1091: Troubled Teen Industry | Skeptical Sunday

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.
Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, survivor and advocate Meg Applegate.

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Speaker 1 Today, every parent knows that raising teenagers can be a wild roller coaster ride. From mood swings to rebellion, navigating the teenage years can be challenging.

Speaker 1 I'm not quite there yet, and I'm, I don't know, should I be looking forward to that? But what happens when the challenges of adolescence make parents feel like they need to find outside help?

Speaker 1 Enter the troubled teen industry, a complex web of programs and facilities that claim to help troubled teens and their families.

Speaker 1 But are these programs the solution or do they create even more problems?

Speaker 1 Today, we're transporting ourselves to the troubled teen industry with survivor, advocate, and mother to her own teenager, Meg Applegate.

Speaker 1 Meg is the CEO of Unsilenced, which is a nonprofit organization that aims to help stop institutional child abuse by empowering self-advocates to create lasting social change.

Speaker 1 Meg, thanks for joining me. This is quite a topic topic we're going to deal with here today.

Speaker 4 Hey, Jordan, thanks for having me. It's quite an introduction and probably one that my teenager would roll their eyes at.

Speaker 4 It's funny you use the word transported because many of the kids that enter these programs are transported against their will, oftentimes in the middle of the night.

Speaker 1 So this kind of sounds like kidnapping. Is it that dramatic? That's crazy, honestly.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, it really is. I myself was actually kidnapped from my bed in the middle of the night and transported to a facility.

Speaker 1 I've tried to wrap my mind around this, right? Cause this is, and we'll get into this, but I've had this happen to friends of mine too. Who comes to you in the middle of the night?

Speaker 1 Do they just take you out of your bed? I'm imagining them kind of like rolling you up in your bed sheets and carting you off in a van.

Speaker 4 Yeah, transporters that my parents hired came to escort me to my first program. They woke me up, told me I was coming with them.
Nobody can do this the easy way or the hard way.

Speaker 1 So this is insane, but I got to ask, what is the hard way?

Speaker 4 Yeah, they told me that that way involved handcuffs.

Speaker 1 All right. So is this legal? I should know this, but I'm asking you because this is your industry.
How did I not know that this was really going on in the world?

Speaker 1 Like, I've had friends that this happened to in the 90s and I thought like they were lying about it because it definitely sounds illegal.

Speaker 1 You can't just have someone kidnapped, even if they're your kid. Can you?

Speaker 4 Unfortunately, it is legal. You may be more aware of this industry than you think.
Thinking back to when you were in high school, do you remember any kids that just disappeared all of a sudden?

Speaker 4 Maybe there were rumors of them going to tour Europe or going to boarding school or going to prison?

Speaker 1 It's interesting that you bring this up because, you know, as I hinted towards the top of the show, I'd had friends who'd gone through some sort of weird experiences, but there was a buddy of mine who vanished for a year.

Speaker 1 Maybe it was slightly less. This is a kind of a troublemaking kid that I didn't want to hang out with too much because he always had like bad ideas.

Speaker 1 And then he came back and he said, yeah, I just went to boarding school and it just didn't add up because who goes to boarding school for one year and then comes back to their public school and says that it was a good experience?

Speaker 1 Like if it's terrible, you come back after a year. If it's great, it all seemed weird to me.

Speaker 1 And another friend of mine who was not actually a bad kid, but was lost in life, he did some nature program where the story was that they left him in the woods alone with a box of crackers, and it was multiple weeks of this.

Speaker 4 Wow. It sounds like that guy might have ended up in a wilderness program and was likely conned the same way so many others were.
Sadly, that's more common than you'd think.

Speaker 4 And it's not just about roughing it in the woods. It often involves a lot more complicated and distressing situations.

Speaker 4 These programs can be pretty harsh, and what goes on behind the scenes is often a lot darker than just camping and survival skills.

Speaker 1 Now that I think about it, I'm like, how did he get food? Because he ate the whole box of crackers on the first night. That's what we were laughing about.

Speaker 1 But then I'm like, it's not funny when you're in the woods with no food.

Speaker 4 Yeah. No, it's the inner workings of something referred to as the troubled teen industry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, when I read that, when I was creating the intro for this episode, I was like, okay, this is a daunting name. And it seems like those words shouldn't go together.

Speaker 1 Like, there shouldn't be an industry around troubled teens.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you would absolutely think that, right? Even more daunting is what it entails.

Speaker 4 The troubled teen industry is basically a powerful network of residential facilities that claim to fix struggling youth.

Speaker 4 Of course, the definition of struggling is up to whoever is responsible for putting them there.

Speaker 4 This can range from mental health concerns to social problems to homosexuality, essentially anything deemed needing fixing.

Speaker 1 Oh, gosh. So parents basically just decide something is wrong with their kid, whatever they're upset about at the time.
My son is gay and I don't like it.

Speaker 1 And then they just send them to one of these places.

Speaker 4 Yep, 100%.

Speaker 4 The only thing I was doing to get sent away was smoking pot and struggling in school and socially. And for many youth, they're there for years.
I spent three and a half years in two programs.

Speaker 1 Even as an adult, that's a long time. But when you're a teenager, that's an eternity.
That's honestly, most of these so-called disorders that people have when they go into these things.

Speaker 1 I mean, it sounds like variations of every normal teenage experience. You're smoking pot.
Is that all you did?

Speaker 1 Seems like you weren't that bad.

Speaker 1 Sure, there are outliers, but being sent to what basically amounts to a penal colony slash gulag because you're smoking pot or you're gay or whatever is horrific, actually.

