaningful oversight, leaving vulnerable youth at the mercy of private institutions with limited accountability.

On top of large donors and political figures operating in the background, public figures, notably Dr.

Phil, promoted various facilities on his wide-reaching platform, which further buried the truth and swindled parents.

When we left off with 15-year-old Gabe, he told me on stage that he would go to Wingate Wilderness Therapy in Utah.

But there was an unexpected turn of events and things did not go as planned backstage, which is to be expected when you are dealing with such a sensitive issue.

But I never give up, even if it means tracking Gabe down in his own hometown.

You're not going to force me to go to Utah.

I'm not leaving state.

broke up!

Although it's clear to many now that what Dr.

Phil exhibited in this and other episodes was traumatizing to these children, his promotion of various programs like Wingate continues to influence parents to this day.

Notably, in 2016, Dr.

Phil referred 13-year-old Danielle Bregoli, also known as Bad Baby, to Turnabout Ranch, a wilderness therapy facility in Utah.

Danielle later reported she was kidnapped in the middle of the night, handcuffed, and taken to the isolated turnabout ranch.

Danielle says she endured horrific conditions, including sleep and food deprivation, and witnessing restraints and violence against other teens.

Danielle says she was inspired to share her story after a fellow program attendee and Dr.

Phil alum named Hannah Archuletta accused one of the turnabout staffers of sexual assault.

Danielle later demanded accountability, stating, So, Dr.

Phil, I am going to give you from now till April 5th to issue an apology, not only to me, but to Hannah and any other child that you sent to Turnabout or any other program like this.

Following her public call out of Dr.

Phil in a YouTube video Danielle posted in 2021, Dr.

Phil responded to these allegations in an interview on NewsNation saying, quote, she went to Turnabout Ranch four or five years ago.

And if she had a bad experience, obviously I would hate that.

We'd be sorry about that.

But we don't have anything to do with what happens with guests once they leave the stage.

That's between the parent and whatever facility they go to, end quote.

Despite Dr.

Phil's deflection, Bergoli and fellow Turnabout Ranch survivor Hannah Archoletta continue to partner with the nonprofit, Breaking Code Silence, using their experiences to advocate for reform and push for greater transparency and accountability in youth treatment programs.

Breaking Code Silence is a leader in advocacy, making survivors feel more comfortable and encouraged to speak out.

The organization began in 2014 as a grassroots survivor-led social media campaign in which survivors of various programs used the hashtag Breaking Code Silence to share their experiences.

Breaking Code Silence became an official five hundred one C three organization in March of twenty twenty one, and its mission is to prevent institutional child abuse and to empower survivors to engage in positive self-advocacy.

Their activism plays a key role in promoting legislative change, including pushing for a federal youth in congregate care bill of rights and raising awareness about community events and protests.

Another leader of the cause is Paris Hilton.

In 2020, her documentary, This is Paris, was released, which revealed the abuse she experienced at Provo Canyon School as a teen.

What she shared in her documentary continues to be a source of validation and inspiration for many survivors while also shedding light on this industry.

That was just the beginning in Hilton's advocacy journey.

In 2021, she testified in favor of a bill that regulates institutions, sharing about her experiences at the Residential Treatment Center.

Her political efforts continued in 2023 as she supported the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act on Capitol Hill, a bill aimed at improving protections for institutionalized youth, and revealed she had also been sexually abused while at Provoke Canyon School.

In 2024, Paris continued to champion the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act by speaking before Congress and beyond.

When the Senate unanimously passed the Stop the Institutional Child Abuse last week, it sent a powerful message.

Protecting children is something that we can all agree on.

My dream is for this bill to pass Congress this week.

And my mission to end institutional child abuse is my purpose in life.

The House of Representatives now has the power to take my hope and turn it into action.

You have the power to make history and save lives by bringing this bill to a vote.

Help us ensure that facilities meant to care for children do exactly that.

Days after her speech, the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act was passed by the House of Representatives with a vote of 373 to 33.

The Senate previously passed the act with unanimous support.

Additionally, recent documentaries by survivors, such as the program, Cons, Colts, and Kidnapping and Teen Torture Inc., have played a powerful role in raising public awareness about the abuse in the industry.

The program, Cons, Colts, and Kidnapping, directed and produced by Ivy Ridge survivor Catherine Kubler, centers first-hand accounts from other program survivors and exposes systemic harm from Ivy Ridge and other WASP facilities across decades.

Teen Torture Inc.

was released months later in July 2024.

