With the arrival of Paris Hilton’s documentary This Is Paris, the multi-billion dollar industry that we in the survivor community call “the troubled teen industry” has gained momentous attention that I truly never thought that I would live to see. These programs operate under strict secrecy, in real cult-like fashion and rely on kids who go through their doors to keep quiet once they’re out, which is usually what happens since it is instilled in you to never speak ill of the program while you’re there.
I was 13 when my parents sent me away to various programs until I turned 17 and finally “graduated” from one. The first that I went to was an all girls program called Greenbrier Academy. It was tucked away in a remote part of West Virginia and was in a huge mansion previously used as a World War II women’s prison. Yes, the prison cells were still in tact in some of the halls. The guy who ran it, L.Jay Mitchell, has plenty of abuse allegations against him from other programs he’s run as well as from girls at Greenbrier. He has been found responsible for multiple kid’s deaths due to negligence and his staff being ill-suited and untrained to work with kids who have mental health issues. During my time spent at Greenbrier, L.Jay acted as my therapist, although he held no such credentials and was little more than a man with a lot of money and power. He would try to hypnotize me during sessions, convince me that I wasn’t bisexual, and also tried to plant false memories in my head. He held group therapy sessions with all of the girls where he would use the “therapy” program he developed called “the ways”. Since he was a mormon, religion was deeply entrenched in his philosophies. During these group sessions, which regularly lasted for hours, he would make us do wall sits until we couldn’t physically handle them anymore.
In these programs, conformity is everything. From how you dress, to who you talk to, to what you eat and when, every second of your life is tightly controlled and monitored. If you get close to someone else in the program, they call you co-dependent and put you on “talking bans”, where you’re not allowed to speak to or look at one another. On the other hand, if you spend too much time reading or doing some other solo activity, they tell you that you’re isolating too much and take those things away and force you to interact more with the community. There were isolation rooms where you’d be sent if you’d been breaking the rules, and hard labor was prescribed for every rule you broke. At one program I went to, Auldern Academy, I was forced to haul heavy rocks around in the woods all day for not falling in line. Manual labor was central to our weekends in programs, and only rarely were we taken on outings in the community.
It was impossible to follow all of the rules, as they were nebulous and changed constantly on purpose as a way to keep you on your toes. There existed strict level systems, with rewards and punishments attached. Almost all of the “therapy” was a form that has been condemned by the American Psychological Association called attack therapy, which is exactly what it sounds like. We would have long group sessions where someone was put in “the hot seat” and everyone else would yell at them and interrogate them for breaking rules or for things they said against the program. Mostly, we were made to feel ashamed of who we were and it was drilled into us that we were defective and bad kids whom our parents didn’t want anymore.
Another critical way that these programs control kids is by monitoring their phone calls with their families and all incoming and outgoing mail. The program staff tell parents that their kids will say whatever they can to get out of being there and to not listen to them no matter what sorts of allegations they make, because they’re just manipulating them. If you write something that the program doesn’t like, they black it out or make you rewrite the letter. If you mention anything negative about the program on a phone call, they’d make you hang up and take away your phone privileges. My parents certainly fell for this, as I tried telling them in whatever ways I could that these places were abusive, but to no avail. The feeling of utter powerlessness I had while in these places is almost indescribable. I felt completely alone and like my soul had been crushed.
When I was 15, my parents sent me to a wilderness therapy program 2 days before Christmas. They drove me out to Georgia and dropped me off at a shabby cabin in the woods where a couple of staff members told them that they’d take me from there. I was taken to a little room with a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and told to strip and put on the pile of clothes they had folded on a chair. I put on the khakis and bright blue shirt, and looked at the backpacking gear they had laid out. I had heard of wilderness programs from kids from the other programs I’d been to, so I knew how horrible they were, but nothing could have prepared me for the next 2 1/2 months. They were pure hell. First of all, I had never been backpacking in my life and had barely spent time in the outdoors at all, being from a big city. We were forced to backpack for miles each day wearing about 75 pounds on our backs with very short breaks. The shoes they gave me were too small, so my feet were constantly aching and blistered. We never had enough food for the week before the van would come to give us more, so we had to ration it out. I learned so many ways to stave off hunger. We were also extremely ill prepared for the elements as it was usually wet and always freezing, and we were only given 2 tarps to make a shelter and our sleeping bags were nowhere warm enough. The staff told us to sleep with our wet clothes in our sleeping bags so that our body warmth would dry them off. We were forced to bow drill our own fires every night to cook dinner, although the staff had their own propane stoves and lighters to cook their meals. At one point, we were all blind folded and lead to a spot in the woods, given our tarps and sleeping bags, and told that we would be staying there alone for several days. They called this a “solo”. I was cold, hungry, and extremely lonely for those 3 days.
I could go on and on about my experiences in the troubled teen industry, as I spent almost 4 years going in and out of these programs, but that would take writing a novel. What I went through though, thousands of kids are going through right now. This is suburbia’s dirty little secret, and these institutions have deep political ties . The majority of these programs are located in Utah because of the state’s super lax child abuse laws, and also because of the wholesome brand the state has because of mormonism. Parents seem to trust Utah over other states with their kids. However, these programs are nearly everywhere, as well as in other countries, most of which are run by a company called WWASP (The World Wide Association of Specialty Programs). It’s been 9 years since I left the last program I was sent to and I still have nightmares about being sent back. I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD and an anxiety disorder, which are a direct result of being in these places. I’ve been silenced for far too long, so I am #breakingcodesilence.