Speaker 4 That's the thing. So there's this well-known German psychologist named Eric Erickson, and he says teens are supposed to be a little rebellious.
It's part of figuring out who they are.

Speaker 4 So when teens start testing boundaries, refusing to do chores, or having power struggles with their parents, it's not just normal. It's crucial for their development.

Speaker 4 They're trying to explore their own values and beliefs outside of what their family tells them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, look, this tracks with my teenage years and probably everyone listening. Who didn't, look, I don't have any tattoos or anything where I was like, yeah, mom's going to hate it, right?

Speaker 1 But who didn't get a piercing and try to keep it a secret? Or who didn't get some.

Speaker 1 ho jeans or something. I mean, you know, and hide them from their parents.
Come on, man.

Speaker 1 I think I've done many pretty crappy things as a teenager. I definitely put my parents through the ringer.
Maybe I was also gulag material at certain points growing up. I don't know.

Speaker 1 So how did these programs pull in the families? Because maybe I'm just lucky my parents didn't know about this.

Speaker 1 Like I said, I was a pill and worse at times, but my parents never schlugged me off to the wilderness or a prison camp.

Speaker 4 Right. Yeah.
No, these programs are master marketers.

Speaker 4 They use scare tactics to make typical teen stuff like talking back, breaking the rules, mood swings, power struggles, or even just being sexually active sound like a crisis that needs extreme measures.

Speaker 4 Then they make themselves look like the answer to everyone's prayers, advertising to them that they can handle any and every teen issue.

Speaker 4 My parents were literally told that if they didn't do something and quick, I would die. You'd be surprised how they can light a fire under a parent's butt to make a move.

Speaker 1 It sounds like it's like reefer madness. She's smoking the reefer.
She's going to drive her car off of a bridge. Exactly.

Speaker 4 Ridiculous.

Speaker 1 So basically, these companies say, is your kid kid not the little angel she was when she was 10? Don't worry, we'll whip her back into shape.

Speaker 1 And then it sounds like these kids spend these important formative years of adolescence eating leaves on crackers in the desert instead of working through their issues with a therapist or just like straight up having a normal life and outgrowing this nonsense.

Speaker 4 Yep. And they take it even further, often claiming to be experts in an impossibly wide range of mental health diagnoses and behavioral issues to caregivers.

Speaker 4 They'll put lots of colorful pictures of smiling kids on their their websites and show off horses and other animals you might see if you enroll.

Speaker 1 So they're claiming to provide therapy and slash a petting zoo or whatever from the sound of it.

Speaker 4 Exactly. They even use therapeutic buzzwords like evidence-based and trauma-informed care to draw in caregivers.

Speaker 4 But when my team at Unsilenced and I investigated, we found that most programs either don't use these methods at all or they misuse them.

Speaker 4 For instance, they might use therapeutic methods as a form of punishment for unwanted behavior.

Speaker 1 So I'm no professional in this area, but it definitely doesn't sound like that's what therapy is supposed to be used for.

Speaker 4 Not even close. And as I'm sure you know, a therapeutic relationship with a therapist can only exist when it's rooted in trust between the patient and the provider.

Speaker 4 But these facilities that claim to provide mental health treatment are holding kids against their will. So the relationship is often inherently rooted in distrust.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would imagine, first of all, it's hard enough to open up on a therapist's couch. It's probably even harder if you're strapped to the couch with leather straps or whatever.

Speaker 1 So rather than receiving true psychotherapy, it sounds like these kids come out with, at best, a skewed understanding of what therapy even looks like. And this actually jibes.

Speaker 1 I get letters from people for our Feedback Friday segments and they're like.

Speaker 1 This horrible thing happened and I'll write back. Oh, you should definitely be in therapy about this and yada yada.
And they're like, oh, I'm never going to do therapy. I've had some bad experiences.

Speaker 1 And of course, I'm like, what do you mean? How bad can a therapist be? And it's usually some variation of this.

Speaker 4 My parents sent me to a thing and it turned out to be be a cult or whatever and it's like oh well okay now i get why you don't want to go lay on somebody else's couch and get back right into that situation exactly and it's sad because survivors of these programs often leave skeptical and fearful of therapy because of the experiences this leads to them being hesitant to seek out help even when they really need it for example The abuse I experienced while I was in the program came directly from my two therapists.

Speaker 4 But because it came from people who had the title therapist, it didn't register as being abusive at the time.

Speaker 4 But now as an adult, it is extremely hard to trust or even go to a new therapist because of what happened to me.

Speaker 1 Can I ask what happened?

Speaker 4 Sure. In my line of work, I've learned to embrace being an open book.

Speaker 4 I experienced things like forced isolation, incorrect diagnoses, and forced medication, name-calling and belittlement, forced labor to the point of injury, medical neglect.

Speaker 4 I had eight to 16 hours of attack therapy per week. I experienced the removal of food and essential items as punishment.

Speaker 4 And I had inappropriate physical and emotional relationship dynamics between my therapists and myself.

Speaker 1 I have more questions than answers from that list, but I definitely want to hear more about attack therapy, but I'm going to do it later in the show because I don't want to get tripped up here.

Speaker 1 This is horrible because it sounds like not only are these places turning regular teenage angst into something that requires drastic intervention, they're also offering what sounds just like phony BS interventions for real issues.

Speaker 1 And then they're marketing it to struggling parents who don't really know what else else to do, which is like con, but also like a very predatory one against families and kids and parents all at the same time.

Speaker 1 This is very evil in many ways.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, it is a con. And there are whole pipelines that funnel youth into this industry.