Survivor of Provo Canyon School, Tara Malone, directed this documentary, featuring powerful personal testimonies from survivors of the Residential Treatment Center and other similar institutions across the country.

Notably, these survivor-driven projects were released on major platforms like Netflix and HBO's Max, allowing for reach and amplification of theirs and other survivors' stories to garner a broad audience.

Throughout my time speaking with survivors this season, these documentaries have consistently been cited as a means of validation and healing for their own experiences.

The power of those who have spoken out cannot be underestimated.

But still, the fight for complete transparency, accountability, and reform continues as these issues persist.

On May 3rd, 2025, a 13-year-old girl died by suicide at Asheville Academy, a residential treatment school for girls in Weaverville, North Carolina.

Later, on May 27th, the state's health authorities halted all new admissions to the program, warning that the conditions there posed serious risks to the students' health and safety.

Tragically, just days later, on May 29th, a 12-year-old girl died by suicide at the same campus, marking the second death by suicide in less than four weeks.

Days later, on May 31st, all students were released and the academy terminated operations.

Following these tragic deaths, a North Carolina investigation revealed serious violations made by Asheville Academy.

The parent company, Wilderness Training and Consulting, also known as Family Help and Wellness, was fined $45,000 for, quote, failing to provide adequate staff supervision, violating clients' rights, and not protecting children from potential abuse, end quote.

Investigators found three A1 level violations at the program, which is the most serious category under state law.

In early June 2025, state health officials confirmed the investigation is still ongoing.

Also in May 2025, a former student at the now closed Red Rock Canyon School in Utah sued the facility and its parent company, Sequel Youth and Family Services, reporting she was sexually abused and impregnated by staff member Antonio Cavia while she was a minor and that multiple adults adults at the school, including his sister, knew about it and allowed it to continue.

These recent devastating stories shed light on the ongoing systemic abuse within these programs that demand to be heard.

At large, federal legislation must establish enforceable standards, require data transparency, and ban harmful practices such as emotional harm, isolation, and physical restraints, ensuring that all youth are protected.

With that said, Season 24 testimonies are absolutely heartbreaking, heavy, and difficult to hear.

You're going to hear detailed descriptions, and though it is maddening and heartbreaking to hear, it was much more difficult for these then-children to live.

If we filter their experiences to our comfort, these disturbing places will continue to hide in plain sight.

It is as upsetting as it is necessary because by amplifying survivors' voices, we also further support and uplift hundreds of thousands of other survivors of this inhumane industry.

And we speak for those who tragically can no longer speak for themselves.

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I had the honor and privilege to interview advocate and expert Maya Solovitz, author of Help at Any Cost.

How the Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, whose research documents an even broader picture of the devastating realities of the systemically abusive so-called troubled teen industry.

I am Maya Solovitz, and I got interested in the troubled teen industry because I had an addiction myself in my late teens and early 20s.

I avoided treatment because I had read that it was about attacking and breaking and humiliating you.

Frankly, I was terrified of people and had difficulty socializing, and that was why I used drugs.

So the idea that treatment was going to be sort of relentlessly social and attacking, I was just like, well, that's just going to make me use more.

I eventually did get help and avoided most of that confrontational and humiliating stuff.

During my active drug use, I was reading the New York Times magazine and I saw a profile of this place that was probably one of the things that made me scared to get treatment because it was lionizing people who were screaming at children.

And it was residential in the sense that people didn't live in their own home.

They lived in the home of another parent in the program and they were often locked into their bedroom at night.

I saw this article in 1986 or or so, and I was horrified by it.

There was always this idea in the mainstream media that these things are very tough, but these children are very tough, so tough things may be necessary.

The idea that the harsher the treatment, the more likely it is going to work.

So that was my first encounter with the kids program.

I went to a organized survivors conference sometime in the early 90s.

I met Phil Elberg there, who is the lawyer who represented Lulu Porter against the kids program.

And he was the first person to win significant amounts of money for people who had survived absolutely horrific treatment.

Because typically in suing this industry, people have ended up only getting money if their child is dead.

The level of torture that this poor young woman underwent was absolutely horrifying.

She was a virgin and she was told that she was addicted to sex and she was made to confess all of these things.

She actually had been abused, but in the sick view of these programs, you have to find what was your part in being abused.

Lulu was often defiant, as you would be if you were in a place where you couldn't escape and people were screaming at you.

She was held down on the floor for hours.

They wouldn't let people go to the bathroom.

So they soiled themselves.