Speaker 4 Caregiver placement, juvenile justice, child welfare, medical and mental health professionals, and even school districts.

Speaker 1 So it's not just parents paying for this. I just assumed this was like upper middle class parents being like, please raise my kid for me because I messed it up.
Here's $8,000.

Speaker 4 Nope. Over the years, these programs have gotten smarter with funding pipelines.
And it's now estimated that $23 billion in taxpayer dollars are utilized every year to send kids away to them.

Speaker 1 $23 billion. So this is a huge industry.
This is not a tiny little, like, there's three of these things in the United States kind of thing. No.

Speaker 4 We're talking about your taxpayer dollars

Speaker 4 potentially funding abuse.

Speaker 1 So with $23 billion, they could probably afford to send kids through real, actual therapy.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And remember, that's only the public funds.
So that estimation doesn't even include the revenue that these facilities get from parents paying privately.

Speaker 1 Wow. That's a stupid amount of taxpayer dollars that goes to villainizing seemingly pretty normal kids.
I guess I can't say I'm super surprised either.

Speaker 1 It sounds like most for-profit industries that we hear about, like those trade colleges where it's like, hey, you can get a loan at 80% per year and you can go get a degree that actually isn't going to work for nursing anywhere in North America, but we're going to advertise on TV.

Speaker 4 Exactly. It's a complex web where each decision maker can be misled or pressured into thinking these programs are the best option for their kids.

Speaker 1 So how do they advertise and market this stuff in the first place?

Speaker 1 Send your kid starving for attention and connection to sunny Death Valley, where we'll make sure his soul is nourished with all the sand, ponies, and parasites he can handle.

Speaker 1 Like, how do you rope the family into this? Don't they have Google?

Speaker 4 Well, to be honest, it's not far off from the truth. They rely heavily on deceptive marketing tactics.
They target people who are truly just desperately looking for help.

Speaker 4 Many programs have websites with quizzes you can fill out online to find out if you have a troubled teen that will ultimately recommend their program regardless of your answers.

Speaker 1 Oh, so this is like which Avenger Are You quiz on Facebook, but instead it decides your kid needs to go to a labor camp. That's absurd.

Speaker 4 Exactly. I actually did that once for a program called Shepherd's Hill Academy.
They have this 10 question quiz to help parents determine if they have a troubled teen.

Speaker 4 I took the quiz as a hypothetical parent, but instead of indicating my teen had issues, I put disagree to all of the behaviors they deemed were problematic. And guess what?

Speaker 4 Even with all my answers being disagree, the quiz results still said, and I quote, it sounds like your teenager is experiencing moderate to high levels of disobedience, anger, or risky behavior.

Speaker 4 They then, of course, go on to claim that Shepherd's Hill Academy was a solution to my non-existent problems.

Speaker 1 Wow. So this is just completely rigged.
It's not like a real assessment at all.

Speaker 1 It's just one of those marketing quizzes that the answer happens to be the product that we sell, regardless of what dots you've clicked on the test.

Speaker 1 Color me shocked that the front page of a marketing website doesn't have a proper therapeutic assessment, but still the level of callous disregard for the welfare of the kids that they're enrolling is a little bit baffling and seems like a class action lawsuit or 10 waiting to happen.

Speaker 4 Exactly. It's completely rigged.
Using only 10 vague questions, and even when my answers were all disagree, they recommended their 12-month residential treatment program for a teen they've never met.

Speaker 4 Yet that doesn't scream rigged. I don't know what does.

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Speaker 1 I think my buddies, well, one of my, the boarding school air quotes, that guy was gone for a year, I think, but my other friend, it was like it maybe a month or two.

Speaker 4 I don't even know.

Speaker 1 It's like they're selling a mattress. Do you prefer a firm sleep? Do you get warm at night? It's like they're selling a mattress instead of locking children up for money.

Speaker 4 Yeah, if the mattress guaranteed a lifetime warranty of psychological trauma.

Speaker 1 So speaking of psychological trauma, and there's no joke pivot here, but what exactly goes on in these programs?

Speaker 1 Your list of abuse that you'd suffered was pretty horrible, but like, how do these things run?

Speaker 4 Yeah, what's really happening in these programs is far from what they advertise, I'm sure you can imagine.

Speaker 4 Instead of giving kids individualized, evidence-based treatment, many of these places are just hotbeds of abuse. You've got physical abuse, degrading punishments, and all sorts of inhumane discipline.

Speaker 4 Kids are also often subjected to dangerous seclusion and restraint practices. This can mean being physically restrained, tied up with devices like zip ties, or even drugged to keep them in line.

Speaker 4 In my first program, if anyone was having an attitude or acting out of line, you would see this group of staff come running in and they would throw the kid to the floor on their face and have a staff member holding each of their arms and legs down and a staff with their knee lodged in between their shoulder blades.

Speaker 4 Then another staff member would come by, pull the kid's pants down, and give them some shot of a tranquilizer or another sedative to make them pass out.

Speaker 4 Then they'd carry them off to a room to lock them up until they woke up.

Speaker 1 Are they giving them a shot and like an intramuscular shot in the glute by force? Yes.

Speaker 1 This is like something we would expect to see in a movie about a dystopian insane asylum or whatever based on the Soviet Union. This is actually

Speaker 1 way worse than I've imagined.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you're completely right. And as if that wasn't enough, there are disturbing reports of sexual assault and harassments of all kinds.

Speaker 4 I myself experienced extremely inappropriate relationship dynamics with my therapist while there.