People spit on each other.

It is really astonishing what people can be made to do when you terrify them enough about their own fate or the fate of their children.

When I went to this survivors conference and met Phil Elberg, this was when he was just starting to work on this case.

He was hearing from people who had survived this.

And he was also hearing from people who were still involved in trying to keep it going.

I was simply horrified by the fact that this stuff continues, even though we know that it is incredibly harmful.

In 1984, 13-year-old Lulu Corder was signed into a program called Kids of North Jersey by her parents.

The facility often treated drug or alcohol addiction, which Lulu did not suffer from.

Kids of North Jersey was one of many facilities developed by self-described rehabilitation guru Virgil Miller Newton and his wife Ruth Ann, targeting youth with drug and behavioral problems, eating disorders, and other compulsive behaviors.

They created a strict and isolating environment where patients had to sever ties with their families and embrace a new structure with Newton positioned as a cult-like father figure.

Lulu remained in the program for 13 years, locked inside until she was 26 years old.

During this time, she was subjected to kidnappings, beatings, forced labor, and mental abuse.

In August 1997, Lulu finally escaped the Kids program.

Two years later, the state of New Jersey sued Newton for $1 million in Medicaid overbillings, and Kids was officially shut down.

State officials also shut down the Newton's other various programs in California, Florida, and Utah, where a prosecutor described the kids' program as a sort of private jail using techniques such as torture and punishment.

When Newton's facilities were officially closed, that was a call for Lulu to seek justice and take her story to court.

In 2003, she filed a civil lawsuit against Newton, his wife, and another former assistant director of Kids of North Jersey.

Her attorney, Phil Elberg, previously won a $4.5 million settlement for another Kids of North Jersey patient, Rebecca Uhrlich, in 2001.

In front of a jury, Attorney Elberg said, quote, this program is not about tough love.

It's about destroying families as they existed.

and creating a new family with Miller Newton as the father and Ruth Ann Newton as the mother.

End quote.

Ultimately, Lulu was awarded a $6.5 million settlement.

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This Labor Day, gear up, save big, and ride harder with cycle gear.

From August 22nd to September 1st, score up to 60% off motorcycle gear from your favorite brands.

RPM members get 50% off tire mount and balance with any new tire purchase.

Need to hit the road now?

Fast Lane Financing lets you ride now and pay later with 0% interest for three months.

And here's the big one.

August 29th through September 1st only.

Buy any helmet $319 or more and get a free Cardo Spirit Bluetooth.

Supplies are limited.

Don't wait.

Cycle gear.

Get there.

Start here.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years' interest-free financing, and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.

This Labor Day, gear up, save big, and ride harder with cycle gear.

From August 22nd to September 1st, score up to 60% off motorcycle gear from your favorite brands.

RPM members get 50% off tire mount and balance with any new tire purchase.

Need to hit the road now?

Fast Lane Financing lets you ride now and pay later with 0% interest for three months.

And here's the the big one: August 29th through September 1st only.

Buy any helmet, $319 or more and get a free Cardo Spirit Bluetooth.

Supplies are limited.

Don't wait.

Cycle gear.

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What else stands out to you that you learned at that conference?

I learned then as well about Straight Incorporated, the parent program of kids.

So Straight had a network of programs in the United States, and some of them lasted until relatively recently.

The idea was taken from this cult called Synanon, on which a lot of American treatment, unfortunately, is still based.

The idea is we break you down, we humiliate you, we totally control you.

And that way we reprogram you to get better.

Straight was Nancy Reagan's favorite drug program.

In fact, it was the co-founders of Straight who actually got Nancy Reagan into being anti-drug when she was looking for a cause.

Straight had arisen because the program that it was based on, that was directly based on Sinanon, had been shut down.

In fact, Congress had investigated them and found techniques that they called comparable to Korean brainwashing.

Because that meant no more federal funding, they decided to reopen under a new name of Straight Inc.

And And then eventually Miller Newton left Straight and became the founder of Kids in Jersey.

And it had a couple of different names.

It was Kids of Bergen County at one point.

It was kids of North Jersey.

That is where Lulu Corder's brother was recruited by the program.

He did have a problem with drugs and his parents got him into the program.

Then Lulu as a family member was required to go to these meetings and they would often decide that siblings had some kind of a problem and take them into the program also.

This does not happen with legitimate psychiatric institutions.

There is an insight in the addictions world that it is good to have help from peers who have been through it.