Speaker 4 The male therapist used to have wrestling matches with all of the girls and even had us sit on his lap.

Speaker 1 What? That is so pervy and wrong, not to mention totally illegal. So how do these places get away with this kind of abuse? Like, I'm guessing the kids can't tell anyone or no one believes them.

Speaker 1 There's no phones. There's no evidence.
What's going on here?

Speaker 4 The kids can't report the abuse because they have severe restrictions on communication with parents, lawyers, and other advocates.

Speaker 4 If a staff member tries to report it internally, they often get punished. These programs make kids live under their total authority, stripping away their autonomy for months to years.

Speaker 4 These kids are victims of institutional abuse. The longer they stay in these places, the more likely they are to experience this abuse.

Speaker 4 This is especially true for kids with developmental disabilities who find themselves in these programs at an alarming rate.

Speaker 4 These kids are more likely to be abused, less likely to report abuse, more likely to experience trauma-related symptoms, and less likely to be able to heal from the harm.

Speaker 1 So these kids are really trapped in there. It seems like there's nothing they can do.
I mean, any way you slice it, they're trapped in this place.

Speaker 4 And that's just scratching the surface. We also hear many reports of physical and nutritional neglect, think, food and sleep deprivation, and restricted access to medical care.

Speaker 4 There is also medical abuse, including forced medication and over-medication. I myself remember being put on meds that had me drooling like a Saint Bernard and made me gain 60 pounds in six months.

Speaker 1 That can't be healthy for any human, let alone a developing brain and body. Can I ask why they put you on that medication? I don't really understand.

Speaker 1 Were you just like, they decided you were better off drugged up and quiet?

Speaker 4 Pretty much. They decided I had bipolar disorder after two days of being there.
Turns out I don't have it at all.

Speaker 1 This is so weird. It sounds like they just decided you'd be easier to deal with if you were zonked out on drugs.

Speaker 4 Yeah, pretty much. Many of the punitive and isolative tactics that they use create barriers for teens and are especially damaging to teenage brains.

Speaker 4 A primary example is conversion and aversion therapy that attempt to change youth's sexual or gender identities.

Speaker 1 Ah, so is this kind of pray the gay away, but with copious amounts of antipsychotic drugs, forced labor, and what sounds like worse.

Speaker 1 If you're spending three and a half years away from your family in these teen prison camps, if I can call them that, are you also going to school? Because you could go to school during that time.

Speaker 4 If you can even call it school. Okay.
For me, it was more like babysitting with a side of manual labor.

Speaker 4 The staff were often unqualified, and I personally didn't learn much beyond how to follow orders and stay out of trouble.

Speaker 4 My education in the program consisted of having me sit at a desk for 12 hours a day writing papers on topics they'd give me. I wasn't allowed to speak.
I wasn't allowed to get up.

Speaker 4 I had to do exactly what they told me to do. I had no free will.
Every day, they just put us all in a room, give us handouts, and told us, when you've learned everything here, we will give you a test.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, that's not education. If they're just making you digest material through brute force, it's more like indoctrination.

Speaker 1 I suppose it depends on what they're teaching you, but not being able to pee for 12 hours is a special kind of hell, and I don't think I could function in that environment.

Speaker 4 Yeah, exactly. And you touched on something important.
The trouble teen industry does have ties to cults. The roots of the industry are wild.
So get this.

Speaker 4 Many modern day programs were actually inspired by a cult called Synanon. A cult.

Speaker 1 So like robes and chanting level cults, or are we talking more like religious fundamentalism stuff?

Speaker 4 Pretty much. Synanon started in 1958 as an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Speaker 4 They had this twisted group therapy called the game in which members would verbally attack each other until they broke down. Not exactly a hallmark moment.

Speaker 1 That sounds like a nightmare. I don't understand the point of that.
I think a guest on the show, her dad was in it, and so she was raised in it.

Speaker 1 So these types of cults helped kick off these youth programs. That doesn't bode well.

Speaker 1 It's like if you told me that a kid's camp was founded by Scientology or something, like, okay, maybe they have fun kite making activities or whatever, but I don't think I would run and sign up for that.

Speaker 4 Childcare and cults are a bad mix, generally. Yes, generally.
And when I talk about the game, that's actually in reference to that attack therapy that I talked about earlier.

Speaker 4 It's the same exact thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So do people just tell you you're a horrible person for three hours? Like, what is it?

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, that's actually pretty accurate. You'd sit in a circle for two to three hours and hear everything that is wrong with you, everything you need to change, and how you're not good enough.

Speaker 1 That's not therapy, yeah.

Speaker 4 No, it's definitely not.

Speaker 1 Again, I'm no professional, I have enough experience with therapy to know that that's not therapy.

Speaker 4 Wow, yep, and Cinnanon was no different. Members of Cinnanon had to shave their heads, mate with people who weren't their spouses, and some were even forced to have sterilizations and abortions.

Speaker 4 When the LAPD finally caught on to the severe abuse and violence, Cinnanon's leadership collapsed. But not before some of its followers took those techniques and created spin-off programs on youth.

Speaker 4 And voila, the modern troubled teen industry was born.

Speaker 1 This is bananas. So, like I said, I know somebody who was in that cult and eventually left, but she might have left out a few details about how crazy it was.

Speaker 1 And I guess I can't really blame her because I don't know if I'd be broadcasting. that I grew up like that either.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah, it is nuts. And that doesn't even touch on the roots of wilderness programs like your friend in high school found himself in.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so what's the origin of those, if it's not the cultie thing from Synanon? And why outdoorsy stuff?

Speaker 1 Because it sounded like a medium security prison meets Boy Scout Jamboree when he told me about it, except for the food deprivation part. That was

Speaker 4 pretty accurate, actually.

Speaker 4 But it basically started in 1966 when school officials at Brigham Young University created a course called Youth Leadership 480, and they paid a former student $90 to teach survival skills to university students who were failing school.

Speaker 4 It was essentially a month-long backpacking trip in the Utah desert.

Speaker 1 90 bucks. That's a bargain for a potential disaster.
I suppose this gets worse.

Speaker 4 Yeah. But then after leaving BYU, that student, along with other peers, started the first wilderness therapy program, charging $500 for a 30-day outing.

Speaker 1 So from $90,000 to $500, that's a nice markup they got going.

Speaker 4 It gets crazier. Another BYU graduate took it a step further and started the Challenger Foundation.
They raised the price to almost $10,000.

Speaker 1 $10,000 for a month in the woods. Better be gold-plated s'mores.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there surely wasn't. But Challenger and all of its spin-offs were based on a very punitive approach.

Speaker 1 Are they punishing kids in the wilderness? What is it that they're doing? Because I've been camping. It's fun.
I'm assuming they're not doing that.

Speaker 4 Essentially, it didn't take long for youth in these programs to start dying from things like malnutrition, falling off of a cliff, extreme medical neglect, and even dehydration. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. So these are the precursors of today's wilderness therapy, air quotes, therapy programs.

Speaker 4 All wilderness therapy programs today are descendants of this Challenger Foundation.

Speaker 1 So when there's money and there's no oversight, there's going to be abuse.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like the prison system, even though seemingly there's way more oversight in the prison system than there is in this.

Speaker 1 I feel like that's a running theme on the show when I talk about this kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 Are there other types of programs?

Speaker 1 We've had the wilderness one. I've heard of a zillion of these programs, but I never really connected them all in my mind together into what you're calling the troubled teen industry.

Speaker 1 I just figured they were all separate, different things.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there actually are a zillion of these. But in 1967, two former Cynanon members went on to found CEDU, known as CDU.

Speaker 4 CDU marked the beginning of therapeutic boarding schools, behavior modification programs, and group homes.

Speaker 4 CDU took children who struggled with behavioral or substance abuse issues and applied the same tactics that Cynanon used, only they also threw in things like force cuddling that they called smushing.

Speaker 4 This is when the industry started its heavy focus on youth.

Speaker 1 Yeah, forcing youth to cuddle, that's so icky. I don't need more context on that one.
That's just like grooming stuff.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I don't blame you on that. Another program that focused on youth, the SEED, was started in 1970.

Speaker 4 It incorporated all of its predecessors' punitive tactics, but took the abuse to a whole new level.

Speaker 4 In fact, a Senate report in 1974 compared the SEADS techniques to brainwashing techniques used on prisoners of war in Korea. This report is what primarily caused the SEADS collapse.

Speaker 1 You know, you've crossed a line when people are comparing your school to a POW camp in North Korea.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You don't want that, but I'm assuming this is not the end of things.

Speaker 4 Nope, of course not. In 1976, two men who felt inspired by the SEED started Straight Incorporated.

Speaker 4 They claimed to rehabilitate teenage drug users using tough love tactics, which included coercive thought reform methods such as public humiliation, sleep and food deprivation, and confrontational tactics too.

Speaker 4 Unfortunately, and not unsurprisingly, these kids actually received no counseling or therapy at all, and most of the kids had never even done drugs. It's pretty crazy when you think about it.

Speaker 4 It has been reported by survivors that when they arrive at Straight Incorporated, they'd be separated from their parents where other peers would question them about their drug use.

Speaker 4 If the youth indicated that they had never done drugs, many times they would be verbally and physically abused until they agreed that they had a drug problem and signed a confession to that effect.

Speaker 4 Then they'd return the kid to their parents and show them the signed confession and say something along the lines of, thank God you brought your child. Look at all the drugs that they're doing.

Speaker 1 What the hell? This is like. straight out of a horror movie.
This really is kind of like POW camp, North Korea style stuff.

Speaker 1 Like we're going to interrogate you until you say that you're guilty and then we're going to give you like a show trial, except they're showing your parents a fake confession.

Speaker 1 Not to mention, it doesn't even sound close to what somebody who, if they really are going through a tough time already, it doesn't sound like this is what they actually need to succeed slash recover from substance abuse issues or anything else.

Speaker 1 You're just making the whole thing worse, clearly.

Speaker 4 And there are obviously other types of programs such as religious academies and boot camps, which have different origin stories. But one thing remains the same.

Speaker 4 Regardless of how these programs were founded, many have patterns of rampant abuse and claim to fix struggling youth using these ineffective and non-evidence-based practices.

Speaker 1 First of all, it sounds like it's definitely a systemic issue then.

Speaker 1 But now that I think about it, I also, I know some people who have had their teens admitted to, I think, similar-ish residential placement, and they swear by this experience.

Speaker 1 Surely you've come across people who report positive outcomes, whether that be the kids or their parents. Because like I said, my friend from high school, he loved his outdoor program.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it was immediate, but I remember him being like, you should all do it. And he said it was great for him.
And he wasn't like trolling us. He was like pretty honest.

Speaker 1 He wasn't that kind of guy. He was pretty bullish on the whole thing.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm so glad to hear that your friend didn't have any lasting trauma from being there. You bring up such an important point.

Speaker 4 There are some who go to these programs and come out having had a great experience.

Speaker 4 While I am so thankful for that, the reality is that these programs are not federally regulated, severely lacking in oversight.