But this has been misread by these troubled teen programs to mean that if you've got like 90 days of abstinence, you are an expert and you can start treating other people.

So this treatment is also sort of entirely run by amateurs.

So many of these kids are neurodivergent as well.

And this is the thing that was especially terrifying to me as someone who is on the spectrum.

I need privacy and I need my own space, but nearly all rehab has virtually no privacy.

You're sharing a room.

Your hours are incredibly structured where you're having to see and be with large groups of people all the time.

It is basically an autistic person's worst nightmare.

What's especially bad is that in order to advance in these kinds of programs, you have to find other people's weak spots and attack them, just like was being done to you when you first got in there.

The better you get at this, the more likely you are to rise through the various levels and you get more freedom as you rise.

This really selects for people who enjoy hurting other people.

And the people who don't enjoy hurting other people get really morally injured by having to do this to save themselves.

It creates a giant mess of trauma and psychological pain.

You can also end up never trusting.

any kind of mental health professional again because this was done to you in the name of mental health.

What are some of the long-term side effects that survivors have shared with you?

It is a very infantilizing experience.

One of the things that I found chilling was a lot of the parents who were in favor of these programs say, I got my baby back.

You didn't get your teenager back because you completely made them into like a rule-following robot.

What tends to happen is for the first six to nine months or so afterwards, people are super compliant because they're terrified of being sent back.

They follow all the rules.

They do everything they possibly can right.

They've also been trained to be what the programs call honest, which means you're taught this kind of sick, cruel honesty rather than to behave in a genuinely socially appropriate manner.

They didn't get an education because during the time when other people were in high school, they were being held down on the floor.

In fact, one of the ways that Phil Elberg was able to sue these places was by focusing on the fact that they genuinely did not educate these people because punishment took priority over education.

That's one of the sort of more subtle side effects.

But what then tends to happen is, after this period of compliance, there's a period of complete abandon where people do more drugs than they ever did before, harder drugs than they did before.

Sometimes, unfortunately, people get involved in sex work in a way that is not exactly voluntary.

You end up being at high risk for addiction.

There's enormous amount of PTSD.

There is an utterly terrifying rate of self-harm and suicide.

And this is only just beginning to be scientifically researched.

If you look at the Family Foundation School, they documented at least 100 early deaths, most of which were overdose or suicide.

There's a whole lot of sexual humiliation that is used in these places, like making girls dress up in clothes and having the boys yell slut and whore at them.

The wilderness programs are especially horrific often because they're sold as, oh, you'll be in the woods with nature and all this.

And then what you're actually doing is you aren't even given the ability to make a fire unless you learn how to do it properly.

You aren't given enough food.

And if you think about it from the business perspective, this is genius because you don't even have to have a facility.

You don't have to have trained staff.

You can sell the lack of food as being a feature, not a bug, because they're learning to be self-sufficient and all this.

What seems to me to be the case is that if you were doing this to prepubescent children, you would be locked up forever.

But doing this to teenagers seems to be this weird loophole in our society.

We

don't respond to the abuse of teenagers the way we respond to the abuse of little children.

And these kinds of things, which are sort of inconceivable, if you told a parent that that's what your child's going to get, nobody would send them there.

This happened at places like Academy at Ivy Ridge.

It happened at Mount Bachelor Academy, which has the most ridiculous name when you're discussing this stuff.

The like most charming sounding names for the most horrific shit I've ever heard in my life.

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Something I'm also learning in my interviews is how the parents were deceived.

I'm just curious if you could shed light for the listeners who are going, how is anyone sending their kids here?

This is why the title of Help at Any Cost is How the Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids.

When my book came out, parents just didn't know.

When you have a kid with psychological or psychiatric problems, you tend to blame yourself.

In these instances, the parents are like searching on the internet in the middle of the night and they come across ads for these places.

And because they've been legitimized by Dr.

Phil or Barbara Walters, the parents don't think there's a problem.

In fact, when I was first writing Help at Any Cost, a lot of parents felt extreme pressure if their child had any kind of problem to just be cruel to them, do tough love, throw them out.

And they were called enablers if they didn't do it.

So there was all this pressure.

to place kids in these kinds of places.

And this kind of toughness was believed to be good for them.

Now that is less so now, but it is still so unregulated that you still don't know what you're going to get if you search on the internet.

What these places do to the parents that's particularly awful is they tell the parents what they want to hear and then they profit by providing the absolute bare minimum to keep your child alive.

The vast majority of the parents have no idea that this is what they're really getting or they've been taught that this is actually the only thing that works.

And yes, it seems harsh, but we are the experts and you don't know.

You also get some parents who are in the middle of divorce and one parent does not want the other parent to get custody, but they don't want the kid either.

So they send them.

Or you get people who actually want their kids to be abused.

That is definitely a minority.

Most of the parents have been conned, but the more that this information gets out there, the less easy, we hope anyway, it is to con the parents into doing this.

I spoke with one young woman.

She came from a super rich family.

She had first gone to Harvard-McLean, probably, the best psychiatric care for teenagers in the world.

Then her parents were afraid that when she got out, she would be fragile.

So they put her in one of these troubled teen places.

They had all the resources in the world and quite intelligent people.

And they couldn't tell that this was bad.

The model is the problem because this model puts profits over children.

The business model itself requires abuse and neglect basically because you cannot hire the kind of staff that you would need and the kind of facilities you would need in order to do actual evidence-based treatment.

You would think somebody like Paris Hilton would get decent care, but she's getting the same kind of care that a child on Medicaid is getting because of how ridiculous and unregulated most of these facilities are.

In a 2024 report, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden released findings of a two-year investigation exposing the industry that enables taxpayer-funded child abuse and neglect in youth residential treatment facilities across the United States.

The investigation found facilities use abusive tactics that are considered rampant civil rights violations under the guise of care.

Kids as young as nine years old reported restraints, isolation, and physical and sexual harm at the hands of staff responsible for their care.

The report emphasized that the problem isn't just the underqualified evil staff members.

It's the entire model that prioritizes financial gain over children's well-being.

Another aspect of the industry I want to touch on is the educational consultants who direct parents to sending their kids to certain programs.

Can you explain more about what their role is?

The idea would be is that this educational consultant is going to find the best troubled teen place for your child.

If you're talking about medical care, you don't need a consultant to find the best one because there's an entire research apparatus to show you what works and what doesn't.

Because it's a wild west and it's unregulated, these educational consultants claim to be like, well, we will make sure that your kid goes to a good one that's the best place for them,

but there's no regulation on them either.

So the so-called best place for your kid is often the place that pays the biggest kickback to the educational consultant.

The problem, which we are now facing on a massive scale, is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

When you have vulnerable people in in a setting that is isolated and the staff is not trained and is not paid well, and the people who are being held there cannot escape or speak out or reach out to the public, it inevitably generates abuse.

When you put people in power over other people and there's no checks and balances on it, abuse almost always occurs.

And this is why legitimate institutions have an ombudsman, a patient advocate.

Hospitals have this because they recognize the power dynamic is bad.

The people who are vulnerable need to be represented.

Otherwise, they will get squashed.

This is why even the best psychiatric hospital in the world will sometimes have abuse scandals.

The places where the staff is told being cruel to these kids is therapy will be the ultimate worst because you're taking a tendency that exists exists and magnifying it by like saying abusing people is good for them.

What I don't understand is, so children just have no rights?

That is true.

And there is an enormous contingent in the United States that really wants to keep it that way, that really sees children as the property of their parents.

We believe very firmly that parents should have the right to hit their kids.

I don't agree with that, but that is like where we are as a society.

And what this means is that if you allow corporal punishment by the parents, this enables allowing corporal punishment in schools.

So that means that you can do things to teenagers that you can't do to adult prisoners in these facilities because it's legal to hit them and it's legal to starve them in a way that is not legal for adults.

In your opinion, what legal measures do you believe are necessary to regulate these programs more effectively and protect children?

First of all, I think that we should not have any corporal punishment in any facility for children, period.

I think that we should ban tactics that are humiliating and degrading.

We should also require that people who are going to be in any of these facilities should have a completely independent evaluation before they are placed.

I also think that if we required every staff member to have a master's degree, the industry would evaporate.

In any facility, there needs to be absolute background checks on everybody.

There is no diagnosis of troubled teen.

Most people who are sent to these facilities do not need anything residential.

Those who do need something residential need something highly specialized, highly trauma sensitive, which means not people getting kidnapped.

If a child has such severe psychiatric or behavioral problems that they do need some period of being away from home.

It needs to be in a place that is highly professional, works to get the child home as soon as possible, allows the kid to maintain ties with the community.

There's some efforts toward this in New Jersey, which I want to investigate more, where apparently parents can call a hotline.

And within a few hours, people will show up to get a free and accessible treatment plan for that child, which if residential is required, will be close enough that the parents can visit.