Speaker 4 And they also don't have proper reporting policies that would ensure the safety for every single youth. In healthcare, everything should be driven by outcomes.

Speaker 4 Until we can guarantee that every youth who enters these programs receives actual treatment and has a good experience, then alternative methods need to be used.

Speaker 4 Not to mention, we know now that even in the absence of abuse for these children, the act of being institutionalized itself can be harmful.

Speaker 4 The kids who go into these facilities have every aspect of their lives monitored. Contact with the outside world is cut off and have a complete loss of free will.

Speaker 4 The very fact that communication is limited to the outside world, that there's no due process, and that these children are extremely removed from their support systems will often breed abuse, even if it's not intended.

Speaker 1 Of course, that kind of goes without saying, right? People have no recourse. They can't communicate.

Speaker 1 It just seems like a recipe for disaster and a completely inappropriate situation for kids or anyone really to be in.

Speaker 1 But I've done work in prisons, maximum security prisons, and even people in a maximum security prison can communicate with folks outside regularly. They can get help.

Speaker 1 They can file complaints and they can get assistance at some level. And I know former prisoners are going to be like, dude, it's terrible in there.
But they're literally in a maximum security prison.

Speaker 1 They can still make phone calls, right? They can still talk to their lawyer, et cetera. Kids especially need support systems to develop and thrive.

Speaker 1 So this is crazy to have them in an environment that has less communication than Sing Sing.

Speaker 4 Yeah, exactly. And most people don't understand that kids in prison actually have more rights than kids in these programs.

Speaker 4 Ripping a teen away from their closest relationships, or should I say kidnapping, as that's often what is done, can cause major disruptions in their ability to function in important ways, both internally and externally.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like you're just ripping a plant out of the soil and then you put it somewhere else, expecting it to thrive, but there's no roots.

Speaker 4 Exactly. But instead of a plant, it's a teenager's mental and emotional well-being we're talking about.

Speaker 4 And trust me, it gets worse when that adversity or trauma hits during childhood, especially without a caring adult to help them through it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like a, this is like a bad software update that just messes with their brain development.

Speaker 4 Exactly. It's something called toxic stress.
It's like regular stress's evil twin.

Speaker 4 It changes the way our brain is wired right down to the genetic level and basically remodels the brain in all the wrong ways.

Speaker 4 It goes after key areas in the brain like the amygdala, hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex.

Speaker 4 Those are the parts that handle things like stress, response, emotional regulation, focus, decision-making, and memory.

Speaker 4 When toxic stress messes with those, it's like trying to run a computer on a corrupted hard drive. Nothing works the way it should.

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Speaker 1 So basically, if a teenager or young person goes through something rough and they're met with a drill sergeant instead of a caregiver, you're saying it messes up their brain and their ability to perform and deal with stress in the future.

Speaker 4 Yeah? Exactly. Our brains are like super sponges when we're young, soaking up everything around us.

Speaker 4 If that everything is chaos and stress, the brain rewires itself to survive in that kind of environment and not in a good way.

Speaker 1 So what kind of long-term effects can this lead to? Because I've done a ton of work around stress on this show and it can basically just kill you early and make your life awful.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you're not far off. When survivors of the industry finally get out of these programs, we're starting to see the full scope of damage.

Speaker 4 We're talking mental health issues like complex PTSD, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and personality disorders, but it doesn't stop there.

Speaker 4 Housing insecurity, lack of job training, poor educational outcomes, and even higher chances of suicide.

Speaker 4 It's like a nightmare bingo card of long-term effects, all tied to something called adverse childhood experiences.

Speaker 1 This might be self-explanatory, but is that a category? Like, what are adverse childhood experiences? I assume that's a clinical term of some kind.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so basically, they're traumatic events that happen before you turn 18 and can mess with your entire life, your health, your opportunities, your stability.

Speaker 4 They're grouped into three categories: abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction.

Speaker 4 The original study and decades of follow-up research has linked these experiences to a greater chance of chronic disorders, obesity, behavioral changes, autoimmune disease, depression, alcoholism, you name it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's awful. I, of course, feel for any kid dealing with trauma.

Speaker 1 And now that I'm a parent, man, whenever I see adults that have gone off the rails, you see someone outside, or you see someone like just really their life life is not in order, or they're in prison.

Speaker 1 I always just, I wonder what happened to them as kids that might have led them to where they are now.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Childhood trauma is like a ghost that haunts you well into adulthood.
And get this, there's a questionnaire for adverse childhood experiences.

Speaker 4 It's like a trauma scorecard with 10 different types of abuse scenarios that can happen in childhood. For everyone you check off, you get a point.

Speaker 4 And trust me, you really don't want a high score on this test.

Speaker 4 What's even more mind-blowing is that many of the scenarios scenarios on that list match up perfectly with the kinds of abuse happening in these programs.

Speaker 1 So it sounds like the troubled teen programs are promising treatment that they don't deliver to the kids and the parents, but they're also increasing kids' trauma, right?

Speaker 1 So they're making the whole thing worse and the kids come out worse than they were when they went in. Is that fair to say?

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 4 Pretty much nailed it. To give you an idea of how true that is.
If I myself had filled out the questionnaire before I was sent away, my score would have been a one out of 10.

Speaker 4 Now, because of what I had to go through during three and a half years in institutions, my score is now a seven. And higher scores aren't just a bad look, they can literally kill you.