We should absolutely minimize putting children in any type of non-family setting as much as possible.

We don't need a troubled teen industry.

That should not be a thing.

What we need is a decent child mental health care system and a decent system for treatment and prevention and harm reduction.

Abusive and deliberately humiliating so-called therapy should not have any place in the world.

Your book came out in 2006.

And in 2024, Catherine Kubler's documentary, The Program, Khan's, Colts, and Kidnapping, and Tara Malone's Teen Torture Inc.

were released, which you participated in.

I've heard from so many survivors how validating it was for them.

And it's been such a powerful movement to see these survivors come together.

Can you speak to what the increased coverage and awareness has been been like for you?

I have got a lot of amazing response.

And one of the things that was the best thing about doing the book was to hear from people who were like, now my parents believe me.

For the first time, I understand what was done to me and why I was harmed in this way.

I think understanding the psychology of why people often come out of these places and think what happened to them was good.

I felt it was very important to explore that in the book.

It is more likely to have harmed you than to help you based on what we know about what works and what doesn't in terms of helping people psychologically.

Understanding that and hopefully taking away some of the self-blame that comes from the way people in these situations were made to like do harm to other people, I felt was really important.

Reading the book or seeing the documentary, people can see that this actually happened, that it is actually a tremendously harmful thing, why it happens, where it comes from, who's behind it.

Once you have more clarity on that, it can help you.

And yes, also, it can be triggering.

So it's really important if you're engaging in material like this to be aware that some stuff may come up for you and to have safe way of dealing with that.

This environment that we're in currently, where a lot of cruelty is being celebrated, I think that in itself is triggering for trauma survivors.

And I think it's really important

for people to realize that cruelty should not be celebrated.

It is not helpful to tear people apart or to humiliate them in the name of making them good or straight.

The reason that people end up behaving in strange or even harmful ways is often because they're just trying to feel okay.

And if you just take away whatever their mechanism is to cope that may not necessarily be healthy, you have to understand what's beneath that.

And if you just try to sort of take away things from people without understanding why they're behaving the way they do, then you're not going to help them and you're often going to harm them.

Is there anywhere else that listeners can follow or support your work?

In order to find all that, Maya S-Z, M-A-I-A, S like Sam, ZlikeZebra.com.

And that has links to as much of my current writing as we can possibly make it have, as well as where to buy the books.

Incredible.

Thank you so, so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

Coming up this season on Something Was Wrong.

The death of a child at a troubled teen camp is now considered a homicide.

An autopsy report states that a 12-year-old boy who died less than 24 hours after arriving at the Lake Toxaway-based camp Died.

A former student at Red Rock Canyon School in St.

George filed a $10 million lawsuit today.

She's accusing the now-closed school, its parent company, and two former staff members of negligence, failure to supervise, sexual assault, and more.

Celebrity Paris Hilton is calling out a Utah youth facility, claiming she was abused during her time there in the late 90s.

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

When I was 15, I was abducted in the middle of the night by two strangers, and I subsequently spent the next three and a half years in two different facilities.

I thought it was a boarding school.

I thought they would teach him not to do the drugs, would treat him well, and thought he would get better.

They're explaining to me that I'm now part of this program because

I was an unruly child.

This was my parents' last attempt to help me.

They blindfold you, do the strip search.

They make every effort to dehumanize you from the second that you're in their custody.

The idea is we scream at you, we break you down, we totally control you, and that way we reprogram you.

It was a privilege to do just about anything because the narratives, you don't deserve anything.

I had to confess to doing drugs and having sex, even though I had never done so.

But if you deny that, then you are lying.

Staff members who were so wonderful when they came in, ended up molding into these horrible people on a power trip.

There were some girls that I was terrified of because they were so programmed where it was kids abusing kids, essentially.

Of course, kids come home behaviorally compliant.

If they were anything like me, they had nightmares every night of being sent back.

You end up being at high risk for addiction, PTSD.

There is an utterly terrifying rate of self-harm and and suicide.

$23 billion of public funds go toward this industry.

My mom had to take out a loan to send me to this place.

It was tens of thousands of dollars.

I am here

to tell the truth so that no other parent has to go through this.

and have their child taken from them so tragically.

We don't need a a troubled teen industry.

What we need is a decent child mental health care system.

Abusive and deliberately humiliating so-called therapy has no place in the world.

Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production.

Created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Reese, associate producers Amy B.

Chesler and Lily Rowe, with audio editing and music design by Becca High.

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

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.

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

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

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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