Speaker 4 In fact, because I have a score over four, my likelihood of developing chronic pulmonary lung disease is up by 390%,

Speaker 4 hepatitis, 240%,

Speaker 4 depression, 460%, and the chances of me attempting suicide is up a whopping 1,220%.

Speaker 1 So even when the industry isn't directly killing kids, it's basically setting up a slow-motion train wreck for their future health, which is beyond messed up.

Speaker 1 I'm curious, though, of course, the depression and suicide stuff, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 But how is somebody more likely to get something like, what was it, like lung disease or hepatitis as an adult from going through a traumatic experience in childhood?

Speaker 1 That part I don't quite understand.

Speaker 4 Great question. And it's one that a lot of people wonder about.

Speaker 4 The connection between trauma and physical health might not seem obvious at first, but it's all tied to how our bodies respond to stress.

Speaker 4 When you experience trauma, especially as a kid, your body is constantly in fight-or-flight mode, and your stress hormones, like cortisol, are working overtime.

Speaker 4 This prolonged stress can wreak havoc on your immune system, heart, and even lungs over time.

Speaker 4 For example, with chronic pulmonary lung disease, ongoing stress can cause inflammation and damage to the lungs.

Speaker 4 As for hepatitis, it's not so much that trauma directly causes the disease, but that the people with high ACEs or adverse childhood experience scores might engage in risky behaviors to cope, like substance abuse, which increases the risk of contracting hepatitis.

Speaker 4 So in short, the stress from trauma messes with your body in ways that make you more vulnerable to a range of health issues later on.

Speaker 4 It's like your body ends up paying the price for what your mind had to endure.

Speaker 1 Okay, yeah. So that makes sense.
This is all like downstream effects.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And the trauma effects don't stop there.

Speaker 4 Because many survivors experience medical abuse or neglect, many are terrified of doctors and hospitals, which shatters their trust in the healthcare system. I've been there.

Speaker 4 Anytime I had something wrong with me in those programs, whether it was a nasty, persistent cough or being covered in blood after a horrific car crash, I was praised if I didn't seek help or ask for a doctor.

Speaker 4 No matter what was going on, needing help was seen as being dramatic. Now, as an adult, the mindset has stuck with me.

Speaker 4 I almost never asked for help, thinking that sitting in pain is somehow better than being a burden by trying to fix it.

Speaker 1 Wait, so you got into a car crash and you just didn't go to the doctor?

Speaker 4 Yep. Sounds so crazy, right?

Speaker 4 One Thanksgiving day, my dad came to visit me in the program. And while I was practicing my driving, since I only had my learner's permit at the time, we ended up getting into a serious car crash.

Speaker 4 The car rolled multiple times and ended up landing upside down. My hand smashed the windshield and I was a bloody mess.

Speaker 4 But my first thought after crawling out through the window was, I have to get to Thanksgiving dinner so I don't get called dramatic for this. People had stopped on the side of the road to help us.

Speaker 4 I remember them saying they were calling an ambulance, but I told them to stop.

Speaker 4 I thought that if I could just make it to Thanksgiving dinner, despite everything, the program owners would be proud of me for being strong enough to not need help. And that is what I did.

Speaker 4 My dad and I took a taxi because the car was obviously totaled to Thanksgiving. And the owner was extremely proud of me.

Speaker 1 That is absolutely unbelievable. I mean, the fact that you were in such a serious car accident, your car rolled, your hand smashed the windshield, you're like bleeding.

Speaker 1 And your first instinct was, oh, I don't want to be seen as dramatic by these people who are abusing me in this program. It just shows how deeply ingrained that fear was.

Speaker 1 And the program owner being proud of you for pushing through it's just, it's heartbreaking and kind of psycho as well. So thank you for sharing that.
It's got to be tough to relive that even now.

Speaker 1 And it's so sad that children are being conditioned this way. It makes me wonder just how many kids are being put through this 23 billion dollars in public funding alone.

Speaker 1 So who knows like the scope of the industry? It's some massive scale. Actually, do we know how many people end up in these programs on a yearly basis?

Speaker 4 I mean, I would say a conservative estimate would be that approximately 120,000 to 200,000 youth are housed in these types of programs every year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a lot more than I expected. I can't believe we don't hear more about this, honestly.
Can we stop this?

Speaker 1 It seems like a senator or two would make this a pet cause and just blow it up and start passing legislation or something.

Speaker 4 Yeah, awareness is key. The movement to stop institutional child abuse isn't new.
For the past 50 years, survivors have been sharing their stories and hoping for change.

Speaker 4 But there's been a shift in recent years that gives us a real shot of making a difference.

Speaker 1 So what's that change?

Speaker 4 So starting around 2020, high-profile survivors like Paris Hilton, Drew Barrymore, and Kat Von D started speaking out through docu-series, documentaries, podcasts, and news stories.

Speaker 4 These stories shined a spotlight on the industry and ramped up the pressure.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is amazing what a little celebrity spotlight can do. I didn't have Paris Hilton becomes child advocate on my bingo card the 2020s at all, but good for her.

Speaker 4 I know, right?

Speaker 4 But then there was the tragic death of Cornelius Fredericks in a Michigan facility in April of 2020.

Speaker 4 Cornelius died after being restrained by several adults for over 10 minutes for throwing a sandwich.

Speaker 4 His death sparked outrage in the media media and highlighted the fact that over 377 youth have died in these programs. The media finally started to pay attention.

Speaker 1 You know, I remember that because I'm from Michigan originally and I remember reading about this and it was just like, wait, he threw a sandwich. So why were people leaning on him?

Speaker 1 I think he was suffocated, right? Because they were just pushing him into the floor and he couldn't breathe. And that was the end of it.

Speaker 4 And he said, I can't breathe. Yep.
But then in May of 2022, the nonprofit I founded, Unsilenced, Paris Hilton, numerous senators and hundreds of advocates went to D.C.

Speaker 4 to speak to lawmakers about the industry and push for more regulations and reporting requirements.

Speaker 1 So did you manage to make an impact? Because it seems like this is long overdue.

Speaker 4 Yeah. In July of 2022, Senator Wyden and Senator Murray announced a federal investigation into the four largest for-profit companies due to long patterns of abuse.

Speaker 4 And only a few months ago, we saw that come into fruition with the release of a report by the United States Senate Committee on Finance.

Speaker 4 The report is literally called Warehouses of Neglect, How Taxpayers Are Funding Systemic Abuse in Youth Residential Treatment Facilities.

Speaker 1 Yikes. Wow.
Transparent title. Okay, good.
We're seeing progress.

Speaker 1 It seems like these efforts are creating change or potentially creating change, which is really great because this is disgusting what we're talking about today.

Speaker 4 Absolutely disgusting. And it's great because since Unsilenced launched in January of 2022, we've seen 90 programs with a history and pattern of abuse shut down.

Speaker 1 Yeah, impressive. 90 programs.
So tell me more about your organization, Unsilence. What are you doing? Obviously, you're going to DC and advocating, but like, what else are you doing?

Speaker 4 Yeah, at Unsilence, we focus on three main areas, preventing abuse, supporting survivors, and ensuring justice.

Speaker 4 For prevention, we educate parents and communities about the dangers of the troubled teen industry and the struggles survivors face after leaving these programs.

Speaker 4 We also push for transparency with our extensive program archive, which contains over 100,000 documents on over 3,500 different programs.

Speaker 4 These include DHS reports, news stories, lawsuits, and survivor testimonies, so we can put critical information into the hands of those who really need it.

Speaker 4 And to ensure justice, our justice support team is dedicated to ensuring survivors of institutional abuse have access to it.

Speaker 4 We connect survivors with dedicated attorneys through our newly launched attorney directory.

Speaker 4 The team also investigates programs, files record requests to expose abuse, and uses this information to inform the public through our social media channel.

Speaker 4 Supporting survivors, though, is a huge part of what we do.

Speaker 4 We provide independence packs to survivors battling unstable housing, which include essential resources like a laptop, gift cards, and other items to help them transition back into society.

Speaker 4 And lastly, we also offer free support groups to help the survivor community connect and heal.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I had no idea that any of this was going on. And of course, I just sort of of assumed like, oh, you go through the program and then you go back to your family and you live your normal life.

Speaker 1 I didn't realize people end up like on the street after this because their life is destroyed. Just horrible to think that this has been happening for decades, really, right under our noses.

Speaker 1 And like, I'm pretty upset that my tax dollars are going to this because it's just offensive and disgusting. So thank you for coming on the show today, sharing your personal experience, especially.

Speaker 1 I think it's great you've turned that experience, that horrible experience, into fuel to help protect others.

Speaker 4 Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 Thank y'all y'all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com.
Show notes on the website at jordanharbinger.com.

Speaker 1 Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support this show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 Meg's organization is over at unsilenced.org. We'll link to that and her social media in the show notes.
This show is created in association with Podcast One.

Speaker 1 My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own.
And I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.

Speaker 1 Do your own research before implementing things you hear on the show. Also, we may get a few things wrong here and there, especially on Skeptical Sunday.

Speaker 1 If you think we really dropped the ball, let us know. I'm also curious which show fans are hearing this and have been through one of these programs.
I'm curious about your experience.

Speaker 1 Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com. Remember, we rise by lifting others.
Share the show with those you love.

Speaker 1 And if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we dold out today.

Speaker 1 In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with Amanda Katarzi, who was raised in a cult and later sex and labor trafficked.

Speaker 6 The women were trained to be insanely submissive, like you could never say no to any man.

Speaker 6 And then the men were trained in a very military way.

Speaker 4 These people are well armed and well-trained.

Speaker 6 And it's a whole group that thinks that the world is evil and they need to repopulate the world with their people to bring the kingdom of God. When you turn 13 in that culture, you're an adult.

Speaker 6 So to be 13 years old being courted by men twice my age, three times my age to see if I would make a good wife, it was just kind of outrageous.

Speaker 6 So I moved to California to go to school and I start training in MMA and my trafficker was there. He was actually one of my boxing coaches.
Then he's like, you know, I like you.

Speaker 6 And so now we're dating. So this is my first adult relationship.
He's twice my age at this point.

Speaker 6 And then he would always take me up to his cabin on the mountain, which was really far away from everybody else. No phone service, isolation, and it was on a Native American reservation.

Speaker 6 So whatever they wanted to do to me, they could. Oops, you accidentally got gang raped.

Speaker 6 That was very common of going to go train and then all of a sudden, now that you've fought 12 rounds now you're gonna be right a girl ran a red light in Tebow in my truck so I pull out my phone and I text my trafficker and I say hey I almost just died in a car accident he said is your face fed up and I'm like no

Speaker 6 he said well you're still fable then

Speaker 6 something isn't right here

Speaker 6 this isn't who I want to be This isn't what I want. And it was like I was coming out of water.

Speaker 6 I had this moment of clarity and I knew something wasn't right, and I knew this wasn't what I wanted, and I knew I needed to act fast in order to get out of that situation because I knew I'd get sucked back in.

Speaker 1 To hear how she escaped her dire situation, check out episode 631 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

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